Psychoanalysis and change: Between curiosity and faith1

The IPA recently announced that it now recognized three sessions per week as a valid frequency for psychoanalytic treatment. From the debate that has ensued over the problems this decision is expected to cause, important insights can be gained into the current crisis of identity affl icting psychoanalysis. Technical aspects of therapy that were once considered peripheral have gradually acquired the status of core theoretical parameters. Freud was a man of science who was concerned with universal human phenomena. His disagreements with followers such as Jung and Adler centred on the major theoretical issues of the sexual nature of the libido and the existence of the unconscious. It is also interesting to note that Freud never distinguished between psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Where he did make a distinction, it was between psychoanalysis and the consciousness‐based psychotherapies, or those that used suggestion as a major tool. When the point has been reached where the frequency of sessions or the use of a couch is used to defi ne whether a treatment is psychoanalytic, some consideration of whether the right direction is being pursued is called for. A serious risk is being run of sacrifi cing our spirit of curiosity for the sake of tradition, becoming more concerned with repeating the formal aspects of practice than with the real purpose of psychoanalysis, the investigation of the most profound workings of human nature.     

Traps for Sacrifice: Bateson's Schizophrenic and Girard's Scapegoat

John Perceval (1803–1876), who suffered from schizophrenia, published two books on his experience, in 1836 and 1840. More than a century later, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson discovered in Perceval's memoirs a lucid anticipation of his own theories on schizophrenia. To Bateson, Perceval describes the interactive patterns between himself, his family, and the hospital psychiatrists, as examples of “double bind” interactions, in which he played the role of a “sacrificial victim.” The article underlines the strong convergence between Bateson's theory of schizophrenia and René Girard's theory of the scapegoat. In the anthropological theory of Girard, the sacrificial ceremonies are the main way of constructing social order. In that perspective, the schizophenic can be considered as a particular example of a scapegoat, that is, as an important figure in social life, and not as a mere phenomenon of psychopathology. This theoretical convergence is remarkable, in particular, because both anthropologists explain the sacrificial processes through a theory of social life based on the idea that the main unit of analysis is not the individual, but the interactive dynamic as a whole: patterns of relationships, to Bateson; reciprocal imitation (mymesis), to Girard.     

Information integration study of Metelli's and Morinaga's theories of achromatic transparency

Information integration methodology was used to test Metelli's and Morinaga's theories of achromatic transparency. Stimuli were transparent achromatic disks on a background formed by two adjacent horizontal rectangles. The common border of these rectangles divided each disk in two halves. Let P and Q be the luminances of the left and right halves of a disk and let A and B be those of the left and right rectangles, respectively. Transparency is given by the ratio (P – Q)/(A – B) in Metelli's theory and is given by a weighted average of the ratios (P – Q)/(A – Q) and (P – Q)/(P – B) in Morinaga's theory. Participants rated the transparency of disks with A and B fixed and P and Q combined factorially. Morinaga's theory closely predicted the resulting pattern of curves and Metelli's theory predicted it incorrectly. Morinaga's theory could also account well for individual differences in the ratings of transparency. The results support the general idea that transparency depends on the integration of photometric luminance information rather than on the integration of perceived lightness information.