The Unyielding Psychoanalysts'

Resistance to Change and its Advantages

 

I firmly believe that there is no psychoanalyst who would not admit that psychoanalysis is in bad shape, even if he would not agree on whether it is its condition as a profession or in its premises and theory (or both). Putting this in a different perspective: psychoanalysis is not what it was before, whether for people, thinkers, patients, practitioners, or aspiring young people. They will differ in their views about what to do with it; revise it, replace it, consider it past its competency to still exists, or analysts are not as competent as the old generations, and we should ameliorate its training. The variations and degrees of disagreements among present-day analysts- in regard to the solution for this quandary is unique in one implicit way. Any suggestion of making genuine and drastic changes in the way training takes place is opposed by the faculty in charge of training or learning, graduating, or has the authority to proffer its professional affiliation based on those changes. Any suggestion of changing the isolation of psychoanalysis and the absence of links between it and other fields of knowledge; any suggestion of making changes in those aspects is resisted implicitly and explicitly too. Analysts want to defend the past and not look to the future.

Being an old analyst who witnessed several major breakdowns in the analytic field, which happened after Adler\Freud and Freud\Young conflicts, I can say that psychoanalysis was never an agreed upon subject: Klein\Anna Freud, Lacan\ French society, Ego\object relations, Latin\Anglo, West\ East and more and still happening out of my present limited engagements. Therefore, it is sensible to say that psychoanalysis is not a tight field of knowledge; it is only a tight field of personal identities. There are psychoanalysts but there no real psychoanalysis.

Does psychoanalysis need to change and become the ‘main issue’ instead of the psychoanalysts with their vague identities? Not really. We are twelve thousand analysts in the entire world. But the resistance to change in the field relates to both issues: analysts do not want psychoanalysis to change as they also resist changing the way they are trained and acquired their cherished title of Psychoanalyst. The resistance to change by ending the IPA professional domination and moving psychoanalysis to academia will require ending the old fashion training of psychoanalysts in poorly supervised institutes.  It will also demand learning new kinds of theoretical fields and exposure to the richness of other fields of the humanities, i.e., taking psychoanalysis seriously, and also taking the discoveries in the other fields in the humanities equally seriously. Put in a clearer way; there is no place for apprenticeship in academic psychoanalysis because if psychoanalysis is not a new branch of the humanities it is a branch of one of the humanities that has more than one applied reach. Analysts resist change because of the ease with which they are trained now. The academic milieu put us in supervised training for a long time. It declares the end of the apprenticeship morality. The issue here is not the length of time required for a good psychoanalyst to become, but the sense that who and what you will be your making as we did with our basic degrees. This is making psychoanalysis more of a respectable academic subject not a side issue in an apprenticeship. We old-fashioned analysts find it difficult or self-injurious to admit the less desirable training we got. Analysts of today would resist the end of apprenticeship and the beginning of an academic psychoanalytic framework for both their sense of independence and false sense of superiority.

The Advantage of Resisting Change:

The resistance to giving up the old-fashioned psychoanalysis has its positive aspect. Psychoanalysis has changed just enough in some parts of the world (USA for example) to still call itself psychoanalysis, based on the classical psychoanalytic model. Although the changes that are made- once in a while- were happening quietly, they were cosmetic changes to allow giving an old system a new appearance. The new trend now is to move training centers that are still IPA to universities, and some are even giving that same training a university degree (name). This is not more than housing training at universities and just changing the ZIP CODE of IPA institute. The system of self-analysis, studying certain theoretical landmarks and supervision of few cases did not enable questioning the apprenticeship concept of learning. The result would be graduating a candidate when he satisfies one or more training analysts’ expectations, and not when he fulfils leanings judged by academic standers and by academicians who have their standers of acquiring objective knowledge.   

The resistance to the demand of progress and insisting on not giving up the old psychoanalysis or at least its training system will in the end go two ways. The end of any psychoanalysis of IPA nature due to its basic and obvious deficiencies, then starting to build a new academic psychoanalysis that is modeled differently (learn, understand, apply, be assessed, and judged by equals). So, the unyielding psychoanalyst will make us get rid of the IPA poor psychoanalysis and keep our minds open to the new human science of psychoanalysis. Th inevitable has to happen and psychoanalysis will find its way to the academic human sciences, will link with several other human sciences like psychology and sociology, and progress to reach the point that it will re-approach psychotherapy from a different point of view.

