The Future of Psychoanalysis and Future Psychoanalysis

The Difference Between Evolution and Change

2\a. The Discovery of the Subject and the Psyche

 

Discovering the mind or better, noticing its existence, came from noting that our relationship with the world is basically and fundamentally interpretative. Either we individually interpret what we deal with or follow the interpretation of another. The separation between ‘mind’ and ‘objects’ in the act of interpretation brought the subject out of its hidden existence in dogma (I believe psychoanalysts could understand easily and better how the act of interpretation brings out the real subject and frees him from his own neurotic dogma). The evolution of human thinking and reaching the point where it could think of thinking itself is not just an advancement; it is a change that implies an evolution. The issue is not a matter of better interpretations and usage of the mind; it is a change in the subject matter of the interpretations (something analyst would understand better). The difference between that evolution and other changes is in the subject-matter  of thinking not thinking itself. Discovering the subject as the antithesis of the object triggered the philosophical movement of the Western world because noticing the gap between thinking and the thinker revealed that the most significant processes of interaction happen within that gap. Thus, came the first philosophical discovery of the complexity of the world of knowledge: is knowledge a given or acquired? How do we “know”? Is knowing innate and inherent in the mind, or an act we spontaneously do because we can do that? Another indirect finding about that point is the fact that we differ greatly in the thinking processes that leads to knowing. I am tempted to say that the birth of western philosophy came when Emanuel Kant proffered the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori. It is a distinction that we psychoanalysts very much need in order to understand the nature of the systemic unconscious. Analysts do not have to learn philosophy or read the great works of the great thinkers in western philosophy, but they have to remember that psychoanalysis was not an offshoot of medicine but of philosophy. With this modest adjustment of orientations, we gain two things: there are great modern thinker who added substantially to psychoanalysis (P. Ricoeur as an example). There are also great psychoanalysts who contributed to Western philosophy in remarkable ways -J. Lacan for example- who created philosophical sensitivities to matters that pertain to the leftist movement and thought.

Does an analyst who knows philosophy do psychoanalysis better than one who does not know it? No, but if he is a good analyst, he will perform a different kind of psychoanalysis that is more consistent with the aim of treating intrapsychical distortions.

Western philosophy has two revealing discoveries that are outstanding because of their unique effect on the rest of its revelations: the concept of interpretation and the concept of the subject (as a unique form of human existence). Those two concepts are the core concepts of psychoanalysis too. The formulation of those two concepts led to the identification of the psyche, in psychology first and then in psychoanalysis. The psyche was not originally differentiated from the mind or the subject. Even if that distinction was made earlier in the cultural medium of the West, the practicing analysts might not have paid attention to it, or probably they would have said we already know what psyche means. It is not true that we know what the psyche is, let alone its link with Mind and Subject.  The psyche is not something or an entity but a manifestation of something. It is a manifestation of intra-dynamics dealings of childhood experiences, wishes, thoughts of which some are not conscious, etc. The psyche is the subject in his ideational relation with the world around him, therefore the psyche is the agent that interprets the world (the other) to me the subject. To simplify matters to practicing psychoanalyst and avoid the reason to deny the centrality of philosophy in our knowledge and profession I say: I, my subjective pronoun, uses my mind to understand and then interpret what the Me the objective pronoun has to deal with. The outcome of this natural and continual process is the formation of a concept of the self, my psyche. My psyche is what I say to me about my world including my own consciousness.  

Discovering the psyche was part of a process of evolution in western thinking (mind-subject-psyche). Evolution is a law of existence; it is the force of change and improvement in all aspects of life. Psychoanalysis is an evolved aspect of philosophy which depicts it in features of change and improvement. Ignoring that puts psychoanalysis in a precarious place both epistemologically and professionally; it would be either a dead end or the cause of a dead end of the continuing discoveries in human nature. Third, if we exempt psychoanalysis from the process of evolution  we make the discoveries of the sixties the guidance of our work in the twenties of the following century. Kernberg work on the borderline personality disorder and the narcissistic personality were turning points in discovering more and better things about narcissism in general despite keeping it in sphere of the libido and its theory. Therefore, we should look at psychoanalysis as an evolving and changing knowledge. If it remains stagnant it should not be called psychoanalysis because it would the be a set of dogma (if we stop exploring our vocabulary and understanding its connotations better we will be practicing what Priests practice in the ritual of confession.   

My objective in this posting is to underline how the psyche discovered in Western culture and how the philosophical background of psychoanalysis makes a big difference between psychoanalysis as a method of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as a theory of the psyche that made it possible to introduce psychotherapy as one of its off shoots. The discovery of the psyche led to the birth of psychoanalysis. Without acknowledging that the philosophical discovery of the subject was critical in the discovery of the psyche our psychoanalysis would be exactly what it is now: just a practice without a theory of psychopathology. What it is, is much more important than something else (psychotherapy for instance). Understanding the psyche led to the birth of psychoanalysis because the psyche puts in focus the notion of interpretation and the duality of the interpreted and the interpreter.

I though of adding this paragraph to this post to allow me to move better to the next (just started to write).

Psychoanalysts and Philosophy:

This is an important topic because examining it closely reveals several important points that are usually ignored, because the important topic itself is rarely addressed. Psychoanalysts were mostly from the medical professions and the rest of them liked to be considered part of the majority. Mentioning philosophy in the psychoanalytic milieu was frowned at, specifically in the Anglo societies and institutes. Basically, because philosophy was not, and still is not, a popular subject in the regular Anglo school curricula (Canada, USA, and some other nationalities). Yet it is basic in Latin and other peoples’ schools. Thus, philosophy was a term that is badly misconceived. To the uninitiated it’s speculative thinking and arguable ‘useless’ topics of no consequence in a profession of particular aims of achieving tangible results, not just enjoyment of the abstract. Philosophy to the uninitiated is a pleasant way of thinking and talking for better thinking.  I hardly know any psychoanalytic center that brought out the most important characteristic of psychoanalysis which is the profession of dealing with the human subject (not his neuroses) and learning about human heritage. As a profession it is a unique method of exploring and discovering the obvious and the unobvious about the human subject. As human heritage it is the tail end of a long human chain of inclination to learn about ourselves: psychoanalysis is the latest connect in the chain of discovering the subject. That is why whether we are human scientists or physician we are all philosophers/psychoanalysts. I should think or be interested in the place the cogito in our theory of the unconscious.

A modest request in any training center is to spend a trimester studying what happened when thinkers like Kant showed us much to learned amount our minds (and our patients indirectly) thinking about ideas (idealism) instead of the objects of those ideas [when Freud thought about the dream instead of dreaming]. There is no medical thinking about guilt feelings but there is a lot of thinking about guilt as a human phenomenon. A better example is Kohut’s institution about ‘mirroring’, which was a breakthrough to the totally ignored duality of the subject in Ego Psychology. For lack of philosophical background, he used mirroring to explain banal issue in transference and identifications. Philosophy trains the analyst what and how to think about his discoveries about his patient while working with him about the repressed. Moreover, philosophical thinking is of unusual significance how the analyst Formulate and structures his interpretations and make sensible reconstruction of the material gathered over many sessions. Philosophy, as it was for the great thinkers, is the better and higher form of looking at and in the mundane. This is the difference philosophy makes in psychoanalysis.