You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Jonathan Lear, the philosopher-psychoanalyst, had enchanted me with his book, Open-Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul , so I looked forward to the experience of reading this new creation, akin to looking forward to an inspiring performance. The Introduction dispelled any notion of being entertained. We are being invited to partake in a challenging seminar to examine, understand, and expand on basic psychoanalytic theoretical concepts guided by Lear, the psychoanalyst, using the skills acquired during his professional life as a philosopher. I had to overcome some resistance or skepticism to enter this exercise with appropriate concentrated alertness, emanating from my highly ambivalent attitude toward our theoretical conceptual heritage. The journey is challenging and rewarding. Lear is unique in his ability to unite the commitment to creative open-mindedness with the commitment to clarifying the adopted theoretical premises that guide one's action. He believes that theory without experience is empty, and experience without theory is blind.
After years of teaching philosophy, Lear entered psychoanalytic training and had the good fortune to be referred to Hans Loewald's book, On the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalysis (2000), where Loewald examines our theoretical rationale for therapeutic action. Loewald's training included philosophy as well as medicine. Lear, aware of this philosophical kinship, approached Loewald and asked him to be his tutor to discuss his ideas. Thus began a weekly conversation that continued for six years. Just before Loewald died, one of his last comments to Lear was that he hoped that there never would be a Loewaldian. Lear pondered about the manifold meaning of this message. One meaning was to refrain from being a disciple and thus deadening one's thinking; another emphasized that there was no body of doctrine that Loewald took to be his own. What mattered to him was a certain kind of questioning that never comes to an end. Loewald sa