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.

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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.