Rachel Blass is a member and Training Analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, Professor of Psychoanalysis at Heythrop College, and Visiting Professor at UCL, University of London. She formally headed the Clinical Psychology programme at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is on the board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, where she is the editor of the “Controversies” section. Rachel Blass has widely lectured, has published over 70 articles and manuscripts, and her work has been translated into over a dozen of languages. Her writings centres on the close study of Freud's texts and Kleinian thinking and practice, with the aim of elucidating what psychoanalysis teaches us about the essential nature of the person, the mind, knowledge, the analytic process and what is uniquely analytic and valuable about it.
Ana Mónica Dias (AMD) and Teresa Santos Neves (TSN): You are a member and training analyst of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society but you are in England for a number of years. How do you see psychoanalysis in Israel today, particularly taking into account the political and social context of your country? And how do you compare it against psychoanalysis in the UK?
Rachel Blass (RB): There are striking differences. A major feature of psychoanalysis in Israel is its extremely broad scope. Not only do all the different approaches that are referred to by their proponents as psychoanalysis represented within the Israel Society, but also it would seem that the scope of these approaches are broadened within this Society. This finds expression, for example, in the development of radical versions of Winnicott, Bion, Kohut, and Relational Psychoanalysis and many new ways of mixing and blending of approaches. So, while there is also a considerable number of traditional analysts in Israel who hold to one form of practice many analysts in Israel will combine newer American approaches with Freud, Klein and the thinking of French psychoanalysts. Lacan, Levinas, and Buddhist thinking and practice will be readily blended in together as well.
One may wonder if this boundary-less approach to psychoanalysis is not in some ways a reflection of the ongoing struggles in Israel with the defining of territorial boundaries and the mixing of the different cultures (Israel's
Member and Training Analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, Professor of Psychoanalysis at Heythrop College, and Visiting Professor UCL, University of London. E-mail:
Associate Member at the Portuguese Psychoanalytic Society and International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). E-mail:
Associate Member at the Portuguese Psychoanalytic Society and International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). E-mail:
population being founded on the immigration of Jews from all around the world). It may also be an expression of a certain related lack of an appreciation of hierarchy and rules, tied to the revolutionary origins of the country. This is most directly opposed to what finds in English culture.
Whether or not such connections are warranted the situation in Israeli psychoanalysis today is a mixture and tension between traditional analysis and analysis very minimally defined both in theory and practice and a widespread eclecticism, which often goes unrecognized because of a lack of concern with definitions. So, for example, what an Israeli analyst may regard as Kleinian might be so infused with ideas from other approaches that it would not be regarded as at all Kleinian in London.
Another characteristic of Israeli psychoanalysis which may be tied to local political and social conditions is its concern with environmental factors and specifically with the traumatic origins of psychic disorders. That is, in the tension between conflict and deficit approaches to psychoanalysis, inner world and unconscious phantasy approaches vs those that stress the impact of actual life events, Israel psychoanalysis pulls towards deficit, towards external reality.
While many would see the features that characterize Israel psychoanalysis that I have described here in a positive light I would be among those who regard them critically. I have expressed some of my views on the importance of recognizing the boundaries of psychoanalysis in my paper “Affirming ”that's not psycho-analysis!“ On the value of the politically incorrect act of attempting to define the limits of our field”, published in the International Journal of Pychoanalysis (IJP) in 2010. In many of my other writings I have articulated and supported the view that what distinguishes psychoanalysis from other therapies is its concern with unconscious meanings, with phantasies. For me spending some years in London, in an analytic society in which this concern is wholeheartedly and deeply espoused was very important.
AMD and TSN: Since 2008 you are the editor of the “psychoanalytic controversies” section of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. How would you evaluate the whole experience? Can you tell us about the challenges you have faced? In your opinion, which are the contributions, for the psychoanalytic community, introduced by those debates?
