A Conversation with Riccardo Steiner

Chiarandini: You have a rich background in literature, linguistics, psychology, history, and philosophy. Obviously it is necessary for any scientific discipline to situate itself within its history and within a philosophical framework. Do you think that this need is particularly relevant for psychoanalysts, given the historical moment they face? Is there greater interest now in opening up archives and documents that were previously inaccessible?

Steiner: I think psychoanalysis cannot be taught outside the cultural parameters within which it develops or, for that matter, outside the social and political ones too. That archives are opening up can certainly help psychoanalysts. When one studies the first generation of analysts, one realizes that they came from many varied fields. They were extremely gifted people who had many different interests, although these interests gradually diminished with the institutionalization of psychoanalysis.

There are, nevertheless, moments in the history of psychoanalysis when the connection between cultural and social events and psychoanalysis becomes more evident, and my paper focuses on one of those moments. The post-World War II period was one in which psychoanalysts were particularly active. Yet the six-year period I describe cannot be isolated from the years preceding it. In the written version of my paper I will show how the British psychoanalytical movement was always tied, from its beginning, to social and political events. It has a continuity in time with other associations. It is tied to British history and tradition for many reasons, among them that the British were not subject to invasions or revolutions for 400 years.

My interest is in showing how psychoanalysis is tied to and reflects the country in which it develops. Psychoanalysis in Brazil is not the same as psychoanalysis in Argentina or Uruguay or Peru or in Europe or in the United States. The cultural context plays an enormous part in the development of differences in psychoanalysis and in creating difficulties in understanding between analysts from different countries.

Chiarandini: Is the influence of the culture mediated through other disciplines or through other elements of the culture? How is the influence brought to bear?

Steiner: Of course, as you say, other disciplines have enormous influence. Look at France, where the study of linguistics is so important; it has certainly influenced psychoanalysis; and in England, the study of preverbal affects has been colored by the influence and the tradition of Darwin and of Spencer.

The Unconscious is universal, but we have access to it through the derivatives of the Preconscious; and the Preconscious is linked to social and cultural life. This idea is related to Joe Sandler's very interesting concept that theories float in the preconscious of the analyst. He is speaking of analytic theory, but I think that the preconscious of the analyst also contains all of his social, political, and cultural interests and background which, in turn, are linked to the environment in which he has grown up and developed. When you train as a psychoanalyst, you can't forget your background and its influence on you. Sometimes, of course, others try to make you forget your background, but then you become a technologist.

Chiarandini: What do you see as the influences that contributed to the development of ego psychology in the United States and of Kleinian theory in England?

Steiner: Psychoanalysis developed in the United States under mixed influences. The analysts from the continent who emigrated had to adapt to a pragmatic environment in which problems had to be solved very quickly. In England, though, some people, such as Anna Freud, never adapted; instead, she created the Hampstead Clinic. Others, like Melanie Klein, who came earlier, were integrated better. She found a very receptive audience because, for instance, of Darwin's theories of affects, because of the training that Jones and others had in the biological sciences, and because of the interest of British analysts in child analysis before the arrival of Melanie Klein. Because of the British tradition of tolerance, different and even contrasting theories could coexist even if they could not be dialectically reconciled. Typically this is reflected in the culture in many other ways. Look, for instance, at the way buildings of totally different styles coexist! The variety astonishes people from the Continent. On the Continent, people are more rigorous thinkers; they also do not allow such freedom. Several European scholars who have come to England have made this observation. I am thinking, for instance, of K. Manheim, the great sociologist who fled Germany because of the Nazi persecution and settled in England. He had to deal specifically with the empirical tradition of the British.

Chiarandini: You are, I know, passionate about your ideas. How does one achieve the interplay that must exist between the need for scientific convictions, so necessary for the development of one's thought, and such ideal tolerance? Where do you stand, for instance, in regard to Wallerstein's question, “One psychoanalysis or many?”

Steiner: There is both one psychoanalysis and many. Some differences are minimal; they may relate to individual narcissism, what Freud called the narcissism of small differences; others may be so profound that they become irresolvable. We are an international community, and, if we are to understand one another, we should understand in each case how these differences came about and whether or not they are resolvable. In this context, the awareness of different sociocultural environments in which psychoanalysis develops is of paramount importance.

