D. Learning or Training: The Dilemma of Psychoanalysts.

This distinction is seldom mentioned or considered in the psychoanalytic circles. It is the distinction between learning what to know about psychoanalysis and training in psychotherapy, which we are inclined to still call it psychoanalysis.  It is a distinction that is blurred- almost intentionally- by the psychoanalytic institution(s) because if it is clarified and recognized there would be some serious questions about the functions of that institution itself. 

However, let us start with another distinction that was fundamental in the development of psychoanalysis itself. It will prepare for a more comprehensive reply to our main issue. What is the difference between a profession that demands certification to practice, and a craft that only requires apprenticeship? This question is in fact fundamental, because though it is avoided by the psychoanalytic institutions it still preoccupies analysts- more unconsciously than consciously (the endless questioning of psychanalysis itself and what is it really). It arises whenever some particular issues are raised like the schools of psychoanalysis, the training systems, the scientificity of the discipline, etc. It has not gotten an answer yet!!. Without answering to that question, we should not talk about ourselves as psychoanalysts. Psychoanalysis has to prove first that it is a profession and not just a designation in other professions to call ourselves psychoanalysts.

Psychoanalysis started with a few physicians and men of knowledge, who were already influenced by the notions of the subject’s duality (German ideological metaphysics). It started with Freud proving -by using hypnosis- the coexistence of dual streams of thoughts in patients. After a short while he realized that the ordinary speech of the patient could, with some attention to its idiosyncrasy, reveals the second stream of consciousness without hypnosis. Freud and his followers embarked on a process of exploring the human subject-via his psychopathology- by just ‘analyzing’ the duality in his speech. The findings revealed that there are obscure psychodynamic processes that link the two streams of thought.  The processes were active and unconscious. Those revelations required improvising new definitions for the common vocabulary and language used to refer to them (repression, etc). Gradually some sort of theoretical framework of psychopathology emerged. The expansion of Freud’s insights and thru the contributions of his group of inquisitive colleagues a movement was created, which evolved to be what we have now: an international organization that is supervising a self-created training system that qualifies a person as psychoanalyst, if trained in one of its accredited institutes.

The reason of choosing this path to start this part of the posting is to show and underline that the onset of psychoanalysis and the objective of the first Freudian group was an interest in acquiring the skill of analyzing people’s speech, not to create a profession. Even those who sought to practice psychoanalysis as treatment of patients took more than two decades to identify-in a definite way- a psychotherapeutic attribute to psychoanalysis. Knowledge of the “unconscious” changed the curiosity, aim, and the dynamics of the group and created an ambition to practice that skill professionally… by making the unconscious conscious. With the increasing number of people who wanted to join Freud’s group the idea of systematizing training in psychoanalysis emerged and linked with the expansion and the reorganization of the IPA. Training in institutes that are governed and accredited by the IPA was found to be the sensible and a practical thing to do. However, there was no external official independent authority to certify the training and authorize practicing that type of therapy (still there is none). Certification is a precondition in the practice of any professions. Analysts, must come to their membership in the IPA already certified by their specific professional qualification to practice their training in with the public, legally.

In Freud’s discussion of the “Question of Lay Analysis” (1926) he was obviously clear in not considering psychoanalysis a profession. He stated that it is an applied psychology that requires special training but is not enough to constitute a separate and distinct profession. He also talked about psychoanalysis as knowledge which is applicable to other professions. As knowledge that could influence- positively-several other professions it could be- symbiotically- a major player in psychotherapy. As psychoanalysis proves its usefulness and functionality in several fields of the humanities it should be treated as such, and not limit it to psychotherapy and characterize it a profession of psychotherapy. A shift to that perception of psychoanalysis requires a different outlook on who is or could become a psychoanalyst?

Up till now, the graduates of only three clinical professions (Medicine, Psychology, Social Work) are accepted in the training programs of the IPA. This stance confirms that the IPA considers psychoanalysis a clinical discipline only. Since the three specialties are not clinically of similar backgrounds, and are markedly different in their clinical functions, we could safely conclude that the graduates of those three disciplines are accommodated in the IPA training in psychoanalysis because they are ‘certified’ professionals. It does not need much to say that such accommodation has nothing to do with psychoanalysis; it only increases the number of the analysts and gives the IPA more members who are certified to practice legally a health act.

 I have to repeat my previously declared view regarding training and the true nature of psychoanalysis to proceed without unnecessary distractions in futile arguments:

If psychoanalysis is a skill and not knowledge, training should-in principle- be restricted to the clinicians who are certified by their academic degrees to treat patient. Example: for a Ph.D. psychologist to be accepted in training in psychoanalysis his Ph. D has to be in clinical psychology and not in experimental psychology, so that after passing his apprenticeship training, he could join the psychoanalytic community. If psychoanalysis is knowledge, training therefore should be open to all the qualified candidates in the humanities, who seek the additional ‘depth’ psychoanalysis offers. Training that meaning should be geared toward the nonclinical aspects of the psychoanalytic discoveries. The term psychoanalyst (if used as an adjective) would then indicate a specialization within a profession.

Losses and Gains:

There are two main issues to address in regard to the membership of the psychoanalytic community: learning/training and the applicants. Psychoanalysis should lose the fixed image of a clinical discipline and being simply a psychotherapy, in order to gain the quality of being a knowledge that enriches other branches of knowledge (including psychotherapy too).  Thus, it would no longer qualify as an apprenticeship but becomes an academic subject. It will not be learned in institutes that are run and overseen by the “membership” organization of the IPA. The learning institution will be Academia which overlook all that is related to getting certifiable in the candidates’ choice of their domain of psychoanalytic interest. There would a real separation between the educational body and the membership body. Psychoanalysis become an integral part of several recognizable professions like medicine.

We lose the unsystematized and haphazard curricula and the subjective significance of the ‘training’ analyst.  We gain the respect of academic learning and the teaching faculty’s concern about its educational input in learning. We also gain that our contributions to psychoanalysis will be scrutinized by other academicians, therefore we open the self-imposed isolation and the gradual deterioration of psychoanalysis.

