Loewald

Iread Loewald's awesome mini-monograph on therapeutic action when I was a resident. When next he spoke at the midwinter meeting of the American I wanted to thank him. I wanted to tell him that, at last, I had a reason to think that what I would be doing for the rest of my life made sense. He had solved the riddle of pyschoanalysis, which is that its theory seems best suited to explain why psychoanalytic treatment won't work.

I felt newly hopeful and energized. I was enormously grateful. But I was shy and I slunk away unseen. (You must remember, this was a time when guards would have barred me from the Grand Ballroom without a pink badge obtained with difficulty by a letter from a member.) I thought: What does he care about the appreciation of a mere psychiatric resident who is not even supposed to be here? As the years went by, and Loewald's ideas continued to light my darkness, I realized that humility had blinded me to the sacred duty owed to an educator. Then I missed a second—and last—chance through no fault of my own. So I have been like the Ancient Mariner, confessing my sin over and over again.

Where was I before Loewald? This is how it was: In the psychoanalytic session patients try harder for the old goals—so they are eager to trade them in for new ones. They work hard to change—impelled by no specifically Freudian motive (all motives being fully employed in preserving the status quo). But patients change because they feel especially safe—since their protection (defense) is taken away. Well, never mind. Neurotic motives will be changed by conveying objective information— that the patient is motivated not to believe. The analyst's words penetrate an impenetrable system, a system that turns all words into the same old same old. Patients don't want to change and analysts don't want to influence. The analyst, you see, produces action without acting. Now, there's a theory that's a real friend to a doubting practitioner.

Not exactly the sort of map one wants to find