The opportunity to publish a psychoanalytic paper in which I was free to express critical ideas about how I believe psychoanalysis has been formulated and practiced over the past fifty years is one that I deeply appreciate because I know how rare it is. Only an online journal like this one (International Journal of Controversial Discussions) would permit me the opportunity to say what I think and believe to be true about problems with how psychoanalysis has been practiced without being told by the Journal's editor that what I said would need to be modified (often to the point of becoming a different paper) or the paper would never see the light of day. The ability to speak critically about psychoanalysis is a gift that Arnie Richards has offered psychoanalysis; it is rare gift particularly in the world of psychoanalysis where our Journals stand, often unconsciously but sometimes consciously, as the outlet for conservative voices that promote ideas that are acceptable to those who have the power to control the message that any Journal represents.
What I wrote in my paper was the result of what I had learned over many years of clinical practice during which I had to overcome the many rules that were promulgated during both my years of training and those that were to follow. I have always felt that what I was aiming at in the analyses that I participated in as psychoanalyst was a relationship with another individual who had been burdened by their life experience even if that burden allowed them to be successful or even famous in the life they were living. I felt a confidence in my way of relating to my patients that I knew was different from what I had been taught and what I observed with patients who had previously been in therapy or analysis with other psychoanalysts. My focus was on the ubiquitous influence of received wisdom about the role of the psychoanalyst and in particular on the need for a constrained, rather under reactive individual, who lived in a world of interpretations of their patients unconscious motivations.
I am pleased to see that several of my colleagues have responded to my paper by writing their own papers. Some of these begin with a
consideration of my critical perspective but then abruptly turn in another direction as if to indicate either an unwillingness to address my objections to classical technique or a desire to go in another direction all together. What I found in their responses varied from connected and additive to my position or disconnected and dismissive without actually stating that to be the case. Of course, I appreciate each of their responses and the time it took to read and reflect on my paper. I remember hearing Owen Renik, at one of our national meetings, proclaim that to be good at either psychoanalysis or love making you needed to be relaxed. I think his message is somehow incorporated into my paper simply because asking another individual to say everything about their thoughts while you, as analyst, responded with interpretations, seemed to require a kind of uptightness that was artificial and off putting as an experience for both the patient and the analyst. I do notice how often my colleagues like to believe that what I write about openness and self-disclosure is unnecessary because we have progressed to a point where we all have given up the rules. This I continue to doubt and question. New analytic theories and schools seem never to address the issue of technique. The old, and antiquated technical requirements persist and keep their hold on clinicians. The Prison House of Psychoanalysis may have been Arnold Goldberg's choice of a title that didn't mean it in the way that I do. Well intentioned psychoanalysts who continue to protect their identity from their patients may have excellent results but that fails to convince me that anonymity, neutrality and abstinence aren't techniques that make the achievement of therapeutic effectiveness more difficult to achieve.
If this volume and my paper can help those who read it reconsider where they stand with regard to the issue of psychoanalytic technique then it will feel like writing the paper and reading my colleagues responses and responding to them has been a worthy use of my time. I hope that those who read my paper and those that follow it will feel similarly that their time has been well spent. It is my belief that psychoanalysts need to work with more inclusion of their true self rather than a professionalized version of who they are that is deemed as necessary for what they do with patients qualify as psychoanalysis.
Historically, we as psychoanalysts have devoted too much energy to protecting the purity of psychoanalysis. This has been particularly true when it comes to issues of technique, much more than has been the case
with theory. Many theories have been found acceptable despite their challenges to Freud's basic ideas; they have co-existed and utilized by individual psychoanalysts without regard for contradictions between the theories they are using. I have chosen to challenge the seeming immutability of classical technique, starting with anonymity. For me, this is an important project if for no other reason than patients are often put off by it and seek out other therapists who are free of the stigma of classical Freudian psychoanalytic technique.