In regard to the candidates, we will get younger people who are going to spend more years in learning a profession that will give them a quality of credibility they will work hard to deserve and keep. It will weed out those who are not there for learning but only for quick training in doing something less credible than it was many years ago because of its novelty. 

The Dilemma of Learning and Becoming an Analyst:

D: Personal Analysis and its Place in Training:

Psychoanalysts are assumed to get their learning and training in institutes that are accredited by a system of hierarchical supervision, which leads to an international 'certification'. Training has three components: Seminars (theory), supervised practice, and personal analysis. The seminars are supposed to go through the classical writings of Freud and previous and contemporary leading analysts, supervision is reporting to three or four training analysts the clinical work with three or four patients to learn the technicalities of practicing the theory 'properly' in psychotherapy.  There is a third requirement for completing the training trio which is known among analysts as “personal analysis”. It is evident to any scrutinizing eye that the first two elements of training are impossible to standardize among analysts who have very different theoretical backgrounds in different parts of the world. However, remedying this flaw in the system of training is possible if psychoanalysis moves to academia as we know about the main defined professions like medicine and engineering. The problem is with the third component Personal Analysis. Most of the time and more frequently Candidates are excited about that component in particular because it used to give psychoanalytic learning and training an air of superiority (a fantasy of analysts being cured of their psychical disorders to be allowed to practice psychotherapy).  I do not know the source of that fixed phantasy, because the requirement to undergo personal analysis is basically to learn how it is done because there is no literature or other means that could show and demonstrate:

1.     How the unconscious is derived from the conscious verbal reporting of the patient,

2.    How an interpretation is formed and delivered to the patient,

3.     How construction is done to turn the interpretations- every time they are ripe- into an insight of an intrapsychical element that was formed or deformed in childhood.

Since 'personal analysis' is a requirement in the training process it became a central issue in the problems of "training analyst". The problem is best recognized in a recent question raised in the American Association. Is there a difference between personal analysis in training and psychoanalytic treatment of patients?

All the arguments in regard to maintaining the status of the training analyst were supporting the notion that analyzing a future analyst should be qualitatively better, therefore personal analysis of a candidate should be with a training analyst. Sounds logical but it is really sandwiched between two contradictions.  A. For any psychoanalysis to work as a therapeutic tool has to come from the patient’s own sense of need for it, and that it is not imposed on him for any external reasons (father, wife, boss, etc.). B. Its benefits should not be linked with any external beneficiary (father, wife, boss or the INTITUTE. 

However, even though the motive behind personal analysis is the right one there would still be a difference related to a genuine desire to train. This difference is imbedded in the process of psychoanalyzing itself. 

Free Association, Interpretation, and Construction: 

There is something about psychoanalysis we usually forget although its effect on our thinking as analyst is very evident in two things: our conception of the unconscious and the meaning and link between interpretation and construction. The roots of the discovery of the unconscious go back to the hypnotic stage in the history of psychoanalysis: the unconscious is the repressed objected to conscious material. This indelible attitude that our work is to make the unconscious conscious takes different forms in the different school but boils down to missing that the unconscious is psychical construct that exists independent of its content, It makes conscious material unconscious (through the primary processes). Unconsciously, Freuds conscious concerns about himself and his patient Irma created a dream-scene full of sarcasm and despise of people. Therefore, our work is to find the hidden meaning -in open sight- of the associations and give it to the patient to understand what he distorted and how. In other a more concise words: interpretation is to elicit the disguise meaning of the given material.

Doing that whenever possible leaves the patient at a loss (he is saying two things all the time). Freud (1937d) says: " 'Interpretation'   applies to something one does to some single element of the material, such as association or parapraxis. But  it is a 'construction' when one lays before the patient of the analysis a piece of his early history that he has forgotten …" (p.261). This new issue fits well the dialectical nature of the human subject who is always in a state of duality (Hegel). I preciously underlined the notion that we do not analysis psychical issues, material, or other psychical 'things', we analyze processes that construct those issues. A transference reaction is the result of a dialectical interchange of analyst analysand relationship[that is why the tripartite recommendation of neutralit,...is very important to adhere to it].

The difference between self-analysis and (regular) psychoanalysis:

In principle there should not be any difference. However prosonal analysis is in all likelihood is gone through with another objective in the mind of both analyst and candidate. The difference could be unnoticeable or insignificant, but we should not ignore the preconscious in that respect ( I am not factitious in raising this point. I am pointing out how much could be swept under the rug in ignoring this point.)   Both will have in the back of their minds issues pertaining to admiring, identification and future encounters in professional life and society. Putting that aside we have to consider the process itself. What could be different in interpreting and construction work.

I am speaking from the point of view of one training analyst. I used to take more time and reveal more of my mental process in reaching my remarks, I did more so when it came to constructing. It was sometimes not easy to hide the teaching aspect of my comments, but I did not notice any marked difference in the outcome of those works on the therapeutic work. However, several times in my own training one of my supervisor (of the cases of training) suggested that I take some of my clinical experiences back to my analysis. The attitude of the supervisor brought to my attention that training is not three separate activities but they are all one process in the "formation" of an analyst. with this in mind personal analysis took a different meaning that I tried to subtly convey to the candidate\future analyst.

  

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 The Dilemma of Learning and Becoming an Analyst:

 

C: The Link Between Theory and Practice!!!??