RB: Editing the controversies section is a difficult task, but one that I am happy to devote myself to. I think that it's very important that basic psychoanalytic ideas be examined and challenged and that this is best done through the kind of critical dialogue that this section offers. In this section I choose a topic of concern in contemporary psychoanalysis and one in regard to which opinions are divided. I then select authors who are known for their views on the topic. I take care to invite authors from different regions and cultures. They are asked to briefly present a position paper on the topic, hopefully supported by clinical material, and this is followed by a request to reflect on the paper submitted by the other author. (In some cases there are several authors). A dialogue ensues and the readers of the IJP are invited to engage in it as well either through letters or in a designated area of the IJP website.
On one level the section opens readers to a better acquaintance with the diversity of views that are found in contemporary analysis, but I see this only as a preliminary step. We hope that it is followed by a process of questioning and evaluation. Through the controversial exchange the authors are challenged to ground their positions and readers are invited to consider: “Do the positions put forth make sense? Are they indeed well-grounded? Do they deepen psychoanalytic practice? What does this say about my own stance on the issue?” I think that it's very important to encourage such critical reflection in psychoanalysis; to encourage that the merits and weaknesses of the different perspectives be seriously examined and evaluated; that ideas and practices would be accordingly discarded or adopted and that, at the very least, central
ideas and practices and the nature of conflicts between them would be more deeply understood.
There are several inherent dangers and difficulties in trying to develop this kind of critical process. One danger is that the second step would be avoided by the readers. That is, that the views put forth would be acknowledged but not questioned, as though in developing this section the Journal is promoting some kind of post-modern open market of contradictory views. This danger is accompanied by a related one, namely, that it would be mistakenly concluded that in placing these views in the “open market” the Journal is, in fact, endorsing them, recognizing them as legitimate or valuable. This is not the case. What is recognized is only the fact that the views published are playing a significant role in contemporary discourse and thus are worthy of scrutiny—not that it's good that they play this role. This kind of misunderstanding can pose a real problem. At times in the controversy section we publish papers that express views that are popular but which if they had been submitted to the Journal in the form of a regular peer-reviewed papers might have been rejected by the reviewers on the grounds of faulty argumentation or weak clinical evidence. We accept them to the controversy section with the idea that readers should be given the opportunity to seriously explore these popular views and critically examine their foundations on their own. However, if readers do not recognize the special nature of the controversy section and wrongly think that the very fact of publication in the IJP means that the views expressed in the papers are regarded by the reviewers as valid and well-founded, then we miss our objective.
AMD and TSN: Facing the controversy between psychoanalysis and neurosciences you argued that neuroscientific findings are not only irrelevant but can be harmful to psychoanalysis too. Could you explain your arguments? How do you understand this increasing tendency to search for the biological correlate of the mind in psychology and particularly in psychoanalysis? According to you this reveals a new tendency. However, don't you think that implicitly reedits an old tendency to submit psychoanalysis to an evidence-based model of science?
RB: In brief, as I have shown in my articles on this topic (together with Dr. Zvi Carmeli) it has not been demonstrated that neuroscience in any way contributes to psychoanalytic understanding and no cogent argument in support of this claim has been put forth. Neuroscience in itself is a valid and important field, but the biological information that it can offer simply is completely uninformative psychoanalytically. This is not merely an empirical finding. If one understands psychoanalysis, as I do, as concerned with integrating unconscious meanings, with encountering phantasy, information regarding the biological correlates of experience is inherently irrelevant. In analogy, the information regarding the chemistry of the paint of a piece of art will not help us to understand what the painting conveys. Moreover, to think that it does would stand in the way of true understanding. Not only would one invest time in the study of chemistry rather than art, but one may redefine art as something which chemistry has a say about. Similarly, endorsing neuropsychoanalysis may result in the distortion of the notion of psychoanalysis, redefining it as a kind of thing that biology could tell us something about.
