The Lifeline for the Existence of Psychoanalysis

         After more than eighteen years of using this blog to express my views ‘freely’ about certain issues in psychoanalysis (despite the language barrier, and the disapproval and disagreements of many analysts) I believe it is time to stop and retire it. Thinking of a topic to end this blog came to my mind in a spontaneous way after days of useless internal debates. A later posting created some interest in Japan which reminded me of the 1981 International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Helsinki. In that meeting- and for the first time as much I know- a delegation of Japanese colleagues was visiting the meeting. They moved from presentation to the next as a group, which attracted attention and raised some ambivalent remarks. I did not see that group again in the next meetings I managed to attend- almost regularly- till 1999 in Chile, or the occasional meetings I attended later. The IPA meetings were occasions to know new analysts from other countries, see again friends from the old acquaintances, and to know about what is happening to psychoanalysis in those countries. Those meetings were a great opportunity to learn and think about analysis from different perspectives.

        The interest in my blog in Asia – although quantitatively not impressive – is interesting in terms of locations. There is even one reader from Korea. This observation made me ask-lately- what keeps psychoanalysis alive till now. It is not the same everywhere, and it has no identifiable theory or even a definable system of practice.  The vocabulary psychoanalysts use is arguable and not of clear denotations. Psychoanalysis- in all measures of validity- is quite easy to ignore. However, pragmatically speaking there is nothing that managed to replace ‘psychoanalysis’ in modern international cultural life. The question, thus, should be: what makes PSYCHOANLYSIS survive almost everywhere despite all those shortcomings? Is it actually surviving, or is it only its name that finds a place in most cultures? Psychoanalysis -with the exception of North America- evolved, academically is approved as a university specialty (not just tolerated or offered it as an elective). There is even a University of Psychoanalysis in Berlin. It became part of the cultural fabric of transformed societies. In some of those countries psychoanalysis is still respected as a psychotherapeutic method, and it is not in the same tight spot as it is in the USA and Canada. In North America psychoanalytic organizations are no longer making the strict puritanical distinction between psychoanalysis and any other psychotherapy for one reason I prefer not get into and another which is a serious dwindling of the people of classical analysis to patients.  

    In the twentieth century this took a new tur 

    But when psychoanalysis was invited and introduced to the USA's guardians of the heritage in 1909 those three lifelines were disconnected and only one replacement was offered to keep it alive: make it useful, expedient, of practical value; make psychoanalysis a profession. It happened and the outcome was slow but drastic: it separated psychoanalysis from its European origin: the Accordion was replaced by some Harmonicas. Putting all that aside we come to the real problem: The USA has One Forth (25%) of all the psychoanalysts in the world. England til1950, had analysts who were also thinker Like Bion, Glover and Klein!! They were psychoanalysts who were turning ordinary talk into ideas that could explain other ordinary talk and turn it into something of striking meaning. France was steaming with ideas that psychoanalysts along with some ingenious thinkers- who were not analysts- revived the philosophical robust vigor of the centry passed.

        In North America the case is different for psychoanalysis, and the efforts to keep it afloat is not very assuring. If I do not hold back my critical psychoanalytic thinking, I would say American Psychoanalysis uses the different efforts to keep it alive as a resistance to really knowing the reason for its decline. But if I just want to offer a suggestion without the courtesy of being a psychoanalyst myself, I suggest (advise) considering this point of view. Psychoanalysis was born and survived in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Europe was still the hub of Western culture and philosophy. It was also pregnant with the notion of the universality of human knowledge.  Although it had advanced cultures for many centuries it was able a little later in the nineteenth century to develop the idea that the human subject is still short of being understood and more work must be done to resume the search. The discoveries in the nature of consciousness represented to many a riddle that is waiting for an explanation. The philosophical findings and the great novels that were written by psychologically gifted novelists. Starting by Shakespear passing by many other European novelists and gaining from the great Russian writers proved that Western civilization and cultures got the foundational meaning of the essence (intrapsychic) of the person and his psychology. Before you jump to criticizing the idea, I want to clarify it: psychoanalysis must have a cultural life in its society to mean anything; without which it will be like classical music without the existence of classical literature, art of painting, architecture even good wine making. Psychoanalysis is PART of a general human movement. This is how Western culture, or any defined culture affects psychoanalysis: analysts are products of their culture and with no culture that envelops them and psychoanalysis they will be nothing but professional artisans.

This cultural Europe gave psychoanalysis three lifelines that North America did have to offer when psychoanalysis was introduced to America to stay.