Academics in the humanities will introduce and integrate psychoanalysis in their programs when and if the are sure the tripartite system of training is disregarded. Psychoanalysis will gradually be accepted as a viable knowledge. Thus, the unrelenting psychoanalysts will help uproot the old-fashioned psychoanalysis and cause it to be ignored.  However, this progress will be founded on to basis:

A.   Reaching out or pulling in the suitable sources of knowledge regarding child development and similar and related topics from other branches of the humanities. Language and psychical functions will be part of the novelty in learning psychoanalysis.

B.    

 Psychopathology of the new fields of studies, which gives life to some neglected or misunderstood phenomenon like psychosomatics, will acquire new identities and the input of the Other (parents, social life, etc.) will be meaningful.

C.   Transference and narcissism will gain new their proper place in psychotherapy and a new system of psychopathology.

The advantage of the rigid and unexplainable insistence on keeping an already dead psychoanalysis is good for te future of psychoanalysis: weeding out the useless system and perspective allowing a new era to start.

 

B. Revisiting the Call for Psychoanalysis in Academia.

B. Academic Psychoanalysis VS.  Professional Psychotherapy:

I come now to the main point in my attempt at revitalize the need for taking psychoanalysis few steps ahead of its present decaying state and renewing its long-lost vitality. The idea of modernizing psychoanalysis-the dearest to us all- never got unhinged from the old modality of the tripart system of training. We spent few decades just improving what we already had, and still have, with some different additions to the old thing we inherited. But we did not even question the tripartite system of the IPA Training Centers. We did not question the apprenticeship model of learning or make the simple distinction between the vocabulary of psychoanalysis and its theory (ies) In a nutshell, instead of looking at a scientific mirror to know how we look we are holding our grand-fathers’ pictures  and thinking that we are their living reflections.

In many previous postings I was calling for moving psychoanalysis to academia. The reactions I got was negative but polite (except three). However, I did not notice or came across any..any sensible defense of the ongoing tripartite institutes of training. My point of view is that the psychoanalytic community could not envisage the idea that we should lose our revered psychoanalysis and replace it with something else that has emerged from our increasing experience over the years. The proof to that is the fantasy that old psychoanalysis is a school of psychotherapy and could or should be replaced with other schools, even if the ongoing training has actually proven ‘to be detrimental to our discipline’( no known criteria of efficacy). Moreover, training analysis created the function of the training analyst, which has proven to be a very problematic issue.

Training under the auspices of the IPA system created levels of in competencies that cannot be ignored but could not point out openly because they were in quasi  private learning facility. In other words, we are stuck with a psychoanalysis that we need to keep patching up, but never thought of replacing it with something manageable. I would not get into that issue and distract the attention from the core notion of academic psychoanalysis, but I will go directly to the problem of having the difficulty in psychoanalysis that could make it an educational topic.

Academic Psychoanalysis:

The psychoanalysis we learned had two features that would not have made it change into an academic topic: it did not have a defined subject-matter and did not have definable links with other branches of knowledge. What was psychoanalysis about, and was it a human science or a medical specialty? The seriousness of Freud and his followers were clearly supported by great minds and respectable professionals to dismiss it as not worthy of acknowledgment. Moreover, the pioneers, who were of varied professional inclinations, seemed to be honing on something that pulled the attention by Mesmer and the French school, which what is there behind consciousness and hypnotism. Psychanalysis did not have the seed of qualification for an academic subject but was right on the intriguing topic of the unconscious.

As it happened, only professional practitioners and no academics continued the walk toward the significant discoveries of psychoanalysis. It was unfortunate because the birth of the psychoanalytic language looked as if there is a theory behind the language and turning it into a profession pushed aside the need to bring it into an academic form. It should have made every practitioner of psychoanalysis look at the way of turning it into acknowledge that deserves an academic affiliation. I think that Laplanche is the first serious analyst who recognized its availability to academic status, but it will be a big disappointment if I was right and just him and few more in France who were that.

Now we should make an independent assessment of the nature of psychoanalysis to proceed with finding it a place in Academia: where does it belong? If is not by exclusion it is by inclusion part of the humanity. Although aspects of it pertain to psychosomatic functions, and basic neurological roots, they are amenable to study within the subject’s other aspects of psychological life. They are separate complete entities in their own right: conscious/unconscious, metal\affective. Moreover, when  we come to the basics and detailed program of studies, we will find out that the humanities have more to offer than medicine or other branches of knowledge. Thus psychoanalysis fits more in the humanities than in any other Academic field.    

But which area of the humanities; psychology, sociology, social work, linguistics, philosophy, or what?

This question requires answers from analysts of all those backgrounds.

