Arnold Richards, M.D. has been a sensitive psychiatrist/psychoanalyst, prolific writer, well-respected editor, and discerning publisher of psychoanalytic topics covering a wide range of issues. Recently, International Psychoanalytic Books published a collection of his papers (vol. 1–3). For decades, He has been an indefatigable champion on behalf of psychoanalysis. He has even taken issue with his own psychiatric establishment for excluding non-physicians from full membership in psychoanalytic institutes. While the latter issue was settled as a direct result of the class action lawsuit filed by Bryant Welch, J.D., Ph.D. in 1985, against the American Psychoanalytic Association, Dr. Richards has expressed concerns about other troubling psychoanalytic matters.
A recurrent theme running through a number of his previous papers—as well as the current one—itself a reiteration (with permission) of an article entitled, “Psychoanalysis in Crisis: Art, Science, or Ideology?” that he earlier wrote for JASPER (2017, vol. 1, issue 1)—has to do with several central questions: (1) Who defines what constitutes psychoanalytic treatment? (2) Is psychoanalysis a science or an art? and (3) Has psychoanalysis decomposed into an ideology or a religion? Any one of these questions could easily be an article all by itself. Yet, he successfully manages to integrate and respond to those complexities in an intelligible, coherent, and expositive essay. Central to his thinking on the subject is his profound concern about the survival of psychoanalysis. If we were ever able to locate his abiding devotion to psychoanalysis, we would not be surprised to find—embedded deep within his soul—a wish for truth.
To that end, he fears that the internecine warfare from fellow psychoanalysts that has characterized psychoanalysis practically from the start, will combine with external attacks from “the barbarians at the gate,” hailing from Big Pharma, the insurance companies, and competing
psychotherapy approaches, and that they ultimately will put asunder this psychoanalytic project that we all love.
Questions regarding differential definitions of what constitutes psychoanalysis; who is a psychoanalyst; and whether there can (or should) ever be a “typical” psychoanalytic process are spotlighted. Alayarian (2018) focused on the nature of knowledge, belief, and their relationship to definitional issues and to each other. She contended:
…A belief is not knowledge if there is opportunity and willingness to test and falsify it. Science in contrast to belief can be wrong, and is constantly revised for improvement; it is knowledge at a particular time. This move away from infallibilism indicates all knowledge is belief. (p. 13)
Insofar as definitional issues are concerned, Frank Summers (2016, personal communication) indicated that s/he who defines the terms of the discourse wins the argument, thus underscoring the singular significance of who does the defining. And as we might expect, the way others define and portray our theories and clinical approaches, all too often resemble caricatures more than represent verisimilitude. Dr. Richards says this about psychoanalysis, “we love it, and we know its value.” When Charles Brenner, MD was interviewed by Kim Kleinman, LCSW, regarding his feelings about the value of psychoanalysis, he thoughtfully affirmed, “it literally can be a matter of life and death.”
But what are the “basic psychoanalytic facts” that should be drawn upon? Spence (1994) asserted that what goes on in the consulting room in the course of a psychoanalytic treatment session that can be put into words are the foundational building blocks constructing its material evidence. Spence includes in this structure the issues that a patient brings up, the words that the analyst uses, and those topics that analysts raise with their supervisors. The latter comprises a mix of observations, theoretical conceptualizations, free associations, word-of-mouth, and reality as sources of evidence. Spence does, however, differentiate clinical from contextual and from what he refers to as latent facts. The latter may not be directly observable during the session, and thus must be gleaned from other sources.
Dr. Richards is not content with intra-psychic examinations per se. Without excluding drive theory, but rather, daring to go beyond it, he brings into the mix exogenous sociological, geopolitical, psychohistorical, economic, epistemological and educational influences. With considerable agility, he deftly moves from definitional issues to the long-argued question over whether psychoanalysis is a science or an art? My own belief is that information bearing upon and germane to this question of art versus science may have to be gleaned from a wide range of disciplines and sources, such as, the physical sciences, art, as well as philosophy.
