Gerald Edelman’s Project: How Gerald Edelman’s Theory of Consciousness Completes Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and Provides a Basis for a Brain-Based Psychoanalytic Perspective

In this article we consider Nobel Prize Winner Gerald Edelman’s remarkable contribution to the understanding of human evolution, and our own application of Edelman’s theory to a brain-based psychoanalytic perspective we have devised. Edelman’s paradigm setting out his theory of the evolution of mind, brain, and consciousness concerns not only mankind’s evolution over all of time, but also the evolution of each and every individual over and within his single lifetime. Edelman contends that human beings, as individuals, and not only as the taxonomic category from which they sprang, have a separate and distinct evolutionary history of their own, and it is especially from within Edelman’s theoretical assumptions about the evolution of the individual per se that our own psychoanalytic understanding of theory and practice derives.     

A Discussion of “Disorders of Temporality and The Subjective Experience of Time: Unresponsive Objects and the Vacuity of the Future” by Stephen Seligman

In this review of Stephen Seligman’s contribution to the literature on disorders of temporality, the patient’s ordinary and extraordinary experiences of time in the clinical situation, the reviewer provides both theoretical confirmation and clinical illustration in support of the author’s arguments. Infant research, nonlinear dynamic systems theory, and especially a brain-based psychoanalytic perspective taken from the work of Gerald Edelman are introduced to facilitate understanding of memory in general and the second of Seligman’s disorders of temporality in particular. Edelman’s formulation on the biological evolution of consciousness affords a means to comprehend how the phenomenon of dissociation emerges spontaneously in the clinical situation that matches and offers an explanation Seligman’s own understanding.     

Convergence,commonality, and context in psychoanalytic supervision

ABSTRACT

What are the binding commonalities that demark and define any and all psychoanalytic supervision perspectives? What do we all do as psychoanalytic supervisors that practically matters? Furthermore, might there be a unifying model that anchors those binding commonalities together into a supervision meaning-making, explanatory framework? In this two-part paper, I take up those questions. In Part I, based on a century-spanning literature review, I identify 50 (non-exhaustive) common Support and Learning factors that appear present across the panoply of psychoanalytic supervision perspectives. Relational, educational, and interventional, these 50 factors reflect the very stuff of which psychoanalytic supervision is made. In Part II, I present and elaborate upon the Contextual Psychoanalytic Supervision Relationship Model (CPSRM) – a theoretically-grounded model that anchors and contextualizes those common Support and Learning factors. Because common factors can be seen as nothing more than atheoretical amalgamation (i.e., lists of desirable characteristics endlessly strung together), the CPSRM is proposed as a theoretically-based antidote. A supervisory extrapolation of Wampold’s contextual psychotherapy relationship model, the CPSRM accentuates relational connection, expectations/goals, and educational action as preeminently supervisee change inducing and learner affecting.     

Psychoanalysis, the Anxiety of Influence, and the Sadomasochism of Everyday Life

After reviewing recent upheavals within psychoanalytic institutions and our diminished status in the worlds of academia, psychiatry, and the media, this essay turns to the historical trends that led to the current state of siege in which psychoanalysis finds itself—trends most clearly manifested on the East Coast institutes of the United States. I hypothesize that a legacy of arrogant entitlement on the part of the founding fathers made for an abiding institutional authoritarianism. This hierarchicalism fostered a loss of self-determination and individuation, negative Oedipal submission, identifications with the aggressor within psychoanalytic organizations, and a pseudospeciation with regard to potential critics in the outside world. Promising in many respects, nonetheless many of the current changes in psychoanalytic education and theory inevitably represent a positive Oedipal rebellion against the generation that had oppressed the one now in ascendancy and, more insidiously, a means of containing the candidates now in our charge. Finally, I argue that our future depends on our ability to embrace unwanted and disavowed truths about the history of our field and thereby to reclaim both our idealism and our credibility.     

Day,Night, or Dawn: Commentary on Paper by Steven Stern

It was in the years immediately following World War II and through the 1950s that the psychoanalytic establishment officially defined psychoanalysis as a subspecialty of psychiatry, and it was in that context of the professionalization of American medicine that they codified the distinction between psychoanalysis and (psychoanalytic) psychotherapy. In this commentary on Steven Stern's “Session Frequency and the Definition of Psychoanalysis,” I deconstruct a series of binaries that was built into the analysis/therapy distinction and that has plagued our discipline. It is argued that psychoanalysis identified itself with the culturally “masculine” and heterosexual values of autonomous individuality (the intrapsychic), while it split off all that was relational and social (interpersonal), marked as “feminine,” homosexual, and “primitive,” onto psychotherapy, which it then devalued. The paper then examines the implications for practice and psychoanalytic education.     