Indeed, there is a human tendency to think that biological correlates of our psychological states of mind help us better understand the psychological states. It were as though they provides us with concrete, tangible information of what's going on. We can't see thoughts, feelings, wishes and desire. We can see the activation of neurons in MRI scans of the brain that are going on while we think, feel, wish and desire. But the idea that what is visible, and specifically, what we can see going on in the brain, is more real than the psychological states that they are correlates of, is ultimately a mistaken idea. It derives from a form of materialism that characterizes contemporary culture. The materialism is manifold. First, it involves an over appreciation of findings about human nature if they come from materially expensive laboratories (as are those that need to make use of MRI scans). Second it involves disbelief in the existence of what cannot be materially seen. And finally it does away with personal responsibility and choice, holding that biological matter determines how we act and ought to be.
The fact is, however, that psychological states, our feelings and phantasies, are real and can never be captured by biological correlates. They are infinitely richer than the correlates, just as (to use another analogy) the multitude of experiences taking place in a moment of time are infinitely richer than any photograph of the moment. Of course, experience is grounded in the body and bodily correlates of experience can always be found. When we experience shame we blush, and I could imagine that there may be some kind of brain activity associated with this experience. But the person's experience of shame would be no more equivalent to, or captured by, that accompanying neurological activity than it is by the state of blushing. The moment of experience exists in an infinite network of related psychological states, which give the experience its meaning—past moments of shame with which this moment is connected, the specific content of shame, the people actual and imagined in the face of whom the shame is experienced, the dynamic uses of the moment of shame (e.g., as a defense against guilt), etc. The biological correlates can never provide this information. For this we need to observe and listen to the person. Indeed, observation and listening are not foolproof methods of discerning psychological states and their meanings.
RB: I think that in my previous response I began addressing these problems. If by submission to empirical “proof and validation” we mean submission to the kind of studies that underlie “evidence-based” knowledge in the sense commonly used today then, as I explained, the tendency is very problematic. Ultimately, the knowledge that it can produce is irrelevant to psychoanalysis. Applying the term “proof” in the broader colloquial sense of “supportive evidence”, psychoanalysis should indeed be concerned with “proving and validating” its ideas and practices. This, however, requires demonstrating their
power through the evidence of our clinical cases and through certain kinds of discourse and reflection which may be referred to as conceptual. I explain:
The so-called “evidence-based” approach considers clinical cases to be anecdotal, heuristic, but not a source of validation. The cases may suggest that certain kinds of dynamics are tied together, they may point to the benefits of certain kinds of interventions, but not prove them to be the case. “Proof”, according to the “evidence-based” approach requires repetition of the ties and influences in large numbers, measured by unbiased objective observers. However, as I have argued, this produces knowledge of the kind that is basically equivalent to the finding that yellow paint is associated with happiness. These are conclusions such as parental neglect is related to dissociative states; dissociative states tend to be reduced through supportive intervention, etc.
The fact is, however, that the practicing analyst (according to my understanding of psychoanalysis) does not aim to diagnose or classify his patient and then apply generalizations, which according to the statistical findings would most probably be true and effective for symptom reduction. Rather the analyst wants to comprehensively understand the unique individual that lies on his couch (and in the process help that individual gain understanding). In a certain sense one may say that the analyst is concerned with “the noise” of his specific case, not the general main effects. He comes to comprehend this specific person, this specific work of art so to speak. This comprehension relies on an understanding of human nature, its functioning, and potential change—we listen for the expressions of the Oedipus complex, we work with ideas regarding what's needed for someone to develop a depressive position, about the defenses that come into play with psychotics, about what underlies states of mania and anxiety and what can be done with them. We hold theories on transference, counter-transference, projective identification and how interpretation impacts the mind. We do have knowledge. It's not, however, of the kind that is validated through the evidence-based approach to proof and validation.