Psychology and Psychoanalysis:

As a psychologist I believe that psychology could offer psychoanalysis a great deal of insight in the areas of development of mental functions, emotional maturity, and integration of the link(s) between verbal acquisition and meaning formation (essential in studying the unconscious). There are the potentials of making good research in the filed of object relations, evolution of identity, the formation of the intrapsychical and narcissistic qualities, etc.

It is possible to think about psychoanalysis in academia through two venues: adapting and adopting the coherent and systematic aspects of its basic findings and offering it as a program in departments of the humanities (with the hope for improving and expanding it), or creating something similar to the The International University of Psychoanalysis (Berlin) with the clear idea that psychotherapy is not psychoanalysis but psychoanalysis is psychotherapy.

Anyway we go-that is if we will go- end the training system of the IPA

 

ONE: Revisiting the Call for Psychoanalysis in Academia.

A.            The need for evaluating the Present System of Training:

After more than a century- since establishing the first training institute in Berlin- it is normal to ask if the Institute System of Training is worthwhile maintaining or we should think of -at least- evaluate it systematically. Personally, I did not come across any methodical assessment of the tripartite system of Seminars (theory and literature), Personal Analysis ( therapy and personal experience), and Supervision ( learning in vivo). It has to be underlined that this system was an ingenious one when it started a century ago.

However, it may have become now less effectiveness if not even counterproductive. Personal analysis has created factions of candidates and training analyst that are not always !!!!!.The literature to study is also badly influenced by the same psychodynamics with the added factor of creating ‘schools’ of thought that are-sometimes- ‘falsely’ considered advancement of the main doctrine. Fewer papers are still adding to the body of knowledge because we do not have yet a defined understanding of psychoanalysis itself to make an objective assessment. Supervision is poorly monitored-in the diverse branches of the institutes- and candidates are not in the position to differentiate between good analysis and bad (is intersubjective psychoanalysis good or bad psychoanalysis?!).

Although those flaws are the natural products of years and miles of independent training centers, insistence on keeping training the responsibility of the IPA is the malignancy.

The IPA is supposed to be a membership association of people who are trained as psychoanalysts. It defies logic that the IPA is also the only source of training that it will accept or its graduates as members. A membership association has the right to recognize the institutions that meet the criteria of training, which it accepts  its membership. But it should not be running the training institution that it will qualify for its membership. This is said again, the IPA could set up the criterion of training that qualifies for its membership OR offer the training and let the boards of professional standards accept or reject their teaching but doing away with both.

Ignoring this very simple fact created the impression that getting the    of the IPA gives the member a professional status, which it does not. The court case of 1989 was considered a psychoanalytic advancement. Yet now, with an unbiased understanding of the situation in the USA , the judgment in that case was harmful to psychoanalysis because it did not make psychoanalysis a specialty but only a membership of sorts. So, it gave the IPA an implicit acceptance of its contradictory functions.

Before I get to that, to my knowledge nonmedical professionals in Europe were well accepted in the local psychoanalytic association without court cases. The reason is that psychoanalysis in Europe  was always the arena of thinkers and not of different fields of practice like psychiatry and clinical psychology. Although psychoanalysts practice psychoanalysis under the name of their basic professional license (because psychoanalysis is not a profession) we gave ourselves a special status. This is dangerous,  because the IPA is a society of peers and not a professional society.

The Necessary Change in the Content of Learning\Training Psychoanalysis:

The tripartite training system we all go through to specify our distinction from other colleagues of our specialty is not  defined strictly distinguish  to make that distinction. Each specialty in mental health professions could train its members in psychoanalysis and initiates its own membership organization. Then, an international psychoanalytic association be formed of members of different backgrounds in psychoanalysis. Membership  in an IPA takes place later and independently. It goes without saying or with saying very little that moving psychoanalysis to Academia will force(one day) that solution because psychoanalysis will become the main concern not the membership in its association that is what is sought after.

It remains to ask what would be the content of such body of association?

My answer now is that I know what should not be, but not -yet- what it should be. People of the caliber of Laplanche in France, and few I know about but miss their names in other European centers are qualified to answer this question. It is not only their personal potentials that qualify them but also the general scientific atmosphere of culture fill in many gaps.

 

 

Revisiting the Call for Psychoanalysis in Academia.

The call for moving psychoanalysis to Academia  was a major basic divergence from the proper well-established tradition of the psychoanalytic movement, and its IPA system of ‘training institutes’. The call to end the system of apprenticeship in training, as I called iy in  June 2020 was met with a great deal of rejection and belittling, although I justified and supported it with logical discussions that were not responded to.

