3. Where to Learn Psychoanalysis:

A.    Deviating and Getting Lost:

The reason I wanted to emphasize that psychoanalysis is not a profession is a wrong attitude we take from the training we get in IPA institutes. For us-trained psychoanalysts-whenever the term psychoanalysis is mentioned it meant what we learned in the institutes of psychoanalysis. The fact is that we were supposed have learned everything about psychopathology and many aspects of psychoanalysis in our professional degrees, so what we would learn in those institutes should have been the technique of practicing psychoanalysis. In other words, the institutes were for training us in the skills of psychoanalyzing. The skills are how and what to listen to (notice, observe, sense, etc.) in order to discover the unconscious elements in what we are hearing. Listening like psychoanalysts should lead to interpreting the new psychical meaning that emerges from what we discovered during our listening, and use it skillfully to make the patient recognize what else he has said (painted, did, meant, etc.) without being conscious of it. In addition to leaning this skill we learn how to reconstruct to the patient his psychical life as one comprehensive LIFE. Without noticing the difference between learning a skill and training in a new profession we created a major distortion in the concept of training; training became an objective not a means to an objective. This was the downfall of psychoanalysis as the subject matter of our professional endeavours and the worsening of the practice of that deteriorating (deteriorated) theory.

The IPA institutes were not and still are not the ideal place to learn psychoanalysis. The candidates of sixties and the mid-seventies learned most of the theory of psychoanalysis before they applied to the training programs. Most of us had training- analyst who were actively participating in expanding and sophisticating ‘psychoanalysis’. They stimulated in us the interest in learning what psychoanalysis has added to our knowledge as psychologists and psychiatrist. Therefore, we never lost our connection with our original formation and became more interested in the theory psychoanalysis. Sadly, this attitude changed when training in IPA institute became a short cut to a practice in the mental health profession. Psychoanalysis changed from being a skill that could complement our original professions to a profession in its own right. There is something basically wrong in that change: psychoanalysis was supposed to be the source of the knowledge that we seek training in the skills to use it, to understand the patient and make the patient understand himself. What happened instead is a major mistake: training analysts ignored the difference between learning and training and gave themselves the right to be both: trainers and professors. This point was not examined thoroughly enough when the problem of the training analysts was highlighted last few years in desperate efforts to solve the negative impact of that created status on training. 

Unconsciously, we sleepwalked into a trap we set for ourselves: we blurred the difference between psychoanalysis as knowledge and as practice (in ALL respectable professions the clear and sharp difference between knowledge and practice is a fundamental feature). The outcome was a gradual deterioration in both psychoanalytic knowledge and its practice. As I mentioned in the last part of this posting: psychoanalysts referred the crisis of the continuing drop of interest in psychoanalysis to misconceptions about it, due to people’s ignorance of MODERN psychoanalysis. The issue is that the crisis of psychoanalysis is due to the poor quality of modern psychoanalysis, which is a result of the poor quality of training in the IPA institutes; what else!!!!!

B.     The Restoration of the Reputation of Psychoanalysis:

Psychoanalysis was born with a very good reputation. From the beginning, which we all know, the initial refutations on moral basis and the medical professions attacks on its findings, did not sway people and the many young aspiring physicians from seeing something futuristic in it. In a nutshell, psychoanalysis had all the features that made people realize that it talked to them about what they knew to be right, because they could see it in themselves and in other people. Psychoanalysis was a theory of the subject and not a theory of “something” and needed to have the evidence to prove its believability; it was a theory of us and them and that did not need to look for confirmation of its discoveries. After a short while Freud introduced metapsychology and was tempted to use its language to create a new vocabulary for his observations, and to give them some abstract meaning. It still was relevant to people’s direct observations and understanding of the subject. Close to the end of being in charge of theorizing for psychoanalysis Freud formulated a metapsychology that was basically a reification of his findings (ego-psychology). Yet, unnoticeably, he corrected that deviation in his work “Inhibition, symptoms, and anxiety”, a work that did not catch much attention, mainly due to it heuristic discussion of the cause-effect nature of psychological phenomena. Freud’s psychoanalysis was a theory that was stemming partially from his clinical experience and mainly from true and valid observations and understanding of the subject (there is no clinical reason for Freud to have discovered the super-ego, except that the presence of the Ego was not enough to explain all the conscious faculties of the subject. The ego had to have a metapsychological addendum to explain other function its direct presence in the subject. Thus, he had to work out a place for that addendum in his metapsychology.

