In contemplating the question, is psychoanalysis a science or an art, and its amplification, or a philosophy, I find myself shrugging, shaking my head in dismay, and wondering, why are we mired in the muck of an old culture war? I thought immediately of the 1959 book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, by C.P. Snow, which described a face-off between two perspectives, where a humanist would challenge a scientist about what the scientist knew of the humanities, and the scientist would ask the humanities expert what the humanities expert knew of science.
Why would the psychoanalytic community be compelled to compartmentalize, categorize, or divide ways of knowing, in order to frame an understanding of psychoanalysis? Are we somewhat addicted to the excitement of continuing one culture war after another, with the ecstatic possibility of prevailing, winning the battle?
Psychoanalysis has a long history of internal culture wars, beginning with the rifts Sigmund Freud had with Alfred Adler and with Carl Gustav Jung. Once upon a time, in a paradise far away, psychoanalysis was psychoanalysis. The first schism occurred over an understanding of aggression. How fitting! Adler had been invited to join Freud's Wednesday group in 1902, and did so. In 1908 he offered his own theory about aggression, and the hounds of war pricked up their ears. Two capable, thoughtful men had an intellectual interest in the secrets of the human mind, a theory of aggression became the focus of disagreement, a bone of contention, and Adler left Freud's inner circle in 1911. They both elaborated a theory of aggression as years went by, and Freud contended that his theory of aggression was different from Adler's.
In 1914, perhaps paralleling the war breaking out in Europe, World War I, Freud and Jung, his beloved “crown prince,” Jung” had a falling out.
Freud and Jung had a close, fraught relationship—fraught because of the fantasies each had of the significance of their relationship, what
each wanted of each other. Whatever personal dependencies and wishes emerged, a theoretical disagreement about the nature of the unconscious caused their final break, and that disagreement has in it the components and structure of the question we are contemplating: is psychoanalysis a science or an art?
Freud's work focused on his concept of an individual unconscious, which manifests as symptoms, as defenses, emotions and wishes that can neither be acknowledged nor fulfilled. Jung focused on two aspects of the unconscious, the individual unconscious, which he called the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious, a vast repository of human culture manifesting as archetypes. Jung was enamored of the manifestations of mind in myth and religion, and Freud, who considered himself a scientist, rejected the emphasis on these “superstitions” as unscientific. Thus, the framework of our culture war in psychoanalysis emerged, similar to the culture war that C.P. Snow identified in academia and among the intelligentsia, emerged. Is psychoanalysis a science, to be conducted scientifically, or is there a whole other element of meaning in psycho-analysis, resonant with mythology, religion, and the arts? It would take decade after decade before psychoanalysts would frame the divide we contemplate now—Is psychoanalysis a science or an art? Yet the foundation for the question emerged with the schism between Freud and Jung.
In those ensuing decades, new schisms arose, as new theories were offered. I remember being so grateful when Fred Pine published a book that seemed to offer the possibility of healing the new tendency toward fragmentation, Drive, Ego, Object, and Self: A Synthesis for Clinical Work . Indeed, his book synthesized what had become fractured psychoanalytic theorizing, by postulating that psychoanalytic work, drawing on clinical observation, should integrate the understanding of the human mind, that the human mind reflected human drives, ego functions, representations of object relations, and a sense of self. Thus drive theory, ego psychology, object relations theory, and self psychology all had something to offer to psychoanalysis, and to clinicians who work psychodynamically.
While psychoanalysis was still a young discipline, it became contentious, and riven into factions—Freudian, Adlerian, Jungian. There were distinct theoretical differences and concerns among the three factions, and
strong feelings of animosity between Freud and the other two. Yet these emerging culture wars were only a beginning. Is the human mind so fractured within itself that a new, exciting discipline that studies that very human mind also is prone to fracturing, fragmenting, falling to pieces?
Freud actually was the original psychoanalyst, offering a complex theory of the unconscious, encompassing conflict, anxiety, drives, defenses, internalizations.
He also was the first to offer a theory of ego psychology, the first to offer a theory of object relations, the first to conceptualize the concept of self.
Freud's tripartite structural description of the mind—id, ego, superego—gave psychoanalysis its first ego psychology, acknowledging the ego mediating between the pressures and demands of the id and the pressures and demands of the superego, the tensions between desire and conscience.
Freud offered two essays that were insightful descriptions of the relationship of self to internal objects, “On Narcissism” , and “Mourning and Melancholia” . He conceived of the self as an object of one's own drives, in relation to others, who also are objects of one's drives.
In “On Narcissism,” Freud introduces the concept of the ego ideal, the self that one expects one's self to be. He describes an original narcissism of libido directed toward the self, taking the self as one's first object. Selfesteem begins with a satisfaction with one's self, fulfilling one's ego ideal. The idealization of the self is reflected in the idealization of others, the love and need for an idealized other.
In “Mourning and Melancholia,” Freud differentiates between mourning, grieving for an actual person, a truly lost object, and melancholia, a sense of loss based on internal psychic events. He postulates that the aspect of self that is experienced as superego and ego ideal is formed in large part from internalizations of a desired object, and when the ego ideal is unmet, the superego berates the self, and the self feels bereft and unworthy. Thus, mourning is self-attack, and the beloved object that should love the self is experienced as lost.
These two essays encompass the first object relations theory, and the
first theory of self. Self and object are mental constructs, internal representations, in relation to one another.
Subsequently, creative and thoughtful psychoanalytic theorists elaborated in depth aspects of ego, object, and self, and gave the discipline meaningful theories that are components of psychoanalytic understanding. Yet, unfortunately, eventually proponents of each elaborated theory found themselves in opposition to each other. In cathecting the theory they most identified with and admired, they rejected other theories.