The actual reality is that there is no definitive or approved link between what we call the theory of psychoanalysis and the technique of proacting it in psychotherapy. We have a rather impressive vocabulary we gathered over the early years of discoveries in psychodynamics and we it treat it as our theory of psychoanalysis. We also have few early recommendations about practice psychotherapy but they have no link with the theory. The proof to that is absence of any serious literature on their on their merits.  The main three recommendations are regarding the relationship between the analyst and the patient: Anonymity, Neutrality, Abstinence. Those three stipulates are mentioned in the ‘theory’ without any clear explanations of their significance. I will venture and reveal my own assumptions of their importance in the practice of “psychoanalysis”, The first and basic Freudian discovery was the interlinkage between the conscious and the unconscious, which made him recommend to the patient to say whatever come to his mind without any attempt to stop himself from saying whatever. He called that free association. Therefore, the analyst should not say or do anything that could interfere with that request, positively or negatively. At the same time the patient’s associations and reactions to the analyst’s demeaner and interpretations should be considered transference material (that is if the analyst adhered to the mentioned above trio). It does not matter if the patient has access to realistic facts about the analyst as long as the analyst does not confirm their accuracy or object to their incorrectness. The point to make is that the practice of psychoanalysis has theoretical parameters and is not just statements of ‘direction’ like making the unconscious conscious.

The first point to mention in this context is that without theoretical elucidation Practice becomes void of any actual orientation. Even in the multiplicity of schools there should be a link between theory improvised new school and its practice. The well-known adage in regard to classical psychoanalysis is that it is making the unconscious conscious (making the unconscious conscious is too abstract to mean anything). The core of the classical theory is that psychopathology manifests intrapsychical distortions caused by an unhealthy relation with a parent. How do we get to those dissertations to make the proper changes in them? Following the gist of the recommended Trio the patient will be less tempted to react to the vague undefined analyst and bring back his previous dealings with the parental figures, i.e., transfer to the analyst his past psychical life. Transference is the substance of the intrapsychical.

In the history of practicing analysts gave the three stipulates recommended for proper practice various imaginary ritualistic values. Being without linkage to the theory resulted in becoming some comic rituals of comic nature. I knew a lady of the third British group who never let her patients shake hands with her or hand her the fees…put them on the desk. The reaction to those meaningless maters engendered equally comic observance and understanding of the ‘ridiculous. The point is that analysts were left with an impressive vocabulary about the psyche that seemed and gave the impression of a new theory; but without any equally impressive explication of the process of psychoanalyzing. Worse, training in two generations lost its purpose: learn a trade; it became a process of imitating the training analysts and advance to idealizing them.

I am not comfortable describing and labeling psychoanalysis in those terms, because even if there some truth-in different degrees of correctness in what I said there are many analysts and associations of psychoanalysis who were able to avoid the negative and stick to the positive. Nevertheless, warning about the inevitable deterioration of training and learning psychoanalysis has something to do with something completely different. Psychoanalysis emerged in the Western culture little more than a century ago. This is the belief of most analysts and a source of their well-known pride; if not more than just pride. This pride is the basis of another falsified belief: psychoanalysis is a profession. Since the human subject suddenly had the insight that there is more to his kind to learn about a new field of achievement was born (3000 years ago !?). Man wanted to know more and detail about himself and others. He called that the love of wisdom philosophy. In other terms philosophy is- more or less- the verbal side of knowing ourselves while the achievements in the sciences are using our knowledge to understand the world around us. Therefore, we could pose the issue pertaining psychoanalysis this way: is psychoanalysis an aspect of philosophy (knowing ourselves) is it a science using our knowledge of ourselves to understand the world around us?  !!

There is a more specific duality that concerns the practicing psychoanalyst in that regard: Hegel (philosopher) realized and recognized- in one of the most revealing thoughts- that the human mind is incapable of dealing with an issue but only with the duality of the issue: morality is the antithesis of immorality, therefore for it to be considered its opposite has to be created and envisaged. His dialectical conception of the dualities of the human mind is the dormant giant of the human creation of language. In that perspective psychoanalysis is a discovery of a cardinal human quality and is also a method to analyze psychical what seems as singular issues. P. Ricoeur marveled at Freud’s dialectical conception of his thought. In a rapid conclusive  statement: the link between theory and practice in psychoanalysis is dialectical but that is only if the theory in its own right is dialectically formulated and the technique of psychoanalyzing is similarly dialectical in its own right too.   

 

The Dilemma of Learning and Becoming an Analyst:

 

C: The Link Between Theory and Practice!!!??

The actual reality is that there is no definitive or approved link between what we call the theory of psychoanalysis and the technique of proacting it in psychotherapy. We have a rather impressive vocabulary we gathered over the early years of discoveries in psychodynamics and we it treat it as our theory of psychoanalysis. We also have few early recommendations about practice psychotherapy but they have no link with the theory. The proof to that is absence of any serious literature on their on their merits.  The main three recommendations are regarding the relationship between the analyst and the patient: Anonymity, Neutrality, Abstinence. Those three stipulates are mentioned in the ‘theory’ without any clear explanations of their significance. I will venture and reveal my own assumptions of their importance in the practice of “psychoanalysis”, The first and basic Freudian discovery was the interlinkage between the conscious and the unconscious, which made him recommend to the patient to say whatever come to his mind without any attempt to stop himself from saying whatever. He called that free association. Therefore, the analyst should not say or do anything that could interfere with that request, positively or negatively. At the same time the patient’s associations and reactions to the analyst’s demeaner and interpretations should be considered transference material (that is if the analyst adhered to the mentioned above trio). It does not matter if the patient has access to realistic facts about the analyst as long as the analyst does not confirm their accuracy or object to their incorrectness. The point to make is that the practice of psychoanalysis has theoretical parameters and is not just statements of ‘direction’ like making the unconscious conscious.

The first point to mention in this context is that without theoretical elucidation Practice becomes void of any actual orientation. Even in the multiplicity of schools there should be a link between theory improvised new school and its practice. The well-known adage in regard to classical psychoanalysis is that it is making the unconscious conscious (making the unconscious conscious is too abstract to mean anything). The core of the classical theory is that psychopathology manifests intrapsychical distortions caused by an unhealthy relation with a parent. How do we get to those dissertations to make the proper changes in them? Following the gist of the recommended Trio the patient will be less tempted to react to the vague undefined analyst and bring back his previous dealings with the parental figures, i.e., transfer to the analyst his past psychical life. Transference is the substance of the intrapsychical.

