Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought. XIV, 1991: Psychoanalytic Life History: Is Coherence, Continuity, and Aesthetic Appeal Necessary? Era A. Loewenstein. Pp. 3-28.

The author calls into question the narrative approach to the psychoanalytic process, which states that the analyst and analysand create a coherent, continuous, and aesthetically appealing narrative life history for the patient. Rather, her thesis is that this kind of approach leads to constructions that are too smooth and polished, that do not reflect the "ambiguous, overdetermined and contradictory aspects of our lived experience." After reviewing the stance of Hartmann and Rapaport that psychoanalysis is a deductive science, Loewenstein recounts the narrativists' challenge to this position. She agrees with the need to challenge the psychoanalytic positivist view, but disagrees about the need for coherence and continuity, because our lived experiences do not come about as arranged stories. Instead, a process of selection and omission is used to arrive at such coherence. Loewenstein examines Plato's preference for the narrative over the poetic or mimetic forms in the presentation of knowledge. In contrast, Freud created a space that fosters emergence of the strong emotions and dreamlike states which Plato sought to eliminate. Ego psychology is seen as having much in common with Plato's views, and the narrative approach as embedded in the assumptions of ego psychology. Lacan's view that division and discontinuity mark the human condition, and that uncertainty and partial knowledge distinguish the psychoanalytic process, is believed by Loewenstein to more closely reflect the important discoveries that Freud made.