Psychodynamic psychology researcher and writer Robert F. Bornstein was inducted by the American Psychoanalytic Association at its 2001 Fall Meeting as an honorary member. Joan Acocella, staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, received the Award for Excellence in Journalism. Marianne Goldberger, as recipient of the COPE National Woman Psychoanalytic Scholar Award (formerly the Traveling Woman Psychoanalytic Scholar Award), was honored for “having inspired a generation of women, through her mentorship and scholarship, both to become psychoanalysts and to take early leadership positions.”
Joseph Masling, in his letter of support for Bornstein, noted that Bornstein had made notable contributions to psychodynamic research on the dependent personality, subliminal perception, and orality. With Masling (also an honorary member of APsaA), Bornstein co-edited five volumes of the Empirical Studies of Psychoanalytic Theories. Further, he is the only person to have won the coveted Klopfer Award for Distinguished Contribution to Personality Assessment twice. “His work leads the field,” said Masling.
In accepting the award, Bornstein commented that he had for nearly twenty years “worked to convince my colleagues of the value of controlled empirical work in testing psychoanalytic concepts.” He pointed out that despite the lack of citations to psychoanalytic literature in psychology's “flagship journals,” the impact of psychoanalysis in these same journals has been considerable. Concepts have been unconsciously plagiarized and renamed, he said. (His remarks appear on page 4.)
Acocella, who writes on dance and books, was honored for her review essay in the May 8, 2000, issue of the New Yorker, “The Empty Couch: What Is Lost When Psychiatry Turns to Drugs.” Her winning article was selected from thirty-five entries judged by a panel of professional journalists and psychoanalysts. The article discusses an anthropological work that explores the relationship of the psycho-pharmacological revolution and the training of psychiatrists (T.M. Luhrmann, Of Two Minds: The Growing Disorder in American Psychiatry), a
Photo by Mervin Stawart
Photo by Jacques Gourguechon
Photo by Jacques Gourguechon
Michael S. Slevin is a Ph.D. candidate in British literature at George Washington University and a first-year academic associate at the Baltimore-Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis.
Bornstein: “Unconscious Plagiarism”
[Robert F. Bornstein's speech upon being inducted as an honorary member of the APsaA]
I am humbled and flattered to receive this tremendous honor, and I would like to thank the members of the American Psychoanalytic Association for recognizing my contributions in this way. As many of you know, for nearly twenty years I have worked to convince my colleagues of the value of controlled empirical research in testing psychoanalytic concepts. It is wonderful to know that some of these efforts have had an impact, valued by colleagues whose work I respect very much, and by an association that has had such a major influence on our discipline.
The mathematician Bertrand Russell suggested that one of the symptoms of an impending nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. If that is the case, I feel secure in my mental health: I have no such illusions. Still, I would like to take just a few moments to discuss the role of research in psychoanalysis today, and our place within modern psychology.
Let me begin by pointing out two conflicting findings that should leave us all scratching our heads, wondering how these two contradictory things could possibly be true. Finding number one: A recent survey of the literature found that less than 2 percent of articles in psychology's flagship journals include citations of psychoanalytic works. Finding number two: Perusal of these very same journal articles reveals that citations notwithstanding, many of the papers actually deal with psychoanalytic concepts.
How can this be?
Let me suggest that these ostensibly conflicting pieces of data are not inconsistent at all, once we recognize a disturbing truth: The key concepts in psychoanalysis are being stolen out from under us, right under our noses — co-opted, re-named, and “rediscovered” by researchers in other disciplines.
To cite just a few examples: Preconscious processing was roundly rejected by experimental psychologists in the 1960s, but now it has re-emerged. This time it is not called preconscious processing but preattentive processing. Or consider: Textbook authors delight in ridiculing the concept of an ego — that little homunculus in your mind that directs rational behavior. Those same textbook authors who ridicule the ego have no problem taking seriously the cognitive concept of a central executive. The central executive is, of course, a little homunculus in your mind that controls the focus of attention, selects among competing responses, and directs rational behavior.
This problem pops up everywhere. Repression has somehow morphed into cognitive avoidance. Parapraxes don't exist, but retrieval errors do. Repetition compulsion? No good evidence. Developmental psychologists now call it a nuclear script.
work on outpatient care emphasizing selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (Joseph Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash: Overcoming the Dangers of Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, and Other Antidepressants With Safe, Effective Alternatives), and a woman's memoir of her odyssey through a half-dozen versions of psychotherapy (Emily Fox Gordon, Mockingbird Years: A Life In and Out of Therapy). The panel's citation noted Acocella's ability to discuss “a crucial and complicated issue in compelling, down-to-earth prose.”
Ultimately, Acocella said in her acceptance talk, psychotherapy is “one of the few remaining institutionalized forums for discussion of moral problems.”
Goldberger will travel in the coming year to the Michigan and New Orleans psychoanalytic institutes as a teacher and exemplar of the role of women in psychoanalysis.
Dottie Jeffries and Leon Hoffman were each presented with the Distinguished Service Award for their work enhancing the presence of psychoanalysis in the media.
Martin H. Blum, John I. Boswell, Jr., Marshall Edelson, Eve Fortson, Holly Gordon, Ronald F. Krasner, Salvatore Lomonaco, Carol A. Munschauer, Marvin P. Osmond, and Harvey J. Schwartz were selected for Edith Sabshin Teaching Awards.
The CORST Essay Prize went to Tammy Clewell of Kent State University for her paper “Mourning Beyond Melancholia: Freud's Psychoanalysis of Loss.”
The Ralph E. Roughton Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Psychoanalytic Literature on Homosexuality was won by Sidney Phillips for his paper “The Over-Stimulation of Everyday Life: New Aspects of Male Homosexuality.”
The Menninger Award for the best paper by a recent graduate went to Lawrence Levenson for a paper presented at the Fall Meeting, “Safer at a Distance: Losing Contact with the Analyst.”
First prize was shared for the 2001 Affiliate Council Scientific Paper Prize. Elizabeth M. Wallace was honored for “Transference, Transformation, and Chocolate” and Caroline de Pottel for “Rethinking Envy and the Defenses Against It.”
This is a troubling situation, to say the least, and it raises an obvious question: Are people deliberately stealing our ideas?
I believe the answer is no. It is not deliberate plagiarism, but unconscious plagiarism. And it is not the first time something like this has happened. Some of you may remember George Harrison's 1976 court case. His hit song “My Sweet Lord” bore a striking resemblance to the Chiffons' old tune “He's So Fine.” So they sued him. After a lengthy trial, Harrison was convicted — not of conscious plagiarism, but of unconscious plagiarism. He paid a settlement of $587,000.
I contend that the same thing is happening here. Many psychologists were exposed to psychoanalytic concepts early in their careers, but then they moved on, forgetting what they had learned. Years, sometimes decades later, these old memories were cued, and the psychoanalytic concept was reinvented in a new context. What started as a psychoanalytic concept was then co-opted by another discipline, and by an author who — lacking conscious memories of her initial exposure to the concept — genuinely believed she had created a new idea.
What can we do to reclaim those ideas and findings that are rightly ours? Three things. We must use our data wisely, to confirm those psychodynamic principles that are clinically sound and correct those that could be improved. Most important, though — and in this we have been negligent — we must use our data to connect with colleagues in other areas, to keep them informed about our work. If we do these three things — confirm, correct, and connect — the coming years can be a time of rebirth and renewal, as we broaden our research base, reclaim concepts that were originally our own, and become even more effective in our research, teaching, and clinical work.