Response to “What a blackbird told me is real and alive” by Ona Lindquist, LCSW

My response to Ona Lindquist's paper, “What a blackbird told me is real and alive” opens with an appreciation of her use of a lyric, poetic approach in presenting the benefits for psychoanalysts in reading and writing poetry by opening the mind to unconscious currents. Having written and published my own poetry since 1965 and having been trained as a psychoanalyst and practiced psychoanalysis since 1982, I attest to the beneficial values that each of these practices has on the other. I also recognize the value of Lindquist's open discussion of her own analysis. I then go on to discuss Lindquist's assertion that she practices psychoanalysis more as an art than a science, particularly in terms of the issue of art and narcissism, citing Freud, Heinz Kohut, and Christopher Lasch. I also suggest that psychoanalysis might be more usefully understood as a science that employs elements of artistic creativity, and finally cite Thomas Kuhn's contention in The structure of scientific revolutions that “when… the profession can no longer evade anomalies that subvert the existing tradition of scientific practice... then begin the extraordinary investigations that lead the profession at last to a new set of commitments, a new basis for the practice of science.”