Chiarandini: You said yesterday that you look at these issues in some ways as an outsider. You called yourself “a sort of anthropologist.” Is it better that the analyst maintain such a perspective to understand the psychoanalysis of each culture? Does the view from the outside permit the distinguishing of a more “objective” field? If psychoanalysis develops exclusively within a localistic view, does it turn out to seem provincial, insular? Doesn't the development of psychoanalysis require the input of ideas from outside?

Steiner: This is a complex problem for all disciplines, not just for psychoanalysis. Take the technological leaps of the last 20 years in communications alone! In one way or another these affect psychoanalysis too. Disciplines interact with each other. I am sure, for instance, that the increased awareness of the way that patients and analysts interact and communicate—the subtleties of nonverbal communication in the transference and countertransference—is in some way the response, the reflection, the metabolization by psychoanalysis of the events outside, in the realm of the communicational sciences. I think these changes can only be good for psychoanalysis and make for the kind of development it had

early in Vienna. But it is hard to predict. The culture is changing all the time. The events in Russia and in all of Eastern Europe will certainly have an effect on psychoanalysis if there is a democratic upsurge in those countries. Psychoanalytic associations reflect certain aspects of the way things are organized administratively and politically in the outside world. Now parameters are changing.

Already North American analysts are more willing to listen to Europeans, and Europeans to North Americans. Unfortunately, because of the natural history of the expansion of psychoanalysis, there has been some degree of hegemony by Anglo-American psychoanalysis, with understandable resentment by smaller societies. In South America, for instance, there is an insistent claim of cultural independence. I do not know if you are familiar with Paolo Freire's pedagogical views about the indigenous components of the culture of Brazil in particular and South America in general. Paolo Freire has had an enormous influence on the way of thinking in South America. I think that some of the attempts of South American psychoanalysis to find its own identity, what they call Latin American psychoanalysis, reflects and parallels Freire's views. I hope that those needs do not lead us to a nationalistic excess or to a rigidity of thinking. A historical approach is, therefore, essential to prevent such rigidification.

Do you know the marvelous parable of Walther Benjamin, who speaks of Paul Klee's Angel and calls it the Angel of History? The Angel of History, he says, would like to remain looking at the past, to reconstruct everything; but the wind of the future blows, and he then flies with his eyes turned back … We have to look at the past, to learn and to avoid the mistakes of the past in moving toward the future … We have avoided the past and forgotten it for a long time. Yet, in our approach to psychoanalysis, it is absolutely essential that we know the origin of our institutions and of the development of our thinking. The Unconscious is surely timeless, but for us it would be psychotic to lose our perspective of time!

Chiarandini: What is your view of what often sounds like the myth of analytic neutrality?

Steiner: One cannot speak about neutrality in the abstract. To theorize about neutrality one must know the history of the concept of neutrality. Freud himself was not neutral. He adopted a model based on his 19th-century background of natural sciences, a model that was believed to be absolutely neutral but was not. And how, nowadays, can a science like genetics or nuclear physics be totally neutral? You see the moral and ethical problems that geneticists and nuclear physicists face. Can physics, a science that gives us the possibility to destroy mankind, be neutral? One can speak only of a relative neutrality. Science should be given the greatest possible freedom to observe and experiment, and one should keep one's mind in a state of suspended attention, what Husserl called constant “epoche.”

But even that stance, of course, is not neutral, it is influenced by values, by the liberal tradition … I do not believe in an absolute neutrality. We make, we create, and we are influenced by values … Someone said to me, “It's all very well, but to decide when children start fantasizing is not a political or an ideological issue.” That is precisely the point I want to make. For instance, British analysts, after the war, had to decide what kind of nurseries they were going to create; then the relation of theory to ideology mattered a great deal. If children do not fantasize until the end of the first year, then certain basic qualities of the mother will be sufficient. If, however, children fantasize much earlier, then the importance of the mother and father is much greater. Thus, the way you conceptualize the family will affect how you plan your nursery. Your plans will be linked to your thinking about the child's splitting in regard to the two maternal figures. Your decision can have sociopolitical implications too. At times, these are very subtle, but one cannot avoid taking them into consideration.

“The danger of indoctrination lies in our not realizing bow we indoctrinate … how we are influenced by and in turn influence, values.”

