Psychoanalysis and Academia

Resistance to Change

It is uncanny that this part of the posting I meant to dedicate to change in psychoanalysis, but has to be interrupted to keep our attention devoted to a more significant and ‘amazing’ change that is sweeping the whole world. I do not know anything that immensely great has ever happened before at any time in written. Because history can only be understood retrospectively the world-change regarding race issues might take few decades to be properly interpreted [not a Trumpian sexagenarian]. Psychoanalysis could step aside for now and for as long as we need to set up afoot the complex process of interpreting this remarkable transformation in human awareness and evolution.

                    

I will only outline now and here the framework of my ideas about change in psychoanalysis, so if some analyst in the future find the required space in time and interest to revisit that issue, he will possibly find in them relevant starting points.

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I finished the last part of this posting by emphasizing that when we think of hope for change, and of accepting that psychoanalysis could move to academia, we should keep in mind the natural resistance to change, and the conflict of interest of senior analysts in that regard. They are supposed to lead the movement to ‘academize’ psychoanalysis but sch a change will also change their role and status of seniority in psychoanalysis. Change in psychoanalysis is not a matter of accepting or rejecting something new. Change in psychoanalysis is a complex personal matter that touches different layers of personal affinities which should be considered- at a first stage. Those problems need to be resolved before offering any concrete steps to make the change to make psychoanalysis an academic subject.

Change is the fabric of exitance; both the existence of animate and inanimate objects alike. The difference is that animate subjects like to believe that they can interfere with their inevitable change. The higher the subject in the hierarchy of evolution the stronger is that belief. What is more problematic, especially with humans, is that we create inanimate and some animate objects, therefore we do not deal only with our own changes but also with the changes of what we create.

Psychoanalysts have changed and continue to change. The subjects of psychotherapy and of psychoanalytic thinking in general also have changed and continue to change. How can we deal with these interacting changes? Could we accept that moving psychoanalysis from the influence of the model of the IPA to the influence of academia is not to save its practice from vanishing, but because psychoanalysis “naturally” has changed? Recognizing and accepting that we are not- right now- doing the right things by our discipline requires tolerating a narcissistic injury, and that we moving to remedy the situation and not to remedy our pride. I am not using the term “narcissism” in the banal meaning self-aggrandizement, but narcissism as an issue of the duality of the subject and his image (imagined). Can we deal with a new duality regarding self perception in an academic role!

Changing from the IPA Model of Learning and Training:

The model of training and learning of the IPA is based on transmitting knowledge and expertise from generation to generation through the direct contact between teacher and student. This was the favoured method of learning in the different trades before schools and teaching institutions existed and universities prevailed.  Academic learning and training, which is the foundation of professionalism, is based on having the required body of knowledge available independently of the teacher. The material to learn is not the professors’ creation but the amalgam of knowledge that was accumulated and scrutinized over many years and experiences. Medicine in Harvard is the same medicine that a student in Barcelona will learn. Even demonstrating the practice of the material in those two academic centres may differ, but mostly in the colour of the gowns the student wears in the examination room. In our present IPA institutes (or an equivalent) there is no means to compare ad match the content and quality of training. The separation of the material from the professor’s idiosyncrasies and the student’s vulnerability to those idiosyncrasies is the basis of academic teachings.  The changes to psychoanalysts and psychoanalysis require us to bring the academic modality to psychoanalysis not just fitting psychoanalysis in an academic department and hope for the best

Four major questions popup in that regard:   

 Where would psychoanalysis fit in academia?

As a component of the academic system who will be responsible for building and maintaining its syllabus?

What will be the orientation of the syllabus be: Humanities or psychotherapy?

How are we going to help in establishing psychoanalysis as an academic entity?  As an academic entity psychoanalysis will require a good dose of “scholarly” work, which there are very few of us who could deliver. Put as a question: Are we going to continue teaching the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality or are we going to show in scholarly way how Freud (and other thinkers) develop their intuitions into a comprehensive discovery?   

These are some things we should think well about. Approaching the subject with academicians requires attention to some issues we might not be aware of. One, which is of evident significance, is: are we moving psychoanalysis as it is now to academia or are we going to accept changing present psychoanalysis into an academic subject to be part of a larger filed of knowledge. No academic institution would accept to house the IPA model of training and learning of psychoanalysis as it stands now. The reason is that academic learning is something the student has to acquire not to emulate.

What I am stipulating here is not difficulties or obstacle in the way of moving psychoanalysis to academia; they are the issue that we should work out with the help of the academics to fix. If our problem is to improve that standers of psychotherapy so patients start coming back for therapy, we could do that without psychoanalysis. There are great programs in European universities for psychotherapy, But if we want to improve ‘psychoanalysis’ we should think of moving it to academia to become part of the human sciences.