Unfortunately, the very fact that this has become a binary representation, much like the arbitrary distinction between body and mind, unwittingly implies that we are required to align with one camp or the other, rather than seek a possible integration of these seemingly disparate constructs. Just as the artificial bifurcation of body and mind or the soma/psyche division can be unified under the umbrella of holism, in which the whole organismic gestalt can be regarded as greater than the sum of its parts, by the same token, art and science can be appreciated as having both likenesses as well as differences. But here's the rub. If clinicians were to admit that their work with patients is an art form, it is anticipated that critics of psychoanalysis would seize upon this admission, make far-reaching generalizations and relegate it to a kind of unscientific netherworld, and thus render the whole of psychoanalysis as invalid. Such thinking is as over-simplified and overgeneralized as it is inaccurate. Psychoanalysis is not two-dimensional. It is highly complex with many nuanced meanings and textured ways of conceptualizing and practicing. Thus, as Dr. Richards asserts, it can be, and ought to be “many things to many people.” Is it an art? Yes. Is it a science? Again, yes. Can art be studied scientifically? Yes.
About this, Shlain (1991), neither a physicist, nor an artist has stated:
I have often been asked how a surgeon could hold forth on such weighty and diverse subjects. Surprisingly, my surgery has uniquely prepared me for the task, for a surgeon is both artist and scientist. The craft demands a finely honed sense of aesthetics: A maxim of the
Page 22profession is if an operation does not “look” beautiful it most likely will not function beautifully. Thus, surgeons rely heavily on their intuitive visual-spatial right-hemispheric mode. At the same time, our training is obviously scientific (p. 8).
Going further, it is interesting to point out that many aspects of Einstein's theories of relativity are contained within Freudian notions (and vice versa), although both Freud and Einstein clearly did not have each other in mind when they independently developed their ideas. Specifically speaking, Einstein explicitly conceptualized past and future as equivalent in their non-existence when “hitchhiking” aboard a beam of light. Similarly, space and time are reciprocal facets of reality. In a comparable vein, Freud believed that opposites lie side by side—in equivalency–in the primary process language of the unconscious. According to this view, past, present and future are all the same representation. Weyl (1963), a well-respected mathematician in his day, had this to add about objectivity, certainty, and subjectivity:
…the objective world simply is; it does not happen. Only to the gaze of my consciousness…does a section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time. (p. 116)
What these individuals are referring to is a study of art, in consideration and in spite of its subjectivity. To this, Davies (1983) and earlier, Heisenberg (1958), added the following:
The common division of the world into subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and soul, is no longer adequate…(Davies, p. 112). Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves (Heisenberg, p. 102).
Furthermore, the view of the new physics is that observer and the observed are interconnected in some fashion. In fact, physicists claim that the very act of one particle observing another affects the other (and vice versa). Imagine that, particles are affected by being observed. The use of the term “observed” hardly seems to be what we would expect from a so-called “hard science” like physics, which is given to methodical observations, precise definitions, and meticulous mathematical formulations. And yet, that is the exact terminology that is specifically chosen.
Also, despite a myriad of studies (Greene, 1999; Rosa, 2012; Frabboni, et al., 2012; Vedral, 2006; Svensson, 2013; Pfleegor & Mandel, 2011; and Rovelli, C. 1996), it remains unclear how this occurs, so much so that physicists have resorted to explaining this set of (what Freud refers to as “uncanny”) phenomena by invoking the appellation, “spooky” physics. By this, it is meant that the inner province of subjective thought winds up being intimately conjoined to the external realm of objective facts. As we can see, this is not terribly different from what Ferenczi (and subsequently others) understood and has now come to be known as the Relational Turn.
Thus, the subjective and the objective, while ostensibly at opposite poles, paradoxically are intertwined. Niels Bohr recognized this and united seemingly opposite notions under the rubric of “complementarity.” In his case, the two diametrically opposed hypothetical constructs associated with light were both particle and wave. According to this system, waves and particles (which he believed to be the components which make up light) are an integrated duality. Although they are different, they are complementary properties of a single unit. More will be said about this shortly. Therefore, why should it be far-fetched or any different for anyone to believe that Psychoanalysis too can be studied scientifically?
