THE INTERPLAY OF DEDUCTIVE AND INDUCTIVE REASONING IN PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIZING

Deductive and inductive reasoning both played an essential part in Freud's construction of psychoanalysis. In this paper, the author explores the happy marriage of empiricism and rationalism in Freud's use of deductive reasoning in the construction of psychoanalytic theory. To do this, the author considers three major amendments Freud made to his theory: (i) infant and childhood sexuality, (ii) the structural theory, and (iii) the theory of signal anxiety. Ultimately, the author argues for, and presents Freud as a proponent of, the epistemological position that he calls critical realism.     

Genetics,Developmental Psychopathology,and Psychoanalytic Theory: The Case for Ending Our (Not So) Splendid Isolation

This paper considers the historical isolation of psychoanalysis from other scientific academic disciplines. The example of behavior genetics is used to illustrate the potential mutual benefit of cross-fertilization. Exploring links between the two disciplines makes it possible to debate antipsycho-analytic constructions in behavior genetics with greater vigor. At the same time, psychoanalysis, which studies subjectivity, is relevant to a discipline that naively explores the objective environment without considering the crucial mediation through the subjective world. Microbiology and genetics offer models of the mechanisms by which meaning generation and interpretive capacity might interface with the unfolding of genetic expression. Simultaneously, emerging psychoanalytic developmental models have provided an ontogenetic psychological framework that links development of this capacity to the infant-mother relationship. The paper concludes by stressing the need for a cadre of specialist psychoanalytic professionals dedicated to research as the precondition of any meaningful dialogue between psychoanalysis and any other discipline.     

Neutrality,tenderness and the analyst's subjectivity

Addressing the rôle of the analyst in the psychoanalytic relationship, the author takes issue with the emphasis on acknowledging the analyst's subjectivity and the critique of concepts like neutrality and abstinence as these issues are presented in the relational tradition. He advocates a better articulation and emphasis of these concepts in the service of understanding the impact of the analyst's subjectivity, and demonstrates how the mere loosening up of analytic neutrality and abstinence and an acceptance of the analyst's self-disclosure make transference analysis more difficult to handle. Such an attitude also increases the risk for ethically dubious conduct, since there is a close link between clinical methods and ethical standards in psychoanalysis. In conclusion, the author points to the importance of the analyst's continuous self-reflection and countertransference analysis.     

Critical realism: distinguishing the psychological subjectivity of the analyst from epistemological subjectivism

To clarify the concepts of critical realism, subjectivity, and subjectivism, distinctions are drawn among ontological subjectivism, moral subjectivity, psychological subjectivity, and epistemological subjectivism. Psychological subjectivity, including the ongoing affective life of the analyst, is an essential aspect of the analyst's response to the patient, and may either facilitate or distort an adequate observation of transference and countertransference dynamics and of the psychic reality of the patient. Subjectivism in current psychoanalytic literature involves an argument that there is an "irreducible" subjectivity in the analyst, who is bound to see things from an incorrigibly personal point of view, such that there is no substantial subject-object differentiation between analyst and patient. Issues of authoritarianism in the analyst, or of pathological certainty, should not be confused with the issues of epistemological objectivism. The concept of critical realism or scientific objectivism includes the essential idea that there is no pure knowledge, no complete knowledge, that often evidence is insufficient for knowledge of some aspect of nature, and that care must be to taken understand what is sufficient knowledge in a given area, in this case clinical psychoanalysis. The question is raised whether "projective identification" makes the sorting out of "what comes from whom" impossible. It is argued that when free association is sufficiently facilitated, when there are enough corrections of the distortions wrought by transference and countertransference, when defenses are analyzed, and when sufficient subject-object differentiation is recovered, the analyst can get to know enough of the patient's psychic reality for the therapeutic and scientific purposes of psychoanalysis.     

The Gap Between: Being and Knowing in Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis

The author discusses various relationships derived from the image of gap, precipice, and abyss with specific emphasis on interacting dynamics between being and knowing as explicated in the Zen Buddhist teachings of Hui-neng and in the psychoanalytic writings of Wilfred Bion. While of significant value to psychoanalysis, it is argued that symbolic meanings can occlude the actuality of the analysand's or of the spiritual seeker's affective experiencing, particularly concerning the human tendency to concretize experiential states engendered through meditation and/or the psychoanalytic encounter. The author draws from Matte-Blanco's explication of symmetrical and asymmetrical perceptual modalities to discuss the fluid nature of spiritual experiencing, paradoxical coexistence of ultimate and relative realities and reciprocal dynamics and identities between states of experiencing that might otherwise appear opposed. The primacy of experiencing for both disciplines, particularly concerning the experiencing subject's momentary state of consciousness, forms a central theme for both Zen and psychoanalysis. Brief clinical vignettes support and illuminate the author's points.     

