Merle Molofsky frames the question “Is Psychoanalysis an Art or Science?” as regressive, as a return to a culture war. She connects the frame of the question (is Psychoanalysis this or that), with the presence of dichotomous rifts that started almost as soon a Psychoanalysis was born, starting with Jung and Freud. Jung's theories were regarded as superstitious; Freud was the scientist, his theories were scientific.
Molofsky briefly describes rifts in Europe and the USA that had an impact on training and the field in general. She locates herself outside of these rifts and describes welcoming Fred Pine's work that focused on integrating drive, ego, object and self theory. She posits that some of the “fracturings” are a reaction to authority. Some people need to believe in authority. Molofsky describes liberation in reading Psychoanalytic Treatment: An Intersubjective Approach (1987), by Atwood, Brandschaft, and Stolorow. to quote her: “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.”
When Molofsky describes feeling liberated to value her own thoughts, is she voicing the complaints that those who resist the scientific have? She sounds like she is setting up a dichotomy between scientific believers who accept authority, and free liberated artists. But then she walks us through her integration of art and science, which includes describing Gerald Gargiulo's work, including a mention of his book: Quantum Psychoanalysis: Essays on Physics, Mind, and Analysis Today.
Molofsky also raises the impact that theory wars have on psychoanalytic candidates. Included in this is a question of how work is described: In the mother tongue, or the archaic lingua franca?
I think that the scientific method was the first psychological theory. Based on untested theories of mind, the scientific method attempts to remove subjectivity from observation, and the resulting objective observations are then considered scientific. Our postmodern colleagues and physicists seem to agree that observation itself has an effect on the observed and have grave doubts about the effectiveness of any method to create a singular theory with “lawlike patterns.” But this does not become a license to abandon empirical research. Our patients deserve a disciplined informed psychoanalyst.
Perhaps what Molofsky does not say explicitly is that the question of art or science itself pulls for a categorization that does not promote a synthetic conceptualization. Quantum Psychoanalysis probably offers the most useful metaphor for integrating the art/science binary. Psychoanalysis can exist in both spaces simultaneously.
Written by Kimberly Kleinman
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