The main charge that has consistently been levelled at psychoanalysis is that it has no research to back up its claims. Nothing could be further from the truth. From its inception, psychoanalysis has been interested in research. Freud utilized the method of free association, while Jung developed a more structured word association approach. These were the first scientific tools of psychoanalysis, but they were certainly not the last. In all likelihood, because the methods of his time for properly studying psychoanalysis were quite limited, Freud put his Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895) on the back burner. Years later, he stated:
Science…is not a revelation; long after its beginnings, it still lacks the attributes of definiteness, immutability, and infallibility for which human thought so deeply longs. (p. 191)
Although Freud gave up his Scientific Project for his now famous case studies, he never entirely gave up the hope that one day psychoanalysis could be studied scientifically. His whole premise of psychic determinism
is predicated on the firm belief that: one day innovative techniques and/or technological advances could be developed that would enable us to progress to the point where more and more psychoanalytic assumptions could be tested and either verified or disconfirmed.
Since his time, a great body of research has been undertaken involving observational studies, the filmed reports and videotapes used by Mahler (1980), Ainsworth & Bell's “strange” situation, filmed documentation of Bergman's work with an autistic child (Skorczewski & Bergman, 2005), the use of split-screen photography (see Beebe's research, 2017), Tronick, et al's (1975) demonstration and effect of the “still face” study, longitudinal studies (see Vaillant 1995, 1980), as well as verbatim transcripts of individual cases over time (see Waldron, et al. 2011).
When D.O. Hebb put forth his theories in 1949 about how experience alters the structure of the brain, in his by-now classic treatise, Organization of Behavior, his theories were regarded as elegantly stated, but simultaneously, as pie-in-the-sky speculations, simply because it was thought that they were unprovable. However, with the advent of more sophisticated neurological instruments (like fMRIs, CAT Scans, and PET Scans), minute, often subtle, neurological changes could now be observed. So too, can many important (although not all) aspects of psychoanalysis be empirically verified.
While it is true that many aspects of psychoanalysis cannot be studied yet using traditional scientific techniques, there are many features intrinsic to psychoanalysis that can be—and have been—studied scientifically. For example, the Journal for the Advancement of Scientific Psychoanalytic Empirical Research (JASPER) recently published an article (Seitler, 2018) that listed over 300 rigorously researched psychoanalytic investigations. The following lists a broad swath of psychodynamic research areas (in alphabetical order) that were covered in that article: adolescence, adult psychotherapy approaches, affect regulation, alexithymia, alliance, assessment and measurement, attachment, attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, brain changes, castration anxiety, child analysis, consultation, countertransference, defense mechanisms, dreamwork, efficacy of psychoanalysis as compared with other psychotherapies, epistemological understandings, group psychotherapy, insight, mechanisms of change, memory, methodological studies, narcissism, neuroscience,
philosophy of science interpretations, process studies, resistance, self, separation anxiety, separation-individuation, supervision, techniques, termination, transference, unconscious, and so on. Articles on the above subjects represent a mere smattering of some of the excellent research on psychoanalytic subjects of interest that has been, and continues to be done. The following year, the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP) honored that JASPER article by honoring it with the Gradiva award.
Not only can art be studied scientifically, but there are a host of other areas which ostensibly are not measurable at first blush, such as poetry, creative writing, music, or jokes, that can, indeed, be studied scientifically. Admittedly, there are some things that do not readily lend themselves to scientific study at this time. That fact does not solely apply to a young social science, like psychoanalysis; it is equally true of various aspects of older, so-called “hard sciences,” like physics. Let me return to a discussion of light.
To wit, the quandary over the nature of light is a classic example of difficulty demonstrating whether light is a wave or a particle. Once again, by juxtaposing these two possibilities as binaries, only one answer is possible. Categorical binaries like the one above, limit us to one choice among many, often overlooking the prospect of two or more answers, rather than one. In this example, the prospect exists that light may be composed of both waves and particles.
