A few years ago several colleagues A were talking over breakfast at Oscar's. One posed the problem of reviewing a new book entitled The Anatomy of Psychotherapy, by Lawrence Friedman. A senior member of the group, a man known for his incisive remarks, commented, “It's difficult reviewing Larry's work, because he thinks.”
The American's plenary speaker this May occupies a unique position in the analytic literature. He may not be the only writer who thinks, but, more than most, he has the capacity to let readers in on his thinking; he in fact insists on letting them in. Reading Friedman, or listening to him, one can almost hear him thinking, and it is hard and stimulating work.
How does he manage it? There are several essentials to his way of working. First, he is engaged in a struggle with psychoanalytic theory and practice at both the highest intellectual level and, simultaneously, the most intimate and personal one. He is always asking of the theory, what does this do for the clinician, and of the practice, how does it work? He is quite candid about the struggle. With characteristic honesty, he speaks about the difficulties of being a therapist, suggesting that if it isn't uncomfortable at times, for both therapist and patient, then perhaps it isn't therapy. He examines the way in which specific aspects of theory relieve specific discomforts for the therapist. And then he begins to talk about the different places that theory “sits” in the therapist's mind. Here as elsewhere he puts into words phenomena we all live with but have never articulated. And then we too can begin to think about them, because he has shown us they are there and given us the words.
Because of this personal engagement with the work, he can translate broad abstractions into common language, “soft” and “hard” object relations is a recent example from the Quarterly.
Perhaps these achievements come to him more easily because, both intellectually and professionally, he has managed to remain largely uncommitted to formal allegiances. Only recently made an honorary member of The American, and also of the New York Society, he may be the most widely read and respected outsider in the field. And that “outsiderness” (to imitate his way of talking) may be an essential aspect of his uniqueness. As an outsider he has been able to observe what insiders are doing, insiders of every ilk. And like a skilled therapist he works his way into the insider's chair, continually asking what it would feel like to be a patient in this consulting room with this analyst, and what it would feel like to be this analyst with this patient and with this body of theory sitting in the mind.
His own history tells us more of how he got here. Born in Philadelphia, he was introduced to Freud's writing in the eighth grade by a friend, and before graduating from high school he had read the entire collected works. He did not in fact graduate formally from high school but was selected for the early entrance program at the University of Chicago, where he earned a bachelor's degree by the age of eighteen. The method of teaching at Chicago, the close textual analysis of advanced primary readings in the sciences as well as the humanities, left its mark. For his master's degree he wrote a thesis on Kant. Add then, to the examination of texts and their authors, the discipline of thinking with Kant about what is subjective and what objective, and we have but a short leap to psychoanalysis.
That leap was bridged by Friedman's residency at Yale, where his teacher, Jules Coleman, created an unusual laboratory for residents. Friedman learned about the engagement of the therapist with the patient and about how particular uses of that engagement make therapy work—or not, as the case may be. Now his intellectual home is the History Section of the Department of Psychiatry at New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center, a setting suited to the unbiased study of psychoanalysis in its historical context as well as its clinical immediacy. And he is on the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Institute at New York University Medical Center.
If, as our colleague implies, Friedman's way of thinking demands that we think too, his lack of prejudice also demands that we not prejudge where his thinking will take us. In this, Friedman is dangerous. With no preset plan or political purpose, what he tells us may be upsetting; it may challenge precious assumptions. He knows well our defensive use of theory.
Since each paper Friedman writes is unique, as he sets out to prepare this plenary address, neither he nor we can predict what lies in store. The only certainty is that he will surprise us and teach us something we did not already know.