Like a phoenix from the ashes – or “sack cloth and ashes”?:1 The reconstitution of psychoanalytic institutions in Germany since 1945 and its consequences

Abstract

Here, I attempt to formulate some thoughts about the past, present, and future of psychoanalysis and its institutions in Germany. To do this, I have employed my varied experience as a supervisor and consultant to many such psychoanalytic institutes over the past several years. Themes discussed include the history of psychoanalysis in postwar Germany, the organizational structure of German psychoanalytic institutes, and their cultures in regard to group and organizational dynamics, and political and economic aspects. Finally, I add brief thoughts about the future, taking into account recent developments relating to planned changes in laws governing psychotherapy in Germany. Further, I attempt to analyze and comment on: coming to terms with the past; how to begin after the “Zero Hour”; the form of organization of psychoanalytic institutes in Germany; missing patients and missing candidates; constructive debate and hurting people’s feelings; the lack of “detoxification” and “recycling” of the poisonous remains of psychoanalytic processes; and the future of psychoanalytic institutions in Germany. I end with an example of a typical primary task used in conducting large groups in the institutes in which I worked, and include an anonymized table listing individual interventions, their duration, and frequency. These should provide an idea of my way of working, and an overview of the dimensions of the task.     

Childhood and Trauma

In this paper, I follow the evolution of the concept of trauma within psychoanalytic theory, and some of the effects of this evolution. Starting out from the point where Freud gives up the theory of trauma as the cause of neurosis in 1897, and the alleged reasons for such a change, I analyze the theoretical and clinical consequences of this change within psychoanalysis. I proceed to develop Ferenczi's ideas on trauma, their relevance to present-day psychoanalytic theorizing and practice, as well as for the understanding of the psychic processes in children, tracing the development of some of these ideas in contemporary psychoanalytic thinking.     

What's Possible? What Matters? Reply to Commentaries

The three discussants agree that a definition of psychoanalysis tied to session frequency is problematic and needs to change. Yet none supports my recommendation to redefine the practice of psychoanalysis in terms of the practitioner's training. This prompted me to look more closely at my proposal and push my thinking further. I argue that psychoanalysis, like many other professions, needs to define its practice as the application of its complex and evolving knowledge and skill base, grounded in its unique field of inquiry. Although there are individual exceptions, the inculcation of this knowledge and skill base is generally best accomplished through psychoanalytic training. This assertion, however, rests on the premise that our training curricula keep pace with our rapidly evolving field of inquiry and knowledge. To further clarify my vision I examine the nature of psychoanalytic expertise. I suggest that such expertise amounts to the inculcation and integration of a large number of psychoanalytic frames of reference. I contend further that the nature of contemporary psychoanalytic theories is such that important psychoanalytic frames of reference are proliferating more rapidly than in the past, that the relationships among them are becoming more complex, and that consequently the application of psychoanalytic theory to practice is also becoming more complex. Psychoanalytic training programs need to recognize this expanding complexity and revise curricula and pedagogic methods on an ongoing basis to reflect this evolution within our field.     

Child psychotherapy: Converging traditions

In this paper I outline some of the ways in which I believe the psychoanalytic traditions in North America and in Great Britain are influencing each other. I identify points of convergence and divergence at this moment in the evolution of psychoanalytic theory and technique. I then point out some of the implications of relational perspectives in child psychotherapy as this perspective is developing in the United States.     

BEFORE ATTACHMENT THEORY: SEPARATION RESEARCH AT THE TAVISTOCK CLINIC, 1948–1956

This article traces the formation of attachment theory to the pioneering research program of Bowlby and his colleagues at the Tavistock Clinic between 1948 and 1956. Through a discussion of the concepts and practices that informed Bowlby's program, I examine the efforts of his team to reconstruct psychoanalytic objects according to preventive objectives and operational criteria. I discuss how the exploratory techniques that Bowlby and his colleagues were developing during these years ultimately led to the establishment of a hybrid investigative framework, in which the prophylactic requirements of mental hygiene, the psychometric model of personality disturbances, the psychoanalytic theory of object relations, and a direct‐observational methodology were brought to bear on the problem of the psychological consequences of early separation experiences. I further claim that this shift in investigative practice was crucial for the succeeding theoretical developments that eventually gave rise to the statistically validated constructs of attachment theory.     

The competent psychoanalytic supervisor: Some thoughts about supervision competences for accountable practice and training

What are the competences required to satisfactorily practice effective or “good enough” psychoanalytic supervision? In this paper, I would like to consider that question. Over the past approximate 15-year period, increasing attention has been directed toward more specifically identifying and defining the components of competent psychoanalytic practice. But any parallel attention toward identifying and defining the components of competent psychoanalytic supervision practice has, in comparison, been sorely limited if not virtually absent. If we are to best practice competent psychoanalytic supervision and best train future psychoanalytic supervisors for competent practice, effort needs to be made to concretely delineate the competences that are requisite for such practice. In what follows, I present and adapt six broad-based families of internationally relevant supervision competence areas for use in psychoanalytic supervision: (1) knowledge about/understanding of psychoanalytic supervision models, methods, and intervention; (2) knowledge about/skill in attending to matters of ethical, legal, and professional concern; (3) knowledge about/skill in managing psychoanalytic supervision relationship processes; (4) knowledge about/skill in conducting psychoanalytic supervisory assessment and evaluation; (5) knowledge about/skill in fostering attention to difference and diversity; and (6) openness to/utilization of a self-reflective, self-assessment stance in psychoanalytic supervision. Although by no means an exhaustive list, 30 supervision competences (five per family) are proposed as significant for guiding competent psychoanalytic supervision practice and supervisor training, and a brief explanatory comment is offered in support of each broad-based family of competences.     

