Postmodernism: Its Origins and its Threat to Psychoanalysis

Postmodernism originated in an overreaction to "modernist" sociocultural trends of the past few centuries. Flaws of postmodern writers include: ignorance and distortion of the history of science and philosophy; the erroneous assumption that such faults of some natural scientists as reductionism and narrowness are intrinsic to the entire enterprise, even to rationality; overgeneralizing such valid criticisms to the level of metaphysical relativism; and deliberately obscure and pretentious writing. Its vogue is a threat to science in general and to psychoanalysis in particular. Psychoanalysis was vulnerable to a postmodernist attack because of Freud's rejection of scientific standards for his creation, his na¨ L ve realism, and his authoritarian heritage plus certain weaknesses of theory, technique, and organization resulting from it. Analysts are urged to stay close to clinical observation and abstain from generalizing outside their realm of expertise.     

Prologue

The discussant begins by describing her British Object-Relations perspective. She emphasizes the difference between obstructive or critical forces within the personality which are best described as a part of the self and those which are felt by the patient to have a quality of otherness about them: the latter are better conceptualized as internal objects since this is closer to the patient's subjective experience. The author stresses the importance—in Scharff's patient's inner world—of the useless maternal—and impotent paternal—object. ‘Stupid’ rather than ‘bad’ objects can affect introjective processes and limit the patient's intellectual functioning because, where the world is seen as uninteresting and unstimulating, it is therefore not worth attending to nor learning from. The author also made a further point. She saw the patient's repetitive bitter self-criticisms, although partly arising out of deprivation, depression, and abuse, as also possibly containing an element of masochistic pleasure in suffering and failure. This would raise delicate technical issues in balancing a sensitive approach to the real suffering with a clearly stated recognition of the addictive repetitive masochistic quality which accompanies it and which may be blocking recovery.