Entrevista Com/Interview with: Stefano Bolognini

AMD E TSN: In an interview with Eva Papiasvili referring to Freud, you said «my fantasy is that his Pribor home was an arquetype of the International Psychoanalytic Association». How do you consider your experience as IPA's President and what kind of fantasy guided you? Which were the obstacles that you faced and what do you envisage leaving as your legacy? On the other hand, what in your view are the main challenges in the near future for psychoanalysis?

SB: My experience as IPA president has been absolutely wonderful: I never would have imagined to impact such complexity and so many problems, but also I didn't expect to meet such a richness of human encounters, of scientific landscape and of great, highly cultured and collaborative colleagues! Psychoanalysis is a strong link among all of us, and I like to fantasize how Sigmund Freud would feel proud and moved if he could see what Psychoanalysis and IPA are today.

The administrative structure of IPA is really fair, effective and professional; the bylaws and rules are the result of a long elaboration; the scientific scope is wide and interactive: in short, a great and really “noble” organization.

However, I admit the obstacles I had to face were mostly due to some hyper-conservative spirit about topics (basically, the training models) which impeded to update the vision of our place, function and role in the

contemporary reality; I can say the IPA was able to conflictually discuss and work through this and to change, even with evident contrasts.

I could mention, about my legacy:

1. the concept of “IPA mentality” (regarding real internationalism, pluralism and respect for the many cultures and developments in our organization), beyond the previous historical “familism” created by collective transferential dependence on 2-3 main analytical poles, which made sense in the past, but no more today.

2. the concept of the “fourth pillar” in the training and after the training (that is, the analyst's continuing education should include personal analysis, supervisions, seminars and “working together” experiences).

3. the IRED (Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis), reporting all meaningful contributions on a concept, coming from the many geographic areas of the three Regions: the only really worldwide vision on psychoanalytic concepts, beyond the many excellent national or only regional dictionaries already existing.

4. the creation of PSYCHOANALYSIS.TODAY, a new psychoanalytic e- journal build up jointly by IPA and Regional Organizations, in order to connect all of them instead of keeping them separated and almost split.

5. the COMMITTEE ON INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES, aimed to study the problems, difficulties and turbulences which almost regularly affect all psychoanalytic groups and societies, and their underlying specific conflicts more frequently connected with narcissistic and familistic fights (i.e.: among pioneers and founders, for personal rivalries) than with real theoretical differences.

6. the basis for the official creation of the IPA FOURTH REGION (Asian-Pacific Region), after the 2017 Taiwan meeting.

7. the new IPA house in LEXICON: a very functional, sober but elegant office in London, easy to reach for Members who want to see where our Staff works every day.

8. a complete renewal of the IPA website, becoming a sort of lively and colourful magazine which informs about events, societies and initiatives, and organises debates and forums on the main topics at stake in our area, on an absolutely Inter-Regional basis.

9. the inter-regional extension of the working parties, thanks to the new IPA WORKING PARTY COMMITTEE, coherently with the inter-regional scientific mandate of the IPA.

There were many other new initiatives and changes, but I want to limit here my report in order not to overwhelm the readers with a very long list; however, allow me to express my deep gratitude to the Administration Officers, to the IPA Staff and to all colleagues who collaborated so fruitfully to all these achievements!

AMD E TSN: There is an ongoing debate within IPA concerning the different training models in psychoanalysis. What would be your position in this respect?

SB: My position is well known: I was in favour of a realistic, adaptive update of the previous IPA frequency standards, for a lot of reasons which make them no more sustainable in many countries.

The reasons are:

The historical change in the internal objectal relation of the today subjects, because of the hugely shortening of the early mother/baby fusional period, due to the premature coming back of the mothers to her job. This induces the baby to partially withdraw from the early objectal investment, and influences a stronger narcissistic investment on the subject itself; this originates a deeply different economical and relational attitude, which is an issue and a challenge for the analysts (who “inherit” such situation) when a potential patient rejects the proposal of an intense sessions frequency from the beginning, feeling threatened by dependence he/she is not used to. Many patients today can bear analysis only starting with a lower frequency, and then they can increase it.