In the history of practicing analysts gave the three stipulates recommended for proper practice various imaginary ritualistic values. Being without linkage to the theory resulted in becoming some comic rituals of comic nature. I knew a lady of the third British group who never let her patients shake hands with her or hand her the fees…put them on the desk. The reaction to those meaningless maters engendered equally comic observance and understanding of the ‘ridiculous. The point is that analysts were left with an impressive vocabulary about the psyche that seemed and gave the impression of a new theory; but without any equally impressive explication of the process of psychoanalyzing. Worse, training in two generations lost its purpose: learn a trade; it became a process of imitating the training analysts and advance to idealizing them.

I am not comfortable describing and labeling psychoanalysis in those terms, because even if there some truth-in different degrees of correctness in what I said there are many analysts and associations of psychoanalysis who were able to avoid the negative and stick to the positive. Nevertheless, warning about the inevitable deterioration of training and learning psychoanalysis has something to do with something completely different. Psychoanalysis emerged in the Western culture little more than a century ago. This is the belief of most analysts and a source of their well-known pride; if not more than just pride. This pride is the basis of another falsified belief: psychoanalysis is a profession. Since the human subject suddenly had the insight that there is more to his kind to learn about a new field of achievement was born (3000 years ago !?). Man wanted to know more and detail about himself and others. He called that the love of wisdom philosophy. In other terms philosophy is- more or less- the verbal side of knowing ourselves while the achievements in the sciences are using our knowledge to understand the world around us. Therefore, we could pose the issue pertaining psychoanalysis this way: is psychoanalysis an aspect of philosophy (knowing ourselves) is it a science using our knowledge of ourselves to understand the world around us?  !!

There is a more specific duality that concerns the practicing psychoanalyst in that regard: Hegel (philosopher) realized and recognized- in one of the most revealing thoughts- that the human mind is incapable of dealing with an issue but only with the duality of the issue: morality is the antithesis of immorality, therefore for it to be considered its opposite has to be created and envisaged. His dialectical conception of the dualities of the human mind is the dormant giant of the human creation of language. In that perspective psychoanalysis is a discovery of a cardinal human quality and is also a method to analyze psychical what seems as singular issues. P. Ricoeur marveled at Freud’s dialectical conception of his thought. In a rapid conclusive  statement: the link between theory and practice in psychoanalysis is dialectical but that is only if the theory in its own right is dialectically formulated and the technique of psychoanalyzing is similarly dialectical in its own right too.   

B. A Useful Introduction:

The most irritating issue I seem to create in my postings is insisting all the time to make a distinction between psychoanalysis as a theory of the subject and as part of the western philosophical heritage, and its function as psychotherapy. I understand that irritation very well. I am a psychoanalyst who defined himself as a therapist for the first thirty years of my involvement with psychoanalytical matters (learning, practicing, teaching, and training). Its is when I started to see the deteriorating standards of all those matters in most of the places I visited in one capacity or another, and the glaring crisis of the dropping interest in psychoanalysis [admitted by the IPA in 1995] and responsible analyst looing outside analysis for the reasons of its deterioration. As an analyst I looked and still look within psychoanalytic mater for the conditions and causes of its deterioration.

Without hesitation I will introduce the post with two very brief introductions to give a background of what I still expect to be resentment my views about psychoanalysis.

1.                  Freud was exploring some psychological features in hysterical patients. He noticed the difficulties face in talking about sexual matter and then moral issues in general. He concluded that he should the let the patients free to just say what comes to their mind instead of asking questions. He called that ‘free association’. He used the term psychoanalysis to define his method of exploration. Psychoanalysis thus is a description of what Freud thought he was doing, which was listening to the patient talking about his psychological and psychopathological condition. He did that in a deliberate way instead of doing it unintentionally as we all do our daily communication. Freud’s exceptional talent was noticing that the patients say things about their condition without being conscious of what they were saying. Psychoanalysis gradually became more than just an exploration of things- unconscious, but also a method of ‘making patients get acquainted with their unconsciousness. Psychoanalysts-not Freud- wanted to systematize that process hoping to make psychoanalysing a defined, standardized, method of a therapeutic objective. The fact that neither the patient, nor the analyst, knew what was going to be said or meant to be said made the process of psychoanalysis unavailable for standardization and unmanageable in the tradition of a scientific methodology.

My argument is that psychoanalysis is not and should not be assess in terms of scientific viability. However, what is uncovered in psychoanalytic work could be studied scientifically in the related and relevant field of sciences. Discovering the lasting impressions of some childhood experience could be studied scientifically by scientists of other fields (psychometrically, child psychology, social psychology, etc.). Psychoanalysis could provide the subject matter of different scientific endeavours without having to be judged in terms of scientificity. Psychoanalysis is the knowledge we gather not the tool of gathering this knowledge. Medicine is not a science but many sciences were and still are needed to state with authority that medicine is scientific?

There is no factual need for psychoanalysis to be a science: it is enough to verify its findings scientifically to make it a credible part of human knowledge. The issue of how to give psychoanalysis the required and acceptable status of being scientifically based has to start first with identifying what of it needs scientific verification-in order to know if they are amenable to the methodology of scientific research. Take, for an example, what is involved in reaching a scientific answer to the patients’ “habits” in arriving to their sessions and leaving them. The main point I am making is that the psychoanalysts are not scientifically equipped to know the basics of even choosing the issues that could be researched scientifically. What is raised now about psychoanalysis and science is still at the stage of the wish (we wish it to be scientific) but there is no serious attempt at offering, suggesting, or even identifying what we wish to be verified scientifically. Some analysts who claim authority (Training Analysts) do not have even an agreed upon clear distinction between what they call theory and what they call practice to create the scientific aspect of psychoanalysis.