Otto Rank: beginnings, endings, and current experience

I have traced the theories of Otto Rank as they appeared in his major technical writings. Against this background, I have discussed references to Rank in past and contemporary psychoanalytic literature. This paper describes three important contributions of Rank--his birth trauma theory, leading to his theory of the birth of the self; his emphasis on present experience (forerunner of the current "here-and-now" theory); and his writings about the creative potential of the termination process.     

CHARACTER,PSYCHOANALYTIC IDENTIFICATION,AND NUMERICAL IDENTITY

Identification figures prominently in moral psychological explanations. I argue that in identification the subject has an ‘identity‐thought’, which is a thought about her numerical identity with the figure she identifies with. In Freud's psychoanalytic psychology character is founded on unconscious identification with parental figures. Moral philosophers have drawn on psychoanalysis to explain how undesirable or disadvantageous character dispositions are resistant to insight through being unconscious. According to Richard Wollheim's analysis of Freud's theory, identification is the subject's disposition to imagine, unconsciously, her bodily merging with the figure she identifies with. I argue that this explanation of identification is not adequate. Human character is held to be capable of change when self‐reflection brings unconscious identifications to conscious self‐knowledge. I argue that for self‐knowledge these identifications must be an intelligible part of the subject's self‐conception, and that Wollheim's ‘merging phantasy’ is not intelligible to the subject in this way. By contrast, the subject's thought that she is numerically identical to the figure she identifies with does provide an intelligible starting‐point for reflecting on this identification. This psychoanalytic account provides a clear conception of identification with which to investigate puzzle cases in the moral psychology of character.     

The centrality of the psychoanalytic setting and the changing aims of treatment. A perspective from a theory of object relations

The psychoanalytic setting, which includes the bond between analysand and analyst, is the foundation of psychoanalytic treatment. This object tie, although in the here and now, and "real", is demarcated from ordinary life and can be thought of as existing within a different level of reality. The psychoanalytic setting is subject to symbolic transformations that enable non-specific developmental conflicts to be worked through. I have described this transformation as the "dependent/containing transference," which I have compared and contrasted to the highly variegated and specific "iconic" transference (transference neurosis). This view of the psychoanalytic setting leads the analyst to pay special attention to problems of entrustment and safety and to the communicative process that regulates the closeness and distance between the two participants.     

'My capital secret': Literature and the psychoanalytic agon

Taking as my departure point Freud 's unequivocal claim in The Question of Lay Analysis that psychoanalytic education should include "the history of civilization, mythology, the psychology of religion, and the science of literature" ( Freud, 1926b, p . 246), I advocate for an integration of psychoanalysis with the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences in psychoanalytic training. Foundations in these fields are not only acceptable as preliminary to clinical training but will also provide the diverse intellectual climate that is urgently needed in psychoanalytic institutes whose discursive range is often quite narrow. To provide one example of the salutary effect of such disciplinary integration on clinical practice, I illustrate how the transformative power of literature provides compelling metaphors for the psychoanalytic encounter. Through an example drawn from within my own experience as literary critic and psychoanalyst, I describe the ways that the troubling tensions in Milton's Samson Agonistes functioned to illuminate, for me, an analysand 's 'capital secret'.     

On the nature and standing of psychoanalytic psychotherapy

In this paper, I offer some reflections on the standing of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the National Health Service (NHS), with special reference to contemporary forms of evidence-based thinking. I consider what may follow when a narrow view of science or psychotherapeutic practice becomes conventional wisdom and assumes dominance. I place stress on the potential loss to NHS psychology and psychiatry if psychoanalytic psychotherapy becomes increasingly marginalized on the one hand, or overly standardized on the other.     

Becoming (and Remaining) an Analyst in Latin America

The following overview of the development of psychoanalysis in Brazil and in Porto Alegre outlines the current situation and the challenges to psychoanalysis in my country. I will explain my own experiences on becoming an analyst, the main reasons for my choice, my main influences, and my evolution as a clinical psychoanalyst and as a member of psychoanalytic and psychiatric institutions. I include my main contributions to psychoanalysis and consider two broad areas of interest: psychoanalytic technique and its teaching, and the relationship of psychoanalysis and culture. As for the former, my main interests are studies on countertransference and analytic neutrality, to which I will propose a comprehensive concept. As for the latter, I discuss a culture that contrasts vividly with the one in which Freud created the discipline, psychoanalytic views on violence and perversity, psychoanalytic institutions, and the application of analytic ideas for the understanding of some artists and their work.

I will also describe some general features of my country and the development of psychoanalysis in it; report my experiences as a candidate and an analyst; and offer some information about my evolution as an analyst through papers I have written over the past 30 years.