A Psychoanalytic Quandary

Academia or not academia

I am back to my blog because either I am misunderstood  or misrepresented. My files show that I introduced my view about training in psychoanalysis in mid-2018. I started carefully because  I was. critical of my own training. As a training analyst I was also seeing the ineffectiveness of the IPA apprenticeship system of qualifying candidates to work independently. I was leaning more toward the academic model of learning but was convinced without doubt that psychoanalysis should not be. just part of a university program (like psychology or sociology) but has to be a program in its own right. At the same time, when  the weaknesses of the apprenticeship model of training were on my mind a new issue started to  catch the attention of the American Psychoanalytic Association: the issue was the training analyst. That issue took most of the attention in the psychoanalytic communities (in north America) and the issue of the quality of training took a back seat The most interesting thing about which is of greater importance to occupy the center of attention was this: apprenticeship requires if not demands and depends on the concept of the trainer. Apprenticeship  is founded on the function of the “master crafts man” who has at the end has to qualify, certify, and license  the trainee.[this is the history of the trade unions in Europe  since the fourteenth century]  the issue of of the training analysts is still a problem in psychoanalysis, because we do not want to concede that the real problem is apprenticeship itself.

My call for moving psychoanalysis and its requirement to academia was met with serious and hard rebukes. Only in the last eighteen months that the notion of moving analysis to academia has been accepted and now has advocates who few months ago were against changing anything in the training of psychoanalysts. It is annoying that some of the old adversaries to idea of moving psychoanalysis to academia came out now to claimed being advocates of that opinion from the beginning. It is more annoying to assert that claim  without having an idea of how it could be done This is more than annoying (what??).The best of them  did not come up with any suggestions more than just moving the address from an IPA institute to the nearest university agreeable to accepting psychoanalysis in its programs.

 No. I did not mean in my persistence since mid-2018  to ‘house’ psychoanalysis in  the nearest buildings of academia: I meant  change psychoanalysis from some bizarre kind of knowledge( I will argue that a little later).into an academic branch of knowledge: Do not move psychoanalysis to academia, move academia to psychoanalysis.

 Degradation of Psychoanalysis:

If in learning LAW you get it that not all are equal in front of the law it is better then not to study the laws that differentiate between people on other bases than their equal rights. Similarly, in psychoanalysis, if transference manifestations are ignored, interfered with as in the new trends of intersubjectivity  or  did not emphasize  that transference is the material that will eventually be reconstructed  to effect the desirable changes in the patient, you will be better off to not waist time  training in psychoanalysis. Better is to seek another modality of psychotherapy. Transference is a natural outcome the phenomenon of the neutrality of the psychoanalyst.  Therefore, the lack of ability to find in the patient’s free speech(not free association) the early features of the formation of his intrapsychic structures of his psychopathology, means that  no psychoanalytic work existed in that case. Transference is the material of psychoanalyzing and restructuring which are the basis of therapeutic work. This point should be thoroughly highlighted because the main issue is not collecting some old concepts and terminology and call that new psychoanalysis. Moving psychoanalysis to academia is the first step in a long trip towards a new psychoanalysis.

The idea of moving analysis to academia is now accepted in Europe and probably in other places in the world. However, what I know about that is limited and could not be generalize for lack of details. Nonetheless, logically and from the little I know and I am sure that academia will provide a better environment for psychoanalysis  to progress  and undergo the heathy process of benefiting from the input of the other specialties. My confidence in this point of view comes from the fact that psychoanalysis evolved beyond the  limited boundaries of its original field of  competence, which was psychotherapy of neurotics, and ineffective attempts at dealing with a wider range of psychopathology  nineteen fifties and sixties As a matter of fact, and  of interest, the widening scope of psychoanalysis came from the academic description and formulations of psychoanalytic  ideas and hypothetical constructions of psychodynamics.The notions of the psychosomatics , psychoses, and personality disorders are  academic reformulations base on core psychoanalytic concept like libido and cathexes. In better terms academia did to psychoanalysis more than what it gained from it.

Academia and Proper Psychoanalysis:

As a psychoanalyst my work is to find within the patient (or whetever is the subject matter of my work)something that is implied  within what is consciously or intentionally expressed. I will get back  to psychopathology and psychotherapy soI might get to the point more clearly.

The patient talks about issues that are related to HIS self. Within what he says I hear what was not said but the patient was unconscious of talking about them. He he said them withing his normal speech. The unconscious in this case is related to older order of things or his  which exist now as part of the intrapsychical component of his-self. The next part of my job is to understand that unconscious material. This comes from two sources: the way the patient treats me (transference) and the verbal way he expresses himself (his linguistic peculiarities). The significance of paying attention to those aspect of free speech is that  each patient uses LANGUAGE in a way that could reveal the period and the circumstances when and what happened in his childhood to contribute to his intrapsychical entity[ I am hungry for love OR. I angry because whatever I give him or do for him is not enough. Language is  the best but also the only key to understanding the unconscious. I mean here by language the is. The cognitive and metal link between humans. I give an example of that from a piece of Freud’s work  In Volume 10 of the S.E. and on page 200, Freud interprets a dream by his famous patient the Rat man. The image the dream expresses:SAYS”: I would marry her for her money not for her ‘beaux yeux”.

We need to learn the intricacies of language. This is not available in the IPA system of training and requires the expertise of a specialized academics to teach us.

The unconscious material is always or could always be noticed  in the patient’s usage of metaphorical and metonymical  expression of ideas The most important and neglected aspect in learning psychoanalysis is that we do not learn from our parents or adults; how to speak. or  how to use it to express ourselves. We learn from them how to express ourselves and then get to develop our own way of talking. It is very easy to understand this point by acknowledging that we usually talk like one or more of our care takers. The significance of this observation is revealing the importance of the unconscious linguistic modes we learn to say things that are unconscious to us.This too, is not available in the IPA system of training and requires the expertise of a specialized academic.

We come then to learning about childhood where the origins of the linguistic phenomena start. It is possible to give transference a verbal connotation( the patient treats me as distant unapproachable father, or as a demanding mother, etc. This is usually where countertransference seeps in with little attention from the analysts. However, what I want to underline her is the importance to learn much and good(very good conception of childhood) It is the the key to seeing what transference bringing to the analysis. Learning about childhood in psychoanalysis is different- in an important rom just knowing simple facts such as when should toilet training should begin. What we need to learn about childhood in the learning of psychoanalysis is the complexities of each stage in development. What is meant by that looking at several things that happen together at a certain period of growing up. Eric t Erikson’s child psychology combines the biological demands of the stage of the child’s development, the structuring of his identity, the object relationship, the mechanism of defense, in a stage that he gives a specific significance like the anal phase. For instance, learning child psychology this way put the transference relationship with the analyst in a context…in a meaningful  psychoanalytic perspective. That is not available in the IPA system of training.

All that has to be done by academics in academia We need to learn how to deduce from the style of speech the patient uses the point of fixation, and the kind relations between tween the conscious and the unconscious to help the patient to put himself together  This too could help us to how to formulate our interpretations  (conceptually and linguistically).This  needs few years of fulltime dedications to learn from academicians, thinkers, and psychoanalytic practitioners are familiar with the distinctive nature of the psychoanalytic way of thinking.

Training by apprenticeship, the part-time and short period dedicated to training  the absence of clear dedicated literature to issue of training, the absence of a psychoanalytic theory, the loose used vocabulary, etc., requires honest work to move  psychoanalysis to academic learning. It is expected that in the best case it will take few years of  develop academic psychoanalysis but it should be be doen.