RB: One can see that the comments that I've just made on research and psychoanalytic knowledge are also relevant to this question. But I will address your question from another direction, that which I developed in my 2016 Psychoanalytic Quarterly paper entitled “The quest for truth as the foundation of psychoanalytic practice: a traditional Freudian-Kleinian perspective”. There I summarize my view on truth as follows:
“Truth is not only relevant to psychoanalysis; it is the alpha and omega of psychoanalysis. I agree with the view that what is ultimately sought in analysis is openness to truth, a capacity to know, rather than the knowledge of this or that truth. However, I see this as a stance that has always lain at the very foundation of psychoanalysis, not as a new perspective. I also do not think that the obstacles to openness to truth, relevant to psychoanalysis as I understand it, are developmental in nature. They are, rather, motivational—the desire not to know certain truths. In other words, the desire not to know certain truths stands in the way of the analytic goal of openness to truth.
This means that in the analytic process (as in life), not knowing certain truths is an expression of a more general incapacity to know; and the incapacity to know is what happens when we do not want to know certain truths. From this perspective, form and content are inseparable; both are expressions of certain states of mind, of certain phantasies. As a consequence, the analytic process is not one of merely helping the analysand develop capacities; it is not a neutral or benevolent learning process in the face of cognitive limitations. Nor is it merely one of unearthing secret, repressed facts and making them consciously known. It is, rather, a lived encounter with the mind, with phantasy—especially phantasies that we wish not to know about and phantasies of not knowing. It is also an encounter with the opposing desire to know and with the reality of our knowing—the foundational reality being that we do, in fact, know.
Integral to this view of truth and its relevance to the analytic process is the idea that the desires to know and to not know are fundamental expressions of love and hate, of life and death instincts. Thus, the analytic process of becoming open to truth is one of being able to give greater expression to the analysand's capacity to love. This is a dynamic relational process, a crucial psychic struggle, posited at the very heart of analytic thinking from the moment it came into being.”
In my paper I elaborate these ideas. What is very important to grasp here is that for psychoanalysis truth is not merely a proposition or a fact, something to be learned or remembered. Rather the truth that is most relevant is that of our psychic reality and to know it is to better integrate in our minds and our very being, despite its disturbing nature. Freud struggled to express this foundational psychoanalytic idea through various formulations and one important aspect of Klein's contribution is her better articulation of it through her notion of phantasy.
AMD and TSN: Analysis-friendly frameworks at universities psychology departments are decreasing, as you developed in “The Teaching of the Oedipus Complex”. How do you considerer psychoanalysis can recover a space in the university?
RB: I'm not sure that psychoanalysis can ever recover its place in the university. As psychology and psychiatry become more biological psychoanalysis will vanish from these departments together with all approaches that study the person on a psychological level per se. Psychoanalysis will continue to maintain a place in the humanities, especially literature departments, but there it is present in a way that is detached from the clinical reality. On the basis of what I described earlier it may be seen that this detachment takes away the main grounds of analytic thinking. Consequently, it is transformed into a source of a very different kind of knowledge; it becomes more abstractly theoretical and often becomes part of a postmodern perspective, which makes use of as a deconstructive tool. We should bear in mind that psychoanalysis is a practice and its essential nature is distorted when studied independently of its practical dimension.
The fact that future therapists would not encounter psychoanalysis in the university will have a negative impact on application for analytic training. Some solution will have to be found such as promoting clinical internships within Humanities studies or developing university accredited programs within our institutes. As a concrete step in these directions I've been working on developing within the context of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society an internship program for clinical psychologists, with the teachers and supervisors being comprised of analysts and candidates from the institute.
There is another kind of solution on the table these days (which is put into practice in some places). According to this solution psychoanalysis should incorporate methodologies and concerns that dominate general psychology and psychiatry. Analysts who adopt evidence-based approaches and do neuroscientific research will be able to find positions in the university and consequently psychoanalysis may continue to be taught there. But as may be seen from all that I've said here, I maintain that to adopt such non-analytic methods and concerns is to pervert psychoanalysis at its foundations. It will result in psychoanalysis being present in the university, but will refer to something which I would consider non-analytic. Moreover, an analyst who is willing to do this (even if he convinces himself that he does so only to get an academic position) would, in my view, most likely be a poor teacher of psychoanalysis proper.
