Gerald Gargiulo is the author of Quantum Psychoanalysis: Essays on Physics, Mind, and Psychoanalysis Today, International Psychoanalysis Press, 2016, and his deep knowledge of quantum physics and its relevance to, and affinity with, psychoanalysis permeates his discussion of whether psychoanalysis is an art or a science. He also is an accomplished poet, and thus, in reading his discussion whether psychoanalysis is an art or a science, we encounter a sensibility that embraces both artistry and science as elements of psychoanalytic theory and practice.
Gargiulo introduces his article with a quotation from Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For Knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” With this quotation, he demonstrates and defends his approach to the question, for imagination is necessary both for art and for science.
Further, he immediately questions assumptions we form when using the easily recognized concepts of science represented by Newtonian physics. He points out that Newtonian physics describes what he calls our “macro world,” a world which can be observed and measured, the results of such operations resulting in replication. When he introduces the term “repeatability” as a substitute for “replication,” he leads us to contrast the uniqueness of art and quantum observations with the Newtonian physics.
Since I was a poor science student in my formal education, and would still be so were I still a student in an educational institution, I immediately began to assume that Gargiulo was going to share my perspective, that psychoanalysis is more of an art than a science. Gargiulo, however, does
not do so. Rather, he speaks to Freud's desire to establish psychoanalysis as scientifically valid, and his desire for his “theoretical models of mind to be accepted as “universal and verifiable.” Gargiulo then pointed out that the clinical practice is not repeatable, due to the unique individuality of each person in psychoanalysis and compares that to the uniqueness of each quantum observation. We recognize that science always entails a search for truth.
Given his knowledge of quantum physics, and applying some of its findings to psychoanalysis, Gargiulo wittily and wisely turns any assumptions a reader may make on their head. In introducing quantum physics into his discourse, he focuses on the fact that “there is no possibility of exact repeatability; rather we live in a world of high probability; not the exact repeatability evidenced in Newtonian experience.” Also, he notes that such a finding “vis-à-vis strict determinism should modify our understanding of free association and dream interpretation.”
Gargiulo leads the reader into making a quantum leap into new possibilities in the psychoanalytic situation. Since imagination is a common necessity in both art and science, since psychoanalysis addresses the particular needs of the unique individual, our curiosity is piqued. While perhaps we may agree with Gargiulo that the flexibility of “high probability” may better describe our understanding of basic psychoanalytic concepts such as free association and dream interpretation than “strict determinism” does, what does this freedom imply?
Imagination and artistry: Gargiulo becomes somewhat playful. His article invites us into a quantum world of intriguing proton behaviors. Even someone who struggles with science, someone like me, can be engaged and fascinated. Even more so, when he points out that each observation of a proton creates a proton, a perfect example of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that if we know the speed of a proton, we cannot at the same time know its location. It does imply that the proton becomes observable by observation! This extends to research occasions in which the very act of measurement or observation directly alters the phenomenon under investigation. What are the implications for the psychoanalytic encounter?
I actually learned about the Heisenberg effect, a quantum theory
principle, nearly 40 years ago, in a psychoanalytic course early in my psychoanalytic education! I didn't know then that it was a scientific principle, advanced science, quantum physics! I heard words. They seemed poetic to me. I didn't see a mathematical equation, which is how a physicist would express it. I believed it. My gut reaction was that of course it was true.
Gargiulo emphasizes that the telling and retelling of thoughts, phantasies, dreams, and hopes in the psychoanalytic situation “does in fact change his/her history.” How? That, in his wisdom, Gargiulo leaves up to our imagination.
Leaving the question up to our imagination leads to his once again posing the question—“is psychoanalysis an art or a science?”—and his answer is that it is “a question mirroring a macro consciousness. It is simultaneously both. Just as, by way of comparison, a proton is both created and always exists.”
I am grateful that in this article, Gerald Gargiulo gave me the opportunity to recognize the wider scope of science, the role of imagination in science, and a new way to think about the psychoanalytic endeavor.
Merle Molofsky