The Thirty-ninth International Psychoanalytical Congress, to be held in San Francisco July 30 through August 4, will present an outstanding program in which psychoanalytic controversy will play a major role. The theme of the Congress, “Psychic Reality: Its Impact on the Patient and the Analyst Today” lends itself to an exploration of the core issues in contemporary psychoanalysis, while the design of the program will encourage open discussion of contrasting points of view. Three plenary sessions will present distinguished international panels on each of three main topics: Psychic Reality and Technique, Psychic Reality and Theory, and Psychic Reality and the Life Cycle.
The Monday plenary session, on Psychic Reality and Clinical Technique, will be chaired by Joseph Sandler and will present views from five IPA societies and associations representing four continents. Sandler is a member of the British and Israel Psychoanalytic Societies; Leo Rangell is from The American; Isidoro Berenstein belongs to the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association; and Haydée Faimberg represents both the Paris and the Argentine Societies. Tuesday's plenary session, on Psychic Reality: Theoretical Concepts, will be chaired by Charles Brenner of The American, and will include Ron Britton of the British Society, Lawrence Friedman of The American, and Janine Puget of the Buenos Aires Association. The Thursday plenary session, Addressing the Psychic Reality of the Child, will be chaired by Judith Chused of The American and will include Yecheskiel Cohen (Israel), Peter Fonagy (Britain), and Carmen Medici de Steiner (Uruguay).
The Program Committee has designed the Congress with far more than geographical diversity in mind. Each day's program is centered around a plenary session followed by a selection of panels, each representing a stimulating variety of clinical and theoretical viewpoints. Panelists will present brief papers (strictly limited to fifteen minutes), to be followed by extended interaction among the panelists, along with questions and discussion from the floor. Following is a sampling of issues and controversies from the program.
Leo Rangell will begin his presentation to the opening plenary session with an historical perspective on the discovery of psychic reality: “Exactly one hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud discovered a new continent. And it was real! As real as the land continent discovered almost exactly four hundred years before by another European explorer who was initially discounted by skeptics.” Rangell plans to develop the thesis that the external world is the site in which the mind operates by way of action.
As if picking up on the geographical metaphor, Owen Renik will chair a panel with the provocative title “Who Maps Psychic Reality?” The panel will take up the question of knowledge and authority in the analytic relationship. Arnold Rothstein's presentation will include vignettes concerning the treatment of patients in transient psychotic states and how questions of authority and understanding are handled there. Vann Spruiell's presentation may touch upon Chaos Theory and its relation to psychoanalytic understanding. Leonardo Wender, of the Argentine and Buenos Aires Associations, will talk about the analytic relationship as it bears upon the question of whose psychic reality is explored in an analysis.
David Sachs will chair a Tuesday panel, Multi-disciplinary Perspectives on the Concept of Psychic Reality. Here philosopher Adolf Grünbaum will present a critique of the very concept the Congress has taken as its theme. Grünbaum's view is that Freud's switch from the seduction theory to the model of “fantasied seduction” did not change the kind of evidence that would be required to validate psychoanalytic theory. In neither model, Grünbaum argues, are actual events themselves considered pathogenic, as they are always mediated psychically. The switch occurs only with regard to the initiation of the causal chain. Thus, he concludes, the distinction between “material reality” and “psychic reality” is an improper one, with misleading philosophical consequences. In either case (actual or fantasied seduction), evidence is required of events taking place within the child's mind if psychoanalytic ideas regarding pathogenesis are to be validated. According to Grünbaum, psychoanalysis itself cannot provide this evidence. Charles Hanly of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, who has frequently debated Grünbaum, will be a member of the panel. A philosopher as well as a psychoanalyst, Hanly agrees with Grünbaum that Freud viewed psychoanalysis as a science rather than a hermeneutic discipline. In sharp contrast to Grünbaum, however, Hanly believes that psychoanalysis can lead to historical truth, however difficult it may be to achieve this result. Hanly argues that subjective factors influencing the analyst's judgments can in principle be identified and overcome, so that psychoanalytic observations can lead to formulations that correspond to things as they actually are. A third philosopher, Gregorio Klimovsky of Buenos Aires, will also participate.