Since I began editing the controversy section I have regularly added an extensive introduction of my own, which offers a summary—one that is as neutral as possible—of the various contributions of the authors of the controversy, highlighting the issues in dispute. This, I believe, helps remind the readers of the special status of the contributions in this section and invites them to assume a critical questioning stance. This is especially needed when the authors themselves are reluctant to critique the views of the other authors of the controversy. This reluctance, which, I imagine, comes from a variety of reasons, is another difficulty that, at times, I need to contend with. While in general I try to minimally intervene in the content of the authors' papers in order to leave the readers with an authentic snapshot of the positions put forth and how they are argued for, at times I do find it necessary to mildly encourage the authors to express their evaluation of opposing views.
Over the years the controversy section has dealt with a broad range of topics including the value of self-disclosure, Bion's later writings, Winnicott's clinical innovations; on the role of the unconscious in contemporary analytic practice. Some of the topics are highly charged. This was the case in the latest controversy which dealt with the influence of culture on analytic theory and practice with a special focus on how cultural trends have impacted psychoanalysis' view of what is regarded as sexually perverse or pathological. In this context one thinks of how the analytic approach to homosexuality has changed over the years but how there has been limited opportunity to reflect on the change in an open way that explores its broader meanings for psychoanalysis as well as its grounds and value. The controversy section offers a framework for such reflection.
Other topics that we deal with are less controversial, e.g., on what the presentation of case material tell us about what actually happened in an analysis.
The controversy section is one of the most popular section of the Journal, and has often been translated into other languages for the Annuals (including into Portuguese). I hope that this indicates not only that the ideas expressed arouse interest, but that they also serious debate; that it indeed encourages a mode of discourse and reflection that in my view is needed to advance our field.
As psychoanalysis teaches us, people are not transparent and have vested interests in concealing their reality from others as well as from themselves. This inherent problem cannot, however be resolved by turning to biology and making use of the data it provides regarding the psychological state, when it is clearly irrelevant to psychoanalysis. That the collection of biological data can be carried out more systematically than analytic understanding does not render biological findings relevant or analytic findings biased. We have to find ways of living with the uncertainty that is inherent to psychoanalytic understanding and more generally to the understanding of meaningful human experience.
To further clarify this point: It could be that I would be interested in the neurological state of a person (or his degree of blushing, for that matter) if my aim was to predict the likelihood that someone is experiencing shame. This, however, is not an aim of psychoanalysis as I conceive of it. Again to return to my earlier analogy: If it is empirically found that paintings which have a high degree of yellow paint in them are associated with happiness I may measure the percentage of yellow paint in a painting as part of an attempt to predict whether or not it expresses happiness. Of course, there is a good chance that my prediction would be wrong but more importantly, this is not an appropriate method for understanding the painting or the happiness it expresses. Psychoanalysis, in analogy, is concerned with understanding, with the process of discovery, not with prediction. When neuroscience is regarded with such esteem in psychoanalysis, psychoanalysis comes to be regarded as the predictive kind of discipline for which neuroscience might be relevant.
Here I think that we see connections with the demand for evidence-based models within psychoanalysis. But I should first mention that I have an aversion to the common use of the term “evidence based” in this context. It associates the term with a specific form of methodology and validation, the form used in quantitative research-oriented psychology departments. But insights into the nature of reality, and more specifically psychic reality may be evidence based in other ways. The understandings of the practicing analyst regarding his patient gained through analytic attunement are also evidence-based; the theories of the mental functioning that are developed on the basis of these understandings are also evidence-based. What's the alternative? Personal-whim-based?… Bearing in mind that the term “evidence-based” is commonly misused in a way that limits our thinking on what constitutes evidence we can see how the concern with finding neuroscientific correlates is just one expression of the analytically irrelevant desire of supporters of the so-called “evidence-based” approach to find objectively measurable correlates of psychic states in groups of people that facilitate prediction of the psychic states in individuals.