Epistemological controversies in the analytic field elucidated by the theological realm

This article proposes to address certain epistemological controversies in psychoanalysis by elucidating them through the religious field. The theological field serves the author as the repressed, which indicates the latent stakes that continue to do work at the heart of these debates. The goal is to show how debates that take place on the epistemological level bring into confrontation different anthropological concepts and discursive traditions that have their roots in religious discourses. The principal hypothesis of the author is that the dissident theories of psychoanalysis can be understood as a return to a pre‐monotheistic theological conception or to an idolatrous practice that aims, primarily, to undo castration. This hypothesis will be used to elucidate the debates with two authors: Adler and Rank. The author shows how these theorists, by leaving analytical ground, connect their theories to pre‐monotheistic conceptions and highlight conceptual tools that are characteristic to them.     

The case for neuropsychoanalysis: Why a dialogue with neuroscience is necessary but not sufficient for psychoanalysis

Recent advances in the cognitive, affective and social neurosciences have enabled these fields to study aspects of the mind that are central to psychoanalysis. These developments raise a number of possibilities for psychoanalysis. Can it engage the neurosciences in a productive and mutually enriching dialogue without compromising its own integrity and unique perspective? While many analysts welcome interdisciplinary exchanges with the neurosciences, termed neuropsychoanalysis, some have voiced concerns about their potentially deleterious effects on psychoanalytic theory and practice. In this paper we outline the development and aims of neuropsychoanalysis, and consider its reception in psychoanalysis and in the neurosciences. We then discuss some of the concerns raised within psychoanalysis, with particular emphasis on the epistemological foundations of neuropsychoanalysis. While this paper does not attempt to fully address the clinical applications of neuropsychoanalysis, we offer and discuss a brief case illustration in order to demonstrate that neuroscientific research findings can be used to enrich our models of the mind in ways that, in turn, may influence how analysts work with their patients. We will conclude that neuropsychoanalysis is grounded in the history of psychoanalysis, that it is part of the psychoanalytic worldview, and that it is necessary, albeit not sufficient, for the future viability of psychoanalysis.     

Grasping psychoanalysts’ practice in its own merits1

The central objective of this presentation is to reflect on the obstacles involved in the task proposed by the Chicago Congress, which is to explore convergences and divergences in psychoanalytic practice. The author discusses two major obstacles. First, the epistemological and methodological problems in relation to the construction of theory in psychoanalysis and especially the inaccessibility, in any reliable way, of what psychoanalysts really do in the intimacy of their practice. He proposes to separate, at least in part, theory from practice in psychoanalysis, in an attempt to grasp psychoanalysts' practice in its own merits. He then outlines a phenomenology of the practice of psychoanalysis, which reveals that, in their work with patients, analysts are guided more by practical reasons than theoretical reasons; that is, their interventions are predictions rather than explanations. Since these practical reasons need to be validated constantly in the analytic relationship based on their effects, he discusses the subject of validation in the clinical context of the core theory of therapeutic change in psychoanalysis, that is, the conditions required for clinical practice to satisfy the thesis of an inseparable union between gaining knowledge and cure. He ends by challenging the core of the psychoanalytic theory of change, arguing that it neither does justice to the practice of psychoanalysts nor to contemporary knowledge of processes and mechanisms of therapeutic change. Finally, he proposes that we detach practice from theory, in order to study the former in its own merits, utilising a plurality of methods ranging from systematic investigation to the recent methodology of the Working Party.     

Pluralistic approaches to the study of process and outcome in psychoanalysis. The LAC depression study: a case in point

Approaching process and outcome in psychoanalysis is a topic that touches on ambitious and complex epistemological and methodological issues. As discussed in the first part of the paper, in keeping with challenging epistemic considerations, it would seem appropriate to describe the specificity of psychoanalysis as a specific scientific discipline of the unconscious (spezifische Wissenschaft des Unbewussten, see LIT). Psychoanalysis, over its more than 100-year history, evolved a range of highly advanced research methods for investigating the specific object of its research, namely unconscious conflicts and fantasies. Hence, like many other scientific disciplines, contemporary psychoanalysis comprises a plurality of theories, methods of clinical treatments as well as a plurality of research topics. This position is discussed with reference to a model illustrating different forms of clinical and extra-clinical research in psychoanalysis. A major, ongoing comparative study of outcomes of psychoanalytical and cognitive behavioural, long-term treatments of chronically depressed patients, the so-called LAC-study, serves to illustrate the richness of contemporary research in psychoanalysis.     