Rogelio Sosnik of New York will chair a panel entitled “Psychic Reality, Symbolization, and Mental Space” that will present four different perspectives on the topic. Harold Blum of New York will argue for a view close to Winnicott's idea of intermediate space; Alain Gibeault of Paris will advance the Lacanian view, which emphasizes the symbolization of different levels of psychic reality; and Pere Folch Mateu of Barcelona will elaborate the Kleinian view of psychic space as a central concept describing the psychic geography within which projective identification functions. Osama Kitayama of Japan, who will talk about psychic space as a metaphor in Japanese language and culture, will also touch on Bion's theory, which deals with psychic space as something real, rather than as a metaphor experienced as concrete.
The panel entitled “Psychic Reality: Its Relation to Defenses Involving Negative Mechanisms” will deal with negation both as a form of defense and as an expression of the Death Instinct. Alan Skolnikoff of San Francisco characterizes the approach exemplified by André Green as “psychoanalysis minus the adaptive and psychosocial perspective.” Skolnikoff will present clinical material in which the patient experiences the analytic situation and the analyst in highly negative ways—as promoting regression and helplessness, depriving the patient, or ruining his life. Skolnikoff will offer a variety of theoretical concepts that help in understanding the experiences of patient and analyst in such encounters. Jorge Ahumada (Buenos Aires) and Michael Parsons (Britain) join Skolnikoff on the panel.
In sharp contrast to the panel on negation will be the Tuesday panel chaired by Harold Sampson of San Francisco. Entitled “The Role of Pathogenic
Beliefs in Psychic Reality: Patients' Theories about Themselves and Their Relational Worlds in the Psychoanalytic Process,“ this panel will take up the view that beliefs about reality are themselves a fundamental part of psychic reality, and form the basic building blocks that organize personality and symptoms. On this theory, developed by panelist Joseph Weiss (San Francisco) and Harold Sampson, beliefs are more central in psychic reality than are fantasies. Beliefs predict danger and therefore lead to repression and other defenses, while fantasies arise as attempts to cope with those beliefs. Michael Sebek of the Czech Republic will address this topic in relation to psychoanalysis in authoritarian regimes. Paolo Migone (Italy), Blanca Montevechio (Argentine Psychoanalytic Association), and Thomas Rosbrow (San Francisco) will also participate.
Robert Tyson (American and British Psychoanalytic Associations) will chair a panel entitled “Psychoanalysis in the Pacific Rim,” which will take up the development of psychoanalysis in several Pacific nations, as well as the history of psychoanalytic thought in those countries. Young Cho of Korea will talk about the psychoanalytic study group that has existed in his nation for fifteen years. The group has fifty members, all psychiatrists, five or six of whom chair departments of psychiatry. While the group is a prestigious one, whose members may join only by invitation, none have completed psychoanalytic training. Keigo Okonogi (Japan Psychoanalytic Society) will speak about psychoanalysis in Japan, where there are a number of unique features of psychoanalytic practice related to the nation's cultural and intellectual history. Ronald Spielman (Australian Psychoanalytical Society) will speak about psychoanalysis in his country, which, like Japan, has an established IPA institute. At the other end of the spectrum, China has no psychoanalytic representative on the panel, but one or more interested psychiatrists from the Republic of China may attend. Myunghee Kim (New Jersey Psychoanalytic Society) and Joseph Okimoto (Seattle) will serve as discussants on the panel.
Paulina Kernberg (Columbia) will chair a panel entitled “Psychic Reality and Psychosocial Problems in Children.” Judy Wallerstein (Corte Madera, California) will focus her panel presentation on the connection between contemporary transformations of social reality and the psychic reality of the child. Wallerstein identifies three issues that contribute to dramatic changes in the fabric of life for children in the U.S. and elsewhere in the Western world: (1) the paradigm of the intact family, which formed a social background for psychoanalytic developmental theory, has given way to a variety of family models; (2) attitudes toward gender and sexuality, and public discourse about these issues, have changed dramatically in the past twenty-five years; and (3), the presentation of violence, violent crime, and violent fantasies in forms that affect children directly or by way of their adult caretakers has increased. All of these changes affect the psychic reality within which children live. Gertie Bogels (Dutch Psychoanalytical Society), Myrta Casas de Pereda (Uruguayan Psychoanalytic Association), and Didier Houzel (French Psychoanalytical Association) will participate in the panel.