I support Henry Friedman's passionate plea for analysts to be more humane and related. I also agree with Friedman's view about the insularity of those within a particular theoretical view.
A Few Briefly Elaborated Difficulties with This Essay
* I believe the “classic” psychoanalysis that Friedman presents is psychoanalysis from 60 years ago, maybe what he was taught as a candidate. Many of the humanistic suggestions he makes have been recognized as necessary for treatment to progress. Necessary but not sufficient.
* Psychoanalysis is not only a treatment method, but also a theory of mind. We have no idea what Friedman's theory of mind is or even if he has one.
* Everyone else is portrayed as biased by his or her theory except Friedman.
* Friedman characterization of the approach in my book as “educational,” I find especially dismissive. Limiting my approach to being a Paul Gray clone, he seems to want to isolate my perspective, and ignores all the authors from Europe and South America whose viewpoints are consistent with mine. My approach, using a variety of techniques, is based on an updated psychoanalytic version of how the mind works, and how a therapeutic cure works, agreed upon by most psychoanalysts. He says that the way he thinks about the mind is very different than the way I do, but I have no idea what his view of the mind is.
The major problem I have with his essay is that Henry Friedman doesn't seem to believe in the unconscious. There is not a single mention of the
unconscious in his essay (except in critical terms), and in his “interpersonal” approach he makes no mention of how to resolve unconscious conflicts and fantasies that cause the pain and suffering that bring patients to seek treatment. As discovering the role the unconscious played in people's lives was the very foundation on which psychoanalysis was built, and is still central in almost all psychoanalytic approaches, how can a therapeutic method that doesn't include the unconscious consider itself psychoanalytic? Yet he seems to want his approach to be considered within psychoanalysis. However, as Rachel Blass (2010) put it, “Is it psychoanalysis?”
When we observe the attempt to refer to all things therapeutic as analytic, the issues underlying these feelings come closer to the surface. The analyst's desire to refer to his work as psychoanalytic, not merely therapeutic, even when (according to the analyst's own account) the only thing that makes it analytic is the fact that it is therapeutic, highlights what is to be gained by the use of the term psychoanalytic. It becomes apparent that it adds a positive connotation to certain therapeutic work, affiliates it with a kind of practice which, for therapists who developed in an analytically-oriented milieu, points to the value, depth and meaningfulness of one's work (2010, p. 96).
I'm sure Henry Friedman is a good therapist. Whether what he's promulgating is analysis is a different question.