What Constitutes a Psychoanalytic Identity?

The concept of identity seems only latterly to have become a concern for psychoanalysts. Psychoanalysis arguably has provided the most subtle and nuanced account available of the constitution and continuous evolution of identity through processes of projection, identification, introjection, repression and sublimation: identity is not given, nor is it fixed and stable, and it is always riven with contradictions due to the mind’s dynamic nature. And yet we are all very familiar with the wish to make definitive statements about psychoanalytic identity: to say with certainty what is or is not psychoanalysis, and this wish goes all the way back to Freud, who in 1914 proposed that “There should be some headquarters whose business it would be to declare: 'All this nonsense is nothing to do with analysis; this is not psycho-analysis'” (Freud 1914, 23). This “headquarters” was of course the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). So this need has been with us from the beginning, but evidence suggests that it has been felt to be more pressing in recent years (e.g. Blass 2010; Bohleber 2010; Busch 2023; Foresti 2018; Friedman 2006). Is our identity in crisis?

Psychoanalysis today is felt by many to be under existential threat and in need of protection. However, opinions differ both about what we need to protect and what we need to protect ourselves from. In terms of what we are protecting, the focus is often on aspects of the setting, perhaps because it has been so difficult to specify what should take place within the setting. For some, the focus is a certain level of frequency of sessions, but there is no consensus about what the minimum frequency should be. Other issues to do with the setting might include use of the couch, or not; willingness to offer virtual sessions, or not; and so on.

If we ask what defines a specifically psychoanalytic approach, again, there is no consensus (e.g. Fulgencio 2020; Green 2005; Karbelnig 2022). For some, evenly suspended attention