Tribute to an Original

Because Edgar Levenson arranged to cap the January 2004 interview with a long quotation from my assessment of the importance of his work, in this commentary I can only repeat myself. Nonetheless, I may now abandon the relatively nonpartisan tone I there adopted as a would-be intellectual historian of psychoanalysis: I believe that Levenson's conclusion that successful analyses result from imparting to patients hitherto missing cognitive and semiotic skills promises to revolutionize clinical practice. (Whether most psychoanalysts will be willing to listen to his message is another matter.)

Levenson has been telling us that all extant theories of psychoanalytic technique miss the heart of the matter. This is the explanation for the embarrassing fact that analytic effectiveness is unrelated to the theoretical views that guide the clinician. Without Levenson's explanation, it seemed as if success depended on the magic of a shaman—a situation that led numerous practitioners to view the analytic procedure as a sacred ritual, any departure from which relegated one to a nonanalytic limbo.

I have the impression that, in the course of the interview, Levenson tried hard to provide examples of how analysts may enhance their patients' cognitive and semiotic competence, to “reach levels of greater complexity and understanding” (if I may quote my own words). He also stressed that such efforts can only be carried out in the individual manner made available to each analyst by his or her cognitive and semiotic assets. These are the differences in “personality” that make the transactions within each analyst-patient dyad absolutely unique. Hence, analytic success cannot be reached by imitating the putative methods of admired predecessors. (I suspect Freud was keenly aware of these constraints, and that is why he refused to specify how he worked.)

In this view, the interviewers' repeated inquiries about what Levenson might do in various contingencies were misdirected; I assume that is why