Science is always limited by the extent of its theoretical and creative flexibility, as well as its technological capabilities and advances. But we should always be open to and prepared for the discovery of new possibilities, even if they require us to relinquish the golden calves of once highly cherished beliefs. Just as armies advance on their bellies, science is sustained by its advances in observation, measurement, and accurate interpretation. As Pasteur perceptively reminded us:
Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard me favorise que le espirits prepare.
Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind (rep. 1939, p.131).
It has been estimated that cones in the retina did not exist before 40,000 years ago (a relatively small amount of time archeologically). As a result, humans were unable to see color at that time. In other words, our (personal) technology was not sufficiently developed. However, merely because we were unable to see color, does that mean that color ceased to exist? Of course not. Furthermore, had there been no microscopes to verify germ theory, would bacteria fail to make themselves known? In short, just because we may not be able to measure a psychoanalytic concept at this time does not necessarily mean that our ideas about it are incorrect. It simply suggests that we cannot come to a definitive conclusion—yet.
Too often, even our own colleagues have invoked the long arm of “there is no evidence to support that idea” as preemptive dismissals, which barely (if at all) hide their thinly veiled derision, sometimes borne of competitiveness, possible envy, or a wish to attain or maintain power. That is not to say that we should support all notions willy nilly. Freud was clear about that when he warned us not to make interpretations prematurely. He admonished us that to do so, before all the facts of the case were in, constituted “über wilde psychoanalyse” or wild analysis (1905, p. 221–227; 1910a, p. 91–95; 1910b, p. 219–227). However, it is important to make the distinction between being unable to definitively demonstrate a particular phenomenon simply because our tools, techniques or level of sophistication are inadequate from clearly egregiously false ideas. A necessary distinction, by the way, but one that is not always easy to make.
Ahumada (1994) raised the issue whether science, itself, is empirical, since it often relies on the senses. That is, is it possible for experiences based on subjective interpretation of one's inner sensations to count as sources of evidence? Is this different from experience of the external world that has been typically regarded (perhaps incorrectly) as objective?
Some of the psycho-physical studies of Wundt (1862), Weber (1834), and Fechner (1966/1860), come to mind. Wundt believed, (1862), much like Leibniz (who he held in high esteem), “nihil est quod non fuerit in sensu, nisi intellectu ipse” (nothing exists in the intellect which was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself). In an attempt to clarify this, Weber focused on measuring “just noticeable differences,” that is, the smallest changes in a stimulus necessary to be noticed or perceived.
Fechner claimed that bodily facts and conscious facts, while not reducible to each other, are different sides of the same coin, known as reality. As a result of his collaboration with Weber, what has come to be known as the Weber-Fechner law, was developed. Simply stated: as the intensity of a sensation increases in arithmetical progression, the stimulus must similarly increase, but in geometrical progression. However, when the sensations are very strong, this elegant mathematical formulation did not pass muster. It remained for Stevens about 100 years later (1946) to point out that intensity is a function of perception and does not correspond to a geometric, but rather to an exponential progression.
We have come a long way since the early founding of those psychological laboratories. Yet, rather than integrate what research has produced, and grow from it, we act dismissively toward findings that are not specific to “our field” and our preconceptions. In the latter regard, we are precariously close to becoming what Richards refers to as an ideology or a religion. We have come to a place where we are too easily contemptuous of opinions that differ with whatever might be the “canon of the day.” Dr. Richards has alerted us to the seriousness of this problem and has pointed out the grim consequences for the survival of psychoanalysis. The following is a parable that I hope will illuminate this issue further.
One day, on high, the Lord G-d Almighty smiled upon His creation, the earth, and all that was on it. In an instant, He brought forth an enormous diamond, and with one fell swoop of His mighty hand, He pulverized the rock into countless smithereens of dust which He sprinkled down upon all parts of the earth. When the angels asked about this, the Lord smiled beneficently and replied, “The diamond that I smashed was the gemstone of Truth, which I wanted to give to humanity as a gift.” The angels then wondered aloud, what would happen if some find one facet of the diamond and conclude that they have the entire truth?