These issues are complicated ones and here I could only point to a few relevant points. To get a better grasp of the matters at hand I would recommend reading the papers that I wrote together with Zvi Carmeli on this topic, which are published in the International Journal (2007, 2013, 2015).
AMD and TSN: As a clinician and as a researcher, which are the main problems raised by this tendency to submit psychoanalytic knowledge to empirical proof and validation? What role do you think conceptual research can play in this controversy?
What it is rather difficult to explain and here I can only do so in a nutshell: I would suggest that uniquely psychoanalytic knowledge is in essence a formulation of insight into human nature based on a relatively small number of indepth analytic encounters. It opens the analyst to an understanding of what goes on in the depths of the mind, which allows him to better explore the minds of other patients in a way that facilitates change. It's not about prediction, but about guiding and opening the process of understanding. To return to the artistic analogy—an expert art critic may be able to perceive in his study of works of art meaningful connections between color and emotion and formulate the connections in ways that allow other viewers to grasp them and also to seek them in other works as well in a way that deepens the understanding of those other works. What the expert critic provides is not evidence-based generalizations that could serve prediction, but rather the mindful grasp of the kinds of connections that exist, an understanding of their essential nature. This insight may be gained even from a single piece of art.
Conceptualization plays a crucial part in the process of formulating psychoanalytic knowledge. Some think of conceptual research as an effort to summarize the different ways in which analysts use concepts. In my view such summaries are of limited value. They describe what analysts do and how they think, but what is more important and what conceptual research should be aimed at is describing what psychoanalysis does and thinks. That is, rather than offer a kind of historical or sociological study of analysts (who may happen to think in all sorts of ways, including non-analytic ones), conceptual research should help us study what defines and founds psychoanalysis. It should inform us about what is essentially psychoanalytic, what can and can't be seen from a psychoanalytic perspective, what kind of change constitutes psychoanalytic change, what are the conditions necessary for analytic understanding, how psychoanalysis conceives of basic human experience – love, hate, guilt, the
mind and its potential and possibilities of development.
Here it is important to recognize that psychoanalysis is one among many different approaches to the understanding of the mind, behaviour and therapeutic change. It is not the best, the truest, the most valid or the most effective of them all. To say so would usually have little meaning, as the different approaches tend to consider the person from different perspectives and with different aims. Psychoanalysis provides psychoanalytic understanding and psychoanalytic change and does so uniquely (and so by default, best). But then the crucial question becomes what psychoanalytic understanding and change are and what their value are, what the vision of the person it offers is and what kind of life experiences support this vision. This means that for validation psychoanalysis does not have to demonstrate that most people have oedipal conflicts and that interpretation has been proven to be the most efficient way of doing away with symptoms related to it. Rather what needs to be demonstrated then is that what are regarded as basic dimensions of the analytic view (e.g., viewing the person is in terms of oedipal conflict) are indeed so and that they are realistic and valuable ones to adopt. This would mean that showing, for example, that considering the person as unconsciously struggling with love and hate in triadic dynamics is meaningful.
Now of course, for it to be meaningful it would also have to be true. The Oedipus complex, the unconscious, the experience of love, hate and conflict, and the power of analytic understanding—all these would have to actually exist. If an alternative approach claims that they don't, then indeed we may argue that psychoanalysis is truer than the alternative. However, what is usually meant by such dismissive claims is that evidence-based research supporting the prevalence of such phenomena does not exist. And this again leads back to basic differences in perspectives, as psychoanalysis is not concerned with such evidence-based findings, doesn't consider them relevant to determining the existence of the dynamic dimensions of the mind, e.g., its Oedipal nature, that are psychoanalytically relevant.