Certainly the psychoanalytic models of the family are based on sociopolitical values. I was amazed to discover how what could be considered as clinical observations or statements based only on clinical observations were actually related to the liberal progressive sociopolitical background of the British psychoanalysts after World War II. A theoretical concept will have results that affect our values and our actions. Psychoanalysis is a social science. Social scientists know they are not neutral. They are participant observers, so how can they be neutral? I do not agree that “if we start to speak about values we are indoctrinating.” The danger of indoctrination lies in our not realizing how we indoctrinate, that is, if we ignore how we are influenced by, and, in turn, influence, values. There is no doubt that we all have values—we are against polygamy, against exploitation. Why should they be denied? Only if we are not aware of how indoctrination occurs are we in danger of indoctrinating.

There is no doubt either that we educate. The resolution of the Oedipus complex implies certain values for the family and for society. In Kleinian terms, the achievement of the depressive position implies values: concern, reparation, love for oneself and for the object, the preservation of the object. Obviously all of that has social and consequently political values. The danger is that if we don't realize how we educate people, then we can become dogmatic and doctrinaire. That danger has been evident throughout the history of education. Educators know they are transmitting values. When they do, they also should instill the notion of critically examining one's theories and one's values. To use Rilke's beautiful expression, that should be our immer wieder too, our “always again” too. The United States has had great democratic educators like John Dewey, who should be part of the background of every psychoanalyst today. If you teach only North American psychoanalysis, you are indoctrinating; if you teach only Kleinian analysis, you are indoctrinating. Theories have to be deconstructed, brought out with all their implications. In this way we will indoctrinate less.

Chiarandini: What do you see as the relative problems of psychoanalytic education in the United States and in Europe? Do you think that in Europe there is more influence by other disciplines, more interpenetrability?

Steiner: No, not for instance in terms of the access to the academic world. England with London has the only combined Chair of Psychoanalysis and Literature. As for psychoanalytic publications, the number from the United States is immense compared with that from Europe.

What is very different is the cross-fertilization within the psychoanalytic institutions. In England and in Europe people come continuously from sociology, from anthropology, from education, from human sciences; they thus enrich the Institution. I have the impression that there is a sort of psychiatric monopoly of psychoanalysis in the United States. There are, of course, social and historical reasons for that evolution, and it has allowed for the extraordinary developments in biology. I greatly admire the developments in neuroscience, but they are only one dimension of psychoanalysis.

Chiarandini: How do your views affect your thinking in the office vis-a-vis the patient? Your training is predominantly Kleinian, although you have an extraordinary knowledge of other models. How do these affect your analytic listening? Do you think that one listens only from one model and that later there is a critical evaluation of that same model? Or is it possible to listen from more than one model?

Steiner: It is possible, even necessary, to listen from more than one theory. You can believe in your own theory, but you have to remain open to allow different theories. The British Society at its best allows the possibility

of tolerance for the ideas of all three groups, and we try to keep together.

You cannot try to fit your theory onto the clinical material. If you have a patient who has been subject to trauma, even if you believe primarily in the importance of constitutional factors, eventually you have to include ideas about the influence of trauma. You should always be aware that you don't know enough, that you are learning. Analysts are constantly learning from their patients. If you don't accept that as a given, you are indoctrinating the patient.

Awareness of our limitations is made much easier if we look at other disciplines and realize how much they do not know and how they tolerate their ignorance. Of course, there is much that we do know, but we should be careful with what we know, too. In analysis, for instance, the words we use are very important: “I think that…” is different from “It must be …” All these stylistic, expressive devices are enormously important in our communicating to the patient what we think. Of course, these styles are also culture bound. I have often noticed that when analysts come to psychoanalysis from medical school, they seem to find the new Gospel in analysis. You have to accept your uncertainty. If you don't, you become dogmatic. You protect yourself by examining the history, by exposing not just the successes of psychoanalysis but most especially its failures.

Chiarandini: Would you tell us about your own background?

Steiner: It is, of course, a humanistic background. I was exposed to linguistics, pedagogy, philosophy, and the history of ideas. I was very lucky that despite the traditional antipsychoanalytical stance of the academic community at that time in Milan, where I studied, the Professor of Psychology, Cesare Musatti was one of the founders of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society. At 18, just arrived at the university, I attended my first series of lectures on Freud in the psychology course we were compelled to take as part of the core curriculum in the Department of Philosophy. In Italian universities, psychology is often linked to the humanities, not to medicine.