However, knowing the basic evolution of the theory of psychoanalysis [psychodynamics- object relation to ego psychology-the schools- the theoretical ciaos- separate theory and practice to finally doing away with theory(ies) and making the practice of psychotherapy a scientific issue], is essential in making sense of our serious stand now: letting analysis die or try to reincarnate it in a different form. 

 

The Dilemma of Learning and Becoming an Analyst:

 

A. A basic problem:

There is a basic and elementary problem with psychoanalysis, that is only if psychoanalysts accept the obvious contradiction in their formation: there is a body of knowledge that is basic in the making and formation of the psychoanalyst, and there is another body of knowledge that is essential in the making of a therapist out of the psychoanalyst. The dilemma is that those two types of knowledges are not related in a natural way. There is no theoretical discussion in the Freudian text about the link between practice and the theory, nor dedicated works by the classical psychoanalysts about that link, nor the contributors to the classical theory from outside the analytic community. We have no notion -for instance-of the links between the material conditions of psychoanalysing, the practicing procedures of interpretation and construction. This loose situation in training is always an issue in supervision of candidate seeing patients for analytic work.   

Sometimes attaining those links becomes a difficult contradiction to deal with. Before explaining what I mean by that I remind the analyst who find my statement strange and negatively provocative that they make an issue of the link between theory and practice, so what I say is just stating the common concern in psychoanalysis as an issue that is part of the crises of the training analysts. Analysts are not settled yet on what is the theory of psychoanalysis and what is there of that theory that is essential for practicing it as psychotherapy. Since most analysts still do not want to realize or to acknowledge that they came to psychoanalysis from the back door of psychotherapy without enough knowledge of what that knowledge entails they confuse the practice of psychotherapy with psychoanalysis. Surgery is not medicine but medicine includes surgery.

This kind of obvious limited understanding of psychoanalysis led -eventually- to asking if psychoanalysis is a science or epistemology? The answer that came from the psychotherapist was that psychoanalysis is a science, while the answers that came from the thinkers of all kind was that psychoanalysis is a theory of the human subject and not essentially a psychotherapy. The reason- in my opinion- is the narcissism of the practicing analyst (his image in his own mind and not if he is sick or psychologically healthy). Protecting analysts see themselves as professional of an exceptional importance, therefore they like to believe that psychoanalysis is a science. Instead of curt remark here I prefer to ask: who is more scientific about the nature of the human psyche...... Eysenck or Bion?  

The issues that pertain to learning psychoanalysis and practicing are not as simple as they look in the apprenticeship institutes of psychoanalysis. Knowledge never ceases to advances and improves. The stubborn hanging on to the parochial IPA system of apprenticeship in specialized institutes is like insisting on learning medicine from the village's surgeon.

 

Interpreting Dreams and Interpreting the Dream Process

A Personal Experience:

This personal experience is not a lesson that others could benefit from. It just explains my divergence from what is commonly agreed upon in the psychoanalytic circles: interpreting psychical issues, pathological formations, unconscious material, matters related to transference, etc. I followed that model for the first three decades of my involvement in psychoanalysis (1957\58- 1989\1990). In my learning and training, practicing and teaching & supervising, and in my writings in psychoanalysis my main orientation was about dealing with psychical things. However, I did everything possible to adhere to the classical conception of clinical practice: deducing the unconscious from the conscious, interpreting the unconscious, and reconstructing the past in light of the new interpretations. With time, I became increasingly frustrated and disappointed in my specialty of psychoanalysis because it did not correspond to what the patients wanted to be done in treating them. The candidates, indirectly (sometimes directly), wanted to learn about the psychical formations they were dealing with more than being guided in the process of practice by putting the emphasis on understanding the terminology used in their list of readings. In teaching, the candidates were learning the same thing for four years from six or seven TAs. My frustration tempted me many times to go back full time to clinical psychology and psychodiagnostics.

Two remarks set me free to learn and do analysis the way I am advocating now. I met Izsak Ramzi in Helsinki and spent an afternoon with him (he comes from Egypt and I just heard of him). He suggested that I move my membership to the “American”. When I expressed some reservations because of its heavy Ego Psychology leanings he asked me few questions about my objections to ego psychology (despite my admiration of a few of the giants of ego psychology then) and he replied: ‘it is good that you know what you do not like in Ego Psychology. It is better than accepting it without knowing why. You will get what suits you from this significant advancement over meagre psychodynamics that stifled psychoanalysis till now’. More or less, he assured me that I will benefit from being anti-ego- psychology if I eventually knew what I wanted from psychoanalysis. In this way he brought to my attention that there is a difference between psychoanalysis as knowledge and as practice.

The second remark came from Dr. C. Scott, a Kleinian as Kleinians should be. He said: “If you understand what the patient said or trying to say then be sure that you are not doing all what he expected you to do: ‘know and understand what he did not say yet’. I realised from those two remarks that I could look for and find the psychoanalysis that makes knowledge of the human subject an open and evolving exchange of discoveries with related fields. Psychoanalysis is not a practice, it is the skill, the art, the ethos of observing and working on freeing psychical phenomena from stagnation whether it is in an individual or in other psychological form. Nothing more stagnant in psychoanalysis than the formalities of practice (putting the patients’ speech in the pigeon halls of empty vocabulary and concepts).    

Those two moments and comments [with a few more from others] made me slowly but continually realize that psychoanalysis is not working with dreams (or similar things) but with dreaming (you should have noticed that the word dreaming means more than what happens when we are sleeping). In a more specific way: there is more to the addict than his addiction. Unfortunately, analysts, instead of improving and expanding their knowledge of the subject they kept changing the aspects of practice by coming up with new vocabulary and schools. Improving psychoanalysis (or even just avoiding its deterioration), has to come from a better understanding of its subject matter and not from varying its psychotherapy.

Freud’s Irma Dream: SE. Vol.4, Chapter II.