In my view, psychoanalysis until Freud was alive and a little after his death was distinguished and deserved its respectability. Psychoanalysis’s main concern was knowledge about a subject. Even when the conflict between the Freudians and the Kleinians emerged the subject matter remained the same and psychoanalysis preserved its distinguished status. The controversies did not reduce the value of the arguments; in a subtle way the issue was what would explain the other: does metapsychology explain psychology (Anna explains Melanie) or does psychology generate metapsychology[aF1]  (Melanie as the basis of Anna)?  Even the French controversies did not reduce psychoanalysis to mere personal disagreement: Lacan was trying to give psychoanalysis its ‘Structural’ identity and dissipate the functional point of view but went about it in provocative way.

   It is when some of Freud’s early and ardent supporters (Stekel, Jung, Rank, Ferenczi, etc.), started to argue about technique that psychoanalysis entered into a downward spiral. There are ‘possible’ causes for that feature in psychoanalysis. The first is that analysts who narrowed their views and limited them to matters of practice were usually either victims of over confidence in their knowledge of the foundational knowledge of psychoanalysis, and argued from a false position of regarding psychoanalysis a theory that has reach the point where it stopped growing, and they knew it well enough to ignore evolving it further.  The second, matters of technique relate to training and not knowledge. IPA institutes are not built to graduate psychoanalyst, they are supposed train psychoanalyst to practice psychoanalysis; their function (with time) changed to graduating clinical practitioners presuming that they also learn psychoanalysis in the process. Training in those institutes in the best case is to teach enough of psychoanalysis that makes training in the technique possible.

Where then could someone learn psychoanalysis?

C: Psychoanalysis as an Academic Issue:

 Answering this question is not a simple one. To evaluate answering this question properly we need to clarify the attitude of the ones who answered it: do they believe that psychoanalysis could be learned without the clinical aspect considered, or there is no psychoanalytic knowledge outside or without the clinical component. If the answering person believes that learning psychoanalysis is meant to prepare the candidate for clinical practice then the IPA institutes, or the equivalent, is the place to go. If the answer comes from an intellectual (physician, social worker, psychologist, drama teacher, etc.) it will be: go to an academic institution that has intellectuals with various interest in the human subject to study psychoanalysis well, where they know how to transmit knowledge to their students. Although some academic institutions did and still do that (though mainly for psychoanalysis as a therapeutic act) they did not take it as a branch of the humanities, or as a significant aspect of psychology in general. 

Psychoanalysis is knowledge that hast to be protected and given the opportunity to be recognized as such, expand to reach its own extent of capability and eventually change psychology as it is taught now in universities, and is involved in psychiatry and social work. By adding psychoanalysis to the existing psychology in academia makes the nature of the human subject more coherent and easily shared by all the branches of sciences that deal with the human subject. However, this kind of change and its extent is not possible without a radical change unrelated to the   psychoanalysts. We, the old and older generation, have to realize that a change in direction in the way psychoanalysis is understood, transmitted to newer generations, setup to relate to other burgeoning human sciences, branching out into different areas of interest outside the clinical aspects, and becoming ‘knowledge’ in its own right and it is not just those mystical things that are available only in the IPA institutes training system, those changes have to happen to us first with sincere intention to give up the present system and make psychoanalysis an academic issue.

However, it is a challenge to expect such thing to happen. Twenty-five years ago, IPA acknowledged the existence of the present crisis. It did nothing more than convened committees ‘puzzled’ about it till now. It resorted lately boosting our moral and suggesting that it is trying and succeeding in containing the crisis. But the most glaring failure in its efforts is not telling the membership what its findings about the causes of the crisis (curing a disease without a diagnosis).  I cannot help wondering what is the undeclared opinion of the- elected- leadership of the IPA, and if they see hope in things improving spontaneously.

I think that sincere and serious analysts about the future of psychoanalysis should just bypass the psychoanalytic organization (s) and go ahead and try with acts of good faith make contacts with the academic institutions in their locations. In other terms we should admit and announce that we the analyst will save psychoanalysis without the permission or approval or even the support of its organizations. The individual attempts will prove to the hesitant analysts that nothing tangible is coming from the IPA; it has stand or opinion about the crisis.

What is of the utmost importance is to keep in mind that taking serious measure in this regard is to save psychoanalysis and not save us and our livelihood. We can survive without psychoanalysis but psychoanalysis cannot survive without well learned and trained analysts.  

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