I was also involved with literary criticism and studied people like Benedetto Croce, Gramsci, Spitzer, and Auerbach and linguists like de Saussure, Bally, and Chomsky. I was also interested in psychoanalysis through my interests in esthetics and creativity. From literature and philosophy, I took a second degree in psychology with Musatti and with Fornari, who actually was a psychoanalyst teaching at the Department of Psychology. They thought I was gifted enough to go to England to study; they knew of my particular interest in Melanie Klein. They wanted me, of course, to return to teach, but for various reasons I stayed in England.

Chiarandini: I venture to say that part of your motivation may have been your obvious admiration for the English.

Steiner: No doubt. When I took my degree in literature and literary criticism, I studied the European Enlightenment, which was very much influenced by the English Enlightenment. I read some letters of Italians who had come to England. One, writing to his brother in Italy in 1755, was amazed to see Catholic churches next to Jewish synagogues and Protestant churches in London. Imagine what it must have been like to an Italian coming from Catholic Italy! When I studied in Milan, there was a great influence by Hume, Locke, the Scottish historians, and Adam Smith. After the war, there was a reaction against Croce's idealism and a rediscovery of empirical roots and radical democratic thinkers. Of course, I have my reservations about English culture, but this aspect of tolerance is unique. Look at the way the Psychoanalytic Society functions. When it comes to issues that deal with the Society, they try to find the “common ground.” That term, so in vogue today, was used by Bowlby in 1944, when the Committee for Child Care was being formed. At first Anna Freud said, “We still have so many differences to resolve.” She had a Continental perspective. Bowlby answered, with his empirical British approach, “Let's use our common ground,” and she agreed. They did, and look at all they were able to accomplish.

Of course, too much tolerance can lead to a confused eclecticism but at its best is very fertile. It is what fascinated Freud about British culture.

Chiarandini: It seems, then, that you don't think it possible for the analyst to separate his ideas as a citizen from his psychoanalytic ideas.

Steiner: Of course not. All those people used their psychoanalytic knowledge as citizens— Bowlby, Susan Isaacs, Donald Winnicott, following the British democratic tradition; and Anna Freud, following the tradition of others like Aichorn and Bernfeld, who in Vienna were deeply interested in social issues during the 30s. They addressed governments! They were not so successful as they wished, but they were successful. And they had a profound impact on the community, through education, and on hospitals. Of course, they could not have been at all influential under a totalitarian regime. Psychoanalysis cannot develop under totalitarian regimes.

Chiarandini: You are talking about not only totalitarian political regimes, but also institutional regimes.

Steiner: Yes. Psychoanalysts can be extremely authoritarian, bordering on totalitarianism, in their own institutions. Sometimes that authoritarianism is linked to profoundly conservative streaks in the culture, but sometimes it is due to ignorance of the fact that psychoanalytic institutions work like political parties.

Chiarandini: In your presentation, you spoke movingly of Tom Main. You said that when you met him you felt you were talking to the last of an extraordinary group. Does that statement reflect your sadness about a change in commitment by analysts?

Steiner: Well, this is a different historical moment. Yes, his ideas were quite exceptional. His famous paper, “The Therapeutic Community,” published in 1945, affected many analysts, including Menninger and Lacan. Main believed that both patient and doctor belong to the community and that the doctor has the obligation to bring the patient back to the community. This is not the same moment as 1945. After all, many of the things those analysts fought for became institutionalized, and in a way they lost their momentum. At other times their goals were naive dreams and exaggerations. Yet their moral and social commitment was really admirable.

Chiarandini: It seems to me that you see the continuity of all of these ideas starting from Freud on. How do you look at the work that is coming out of Latin America after the years of military dictatorship?

Steiner: Well, it is a confirmation of how differently people think according to their cultural and sociopolitical situation. During times of life or death crisis, one's work becomes scotomized, with complex consequences for one's thinking. Later, as many Latin American analysts are doing now, it is possible to review what was the nature of one's thinking and activity during those times of crisis.

Chiarandini: Though we have not exhausted our subject we must stop. It has been a pleasure.

Steiner: Thank you.