How do we Bridge the Gap? Commentary on Luyten, Blatt, and Corveleyn

The “gap” within psychoanalysis traces its roots to Freud's complex identity as a generalist—a scientist, as well as a physician; a psychologist, but also a writer and humanist. Similarly, psychoanalysis has been located in different places—in the academy, in medical schools, and in autonomous professional networks. As a result there are psychoanalytic researchers, psychoanalytic humanists, and pure psychoanalytic clinicians. Working in different peer settings, answering to different funding sources, the analysts involved have come to speak different languages and hold different values. We are only too familiar with disagreements among analysts around theory; Patrick Luyten, Sidney Blatt, and Jozef Corveleyn draw our attention to another important division—one between the “two cultures” of humanism and science. In psychoanalysis this division takes the form of controversy about the relevance of research on one hand, and the limitations of hermeneutics on the other. Luyten, Blatt, and Coveleyn, analysts and research psychologists, develop and discuss this gap in sophisticated, detailed, and persuasive terms.

I would like to extend their discussion in two ways, influenced by my own perspectives. These perspectives are those of a full-time practitioner doing analysis, therapy, supervision, and teaching, with an earlier career in social psychiatry and a continuing peripheral relation to psychoanalytic research. Each of these experiences leads to a line of response to Luyten, Blatt, and Corveleyn's paper. As an analytic practitioner, I am aware of just how distant the research enterprise and its publications can seem. As an observer of the current research scene, I am aware of how demanding it has become—its scientific standards,