The completely different situation of rich countries in comparison with poor countries, particularly when the rich countries have the complementary benefit of a Health System or Insurances support for the payment of the sessions. In many countries psychoanalysis develops and has an important social function exactly because of the flexibility and adaptive capacity of the local analysts, who are able to modulate the contact referring both to the economical possibilities and to the internal organization and libidinal budget of the patient. Incidentally, one should notice how the relevant economical presence of a “third part” (state or insurances) could be much more interfering with some basic criteria of analysis, than the frequency of three or four; but this is never mentioned…

The hyper-emphasized importance of the “different philosophy” of the French model, in order to justify the absolutely different reasons which create a problem for the conservative wing when one realizes how the francophone analysts actually work well with the 3-5x week frequency: an embarrassing reality that messes the cards on the table, disproving some previous “credos”.

Besides other factors, the widening scope of the contemporary analysts regarding the kind of patients who can be treated with psychoanalysis: children, adolescents, borderlines psychotics, etc. They require for special adaptations, including a realistic modulation of frequency case by case. I am not in favour of a “Procust's bed policy”, based on almost religious undisputable rules.

AMD E TSN: You have published widely on the relation between the interpsychic and the intrapsychic dimensions in the analytic process. Could you further explain those different dimensions?

SB: I mainly differentiated the Interpsychic from the Interpersonal and the Intersubjective level. These three concepts, often used and confused as if they were interchangeable, can overlap in some areas and for some meanings, but essentially they differ from each other.

A subject is a human being with a sufficiently coherent self-contact core, able to experience his/her own feelings and affects with a sense of self-continuity.

The cohesive perception of his/her own Self can be at work and can be intensive enough, even if the separation process is not completed and the personal boundaries are still scarcely defined; for example, many artists are strongly subjective in spite of a low definition – at least partially – of their boundaries as persons.

A person is a human being with a well-defined identity, with very clear bodily and psychic boundaries in his/her self-representation, and with a clear psychic distinction from the other.

A sufficient part of his/her mental activity can be developed at a conscious level, of course with all the issues and defenses that psychoanalysis has explored.

A Person can be defined as such even if having a tenuous contact with his/ her subjectivity, as is described in many pathological cases. For example, a man and a woman can have sexual intercourse with no subjective feelings (here I am obviously using a concept of “person” that is very different from the integrative one described by Lopez, 1983).

Because of that, «being a Subject» does not always amount to «being a Person», and vice versa: one condition doesn't exclude the other, but it doesn't grant for it either.

The Interpsychic is a way of co-experiencing and co-working that connects two individuals; it is not a structural and stable condition.

For instance, when a mother breastfeeds a baby, there is at the beginning no declared personal «status»: at the beginning there is some degree of consciousness and almost no reflexive awareness; but there can be a natural cooperation between mouth and nipple that allows both mother and baby to «work together» and to exchange internal contents (both bodily and psychic) through their organs going into and out of the internal world, covered by the membranes (mucosa): the membranes are the porticoes, the passageways between inside and outside from the internal world of one to the internal world of the other (Bolognini, 2008).

I think that these bodily relations, initially experienced with such a low level of mentalization, will find their interpsychic relational equivalents, but also subsequent intrapsychic equivalents mainly at a preconscious level, as happens in the majority of creative processes; they will perhaps also become conscious and will find a full mental representation, but this could also not happen.

AMD E TSN: As Freud mentioned “theories, like fantasies impose themselves on us like unexpected guests that turn up at the door”. Could you tell us how the topics of psychoanalytic empathy and the relation between the intrapsychic and the interpsychic impose themselves on you and how do you link this with your daily clinical practice as psychoanalyst?

SB: Thank you for this “highly personalized” question! For more than twenty years my name has been linked to the exploration of psychoanalytic empathy, and now it is the same for the Interpsychic, so I feel comfortable with the topic. In short, I could say that, while working with my patients, I was struck by two facts: the unexpected, unforgettable experience of a complex, articulated empathic experience shareable with no confusion between two individuals; and the absolute impossibility to foresee, to plan and to “decide” it. In fact, the more I expected or pretended to “be empathic”, the less it happened. This reality captured and fascinated me.

I could summarize now the theme by suggesting to read the famous novel by Eugen Herrigel “Zen in the art of Archery”, that in my opinion condenses wonderfully the core of the analytic situation and the deep conflictual contact between Ego and Self, as we experience sometimes, in some privileged occasion, while working in the session (by the way, I want to mention that Herrigel didn't know anything about psychoanalysis).

The Interpsychic came later in my mind.

