Letting Go of an Old Belief:

Psychoanalysis is what we learn and train in IPA and IPA like institutes. Outside that set up we will likely encounter deviations from ‘true’ psychoanalysis.

One Consciousness not two:

I just received a personal email from a senior and very insightful colleague regarding the interest of young psychologist-in academia- in psychoanalysis. My colleague expressed the wish to be excluded from any possible open discussion of that matter on the member’s listserv. Therefore, I will mention two of his new and valuable ideas without mentioning his name.

He stated that the interest of young psychologists in psychoanalysis is due to the on-going deterioration of the condition of teaching psychology (post cognitive psychology) in departments of psychology. I do not have first hand knowledge of that but from past experience I can see the correctness and weight of such idea.  The second is the best characterization I encountered of the psychoanalysis we presently train young analysis in (I wish to get the sentence and the permission to publish it). In summary, psychologists are studying a dying science because there is nothing that could be new or different in studying psychological cognitive functions now (memory, conflict solving, etc.) than what was there to study twenty years ago. His description of contemporary psychoanalysis underlines the troubling issue of the use and abuse of the vocabulary of “psychoanalytic” observation as its theoretical foundation. His characterization of psychoanalysis and the observation about the psychology of conscious function is the best understating of the need of psychology for learning about the intrapsychical dynamics, and psychoanalysts’ need to change the substance and the method of learning psychoanalysis. Psychologists have to open up their science to the unconscious processes that shapes the intrapsychical dynamics, and analysts have to know that personal analysis was and still is the only way to experience how psychoanalysis is done, therefore make clear the link between what is done in analyzing and what is taught about it. There is no literature or scientific material that could teach how analysis is clinically done. This ‘fact’ should make learning and training in  psychoanalysis centered on what we work on changing in therapy, and how its done through psychoanalysis not via correcting cognitive failings.

      The significance of my colleague’s two remarks, which unfortunately will not be properly presented by me, is in making us see that psychology without learning about the unconscious dynamics is a dead science. He also makes it clear that psychoanalysts without a clear and good definition of consciousness will be without a subject matter. The human subject deals with his psychological life in two ways at the same time:  one conscious and the other is unconscious. The issue is that we deal with our life both consciously and unconsciously at the same time.  There is only one consciousness in each human subject, but aspects of that consciousness are not always within the fields of the subject’s awareness. There is no consciousness without its own unconscious counterpart.  The unconscious is one of the different conditions in consciousness. I need to emphasize a point: unconsciousness does not suddenly jump into the patient or the analyst consciousness but reveals itself through, within, or by the distortion it creates in consciousness.

Therefore, we should approach the new wave of interest in psychoanalysis as the natural and healthy awareness of psychologists to the fact that any cognitive, emotional, mental event is subject to the influence and the contribution of unconscious aspects that we are unaware of, and we need to uncover to make our consciousness meaningful. Most importantly, we should consider the psychologists recent interest in psychoanalysis not an invitation to participate in the academic world of psychology, but a call for unifying the conscious\unconscious duality in one psychology that envelops the subjects’ psychological life (from sickness to ingeniousness). We should work on modifying our conception of the unconscious to meet the psychologist expected effort to acknowledge their need to advance their understanding of the human subject. Psychologists still have some good work to do in regard of the cognitive, emotional and mental phenomena that require different understanding with adding the unconscious as vital constituent of psychologic life.

Accepting that there is only one consciousness that in some conditions escapes attention is the way to free psychoanalysis from its isolation from any meaningful status. The notion of one consciousness that encompasses several dualities will make the idea of uniting psychology and psychoanalysis a logical and a natural thing. However, this notion is a big pill for psychoanalysts-medical and none medical- to swallow. Psychoanalysis has been a practice that several professions could seek training in it.  The creation of the new science of psychoanalysis will reverse this situation: instead of different professions getting training in psychoanalysis, psychoanalysis will create different professions that need solid basis in psychoanalysis.

It is useful and very important to note that the push to change psychology to become more than a science of the conscious psychological functions, and psychoanalysis’s to be more than a discipline of psychotherapy, happened in a natural way: unconsciously. It is not happening because of individual calls but as the outcome a need for change. It is rewarding to wait for normal change get rid of the declining old.