Subject in first person--subject in third person: subject, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity

In this article, the author traces the history of the concepts of subject, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity in different psychoanalytic theories in the last decades. She argues that the uniqueness of these concepts and their different implications were not emphasized enough. The author discusses the various implications and contexts of the concept of subject in psychoanalytic theory proper and to relate as to: (1). The need to distinguish between the concepts of subject and subjectivity; (2). The mutual interdependence of the subject and his subjectivity and the intersubjective domain (both in the development of the individual and in theoretical thought pertaining to it). Her point of departure is from the position of the subject as a free creature, the centrality of the experiencing individual, from his/her perspective—the subject in the first person. She tries to explain the paradox implicit in the experiential dimension, the place of the other as participant, as both negating and recognizing—the subject in the third person. She suggests the interdependency of the first-person experience of subjectivity on the intersubjective dimension.     

Psychoanalysis and Humanism: A Review and Critical Examination of Integrationist Efforts With Some Proposed Resolutions

Psychoanalysis and psychological humanism are theories that provide ways of understanding the psychotherapeutic process. These orientations have somewhat incompatible assumptions, thereby making integration difficult. Efforts at theoretical integration of psychoanalysis and humanism are critically reviewed along the lines of F. Pine's (1990) 4 psychologies of psychoanalysis. The author concludes that psychoanalysis and humanism have certain compatible features, but that they generally represent opposing vantage points in the study of subjectivity. Each orientation is grounded in a particular epistemic value system that dictates the way knowledge about others should be acquired. Recommendations for integrating these orientations in the psychotherapeutic process are provided.     

Working through the question of the phallus to the other side commentary on Bracha Lichtenberg‐Ettinger's paper

The work of Bracha Lichtenberg‐Ettinger implicates psychoanalysis as a political, clinical, and aesthetic project and draws theoretically from each of these domains. As part of her challenge to psychoanalysis, Lichtenberg‐Ettinger questions the Lacanian and Freudian preoccupation with the phallus. She queries the degree to which the psychical amplification of the phallus remains blindly tied to the penis and a masculine incarnation. She supplements this phallogocentric positioning with the concept of a matrixial subjectivity grounded in the intrauterine coexistence of mother and child. The womb and its possibilities indicate another relationship between the I and the non‐I based on forms of relating that do not revolve around the dichotomy of exclusion and merger. As part of her critique of phallogocentrism, the author repudiates the absoluteness of a phallic presence versus castrated absence and the binaries in conceptualization to which this configuration leads.

The following commentary is deeply in sympathy with this project and appreciates the great reach of Lichtenberg‐Ettinger project. Her project requires great care, however, as it tries to redefine formations of subjectivity through the Real of bodily difference. Further, it is not fully clear how matrixial subjectivity is situated with respect to certain questions raised by the phallus. More specifically, if the phallus represents a moment that structures one's relationship to speaking and to repression, a clearer articulation of the place of these moments in a matrixial subjectivity might create a more productive dialogue with the most innovative aspects of Lacanian psychoanalysis.     

Recent theoretical convergences in psychoanalysis and their epistemological importance

In this paper, the author starts by examining the recent occurrence of an increasing receptivity and critical exchange between different schools of psychoanalytical thought. Among its consequences have been convergences in the understanding of countertransference, especially through the hypotheses of projective identification and countertransferential enactment. The prevalence of these hypotheses points towards the fact that the community of analysts is bringing about an informal and convergent clinical research conducted by a wide and heterogeneous range of its members. The importance and epistemological relevance of this kind of 'informal clinical research' for the construction of psychoanalytical knowledge is emphasised. This process in psychoanalysis is compared with the evolution of knowledge in other scientific areas, highlighting their similarities and their differences. The author shows how Freud's 'mystic writing-pad'model can be expanded to represent the object of psychoanalytical investigation and to bring a better understanding of the reason why the hypotheses of projective identification and countertransferential enactment occupy such a central position in psychoanalysis. In addition, consideration is given to how this kind of research can help in the difficult task of finding criteria for the evaluation of different psychoanalytical concepts. Finally, the author demonstrates how, using this approach, some of the important divergences in contemporary psychoanalysis can be viewed from a new perspective.     

Narrating a Fantasmatic Unity: On the Contemporary Sinophone Discourse of China’s Civilizational Subjectivity

A powerful discourse centered on China’s civilizational subjectivity has emerged in the Sinophone intellectual world since the early 2000s. Among many promoters of this intellectual trend, Gan Yang, together with his slogan of the “fusion of three traditions,” is indeed most influential. This study employs Lacanian psychoanalytic technics to tackle Gan Yang’s thesis, treating the latter not just an object for textual analysis, but more deeply (and fruitfully), that for psychoanalysis. The findings of the study reveal the presence of a fantasmatic structure framing and guaranteeing Gan’s (sharply inconsistent) vision of China’s civilizational subjectivity. Such fantasmatic formation can be referred to as the “Great Dragon fantasy”—a fantasy about China’s civilizational unity and glory.     

Is there a place for individual subjectivity within a social constructionist epistemology?