The Irma dream is the first dream Freud interpreted. He said: “‘interpreting’ a dream implies assigning a ‘meaning’ to it-. . . replacing it by something which fits into the chain of our mental acts” (p. 96). The dream was a scene that puts one of Freud’s problematic patient in the midst of a gathering that included some known physicians. The theme of the dream was Freud’s effort to exonerate himself of making a medical mistake with that patient and putting the blame on her and the physician who gave him the bad news about her. Freud reached a conclusive decision about his dream and stated: “The dream represented a particular state of affairs as I should have wished it to be. Thus, its content was fulfilment of a wish and its motive was a wish (ibid. 118-119. I believe that analysts, and none analysts too accept Freud’s idea that a dream is a whish fulfilled, because the dream as a scene is a scene -in the present tense- of a fulfilled wish: [Irma proved to be the cause of her misery and Otto is part of the problem. Moreover, those respectable people are not respectable at all].

If Freud was a patient reporting that dream to his analyst the analyst might have also shown him that his dream expresses a latent sense of insecurity regarding his belief in his superiority. It also shows aggressivity if faced with disappointment. Maybe the analyst would have tended to integrate this feature of Freud’s personality in a wider range of his life experiences. Great….. but what about the process that generated ‘such’ dream! What about his unreasonable hostile reaction to criticism, his tendency to do away with the limits of reality in turning everything in the scene into a theatre for his grandiosity! What about the irrationality of proving his point (the infiltrated skin on the left shoulder ibid, p.113)? Better, the fulfilled wish in the dream exposed Freud’s manner of wishing. Interpreting a dream is only useful if it reveals the ‘internal structure of the person’s psychical structure. This applies to the work of psychoanalysis as a whole.

We listen, understand, interpret, so the patient knows more about his dealings with his intrapsychical life. Knowing more about the unconscious intrapsychical life that is derived from dreams, acting outs, transference conflicts, etc. is the main-if not the only- initiative for change. Interpreting dreams, uncomfortable relationships, certain decision and the likes, have be to means to reveal to the patient the nature of his intrapsychical life. We interpret psychical ‘things’ to get from that better view of the intrapsychical.

 

C. Part Three

Psychical Issues and Psychical Processes

An Important Distinction to Make:

The first forty years of the history of psychoanalysis, and a few more years after the publication of The Ego and the Id, were spent by Freud and the pioneer analysts in discovering new aspects of psychopathology. They generated and formulated a vocabulary for their findings.  They chose words that described or explained the dynamics of the observed processes behind psychopathologies, even the untreatable ones. They gradually became ambitious and tried to turn their theory of psychopathology into a comprehensive theory of the human subject. Freud’s book of the Ego and the Id (1923) was the first identifiable attempt at transforming the discoveries of psychopathology into a psychoanalytic theory of the subject. The ‘title’ of the book, when translated into English, created a subtle but a lasting distortion in the sought-after theory of psychoanalysis of the subject.

The theory remained up till now an illusive prospect because of the kind of distortion created by translating Ich (German) into Ego instead of I (the pronoun of the first person subjective). Ego (Greek for I), turns the subject into an object (I can say I am happy but cannot not say ego or my ego is happy, although a Greek could say Egho happy). The inclination to turning whatever is subjective into a psychical object or entity was and stayed the dominant trend in the translation of the ‘Standard Edition’. This trend-in my opinion- was expressing the translator’s ‘wish’ to turn psychoanalysis into a theory of human entities and psychical things instead of a theory of the subject himself[i], thus giving the impression that psychoanalysis-like physical sciences- deals with issues. There is a basic and fundamental difference between an analyst saying I interpret my patient’s dreams and another saying that he interprets the patient’s dreaming as one of the psychical processes that he deals with in analysis. The first makes the dream a psychical entity, and the second uses dreaming as a process that turns something subjective (wish) into a psychical signifier of the subject’s ways of fulfilling his wishes. The wish is not material for psychoanalysis, wishing and its nature in a state of dreaming, fantasies, enactments, etc. is material for psychoanalysis.

Freud and the early practitioners initiated a genuine and powerful movement of discovering new aspects of the subject that were unnoticeable before psychoanalysis.  They used the common vocabulary of everyday life to define their novel findings. There was nothing particular about their findings that could have engendered new vocabulary. There was nothing unusual in what they identified that required ‘inventing’ new meanings for the used vocabulary. However, what was unusual about the psychoanalytic discoveries is the richness and details of the meanings implicit in the spoken language. For instance, repression as an analytic term meant the usual disappearance of an unacceptable issue from consciousness. But it also signified that the ‘repressed’ is predisposed to taking disguised forms of itself to still remain out of consciousness but still could be deduced from its repressed form. 

Psychoanalysis did not create a new vocabulary for its discoveries, like the theories of the physical world usually do; it created theory regarding certain new aspects of the human subject, used the common vocabulary in more meticulous and particular ways, revealing its hidden connotations. The necessity to use regular vocabulary to express psychoanalytic discoveries was basically the outcome of something that we do not pay attention to: the vocabulary of the current psychoanalytic literature is not of entities or things psychological. It is a vocabulary that denotes processes that pertain to the person as a human subject. Repression would mean nothing or very little if we do not know the psychodynamics of the process of repressing. Repression is removing a psychical issue from the field of attention but transforming it into another that could just hints to its original meaning. Another way of putting it: the vocabulary of psychoanalysis is not about psychical issues, events, entities, things: it is the vocabulary of psychical processes, i.e., the vocabulary of psychodynamics. If and when this quality is neglected or ignored psychoanalysis will become a practice of correcting faults in a person or psychotherapy (a ‘lower’ level of practice).

