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