Psychoanalysis:   The Difficult Link Between Theory and Practice.

This is not the regular argument regarding causes and effects, or the link between learning and applying what is learned. It is more a discussion  of something unique about the psychoanalytic theory and its practice.

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         Psychoanalysis-in one way-is similar to all other professions that are conceived as a practice of a theory, or the application of an stablished knowledge. Yet, there is something particular about psychoanalysis which requires a different kind of scrutiny. After Messmer's introduced Hypnotism (magnetism) to the Europeans- of which some were physicians- the notion of a rich world of psychic life just opened the minds of the medical professionals. They accept the notion of experimenting with that phenomenon. The Salpetraire  Hospital in Paris proved that some patients seem to have a different layer of consciousness behind their sick one, parallel but different. Bernheim in Salzburg too ventured to deal with the consciousness that is revealed by hypnotism.  So, in the late eighteen hundreds, and in France more than any other part of Europ, the psychical was given birth  in the form of its coexistence in awareness and unawareness together. It started and argument: witch consciousness instigates the other, and how that due evolves and coexists in all humans and not only patients. We can imagine now what kind of chaotic atmosphere there was at the time. Freud, who was trying psychiatry at the time for a profession went to France (maybe three times) to learn more about the UNCOSNCIOUS.

What I want to emphasize is that Freude's discovery of psychoanalysis was unintentional, but was also still unique. He realized that hypnosis removes-and just removes- a barrier between two psychical entities. This was the basic realization that Freud faced and what remained the core of psychoanalysis whether as a profession or a theory of the subject. In better terms Freud identified the core of the human subject and was not distracted by the details of either consciousness or the unconscious. He, in a stroke of genius, honed in his intellect on the force that separates the two coexisting consciousness. Let us not forget Freude's early great publications like The Interpretation of Dreams, Psychopathology of Everyday Life, the Book on Jokes, and crowning all that by The Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. All those works were about the barrier that creates the psychological phenomena in many aspects of our human life and are also developmental, i.e., we are born with them but they evolve and mature over the childhood years. 

        The early beginnings of psychoanalysis are mainly unspecific and could be confusing for the historian. But- as an example-Freud did not trey to interpret dreams but wanted to know what structures dreams, therefore dreams could be interpreted, i.e be referred to the dreamer. Better to say: Freud had his hand on the door knob that opened the door to the notion of psychoanalyzing; the knob was the human SUBJECT. His sense that the psyche is the way to understand the subject was the breakthrough which is a compound of two separate psychical entities: consciousness and whatever is unconscious. This is what evolved into psychoanalysis: listening to the patient's speech (symptoms, dreams acting out, etc.) and finding out what was not said but gave the clue to its unconsciousness presence in the person's consciousness.

                Now we can go back to the question: Is analysis a practice of a theory or a theory that promised a practice.

            The answer, which needs further elaboration is: psychoanalysis is neither of the two because any attempt at separating the two constituents results in two distinctly different understanding of psychoanalysis. Interpreting a dream separately from the dreamer (Alexander's Dream for instance) says something about the dream, but interpreting a dream in the process of therapy would tell us  something about the dreamer. In psychoanalysis we encounter the two distinct entities of the object (the work of art, the human act separate from subject, slips of the tong, etc.,etc..) and the subject, the patient ,the politician, Better: analyzing the subject's product or his the art during his therapeutic process is different from the same thing happening outside therapy! Interpreting the subject's associations in attempt to bring his psyche into focus is not the same as interpreting  psychical product to get to his psyche. We can analyze the patient and his art work and get two different results. We can understand the human subject when being a patient and understand his psychological in his relations with peers. But, up till now we -psychoanalysts- believe that we are should be using the same psychoanalysis. Therefore, we think or should think, that we are applying the same theory in both cases. In clearer words we believe that we have a theory that could be applied in any field of human endeavors. we should go back to the main Freudian dis discovery.  Messmer revealed the existence of a hidden or disguised aspect of the subject. the French psychiatrists formulated that discovery as a duality with the  human mind. Working on the link within that duality Freud discovered that that duality is not just in psychopathology but duality is the nature of everything related to the human subject, and in all his endeavors. He also managed to formulate  a theory of  the link (s)  between those dualities. THUS, the dual nature of the psyche was made a duality between theory and practice, when the psychotherapy was the only field of applying the notion of duality. 

            In the early sixties of the last century I was assigned- as anew graduate of the first department of psychology in the middle east- to the position of assistant researchers in anew research institute. I was to work on the problem of prostitution as a step toward legalizing it in conservative religious society,      Egypt. At that time  lady in Paris called Maries Choies -published a book on the psychoanalysis of prostitution. I was struck by her attempt to squeeze psychoanalysis in a socio-economic phenomenon. I even tried myself to do something similar with (Blood Feud in Upper Egypt) and reached the same conclusion: psychosocial phenomena have their own meaning, and psychoanalysis is viable in individual cases only. It became more obvious that the theory of psychoanalysis is about the nature of the subject who in a way unique because it shows what the sociologist misses, and generalizing from studying him is unacceptable unless we try to reverse the sequence of action: from the general to the individual (which will also prove futile). Thus, psychoanalysis is not a theory that has a practice but a theory of the human condition and could suggest approaches toward therapy. I felt satisfied that I can  understand psychopathology in the way that would make treating it fits the Freudian notions of the unconscious (see Freuds paper on the Unconscious (

            We, or just some of us, take notice of those duality(ties) of the subject. What we should-the least-do is to seriously consider an academic approach to studying the dualities in the human psyche. The study of both the brain functions that are behind the role of language in making the psyche be expressed linguistically is an issue that belongs to several academic fields. We need to rid ourselves from the notion of improving psychoanalysis and venture in speculating about what is feasibly new. It cannot be improved but it could and should give birth to serious academic works on language and the dualities of the subject. It is not theory or practice; it is language and the duality of the subject. 

This aspiration is stemming from the lake of a link between the subject and the human phenomena. Therefore, psychoanalysis is not a theory that could become a practce, or a theory that we could derive from it a practice. It is a branch of epistemology that is ready to tacle the subject of the dual existence of the human subject.