      Anxiety and Narcissism:

The trend to translate the S.E. in the way Strachey did was a simplistic and crude attempt at making psychoanalysis sound as if it is a theory of ‘things- human’ (thus could eventually qualify to be a science of psychopathology). The things- human could be turned into a subject-matter for theories[1].  The pervasive tendency to do that (see: Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety (1926) has distorted psychoanalysis and flawed the meaning of its vocabulary. That distortion gave the impression that a theory of psychoanalysis is a theory of psychodynamics (A theory of faith is not a theory of religion). Anxiety, which was considered before caused by ‘frustrated’ libido, became a cause symptom formation. A new issue emerged: castration and its anxiety. Castrations was one of the central notions in understanding the Oedipus Complex[ii] It is now (after more than two decades) the instigator of anxiety. The details of hose concepts (vocabulary), confusing as they happened to become in the S.D., put the main issue of anxiety within the duality of the I and the ME. It clear that the vocabulary of psychoanalysis without a theory could if not is confusing one has to be well versed in their source before using them as theoretical concepts.

What is even more distorting of the theoretical situation in psychoanalysis was not making the distinction between language and vocabulary: vocabulary does not make a language but a language gives vocabulary its communicative functions. Thus, the vocabulary of psychoanalysis has no meaning or expressive connotation outside a clear comprehensive theory of psychoanalysis itself. For instance: does identification denotes a psychodynamic process which renders the subject and the object become alike, or the case where both subject and object are alike should just call it identification. This simple and subtle distorted beginning of psychoanalysis invited the new generation of psychoanalyst to complicate matters further.

The third generation of analysts, leaned to understanding the psychodynamics of the discoveries based on what the vocabulary linguistically suggests. By doing that they the shifted the emphasis from looking for the subject matter of psychoanalysis and gave the causal relationships between the pathological symptom and its psychodynamic a central place in the concept of psychoanalysis. Analysts used the terminology of describing psychical findings as explanations (causations) of the psychopathological phenomena (the patient introjected the mother’s passive aggressive trends). This way, psychoanalysis became a verbal medium of common terminology use with a different meaning.  

A preliminary step toward a subject-matter of a theory of psychoanalysis is looking closely at the subject that psychoanalysis tries to study and define, and ultimately be useful to. I will mention just two attributes of the human subject (not his manifestations) that qualifies him as the subject-matter of psychoanalysis. This banal distinction between the subject and his attributes is the key to defining the subject-matter of psychoanalysis and the essential step in knowing why psychoanalysis is the theory of the human subject, not the reverse.    The human subject’s is the only life-entity that has a psychological life. Some animals display effective reactions similar to those human display. We are able to bestow on them some verbal connotations. However, the are reactions but do not qualify as messages.  ( the only living organism that does not respond the internal or external stimuli without turning them first into a subjective issue, and responds only to the subjective issue he created. The human subject does not feel hunger and eats; he feels a desire for certain foods and tries to get what he specifically desires. Moreover, the human subject could feel hunger for other things that have nothing to do with eating like love, fame, wealth, etc.

 The human subject is not just a higher-ranking mammal; he is the only mammal who developed language which translated his vital needs into psychological demands. The psychological demands become his real source of stimulation. The psychology of the human subject is caught in the process of turning a need into a psychological demand. The subject matter of psychoanalysis is that particularly human attribute. 

 

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1.In a meeting in Los Angeles 2019, Mark Solms, who is supervising the new edition of the Standard Edition, confirmed that those kinds of distortions will be corrected in the new edition, and the translation will adhere to the intended content and   style of the original German text.

. 2.. At the beginning, Freud and the pioneers of psychoanalysis considered anxiety the result of transforming the frustrating libido into anxiety. Then, came the notion of castration in the dynamics of the Oedipus complex and anxiety was associate with castration. We know now that castration anxiety relates more to that concept of narcissism which a better concept to explain anxiety as the result of concerns about the person’s identity. But we still have to find our way to know if the anxiety relates to affecting the I the Me.

 

 

               

                             Part two:

Psychoanalysis will no longer be learned in ‘institutes’ of psychoanalysis. It will be part of the world of knowledge in academia not confined to the world of apprenticeship in the institutes. In light of the anticipated radical changes in its learning and training analysts should not feel sorry for what they know and have to discard. They better begin working on an advanced theory and practice of psychoanalysis.  One of the primary issues we have to deal with is the development of a language that could be understood and spoken by other academicians. We also have to work on the subject-matter of a theory so that we could exchange knowledge with other professional about what is overlapping between their theories m and ours.    

 The problem with psychoanalysis since its birth is ignoring that there is a difference between the subject- matter of “psychoanalysis” and the practicing of psychotherapy. If psychoanalysis is only psychotherapy, why then do have so much vocabulary about unrelated issues of psychotherapy! The lack of distinction between those two issues was caused by Freud discovering psychoanalysis while doing psychotherapy. A blind- almost infantile- identification with Freud as a therapist rebuffed some great thinkers from joining him and us after him. The theoretical base of psychotherapy itself could have and still can benefitted from inputs of that nature.

Psychoanalysis: Theory and Practice.

If psychoanalysis is more than just psychotherapy (which it is) what could it about. The main point in answering this question is knowing what we analysts do when we practice the psychotherapy of psychoanalysis. Do we analyze the patient, his speech, or a psychoneurotic structure? I hope that it is noticeable that whatever the answer of any of those questions might be the analyst has to have a theory, in which those issues are of some sort of theoretical entity and could be subject matter of that act of therapy. If that is achieved psychoanalysis would be more than just some vocabulary that is not even constituting a language.

There is a fundamental preface to this notion. The last six centuries were the age of philosophy. Philosophers’ work during that period was understanding the nature of the human subject (the subject matter of philosophy). They reached the point where a contradiction in his nature needed to be dealt with. Freud was the one ‘destiny or time has assigned to reveal the duality of the human subject, and it became the subject-matter of the Freudian theory of psychoanalysis. I will explain this point without preliminary discussion relying on the contributions and  discussions of other colleagues’ and some material I published lately.

