Paradigm Found?: Comments on the Levenson Interview

As one would expect in a thoughtful, searching interview with Edgar Levenson, there is much to think about and respond to. His history at the White triggered my own memories of working there under Joe Jaffe in the late 1960s. His relaxed attitude toward scientific metaphors is such a welcome relief from what a colleague has called the Eureka shriekers, the “That's it!” at every scientific fad. And there are the little gems of clinical insight: higher levels of abstraction mean higher levels of anxiety—if you are looking to make sense of things in the consulting room, look to your countertransference, what's making you anxious? The list can easily be lengthened. All these threads are thought-provoking and open out, as he might say, into new material.

But I want to respond to something I think is quite fundamental in Levenson's description of the way he works and the way Hirsch and Iannuzzi respond to it. The theme I am responding to weaves through the entire interview. It is Hirsch and Iannuzzi returning time and again to questioning Levenson what he does in the consulting room—a search for principles or failing that, a desire for examples—“show us what you mean.”

Levenson, however, while being to my mind undefensive and open— in fact the open collegiality of this exchange is delightful—keeps telling them there is no principle.

For example, about countertransference: “And so what I think is irritating you about what I'm saying about the use of the countertransference—each time in each patient, I would do it differently. You're saying, ‘But there must be some principle’.”

And I think here we have the opportunity to explore what I think (in the first approximation without qualifiers) is the fact of the case: There Is No Principle.

Let me say it a different way. What emerges for me in this fine interview is a constant theme about Levenson's practice, a practice that has