Loewald Panel: Discussion

In one and the same act—I am tempted to say, in the same breath and the same sucking of milk—drive direction and organization of environment into shapes or configurations begin.

Lively, readable, and personal, these four essays are not standard psychoanalytic papers. Moving narratives of appreciation, they honor Hans Loewald as a psychoanalytic thinker whose work stands with, extends, and completes Freud's. Here, for example, is Nancy Chodorow in her introduction: “Loewald's writing, in its depth and range if not its quantity, approaches Freud's; in its conceptual clarity, precision, and elegance, it is unmatched” (p. 1091). Ted Jacobs writes that “Loewald's formulations opened up a way of thinking in classical analysis that recognized the importance of the interactive dimension in analysis …” (p. 1099). Larry Friedman sums up, “[W]hat Loewald did for me was to provide a convincing rationale for an interpretive talking treatment” (p. 1108). And Rosemary Balsam predicts that Loewald, “because of the open, integrative nature of his thought, and its abiding clinical aptness, will only gain in stature in the years to come” (p. 1117).

Each panelist in some form addresses the same question: How did I come to Loewald and what did he give me? I will center my own, somewhat personal, response around the idea of safekeeping, as that idea is related to Loewald's distinctive way of writing about psychoanalysis—a style illustrated in the epigraph above by the contrast between the organic sucking and breathing on one side and the systematic organization and configuration on the other: polarities balanced on the marvelously colloquial fulcrum of “I am tempted to say.” Like Freud, Loewald offers “not prescriptions but “guiding principles” (Balsam, p. 1123); and like Freud, too, he has power as a writer.

A thinker and a caregiver, Loewald trained first as a philosopher and second in medicine. Safekeeping is also double: both an abstract idea