For psychoanalysis the meaningfulness and the truth of the perspective it offers is demonstrated through reflection on life experience, as well as insights into human nature that are made accessible through works of art. Literary works seem, in this context, to be especially important. Not only are they often cited in the analytic writings (e.g., Goethe, Milton and Shakespeare) but great psychoanalytic texts are often valuable not only for the ideas they contain, for their reflections on the analytic situation, but rather for their poetic power, which opens the reader to understanding, allows the truth of what is expressed to be recognized through its resonance in the reader (Blass, in press). But as I just mentioned, it is in a most immediate and direct way supported by what we see in the analytic situation and by dialogue regarding what we see there and how and why we formulate what we see as we do (which ties back to the importance I ascribe to controversies section of the IJP). All this involves an open-ended dynamic process of reflection and discourse. This process rests on the analytic idea that our minds are fundamentally open to truth' that when we truly come in touch and deal with our unconscious tendencies to distort we can then come to trust that what we see offers some true reflection of reality. I refer to this as an “epistemology of trust” and in my writings have argued that it lies at the foundation of Freud's thinking and legacy regarding knowledge, both within the clinical setting and outside of it (Blass, 2016).
One would also have to consider the implications of what are regarded as analytic perspectives for the kind of change that is deemed desirable. One may argue – and I think that this would be right – that psychoanalysis doesn't aim for freedom from distress, but for living truthfully through integrating the anxiety-arousing parts of oneself. Again, the question of change shifts from some notion of efficacy to whether the proposed change is psychoanalytic and also whether it's desirable to adopt it. Here ethical questions emerge as well, including whether the analyst's overall aim is that of the patient. My convictions regarding human nature lead me to believe that it is (that
ultimately all people want to be themselves, and hence on a certain level all want analysis) but the matter is complex. (I discussed some aspects of this in my 2006 IJP paper on the ethical aims of psychoanalysis).
In sum, my point here is that instead of the so-called evidence-based approach what we need is discussion of our convictions, grounded in clinical experience and insight into the essence of what is psychoanalytical. This approach is perhaps messier than the evidence-based one, which offers a set of formal indications regarding what constitutes a valid finding. But perhaps messiness and doubt is integral to knowledge if it is to be of a meaningful kind.
AMD and TSN: You wrote several papers about the notion of truth. Psychoanalysis moved from helping our analysand's to find truths to help them to develop the capacities that could make knowing possible, allowing openness to truth. How is truth central to our contemporary theoretical and clinical enterprise and which controversies regarding truth do you consider the most relevant?
When we can own up to the truth of our psychic reality, when we can contain and integrate it, we are less inclined to impose it on others and thus we can truly see these others as they are. We can allow the world to be rather than destroy its reality through our impositions. This is the openness to truth (and hence to love) that psychoanalysis facilitates. Another way of looking at the matter is through the notion of the thinking mind. To know our psychic reality in the sense of owning it is also a state of owning our mind, of integrating it. And it is the integrated mind that is capable of perceiving things as they are.
There is so much more that can be said on this topic, which in many ways goes to the very heart of what psychoanalysis is all about.
There are in my view several major issues in regard to truth that we have to contend with today. These have to do with alternate visions of truth that are replacing the traditional analytic one. There is, as discussed, the one that is evidence-based in the limited sense of the term. There is also a post-modern perspective on truth, which regards truth as largely irrelevant. We have stories, narratives; we may subjectively feel that they are true, but we have no way of knowing if this is the case. Rather than struggling with doubt, according to this perspective truth doesn't really matter. In fact, it has been argued that it is the capacity to move between narratives which is indicative of mental health. Some North American relational approaches espouse this view. Yet another perspective may be referred to as a new-age view of truth. According to this view openness to truth is dissociated from knowledge of truths and defense against them. It is rather regarded as a kind of mystical state facilitated by the analyst adopting the role of a benevolent guide. Among other places, one finds this position among those who have made Bion's O into a central psychoanalytic construct. There are two other perspectives, which have competed with the traditional analytic view of truth from the start, and have become more dominant in recent years. The one offers conscious understanding of facts instead of the integration of indepth analytic insight. This perspective, which transforms psychoanalysis into a kind of cognitive treatment, largely goes unnoticed in contemporary analysis—although in my view it's quite widespread, finding expression in several analytic approaches. The other perspective, in its effort to offer more than this kind of conscious understanding, eschews truth per se (or even the semblances of it that the post moderns offer) and aims instead at corrective experiences. The idea here is that the analyst could bring about actual significant change, not mere self-understanding, but only if he provides nutriments or forms of relatedness that were missing in the course of the patient's pathogenic development.