In the latest part of nineteenth century psychoanalysis was new a point of view regarding the human subject -therefore it was natural that it would be stated through a system of apprenticeship. Apprenticeship was the way to train young people in trades in the Middle Ages. The creation of ‘institutes’ to be the place where transmitting knowledge and experience of the forefathers of psychotherapy to a new generation, was the logical thing to do with psychoanalysis, only at the beginning. But when we come to the twenty first century we should know better: there is a great volume of knowledge and modifications, which transmitting it from generation to generation necessitated changing the system of qualifying the professional practitioners. The IPA did not pay attention to a subtle point. Psychoanalysis was not going to stop at improving itself as psychotherapy; it was destined to become more than psychotherapy. Yet, the issue at hand in that regard was not whether psychoanalysis is psychotherapy or much more. Whatever psychoanalysis was it was also a knowledge that has to be ‘acquired’ from experienced professors who are knowledgeable in the field and are also knowledgeable in related fields. All the attacks on the notions of adding to or replacing the traditional system of the institutes came from training well-established analysts who did not want to lose their distinctions to none analyst or none training analysts. Denying the impact of such change on the community of psychoanalysis had a direct impact on assessing the sustainability of the suggestion to remove training out of the apprentice model and moving it to the system of academic education.

My point of view:

My suggestion was to move training in psychoanalysis to academia for two reasons: academic thinking would introduce to psychoanalysis different and new aspects that would change it from merely a transmittable knowledge from generation to generation to become a knowledge that exits independently of a certain generation and remain available independently of some aspiring psychotherapists. Psychoanalysis should not remain an ownership of individuals but should be component of knowledge, i.e. a heritage. The second reason is keeping psychoanalysis as merely a transmittable experience would- sooner or later- lead to its deterioration (which is proven to be a correct prediction by what happened to it in its IPA isolation). Few supporters of the change in the USA were becoming cognizant of the serious efforts in Western Europe to add psychoanalysis to its curricula as  an academic item. This made them  more agreeable to consider the matter. The issue at this juncture is the relationship between the IPA with its training program and institutes and the different universities that offer training in psychoanalysis. Failing in writing something reasonable about that subject convinced me to ignore its complexities and just give my opinion without background support.

I think we are at a point now that is ‘at least’ suggesting making training and education in psychoanalysis an academic task. Thus, the IPA institutes should be phased out gradually, and the academic facilities to take over the job of maintaining and developing psychoanalysis. We are few decades behind in doing that but the resistance of the training analyst is waiting time.

However,

It was natural that introducing psychoanalysis to academia started in a shy mode. As much as my capability allowed me to know, this change in attitude had some basic flaws. In Western Europe the sensitivities regarding competing with the function of the IPA institutes was noticeable. The academic psychoanalysts  avoided making an academic degree equivalent to becoming a certifiable psychoanalyst. Those attempts proclaimed that the objective of academic psychoanalysis was to learn it but practicing it is the domain to the IPA system. The same was the case in the USA universities. After few decades of resistance there seem to  be a trend to create academic psychoanalysis that matches the IPA model. This is almost as giving IPA psychoanalysis a university address. However, in very hesitant and cautious  ways the universities acknowledged the existence of psychoanalysis as knowledge and not just a practice without the backing of psychoanalytic knowledge. Despite all that we still face a reluctance to ‘fully’ accepting psychoanalysis in academia.

The IPA is not an educational body. It was at the beginning when it was only an association of fellows of similar interests. Its institutes were an additional service to its members. That service, with time and domination of the training members, became Something Else.

Psychoanalysts, or the psychoanalyst who manage the old link between training in psychoanalysis and getting officially recognized as a psychoanalyst are losing the old powerful right acquired from the authority and status of the IPA. In simple and hesitant way, it could be said the IPA will soon be merely an association of differently and poorly trained psychoanalyst.  Few years ago there was a quasi-silent complaining of the status of  the “Training Analyst”. That complaining was  leading to nothing because the cause of creating that fictitious was the apprentice mode of training.  The problem and the cause  was not the status of training analyst but is apprenticeship as training: if knowledge is only available for ‘transmission’, then the training analyst is the ‘transmitter’. But if knowledge is to be ‘acquired’ then professors should be the source and the teachers. In the academic world there are Levels of Competence based on excellence and competence not on age and connections.

Psychoanalysts should not remain isolated in an antiquated system of learning, training, affiliations and ‘the mystique’ of psychoanalysis. If the IPA is so dear to us we dn not have to reinvented, just make it a professional association.