Once More

Psychoanalysis and the Academy:

Two:

This Post is a response to a recent discussion of the subject of psychoanalysis and the academy in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (Volume 64. #3, June 2016). It should have properly written it as a paper on the raised issues in the volume, but I did not find the energy and the endurance to engage in a well vetted paper. However, I will try my best to avoid the temptation of being slack in raising issues and expounding them. I will make sure that scrutinizing this paper will prove that it came from documented literature and not be put to shame.

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2. Language and the theory of psychoanalysis:

Freud’s discovery of the intrapsychic was a major event in the history of epistemology; and maybe because he did not note all its significant repercussions. He discovered that the human subject could be understood, thus ‘everything human’ was then subject to study.  Humanities were born. Although he went on to discover more of the intrapsychic and its content he was revealing something unique about psychoanalytic thinking: the human subject as well as human phenomena comprise two different entities; a manifest entity and a latent entity which are linked to each other in a different way than the links between the components in each entity separately. I will get to that later but for now Freud showed that conscious components- as well as unconscious components- link to each other in a functional way (cause\effect), while the link between the conscious and the unconscious components link with each other structurally.

Freud’s search for the content of the intrapsychical led him to originate the theory of psychoanalysis. Clinical analysts concentrated on the content of the intrapsychic because it was promising a theory of causation which is what a therapist aspires to have. The theory was functional expression of what was discovered. The pressure of an incompatible urge causes its repression thus creates symptoms.  Repression weakens the go so it resorts to new identifications that could make it regain some of the lost narcissism; and so forth. A theory of functions and content gives psychoanalysts a sense of being scientific because they makes them explain things. But what about the tool of configuring the theory and expressing it? What about the language of psychoanalysis? 

There is basic differences between the languages of the nomothetic sciences (physical) and the idiographic sciences (humanities). Nomothetic sciences have languages that fix a meaning to a word, a symbol, or a sign. Those languages are universal and a chemist in Greece understands the formula he receives from Norway about a chemical reaction. In the humanities scientists use the local or the most dominant language in the field. However, there are definite chances that in translating the vocabulary of one language to the other some of the connotations or the denotations get distorted or lost. In describing a human attribute of some sort in one society might be misconceived in another. Scientists in certain areas of the humanities, being aware of that flaw in their vocabulary try and succeed in anticipating the confusion and make the effort to remedy it.

Psychoanalysis is in a big disadvantage in that regard. Freud’s discovery was of very common human attributes yet he had to use the daily language to give those attributes new specific meanings. Both his understanding of what he discovered kept changing as language itself changes as a natural process. Added to that is translating a vocabulary that is neither accurate enough nor has a stable signification makes the theory of psychoanalysis quite wanting. The worst part of this difficulty is the psychoanalysts’ unshaken belief that they know what they mean by what they they say and that others understand what they say. This stubborn conviction is manifested in the continuous birth of new schools of psychoanalysis. The birth of new schools of psychoanalysis raises a flag: the language of a society undergoes changes that reflect social change. Does the change in the meaning of psychoanalytic vocabulary reflects a change in psychoanalysis?

Before I answer this question, I have to emphasize that despite all those issues in the theoretical validity of the psychoanalytic theory, we still have a psychoanalysis. All the theories of psychoanalysis- since the beginning of the deviations- were theories of content and of functional nature. If we scrutinize well Freud’s own revisions of his theory they were revealing a structural aspect in the prevailing content version of his theory. Because all the conflicting theories of psychoanalysis are content theories and of functional nature, not one could claim that it is better or the only best. 

The functional theories are about ‘psychoanalytic things’ defenses, conflicts, fantasies, transference, etc. At a higher and more sophisticated level they are about what, why, and when do things psychological happen when they happen. They use a known, and almost concrete concept, to explain another known and almost concrete concept, in a new way. This is what plagues the contemporary literature which is recycling older ideas. Studying two conscious ideas or two unconscious ones generate functional conclusion. This kind of theoretical knowledge or exercise could be communicated from generation to generation in institutes like the ones we have now: learning what Bion said about the primary process, and what Greenacre said about construction and reconstruction. There could also be some training in in those institutes in applying this knowledge in an ongoing supervision. 

Because the attributes of the human subject, in the basic Freudian conception, is the outcome of a conscious\preconscious system and an unconscious system in a dynamic interaction, a true psychoanalytic theory should not and cannot be a functional theory. The link between the Cs\Pcs systems and the Ucs. system is not causal, direct, logical, laying  there to be found or to be deduced from the human givens. If givens are psychological then they have to be psychoanalyzed. If they are social they have to be socially analyzed.  This is a very contentious issue in the psychoanalytic circle, especially lately. Do we have a psychoanalytic theory of social phenomena? Do we have a theory of the psychology of societies?

My answer is no: we do not have such things. It is absolutely wrong to individualize a social phenomenon and treat it as a person we have some vocabulary to describe psychologically. Nevertheless; we have a psychoanalytic method of thinking and working, which applies to all things human. Just a reminder of the most banal in the Freudian discovery: everything human has a manifest given and a latent content and the link between them is subject to the workings of the primary process.  So, a patient’s lateness to his sessions would be analyzed in the same way the crushing of a glass by the groom in a Jewish wedding. In both events, what we seek is the place of the human act in the psychical meaning of the whole event i.e., lateness in this patient’s analysis, and the crushing of the glass in the Jewish weddings.

This aspect would get us into the fundamental differences between content functional theories and process structural theories. Getting there in the proper way would shed light on the difference between training in the present institute system and the academic system of educating future analysts.