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.