Re: “Two Cheers for Austin Ratner”

To the Editor:

I thank Professor Rudnytsky for the generous attention he's devoted to my book The Psychoanalyst's Aversion to Proof—first at the winter 2022 American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) conference, to which he invited me as a speaker, and then in a long review in JAPA 71/4 (pp. 709-726). His knowledgeable, eloquent essay raises many points that bear further discussion.

In his commodious scholarship, Professor Rudnytsky covers a lot of ground and as such he only engages fleetingly with my central thesis. For that reason, and because he filters the Freudian argument of my book through a stringently non-Freudian perspective, his essay renders my book somewhat unfamiliar to me. JAPA's editors have graciously made an exception to their rules to allow me a brief response.

I hope that in addition to considering the points Professor Rudnytsky makes, JAPA's readers will consider my central thesis. If the thesis is right, it has implications for psychoanalysis. Mark Solms suggested my book “could help determine the future direction of American psychiatry and mental science,” praise I proudly stuck on the back cover. But my idea obviously can't help drive change if people don't consider it or don't know about it.

My idea, which I call “proof aversion,” is a straightforward corollary of the theory of repression. Repression, of course, opposes and delimits self-knowledge to protect us from emotions and memories that cause pain. The idea of proof aversion adds that the public exposition of psychoanalytic theories and insights can also be uncomfortable in a special way that invites unconscious mischief. Freud was acutely aware that speaking up about anxiety-provoking facts of emotional life, which people prefer not to hear, elicited others' resistance in the form of irrational criticisms, denial, and doubts. He also noted his own aversion to doing

the work of public exposition bef