Acknowledging a distinction between the intrapsychical (the subjective psychical aspect of the person) and the interpersonal (the psychological aspect of relating to others) depicts two human conditions: a subjective sense of being, or the I am, and an objective sense being an  he or the object me. The formation of the very personal intrapsychical structure is made possible because the human faculty of language which allows distinctions of that kind. Language as a mental capacity creates a gap between the subject as I and an object Me. Our psychological life is there in that gap. The subject-matter of psychoanalysis, or what analysis is analysis of- is the linguistic bridging between the subject I and his objective me (a counterpart or the I). Without this particular subject- matter our vocabulary will have no psychoanalytical content. Cicero as I sublimated his urges of superiority as a me, benefitting from his verbal endowment to fulfill his narcissistic inclinations. If we did not have in mind the that Cicero transformed his intrapsychic urges into fulfilling behavior our usage of word sublimation would be misinterpreted.  Vocabulary is meaningless until it sets up the context in which it will attain its meaning. What we have till now-in psychoanalysis- is mostly vocabulary that has confusing meanings and creating different psychoanalytic languages.  Psychoanalysis does not have a theory yet, but has some vocabularies, and a shadow of a subject matter.

Temporarily, I would say that the human subject presents us with a phenomenon that is very difficult to fathom: his duality. It is a duality that is inherent I would even say that the subject-matter of psychoanalysis is that duality of the human subject’s existence. I do not mean by that the dualities of conscious and unconscious, manifest and latent, past and present, primary and secondary, metonymy and metaphor; I mean the duality of identity: I and me. The other dualities, which we are more familiar with are onlypossibel to exist because of the nature of the person is inherently dualistic. 

I think that language, which is a human characteristic that does not exist in any other life entity facilitated and allowed a dichotomy within the human mind to take 'hiself' as an object.    

 

The Theory of Psychoanalysis

A.  What and How

It is obvious that psychoanalysis (in the USA) is clearly going through major and sweeping changes in theory, learning and training, and the process of qualifying its practice in future related professions. It is equally obvious that important and serious effort and work is needed for that change to happen successfully; preferably with participation from the existing psychoanalysts who could guide the new generation to what would contribute to that change.

I strongly believe that a starting point in that direction is the theory of psychoanalysis. We do not have a theory of psychoanalysis yet. What we think is our theory is just some vocabulary that does not even have an agreed upon meaning.

                  ………………………….

Preface:

Psychoanalysts, and mostly in North America, believe that we have a theory of psychoanalysis, if not even more than one. What we have is just psychoanalytic vocabulary, which in our opinion qualify as a theory, because we believe it to be originating from an established theory. Generally speaking, vocabularies are enough to a theory and are not necessarily product of theory. They have to constitute a distinct language because the meaning of words and their communicative function- a precondition for language- are decided by the way the material of the language is interconnected.

We have to ask: what is psychoanalysis a psychoanalysis of; or what is the subject-matter of psychoanalysis. I expect that most analysts will say who needs to know: we know what we do and we do it. This reply is unsatisfactory in light of the radical changes that are approaching. Psychoanalysis will no longer be delivered within ‘institutes’ of psychoanalysis. It will be part of the world of knowledge in academia not confined to the world of apprenticeship. Therefor, it has to develop the language that could be understood and spoken by other academicians. It also has to have subject-matter of a theory that be the link between itself and other academic topics.     

 What is psychoanalysis a psychoanalysis of?

The problem with psychoanalysis since its birth is ignoring that there is a difference between the subject- matter of “psychoanalysis” and practicing psychotherapy. If psychoanalysis is only psychotherapy, why then do have so much vocabulary about unrelated issues of psychotherapy! The lack of distinction between those two issues was caused by Freud discovering psychoanalysis while doing psychotherapy, and by a blind- almost infantile- identification with Freud we limited ourselves to psychotherapy, or took the feature of the therapeutic act as a theoretical background.

Psychoanalysis: Theory and Practice.

If psychoanalysis is more than just psychotherapy (which it is) what is it about. The main point in answering this question is knowing what we analyse when we practice “psychoanalysis”. Is it the patient? His speech? Neuroses? I hope that it is noticeable that to answer any of those questions the analyst has to have a theory of psychoanalysis in which those issues are of some sort of theoretical entity and could be subject matter of that act of therapy. If that is achieved psychoanalysis would be more than just some vocabulary that is not even constituting a language.

Whatever vocabulary we have to describe the patient’s condition, or even offer a causative explanation for it we will still not reach the point of defining what psychoanalysis is psychoanalysis of…. The reason is that the subject matter of a theory is the required need for that theory in particular. The theory of evolution was reached because change (its subject matter) caused the urge to get an explanation of that subject matter.

 Psychoanalysis and its Subject Matter.

The last six centuries were the centuries of exploring the nature of the human subject. Philosophers’ works during that time was making strides in understanding the nature of the human subject (the subject matter of philosophy). They reached the point where the contradictions in his nature needed to be dealt with. Freud was the one ‘destiny or time has ‘designated to discover the duality of the human subject. The duality of the human subject became the subject-matter of the Freudian theory of psychoanalysis. I will explain this point without preliminary discussion relying on the contributions the discussion of other colleagues’ and some material I published in my last Book.

What distinguishes the human subject from the rest of the animal kingdom is the existence of an intrapsychical structure that is distinctively subjective. The intrapsychic is the psychological nature of the person, which does not exist in the rest of animal Kingdome. [Object relations are reflections and products of the person’s intrapsychical structure]. The formation of the very personal intrapsychical structure is made possible because the human faculty of language. Language-existed because of the human to be aware of self as subject and as object too.  This mental capacity creates a gap between the subject as I and an object Me. Our psychological life is there in that gap. The subject-matter of psychoanalysis is the linguistic bridging between the subject and his counterpart or himself. The duality of the subject is not between things like conscious\unconscious, impulse\resistance, ego\id; it is the duality of subject\object (as I will show a little later) in addition to several others, of that nature.  Without this particular subject matter our vocabulary of will not be psychoanalytical.  Cicero sublimated his urges of superiority, benefitting from his verbal endowment to fulfill his narcissistic inclinations. If we did not have in mind the that Cicero transformed his intrapsychic urges into fulfilling behavior our usage of sublimation would be misinterpreted by the listener.