All these alternatives, in my view, distort what is essential to analytic thinking and practice.
AMD and TSN: Having in mind one of the latest presentations made by Fred Busch in Berlin Congress – The troubling problems of authority in psychoanalytic institutes – what do you think about the trends in education and specifically the psychoanalytic education for candidates in the institutes?
RB: First, I have to thank you for referring me to Fred Busch's presentation with which I largely agree. He emphasizes the contemporary devaluation of authority that makes analytic teaching worthless. This is expressed in analytic seminars becoming a framework for candidates to associate to readings and find their “own voice” rather than actually learn from their teachers.
I have argued that true authority becomes a problem when we fear that a wish to impose ourselves on others and control them, overrides a wish to see them as they are and allow them to be; that we seek the other's agreement with our views, whether or not they are true; that hate overrides love. Knowledge can be conveyed with authority when we can trust our love. In turn we can receive knowledge when we are not overwhelmed with projected fears of being controlled, when we can acknowledge limitation and dependence, accepting that others have knowledge that we don't. Here it may be seen why I tend to
question the friendliness and humility of those who strongly criticize the very existence of authority in regard to knowledge.
To accept authority also requires accepting that there is truth to be learned. I have just discussed some of the objections to the existences of such truth. Here the objections of the postmodern kind are most relevant.
Of course, to acknowledge that there is truth to be learned from those who know more is not to blindly accept whatever one is taught. What needs to be fostered is a learning state of mind and this is especially so among analytic candidates. This is a state of openness and reliance on authority, a willingness to imagine and empathize with the views that are presented, while at the same time maintaining an ability to wonder about them, doubt them. It also involves a desire to learn more and making use of the existing knowledge in order to advance what we know. Indeed, the candidate needs to develop his voice, but for this voice to be meaningful and a real contribution he needs to learn what others have seen and said and to really care about this. He needs to enter the psychoanalytic dialogue which has been going on for over a century, to learn and intellectually and emotionally join the tradition to which he hopes to contribute. This is a step that requires both humility and courage. (I have discussed these ideas in 2006 in my paper on tradition in the Imago, and on Leonardo da Vinci in the IJP as well as in my 2016 paper on authority which appears in the EPF bulletin.)
Two related problems having to do with education should be noted here. One is the fact that in some analytic societies there exist so many competing analytic approaches. The demands on the empathy of the student is great and in these conditions the pull towards postmodernism and eclecticism gains strength. As I mentioned at the beginning, in the UK this would be less of a problem, but in other places where the scope of analytic perspectives is broad what are candidates to do? How are they to manage with a course on Klein followed by a supervision by a Kohutian which rests on assumptions that completely negate those that underlie the Kleinian course? And one may ask: Should they have to manage with this? Should not the candidate be given the option to make some initial selection of the kind of psychoanalysis that he wishes to learn about and engage in? Much could be said on this question.
Another issue has to do with the development process of teachers within the analytic institutes. Fred Busch touches upon this point as well. The fact that not everyone who could practice analysis well can teach analysis well is not sufficiently acknowledged. Whether teaching is an inborn talent or a developed skill it would seem to me that there is a serious question of how to foster better teaching. Encouraging the teacher to embrace his authority is one important dimension of this process, but not the only one.
The alternatives that I suggest are more radical and harder to implement. But I think that we are in a predicament that requires radical and difficult steps if psychoanalysis in its essential traditional sense is to survive.
I would like to thank you for this interview. I'm sorry that I could only respond briefly to each of these questions but it strikes me that somehow all my responses are related to each other. So I hope that what's missing in one response will be filled in by another. And at least I can hope that the reader will get an overall picture of what I'm trying to say. If questions remain I'd be happy to hear back from your readers.