Thanks to Henry Friedman for providing us this opportunity to weigh in on psychoanalytic technique at this moment in the history of our discipline. Indeed, this seems to be one of those moments in the evolution of our field where theory, practice, and advancements in neuroscience call for this kind of self-examination.
There seems to be little disagreement among our contributors that technique derived from classical theory does not necessarily help patients get better, sometimes interferes with their getting better, and sometimes makes patients worse. Experience teaches us that healing often requires “something else” provided within the patient-analyst relationship. The importance of that “something else” can't be overestimated. Dr. Friedman make a good argument that traditional psychoanalytic theory and technique potentially blind us to the two-person nature of “where the action is” in therapy. Then there is the problem of the incompatibility of traditional psychoanalytic theory and technique with what we have discovered about how the brain operates.
In that regard, if Dr. Friedman's essay is read as an invitation to re-examine our old concepts, it's a most welcome one. If read as an argument to retire concepts like transference, resistance and the unconscious—it becomes even more interesting.
At a similar moment in time, when oedipally oriented ego psychology was being challenged by the emergence of object relations theory and self psychology, Hans Loewald wrote “The Waning of the Oedipus Complex” (Loewald, H. W. 1979 The Waning of the Oedipus Complex. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 27:751–775). Loewald had two aims: 1) to re-revaluate the Oedipus in terms of newer understandings; and 2) to address the psychoanalytic community's relationship to the emergence of new ideas. Regarding the second:
“Our hitherto normal form of organizing reality, aiming at a strict distinction and separation between an internal, subjective, and an external, objective world, is in question. Our psychotic core, as it comes increasingly
into view, prevents us from being as much at home and at ease with this solution as our scientific forefathers were. I believe that our quest for individuation and individuality, and for an objective world view, is being modulated by insights we are gaining from the ‘psychic reality’ of preoedipal life stages. We even need to reexamine Freud's distinction between psychic reality and factual, objective reality. Not that this distinction might be invalid. But its validity appears to be more circumscribed and limited than we assumed, analogous to Newtonian physics: the new theories and discoveries of modern physics do not invalidate Newtonian physics, but they limit its applicability.
Interest in the Oedipus complex has been on the wane because of these developments. But it is also true that perspectives on the Oedipus complex are changing, that the different modes of its waning and waxing during life stages give it renewed significance and weight, and that the intermediate nature of incestuous relations, intermediate between identification and object cathexis, throws additional light on its centrality. I have pointed out that the superego as the heir of the Oedipus complex is the structure resulting from parricide, representing both guilt and atonement for the usurpation of authority. We are reminded that the oedipal attachments, struggles, and conflicts must also be understood as new versions of the basic union-individuation dilemma. The superego, as the culmination of individual psychic structure formation, represents something ultimate in the basic separation-individuation process” (Loewald, p. 774).
If we attempt to assimilate Dr. Friedman's essay and the contributions of our discussants into this framework, we can appreciate that the struggle to liberate ourselves from our predecessors involves (at least within the theory we are killing off) the act of “theoretical” parricide. And yet it's largely through our failed attempts to apply “classical” theory that we've arrived at a place where we can recognize its limitations and new territory. The degree to which this process—which is a process of growth—will lead to retirement/rejection/repression vs internalization/atonement is not yet known, a work in progress, and our story to tell.
How shall we tell it? One way, as Bhaskar Sripada suggests, is to hold ourselves to the task of describing our own inner experiences and the way they emerge in our contributions to the two person psychoanalytic
process. In other words, being as “real” as we can be in our accounts of our clinical interactions. But in the analytic moment, and the series of moments that constitutes the analytic relationship, there is the lingering question of what it means for the analyst to be real.
There are other questions, as well. What words do we use to talk about the real relationship? Do we need a new conceptual language to free ourselves from the vestiges of terms derived from a one-person psychology? Can the “real relationship” exist without reference to its one-person opposite? Last but not least—do efforts to analyze the elements of give and take destroy the spontaneous essence of what is real in the real relationship?
There is, clearly, much work to be said and done, and I appreciate having had the opportunity to help set the stage for this discussion of a matter so important to our intrinsically controversial field.