To answer this complex question, I will organize the response in two parts. First, I will consider psychoanalysis as a social science. It is a science because it has [1] Data Collection [2] Experimental Procedures [3] Logical Reasoning based on Psychoanalytic Theory. This theory also presents organized ideas regarding a model of the human mind with a proposal for its mental structure and corresponding mental mechanisms. This theory presents a proposal for the formation, development and functioning of the mind. In the second part I will consider the practice of psychoanalysis as an Art. I say this, because it is possible that the analytic act done by a qualified psychoanalyst may create new ideas. Since this analytic act may produce new ideas, this new knowledge may be a revelation for that particular individual. That is, this knowledge may have not existed before the analytic act was performed. Also, sometimes these new ideas are new for the psychoanalytic theory. This is something that may happen in all sciences, which are all of them under constant development. When the new idea appears, we may say that a creative act had happened. If we define Art as the performance of a creative act, then the practice of psychoanalysis is also the exercise of an art: The art of listening. Here I am referring to a special kind of listening, which is performed without prejudice and above all without any moral judgment. This listening seeks to understand the functioning of a particular mind without prejudice of any kind. It is a kind of pure scientific observation through a special form of listening.
In this text, which respectfully I present here, I will show more detailed arguments with the intention to support these two ideas.
In my opinion science refers to an ordered set of knowledge that can be verified. This scientific knowledge is obtained by data collection, experimental procedures and logical reasoning. This will allow the verification of any new scientific proposal. Scientific knowledge is organized on the
basis of complex theoretical principles. Those principles have their corresponding logical reasoning. From this scientific knowledge all sciences build up new theories, models, and systems. Training for these scientific specialties are obtained when engaging in advanced studies which will produce experts in each corresponding scientific field. Being an expert with a proper knowledge will permit professional observation and the proper recollection of data. This data collected will be organized in a logical, useful and productive manner, which will permit the expert to understand this particular and specialized information.
It is clear that all this knowledge in science takes place at the level of consciousness. The activity of consciousness will give validity to this new scientific knowledge. The importance of consciousness has its root in logical reasoning that tries to understand these new ideas that have arisen from observations and experimental procedures. Thus, the logical conscious awareness offers a scientific sense of conviction steaming from the revealing power of evidence. The logic of evidence raised by the philosopher René Descartes in the middle of the seventeenth century caused an accelerated development of Sciences.
Science can be divided arbitrarily into three groups:
Pure Sciences [Basic sciences], which include: Geometry, Mathematics, Physics, Astrophysics, Chemistry, Trigonometry, Quantum physics, etc.
Natural Sciences [Biological sciences], which include Biology, Biophysics, Botany, Veterinary Medicine, Medicine [in all its specialties], Geology, Mineralogy, etc.
Social Sciences [Human Sciences], including Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, etc.
As proposed already, science has its foundations in the logic of evidence. This evidence is something conscious in nature. This evidence is regarded as something with a true-value, therefore is considered something valid. From this argument René Descartes had proposed his famous statement the so-called Cógito, which says: “I think, therefore I exist.” In this way consciousness, according to Descartes, gives validity to the existence of being. Here it is necessary to say that this statement by Descartes applies
only to the world of consciousness.
The Psychoanalytic theory, as we all know, is not based on certainty nor is it is based on evidence. It is necessary to affirm that the psychoanalytic proposal is not based on conscious processes. However, the knowledge derived from Psychoanalytic Research, ends up being something that inhabits the world of consciousness. So, it is “we know, that we know.” But that is not all. Since the very end of the 19th century, we know that there is a world beyond consciousness.
In the late 19th century Sigmund Freud introduces the idea of the existence of unconscious and says the contrary of the statement proposed by René Descartes in the 17th century. Sigmund Freud had said “I exist, where I don't think,” referring to the self that exists in the unconscious. Freud proposes in his first topic, published at the very end of the 19th century, a model of a mental apparatus. In fact, this model was the first model of the mind that ever existed in history. In this model Freud proposes the mind is divided in three instances: conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. The unconscious instance was the largest one. So large that it was called oceanic. This unconscious cannot be known directly. Sigmund Freud proposes and establishes that the most important part of Self resides in the unconscious. There in the unconscious, in German and English called the Id, reside, among other things, desire and drive. The term drive refers to an Energy that drives us to life. Thus, the unconscious is known only by its effects, such as dreams, symptoms, hallucinations, delusions, jokes, common errors of daily life, psychosomatic illnesses, bodily posture, etc.