And so it is in the lofty halls of psychoanalysis, that when we have one piece of the analytic puzzle, we often then develop an entire theory from that singular chunk. What is worse, we become incensed if others either do not worship our creation, or dare to craft a different one from our own. This raises a very serious question that goes to the very heart of psychoanalytic training.
Why is it that supposedly well-analyzed individuals sometimes stimulate in each other the most primitive urges when working together in, of all places, the sanctum sanctorum of intellectual, educational, personal, and professional learning, the psychoanalytic institute? Does it not seem ironic that the very place where people congregate to immerse themselves in an atmosphere of nurturance, holding, attunement, collegial support and learning are somehow not “good enough” containers of their own Oedipal conflicts, feelings of envy, narcissistic rage and sibling rivalry, to name a few? It seems rather puzzling to me, at least on the face of it. Is this phenomenon ubiquitous to all psychoanalytic institutes, and thus inevitable, or are there some things that we can take note of either to prevent the forces of dissension and destabilization from occurring or from holding sway in the analytic family?
To begin with, the notion of being completely analyzed is a delightful, yet idealized fiction, no matter how expert the analyst may be and no matter how conscientious, cooperative, and analyzable the patient. It was Lucia Tower (1956) who made these insightful comments:
No analyst has been presumed to have been so perfectly analyzed that he no longer has an unconscious, or is without susceptibility to the stirring up of instinctual impulses and defenses against them. (p. 224)
Therefore, we should not be surprised that even analysts have “blind spots.” Moreover, the greater likelihood is that said “blind spots” can be expected to be located in pre-verbal, or even pre-symbolic areas, thus making them a source of resistance to traditional talk therapy, which would certainly account for the primitiveness of the urges and behaviors noted above.
As to the question of the Primal Horde, Oedipal conflicts, and whatnot, it is curious to me that the first mention by the Old Testament for example, of murder, occurs in conjunction with sibling rivalry, in which Cain slays Abel. Cain's punishment is to be exiled, to bear an identifying mark by which the whole world would know of his ignominious deed, and for him to be shunned. I find it fascinating that Cain would be shunned by “other people.” If Adam and Eve were the first humans, this raises the inconvenient question of where these “other people” came from? Unless they came from Eve herself, we are left with a puzzle the likes of which
even Sherlock Holmes might be thunderstruck. Of course, if Eve was the (unmentioned) matriarch of the “other people” in question, might Cain have been invested in making his own seminal contribution to their existence? If that were so, Cain would represent both sibling and father. Remarkably, this is not so terribly different from the incestuous relationship (unwitting as it may have been) in the Sophoclean Oedipal trilogy.
So, even though there is no allusion to an attempt by either Abel or Cain to usurp the vaunted position of the father, Adam, one can make a case that the so-called “birthright” over which Abel was killed, was not property or material goods per se, but Mom. Even if that were so, it would not argue for the universality of either fratricide or parricide, since one of the two protagonists did not commit the act, nor did the next-in-line brother, Seth. Accordingly, the Oedipal may not be universal, and that pre-Oedipal conflicts, one of which may be sibling rivalry, may explain some of the cases of internecine warfare that we see in institutes. Thus, sibling rivalry may be at least as powerful, and certainly no less complex, as the Oedipal.