Perhaps most regrettably, the most egregious fracturing began in Britain, with adherents of Anna Freud and adherents of Melanie Klein quarreling, dividing practitioners into ego psychologists and object relations theorists. Each line of thinking led to creative and original contributions from outstanding theorists in the United States and in Britain, and some theorists, including Michael Balint and D.W. Winnicott, encouraged a “middle school” way of thinking that embraced all possibilities.
I attended the institute from which I graduated in the 1980's in New York City, well after the divisive fracturing in Britain in the 1940's and 1950's, and the arguments that raged in the 1980's New York City halls of psychoanalysis were just as virulent. People expected each other to announce their “theoretical orientation,” to adhere to it, and to defend it. I was absolutely bewildered. I was grateful when I came across and read Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory, by Jay Greenberg and Steve Mitchell, in 1983, when it was first published. The two authors provided a coherent, in-depth history of the evolution of psychoanalytic thought, which allowed me to recognize that the seemingly antithetical theories of the building blocks of the human mind—the same drive, ego, object, self that Fred Pine would later address in 1990—were part of an evolution of psychoanalytic thought. I determined that these theories do not cancel each other out, but rather could lead to integration. That was not the conclusion that Greenberg and Mitchell reached, but I needed to make sense of disparate claims, and integration helped make sense of all claims without privileging any particular one.
When people asked me my theoretical orientation, I answered, “psychoanalytic,” and I meant it. I still do. In my teens and in my twenties, long before I began to consider a career as a psychoanalyst, long before
I even considered any career path, I had read Freud and Jung. My working-class parents, neither of whom had attended college, both of whom were highly cultured and self-educated, had in their library The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud edited by A. A. Brill, and Man and His Symbols by Jung and others. I read these books without any knowledge of any dissent between Freud and Jung or any knowledge of the politics of psychoanalysis, and valued what I was reading.
Perhaps what underlies these fracturings is the need to believe in, and trust, authority. When I first read Psychoanalytic Treatment: An Intersubjective Approach , by Atwood, Brandschaft, and Stolorow, I felt a great sense of relief, true illumination. I didn't have to accept some final authority. Rather, I was liberated, in that I could value my own thoughts, my own insights, and, therefore, trust my sense that psychoanalytic work is a partnership with the people with whom I was working.
The culture wars that raise the question of whether psychoanalysis is a science, an art, or a philosophy, dismay me because I know my own strengths and weaknesses. I have always been a poor science and math student, and since I first learned to read and write, I always have been a poet and fiction writer, and a devotee of literature and the arts. I know people who resonate with, and excel equally in, the sciences and humanities, but I am not one of them. I would prefer to stay safe in my own cocoon, claiming that psychoanalysis is an art, but I don't want to impose my insecurities on others in the guise of intellectual belief.
In 2015, I was greatly honored when I was asked to participate in the 2015 Symposium in New York City, on the theme “Brain, Mind, & Body.” I was asked to present on “mind.” I most assuredly could not have presented on “brain.” I drew on the work of D.W. Winnicott, “The Location of Cultural Experience,” in Playing and Reality , where he said “cultural experience is located in the potential space between the individual and the environment (originally the object). The same can be said of playing. Cultural experience begins with creative living first manifested in play.”
Science and art are part of our cultural experience, and both involve creativity manifesting in play. Serious play.
I also cited Gerald Gargiulo, who said, in “Inner Mind/Outer Mind and
the Quest for an ‘I,’” Soul on the Couch , “mind resides in all the cultural bridges we have built: language, art, philosophy, religion and psychoanalysis to name a few”.
Gargiulo is quite at home in both the humanities and the sciences. He is a psychoanalyst, a poet, and he recently published Quantum Psychoanalysis: Essays on Physics, Mind, and Analysis Today.
Following Gargiulo, I hope for bridges.
Ofra Eshel, in her book The Emergence of Analytic Oneness: Into the Heart of Psychoanalysis , has a chapter, “From extension to revolutionary change in clinical psychoanalysis: The radical influence of Bion and Winnicott,” where she talks of “a transition from extension to scientific revolution and paradigm shift (or paradigm change) in psychoanalysis” (p.237), using terms derived from Thomas Kuhn's discussion of the evolution of science. Continuing with Kuhn's terminology, she speaks of a paradigm in a crisis-transition period, with old and new paradigms each having their adherents, resulting in a communication breakdown. What is needed is translation that results in better communication. She draws on Vermote's concept of integrative modeling, and cites Bion's concepts of K and O as a major paradigm shift in psychoanalysis.
Is psychoanalysis in crisis? Are we witnessing a new paradigm emerging? Or is this the same old, same old paradigm crisis and communication breakdown?
Again, when I was a candidate in the 1980s, the president of my institute, who was committed to drive theory, tried to establish a protocol in which candidates presenting their final case to qualify for graduation would have to present their case using drive theory. If they had used any other theoretical approach to conduct the analysis, they would be required to “translate” their case and use drive theory language only. Fortunately, he did not prevail. But I did know of one candidate, who had used an object relations approach primarily, being counseled by her control supervisor to present in drive theory terms, nonetheless. And she did.
Is our work doomed to be “lost in translation” if we continue fighting useless culture wars?
I am grateful that I have a psyche, that I have a mind, that I have a brain, that I have a body, and that I had the opportunity to become a psychoanalyst. I am indebted to everyone who taught me. I have learned about the human mind, the human experience, from psychoanalytic writings and from literature, from the people in my practice, from my own life experience.
Perhaps we will be fortunate enough to learn from the fractures and fragmentations in the history of psychoanalytic thought.
How can we learn?
In conclusion, I offer two quotes:
“There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in” Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”
“The Wound is the place where light enters you”
Rumi, 13th century CE Persian Sufi poet
Merle Molofsky
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