To read Merle's “What me worry response” (and ponder her important psyche soma references), training experience, and somatic focus, response to Arnie's paper on the vicissitudes of ideology-training and Sigmund Freud's art and science, is to elicit a desire to hug her, complement and underline the importance of keeping alive the robust nature of lay narrative practice and training, but also pay attention to the soma of the psyche, and the onrushing importance of cognitive-affective neuroscience for all practitioners. As practice becomes an important component of an effective and economic healthcare for all, across gender, intersectional, cultural, and behavioral-health and major mental illness treatment in an era of deinstitutionalizing racism and healthcare disparities in an increasingly diverse clientele where sensitivity and sophistication to co-created and culturally informed familiarity with experience is critical to informed care.
Merle's paper: Lay training analysis and integration is @ the nexus of brain-mind science, which was originally one of the major reasons why Freud had to go with a primarily narrative method, that was limited in scope and science with respect to cognitive-affective neuroscience and narrative methodologies.
I would add that what is also important is the way in which psychiatry and mental health in general has been balkanized in ways alien to Freud and good training in general by merchandizing (what Les Havens called the healthcare market place), brief therapies getting hijacked by insurance and interdisciplinary competition and need to contain costs, the narrative-lay approach has been important to keeping psychoanalysis viable, but also applicable across modalities, parameters of technique and technology and consistent with common factors relationship value. As time goes on, therapist-client fit and process, and fit between mixed therapies will. assume more importance.