This is what Wakefield (2007) contends. Extrapolating from Bowlby's thinking about attachment, Wakefield challenges the Oedipal explanation offered by Freud of Little Hans's “phantasy of the two giraffes,” in which Hans is said to have inchoate desires for sexual intercourse with his mother. Bowlby maintained that Freud's exclusive focus on the Oedipal explanation lead him away from other factors that may have also been involved, namely attachment issues. Based on a microanalysis of little Hans's phantasy, Wakefield asserts that an attachment account of this “phantasy” produces an interpretation with much greater explanatory power than the strictly Oedipal one. Wakefield's evidence suggests that Hans's giraffe phantasy is about the sibling rivalry triangle involving access and attachment to the caregiver. This is not necessarily in place of any Oedipal strivings, but it seems to occur along with the existence of any Oedipal urges. Thus, the issue of multiple factors, and multiple meanings of these factors may need to be given equal (or perhaps greater) regard as the up-to-now reflexive knee-jerk invocation of the Oedipal explanation for all things conflictual. And even if the Oedipal were deemed to be universal, should all Oedipal complexes be regarded as equal? This is one of the questions considered in great depth by my esteemed colleague, Dr. Howard Covitz, in his meticulously thought out
paper (2007) on the subject, and his extensively compiled book, written ten years earlier (1997), which raise the possibility of the existence of many types of Oedipals.
And, to muck up the waters a bit more, the not so simplistic explanation to begin with—of Oedipal conflicts being behind the strife within some institutes—may not fully satisfy our appetite for deeper understanding. Thus a broader menu may have to be provided to sate our intellectual hunger, one that goes beyond (or more properly, which precedes) the Oedipal bill of fares.
Interestingly enough, information derived from a non-analytical source (perish forbid!) puts forth a similar point of view derived from examining the structure of, and the relationships that develop within organizations. In a detailed description of organizational behaviors, Lister (2001) observes that organizations generally tended to replicate the behaviors seen in families, particularly, although not exclusively, with respect to conflicts involving sibling rivalry, as well as battles with authority figures. She suggests that these behaviors are not only commonplace, but also are both typical and normal adaptations to the ongoing, ever changing dynamics inherent in organizations. Her explanation reduces the considerable data that she painstakingly gathered to pre-Oedipal themes involving sibling rivalry and subsequent Oedipal ones, linked to Oedipal conflicts with authority figures.
Still other potentially contributing factors need to be mentioned. One of these relates to narcissistic wounds and ensuing (out) rage. Developmentally, the very first narcissistic wound occurs at birth.1 Where before, everything was Eden-like; all needs were automatically met, there was no waiting to be fed, temperature was regulated, visual stimuli were toned down, and sounds were muffled, when, all of a sudden, a child is thrust out into the world and is bombarded by a sensory kaleidoscope of simultaneously impinging stimuli, which an external object (the mother) then must intuitively realize what is happening and figure out how to modulate such stimuli on behalf of the infant. More narcissistic wounds follow. The child as s/he matures, again through the mother's ministrations, must learn to delay gratification, tolerate ambiguity, and learn to communicate his or her needs verbally. If rage at being thwarted
occurs at a pre-verbal, or even further back, at a pre-symbolic level, its expression may take either an “acting out” appearance (e.g., crying jags or tantrums), or an “acting in” form such as, in somaticization. I regard the latter as “attacks” against the body.
McDougall (1989) says if inner conflicts are so great that they cannot be expressed in any other manner, or if they occur at a pre-symbolic or pre-verbal level—and verbal mitigation is unable to take place, they may then take their petition to the court of last resort, namely the body. In so doing, the body acts “crazy,” thus sparing the rest of the self from disintegration into psychosis.
Is it possible then, that some of the irrationality that we sometimes see in the negative interactions within and between institutes may be related to similar forms of attacks against the body, in this case, the body psychoanalytic? This may not be so-far fetched when we consider that institutes may recreate, foster, and exacerbate the above themes due to their very incestuous nature and structure. But before getting to the conditions that may give rise to the incestuous climate of institutes and all their attendant problems, let me provide a very brief historical overview of some of the basic, although necessarily incomplete tenets of psychoanalytic training.