The first lifeline was that analysis that came to Europeans extended its main idea of exploring the human subject to learn about his psychopathology too. However, psychoanalysis of psychopathology started from nonpathological issues (Dreams, parapraxes, and Jokes). It conceded that the human subject-not only the patients-is still a dilemma that invites exploring to extend the philosophical endeavors of the centuries passed.  The second lifeline was that psychoanalysis is not an isolated knowledge, but it is an item in a culture, i.e., it has things to say about psychosomatics as well as about falling in love and understanding what is not said in what is said.  The third line of life is its need to keep an eye and an ear on the flourishing evolution of the surrounding human sciences to stay in line with them, this notion came from the eagerness to apply psychoanalysis to those sciences. Psychoanalysis was born in an environment that had the basic ingredients for its survival and had a place ready for it to occupy.

    But when psychoanalysis was invited and introduced to the USA's guardians of the heritage in 1909 those three lifelines were disconnected and only one replacement was offered to keep it alive: make it useful, expedient, of practical value; make psychoanalysis a profession. It happened and the outcome was slow but drastic: it separated psychoanalysis from its European origin: the Accordion was replaced by some Harmonicas. Putting all that aside we come to the real problem: The USA has One Forth (25%) of all the psychoanalysts in the world. England til1950, had analysts who were also thinker Like Bion, Glover and Klein!! They were psychoanalysts who were turning ordinary talk into ideas that could explain other ordinary talk and turn it into something of striking meaning. France was steaming with ideas that psychoanalysts along with some ingenious thinkers- who were not analysts- revived the philosophical robust vigor of the centry passed.

     In every corner of Europe in the late nineteen century and early twentieth a cultural Kitchen was cooking the mental food that psychoanalysis provided its ingredients. Psychotherapy was one of the nonexciting daily breads.  Psychoanalysis turned the cultural, in its philosophical, artistic, literary, and indirectly orality into a completely different ethos.  The point to make here is that psychoanalysts in Europe considered themselves part of a whole and there was mutual acceptance between the practicing psychoanalyst and the thinkers of all fields of thinking. Psychoanalysis was continuously enriched by and enriching of its culture. 

        This is what is missing in psychoanalysis in North America. In north America psychoanalysis is a profession of psychotherapy, and the psychoanalysts either pretend or actually believe that psychoanalysis is not originally part of another theory. At this point we face the hidden problem of Narcissism and the psychoanalyst's identity. It is difficult to explain that to the narcissist because it hurts his narcissism, but I will try. The human subject with his qualities can only know himself from his reflections…money, success, lake of importance, failures, etc. Psychoanalysts are as narcissistic as lawyers, rickshaw boys, etc. They need mirrors and if there are none, they will invent one. But somehow, they created a fantasy mirror which doe does not reflect their true entity; it reflected uniqueness and superiority. Therefore, we tried and successfully managed to maintain that image for a few decades. But psychoanalysis is a theory of the human subject. Therefore, the thinkers, the intelligentsia, the academicians, and serious amateurs and enthusiastic were able to learn, use, and contribute to that psychoanalysis extremely valuable thought, and better quality. In Europe analysts welcomed those contributions. The mirror there reflected a different image than the psychotherapist. The story is that psychoanalysis in the world (except for North America) is vitalized, enriched, found its place in the intellectual world and Narcissus did not need a fantasy image anymore.

In North America there is no external input in their identity as psychotherapist. They respect only psychoanalysis that is a product of “psychoanalysis”. They would deny that, but I will ask them: would you consider Foucault and Sartre, Vygotsky, and Ortega y Gasset psychoanalysts when you notice that their work on psychoanalytic issues surpasses our work. Would psychoanalysis-or anything else-remain of value if it does not get revived by the minds of other interested thinkers? Could psychoanalysis live on recycling its works? I asked a colleague who knows the American mind better than me if there are American thinkers whose work should have been integrated in American psychoanalysis. He stated that there are no thinkers in the USA who have the same prestige that European thinkers have amongst people in general and analysts in particular. I have no reason to disbelieve him, but how could a nation of more than three hundred million with the caliber and number of the academic institutions it has not produce thinkers in the dozens. 

This could only happen if propel reject novel thinking. Analysts in North America are that kind of people: they lose the foundation of their narcissism if they allow none-analysts to talk and show something their clinical work does not show. Maybe, and just maybe, there are ether social factors that are enforcing that viscous narcissism to be maintained  and north American psychoanalysts are falling victims of them.