The epistemological turn towards social constructionism has become well established within the field of family systemic therapy. Social constructionism has provided therapists with a theoretical rationale for the concentration upon the social context within which individuals and families live their lives. This is a philosophical position that pushes to the margins the positivist premise that individuals have fixed and measurable personalities in favour of a discourse which proposes that the person is encountered differently within different social contexts. Prompted by the growing interest in systemic practice with individuals and by the rediscovery of the psychoanalytic canon within family therapy literature, the adequacy of this position is examined and an attempt is made to open up a space within social constructionist discourse for a theory of individual subjectivity. Findings from a research project are the starting point for this venture. These findings are understood through the lens of psychoanalytic theory, with particular reference to the work of Jacques Lacan.     

Are we losing our mind?

The individual mind of the patient, and how it works, are the central topics of this plenary address. In psychoanalysis we are always dealing with a mind--a mind with its own particular structure--and this is a fact of singular importance in how we listen to, understand, and communicate with patients. Techniques geared to this view are presented. The author reflects on and challenges some contrasting current views of psychoanalysis as primarily coconstructed or as a relational matrix. Technique according to this view highlights the analyst's subjectivity and actions as central to treatment.     

Subjectivity and symbolization

The aim of this paper has been to demonstrate that the emergence of subjectivity as a central concept in psychoanalysis is both consistent with and intertwined with the emergence of a new great generative idea (Langer, 1942), now in its nascent stage. Langer's (1942) thesis that symbolization and the power of symbols provide the basis for the fundamental assumptions of the new great generative idea was presented in condensed form. Langer's work was then integrated with that of contemporary psychoanalytic theoretical writers, which tends to support Langer's thesis. Freud's discoveries were revolutionary insofar as they resulted in the posing of new kinds of questions that have to do with symbols and their meanings. To that extent the birth of psychoanalysis itself appears as one manifestation of the emerging new generative idea. The issue of subjectivity was examined from the specific vantage point of recent conceptualizations of self and self-experience. Symbolization, it was shown, is a crucial factor in both self-experience and conceptualizations of self. Finally, it was suggested by the author that some of the existing baffling problems concerning subjectivity, the concept of self, and self-experience may disappear in the context of the new great generative idea, based on fundamental assumptions about the power of symbols.     

THE NEED FOR TRUE CONTROVERSIES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS: THE DEBATES ON MELANIE KLEIN AND JACQUES LACAN IN THE RÍO DE LA PLATA

Controversies are part of the process of scientific knowing. In psychoanalysis, the diversity of theoretical, technical and epistemological positions makes the debate particularly necessary and by the same token difficult. In this paper, the author examines the function of controversies and the obstacles to their development, taking as examples the debates held in the Rao de la Plata (Buenos Aires and Montevideo) during the nineteen seventies, when the dominant Kleinian ideas came into contact with Lacanian thought. The author examines different examples of argumentative discourses, using concepts taken from the theory of argumentation. The major difficulties encountered did not hinge on characteristics pertaining to psychoanalytic theories (i.e. the lack of commensurability between them), but on the defensive strategies aimed at keeping each theory's premises safe from the opposing party's arguments. A true debate implies the construction of a shared argumentative field that makes it possible to lay out the different positions and see some interaction between them and is guided by the search for the best argument. When this occurs, controversies promote the discipline's development, even when they fail to reach any consensus.     

Understanding Gender Through the Lens of Transgender Experience

There is constant pressure on 20th-century psychoanalytic paradigms concerning gender and sexuality, leading to ambiguity in theoretical constructs of, and therapeutic approaches to, gender. The ongoing destructive notion that transgender people are inherently abnormal, perverse, and psychotic is an epistemological problem that warrants scrutiny and correction in the field of psychoanalysis. This article explores a nuanced set of transgender experiences juxtaposed with the author’s psychoanalytic encounters as therapist, analysand, and analyst-in-training, in an effort to elaborate on transgender subjectivities. Categories are woven, unraveled, and rewoven in the face of personal realities and the author’s relationship to gender over time.     

PSYKOANALYSE I DAG

The original psychoanalytic research situation is the two-person dialogue. However, clinical practice in itself is still not an application of systematic case study methodology. In order to approach the question of why we need systematic psychoanalytic research, three types of dialectical tensions are described. Psychoanalysis, like other scientific disciplines, is involved in a dialectics of (1) rationalism versus empiricism, i.e., theory construction and observation; (2) the perspective from within and from without, i.e., subjective self-knowledge versus expert knowledge; (3) continuity or discontinuity between psychoanalysis and adjacent fields of knowledge, as well as realism versus essentialism. The tension between the scientific and the clinical attitudes is discussed. Finally, the question of scientific and private theories is approached. Some of the methodological and epistemological pitfalls in psychoanalysis are seen as a consequence of the close affinity between private explanatory systems and psychoanalytical theories. Rules of evidence are necessary as a control for the unavoidable uncertainty.