Around 1918, early psychoanalytic institutes adopted Nunberg's requirement that all would-be psychoanalysts be analyzed themselves. Later on (circa 1925), Eitingon proposed that analysts receive supervision as part of their institute studies (see Sandler, 1982). These requirements set psychoanalysis apart from all other psychotherapies in a way that remains one of its finest contributions. There are other developments that were not as salutary that resulted in divisiveness between practitioners, between various institutes, as well as within a number of psychoanalytic institutes. For one thing, the ways psychoanalysis was viewed and practiced in the United States, for example, was vastly different in attitude and spirit from the manner in which its European parents conducted it and themselves. The Americans largely subscribed to the medical model. To this day, residues to one degree or another, are seen in the increased emphasis on biopsychiatry and its current almost exclusive reliance on the use of medications. For another, the question of “lay analysis,” which was not an issue in Europe, became a hot topic in the U.S. and lines were
etched in acid delineating “real” analysts from non-medically trained ones.
Thus, a pecking order soon became established between the two groups, ultimately creating a schism between medically trained and non-physician analysts. Shortly thereafter, a break occurred from the medical model and attempts by some of its own former adherents to achieve hegemony over the way psychoanalytic training should be run. This rift came from a certain sector of the medical analytic community itself, as a specific protest against its refusal to admit Theodore Reik, Ph.D. into a training program, simply because he was not a physician. According to this reasoning, the likes of Ms. Anna Freud, Mrs. Melanie Klein, or for that matter, Mr. Erik Erikson, as well as a host of other eminently qualified clinicians would have been found to be unacceptable and denied access to the vaunted and most exclusive inner circle of American psychoanalytic training.
The break resulted in the establishment of other training programs (i.e., non-medical model ones) like the Karen Horney Institute, the William Alanson White Institute, the National Psychological Association of Psychoanalysis (NPAP), which was founded by Reik, himself, and other training institutes. This is not to say that European analysts loved each other unconditionally, if at all. They too, had more than their share of problems, both with each other as well as the chaos unfolding around them of world events, which included World Wars, pestilence, the rise of communism, the Great Depression, nationalism, fascism, nazism, not to mention their own brand of internal exclusionary practices. According to Shapiro (1990):
In the early history of psychoanalysis, especially in the banishment or control of those who strayed too far from the core of psychoanalytic concepts, the attempt to maintain the continuity of the past into an uncertain future often conveyed the quality of a struggle to the death between past and future, master and disciple, parent and child. The early history of psychoanalysis is marked by bitter excommunications of once cherished disciples (Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Otto Rank) and equally acrimonious close calls (Sandor Ferenczi, the Ernest Jones/Melanie Klein alliance).
In the above regard, Bollas (1999) referred to the politicization of psychoanalysis as the tendency to develop “brands” of analysis. He likened this process to reducing psychoanalytic practice to the worship of certain body parts over others, which ultimately produces a part-object theory. Certain schools of thought seem to impose their viewpoint on their students, on pain of parental disapproval or excommunication from the Oedipal drama existing in the psychoanalytic institute. This produces splitting, fractionalization, fragmentation, and the development of splinter groups and cliques, all of which gravely threaten the life of scholarly, give-and-take, open debate and diversity. When this happens, previously active members often withdraw and the life force, which usually inspires creative thinking, ebbs. On the matter of part-object theory, Bollas adds the following comments:
Taking part of the overall theory of meaning…and founding either a school or body of thought around this particular part-object and then treating it as a sufficient ground of knowledge—more a form of intellectual cloning than it is a large development of theory; with supporters standing in for critical examination, sheer numbers ultimately determining the validity of the theory and its perpetrators. (p. 46)
Bollas and Richards are not lone voices in the wind expressing apprehension about the future of psychoanalysis. Kernberg (1996), for example, extensively studied the current educational model being offered at most American psychoanalytic institutes and has expressed a number of his own reservations. He asserts that unless we make significant modifications in our institute procedures, the transmission of psychoanalytic training to future generations, and with it the profession of psychoanalysis itself, may eventually cease to exist. He has observed a number of impediments to creative thinking that are inherent in many institutes. In his comprehensive analysis of the situation, he derived thirty conditions that could lead to the destruction of independent, divergent, and creative thinking in students' training to become psychoanalysts. Space is sufficient to list merely a few of them. Among these are:
…accentuation of the hierarchical relations among the psychoanalytic faculty…isolation of institutes…lack of full presentation of clinical work by senior members of the faculty…neglect of studies of controversies regarding psychoanalytic technique…effects of institutional conflict. (1996, p. 1033-1036)
In an earlier paper, Kernberg (1986) went even further with his admonitions, declaring that:
Psychoanalytic education today is all too often conducted in an atmosphere of indoctrination rather than of open scientific exploration (p. 799)… . Candidates as well as graduates and even faculty are prone to study their teachers, often ignoring alternative psychoanalytic approaches… . They are usually even sheltered fromsharp disagreements within their own institute… Preventing candidates from learning about the difficulties and uncertainties of psychoanalytic practice and technique leads, under the best of circumstances to…the candidate's unrealistic idealization of psychoanalytic technique and of the senior members of the faculty. (pp. 800–801)
As was noted earlier, psychoanalytic institutes require candidates to be in their own analysis. More often than not, the analyst must be a member of the institute in which the student is a candidate. The same set of circumstances usually applies with respect to the choice of supervisors. That is, the supervisor is typically a training analyst at the very same institute that the student attends. The potential for inbreeding, in fact its likelihood, is unmistakable, the consequences of which are as numerous as they are profound.
