How Much can Analysis be Discovery, Not Suggestion?

Lawrence Friedman began by posing a question: Is it possible for patient and analyst to uncover mental content that is relatively independent of the analytic relationship, or is any discovery in analytic treatment inextricably linked to suggestion? Friedman delivered what he termed his “Sunday sermon,” a thought-provoking and sophisticated review of how suggestion and discovery have been conceptualized, how they have remained located at the very center of core controversies as psychoanalysis has developed, and how they are linked to profoundly different understandings of the science and technique of psychoanalysis today. The discussion that ensued was lively, at times indeed impassioned, as the panelists, joined by some notable discussants from the audience, staked out strikingly different positions and attempted to clarify not what joined them (a shared commitment to psychoanalysis, a passion for teaching, and a devotion to patients) but, perhaps more important for our field, the distinctions we need to come to terms with and take a position on if psychoanalysis is to distinguish itself from other fields as of specific value. So Friedman's Sunday sermon had the aim of all sermons—to stir deep feelings in people of faith, to define that faith, and to defend it.

Invoking psychoanalytic history, Friedman described suggestion as “the bugaboo of psychoanalysis,” the issue that “sent shivers down Freud's spine” as he struggled to separate his new science from older methods, such as hypnosis, that relied on suggestion. Freud's comparison of treatment to archaeological work and his embrace of scientific objectivity as an ideal indicate the importance of discovery in early psychoanalytic thought. Freud worried about suggestion not only because of his need to distinguish his treatment from hypnosis, but also because he was intent on establishing independent truths about mental content. So he welcomed Ferenczi's idea that even if suggestion is part of analysis, it is ultimatel