Let me step back a moment to something I already said: Evidence is based on conscious processes. Thus, scientific evidence should be, and can be, subject to verification. An example of the need to verify evidence and review it periodically may be found in scientific astronomical observations. For example, we know thanks to Herodotus and Plutarch, that 250 years before Christ, an astronomer and Greek mathematician, Aristarchus of Samos, made a heliocentric model of our Solar System. In his day he declared in writing that the earth revolves around the Sun, and managed to assert that the Sun was bigger than Earth. His writings rested for years in the ancient library of Alexandria. We all know the rugged evolution over the centuries of this heliocentric proposal. The idea traveled
long [centuries] up to Copernicus in the 15th century and then later to Galileo, who presented it as something new. Despite all that, the idea was strongly rejected by the authorities of the Church, who defended the opposite idea. Then, when it got to the middle of the 17th century, this heliocentric astronomy was accepted by the scientific community and then accepted by the culture as scientific truth. So, certainties of science are always in constant evolution. New discoveries force us to review and validate the existing knowledge of all sciences.
An artist is someone who performs a creative act. A creative act is any act that produces something new. I mean something that did not exist before being created. So, the artist with his creative act creates a new thing. The created product can be varied. Therefore, the artists will be of different types. Thus, we have the possibility of having plastic artists [painters, sculptors], musician artists [composers, performers], scenic artists [drama, ballet dancers, and modern dancers], gastronomy artist, carpenter artists, artists of poetry, literature, philosophy, and artists in the field of Psychoanalysis. We also have artists in Chemistry, as it happens with Dmitri Mendeléyev, that Russian chemist, who discovered and presented for the first time the idea of the Periodic Table of Elements. Or, as it happens with August Kekulé, that German chemist, who solved for the first time the mystery of benzene chemical structure. Or Charles Darwin, the Englishman who first introduced the idea and presented evidence for the Theory of Evolution. Or, the American and English researches Watson and Crick, who introduced the idea of a double helix in the chemical structural model of DNA. All of them had their creative moment. All of them created something new, something that did not exist before they were revealed. At that precise moment they are artists, creators of a new idea.
Something additional happens with inventors. The inventor develops an original idea, his idea or an idea from another person. The inventor further develops the idea and uses his intelligence and creativity to build a machine. This happened to Thomas Alba Edison who, based on somebody else's idea, industrially developed mass production of electricity. He acted based on the original idea of Nicolas Tesla, a Croatian electro-magnetic engineer who was the first to reveal the secrets of electricity. Tesla
had his creative act. Edison was the meritorious inventor who developed electricity producing plants. These engines would produce electricity for industry and for society, as shown in the 1900 World Fair in Paris.
The act of making crafts defines a craftsman. The work of craftsman does not imply a creative act. A craftsman with his/her craftsmanship makes beautiful things, but they are not unprecedented. They are not original. They are variations of something already created. A very distinguished artist [a creator] can also be a craftsman. A very distinguished psychoanalyst [a creator] can also be a craftsman. This means that the psychoanalyst can work with the mind of a person being analyzed using the Psychoanalytic dialogue without creating a new idea. At that moment this analyst is working as a craftsman. This craftsman's work is valid, is useful and is honorable. No problem with that.
The verbal interventions of the analyst do not always reveal something new. Something that, prior to being said by the analyst, did not exist for the analysand. Therefore, the psychoanalyst has their moments as an artist and their moments as a craftsman. It is appropriate to insist here that the analyst's thoughts and proposals are scientific. This is so because they rely on a psychoanalytic theory of mind and on a psychoanalytic theory of technique. Both theories have a scientific, logical reasoning and they are based on scientific observation through the data collected in the act of listening. The analyst has training to listen to the productions of the analysand attentively without prejudice and without moral judgment. The analysand presents his productions through spoken language, behavior, and affect. In a spoken language the unconscious truths are hiding between the lines, as metaphors, and in the presence of certain silences that are full of meanings. It is the work of the psychoanalyst to be able first to detect them and then to decipher them. Then the analyst has to decide if it is the proper time to reveal this unconscious truth to the owner, the analysand.
It is necessary to be trained to perform this special analytical listening which requires working analytically with the other. This work has to be done with this particular other based on asymmetry. This asymmetry refers to the concept of alterity. This alterity refers to the relationship with the other based on the “I-am-not-you” and “you-are-not-me.”
For psychoanalysis, working with the analysand in asymmetry is something basic. At the same time, it is difficult to install this capacity in the mind of the future analyst. When the candidate of psychoanalysis acquires that capacity to listen in alterity [asymmetry], then he or she is ready to practice successfully analytic listening.
To achieve the capacity for analytic listening the future analyst must be previously analyzed for several years. When he or she is analyzed and acquires the capacity for alterity, then the candidate can legitimately occupy the chair of the analyst. It is fair to say, of all of us qualified analysts, when working analytically with an analysand, that we may lose momentarily the capacity for alterity. We have to learn to identify those episodes of identification with the other [that produce loss of alterity]. And then rescue ourselves from that moment of symmetry.
There is something else. I refer to the capacity to understand “behavior and emotions.” That is not a simple thing. I may say the analyst must be capable of deciphering both. In order to do that, the qualified analysts must know, as much as possible, the working of the human mind. The important thing is to be able to understand it and to communicate it to the analysand, whom at the end is the legitimate owner of this alleged truth.
For all this reason we may say that psychoanalytic theory is organized as a “Science and the practice of psychoanalysis” is performed as a “Art.”