Breach of confidentiality, for one thing, may be an “accidental” artifact of the structure of an analytic institute. But even an unwitting breech of confidentiality, is no small matter. And yet, if the current system is not changed, it may be virtually impossible to completely safeguard an analysand's privilege. For example, if an analyst is a member of a committee that discusses the progress of students and the analysand's name comes up, as it must as a matter of course, the analyst must recuse him or herself from the discussion (i.e., by leaving the room, etc…). In so doing, the analyst has implicitly disclosed that the student under discussion is that analyst's patient.
Also, what happens when an analyst of a particular student is the analysand's teacher? How does this effect the nature of the transference and/or countertransference? What resistances may arise, but go unmentioned in therapy? How are other students affected when they know (as
they always seem to) that a particular student is the analysand of the instructor? Are there jealousies; is there envy; sibling rivalry; competitiveness; feelings of favoritism? Since each of the other students is not the teacher's patient, and thus had not entered into a therapeutic covenant with the instructor nor has a relationship beyond the class that safeguards his/her status, how are these matters to be worked out? Even though we say about therapy that “everything is grist for the mill,” there are enough things that are going on without additional variables being thrust into the mix, many of which could be avoided with a few simple procedural modifications.
For instance, what if an institute continued to require that its students be in analysis, but stipulated that it must be with an approved analyst who was not affiliated with the student's own institute? Of course, such a radical proposal could be expected to meet a sudden, rather unceremonious demise. The reasons for this are extensive. Briefly, they are: narcissistic injury, feelings of paranoia, competitiveness, basic distrust, or, more cynically, the fear of loss of income, etc. …
Nonetheless, the implementation of such a seemingly radical procedural modification would drastically minimize a fair amount of the systemic Oedipal overtones associated with the way institutes are currently designed. Moreover, if such measures (and more) are not taken, institutes would be well advised to recognize the self-destructiveness of unprocessed, unresolved Oedipal conflicts and the presence of pre-Oedipal issues, such as sibling rivalry, that are often inherent in, and a systemic part of, most psychoanalytic institutes as they are presently constituted.
In conclusion, it is ironic that freestanding psychoanalytic institutes were developed historically so that psychoanalysis could be safe from political, economic, or other influences. This was so that analysts, and those in training to become analysts, could feel free to think their thoughts, express their ideas, and ultimately be creative in developing and refining their craft.
Now, more than ever, psychoanalysis needs to deeply consider the latent forces contributing to our divide—pre-Oedipal and Oedipal alike, to identify and to work through our differences. Although psychoanalysis has lasted this long despite numerous predictions and reports of our demise,
we must not take our longevity and ourselves too seriously, or our continued existence for granted.
The second narcissistic wound is the child's realization the s/he is not the center of the universe; that others exist beside him or herself; and that the parents might love each other as much, or perhaps even more than him or herself.