I began to reflect on this, when I reconsidered the psychological equivalents of the sane bodily experiences in the human development: so, I found an undoubtable continuity between the pre-subjective “not confusional” fusional relation between mother and baby in their intimacy (when things happen well enough) and its further equivalents: in adult love, in cooperation, in the analytic collaboration, in the occasional mental pre-subjective cohabitation of well-developed people, and more profoundly in the health intrapsychic functionment and practicability of the preconscious area, where the Central Ego and the Self (internal equivalents of the caregiver and of the baby) can interact in a not confusive good operational fusionality.

This can happen thanks to psychic mutual familiarity and relational trust, and it allows to save psychic energy, with economical mutual advantage.

What is fundamental is not to confuse each other, while opening channels in the intimacy; I wrote these ideas in my book “Secret Passages”, translated in several languages, including Brazilian-Portuguese. I can say these ideas improved not only my daily job with my patients, but also generally my life.

AMD E TSN: You mentioned in a recent paper (2015) that intersubjectivity is one of the future areas in psychoanalysis but nowadays it remains a fragmented topic needing to evolve towards integration. According to you which are the main issues underlying the debate between the American intersubjectivity on the one hand and the European vision on the other? Do you think this integration is possible without breaching the fundamental tenets of psychoanalysis? How to overcome differences such as the ontological

conception of the individual proposed by relational psychoanalysis (that regards the mind as an interactive phenomenon whose contents are created within an interactive context)? Furthermore, how to integrate the tendency in relational psychoanalysis to emphasise the real interaction, to promote a good and corrective relationship that may even entail some self-disclosure with the European view of the clinical work?

SB: Good and very important question, involving the future of psychoanalytic vision and identity. I think the new opportunities for communication and interaction among analysts all over the world highlighted how each clinical-theoretical school, national community and regional culture focuses more on a specific aspect of the human reality and of the psychoanalytic theory and subsequent technique.

The unavoidable, underlying transference of the analysts to their own “parents” and masters added a quality of “absolute and unique truth” to the spirit and statements of their teachers: the transference to the authors is a still not enough explored area for better understanding how the Regions are so characterized theoretically.

I think the controversy “Drives vs. Relation” or “Intrapsychic vs. Intersubjective” will be reduced and then overcome in few years: it already progresses this way in many countries (i.e.: we know how the new Kleinians, like John Steiner and others, pay attention also to the relational aspects; and how intersubjectivity is now interesting also several French colleagues, like i.e. Roussillon). In my view human beings are both intrapsychically and interpersonally predetermined in their life, and I easily foresee there will be in the future a more integrated approach to this topic, taking into due account a respectful consideration for the trunk of the three (Freud) and the evolution of its branches (the further thinkers which enrich psychoanalysis, starting from that trunk and adding new visions).

I disagree both with those who say “Freud had already said all” and with those who don't consider how much Freud ideas are such a still respectable basis for the further achievements; I'd say that “psychoanalytic genitality” is not celebrating the kingdom of an only one father, on one hand (it would be more a narcissistically phallic than genital vision…), neither an hyconoclastic ingratitude towards a great grandfather, who was able to generate and to grow up so many further “genital” descendants.

AMD E TSN: During your presidency we witnessed a special attention to the issue of ageing. What sort of initiatives promoted by the three regions of the world societies do you consider transformative regarding ageing issues?

SB: At our Administration we all shared the genuine conviction that psychoanalysts should (and could) have a specific say about the issue of ageing.

The IPA Committee “On Ageing”, dedicated to this specific area, represents the most evident sign of institutional awareness about new needs of a part of our patients today: those who are aged, and those who are ageing, with unprepared vulnerability. While in the past old people didn't seriously consider psychoanalysis for themselves, today many of them ask for it; which is good and realistic (I had several aged people in treatment, with their remarkable benefit and with my professional satisfaction).

This topic raised also the issue of the undeniable increasing ageing of our membership, and the worrying outcome of this investigation was one of the many factors that influenced our reflections on the current training: which future for psychoanalysis, if the majority of the applicants for Qualification are actually so aged? And further questions arised, i.e. regarding how to afford our ageing as psychoanalytic professionals, when planning to retire etc. Basically, analysts, who work part of their day in contact with a timeless unconscious

dimension, have to face the uncomfortable reality of the passing time not less than their patients. Dealing with such topic let us wake up from a dream of eternity during (and sometimes after) our full immersion into ours and other's unconscious, painfully and healthily recovering the real common condition we share with the patients: “being but men”, as the great poet Dylan Thomas said much time ago.