Separated Realities

Anyone familiar with the filed of psychiatry is also familiar with the notion that psychotic patients are detached from reality. Yet, anyone who worked with psychotic patients knows that they have their own realities, which is not totally chaotic or loosely put together; their realities are strongly convincing to them. It just isolates them from other realities behind the thick line of psychosis, a line that does not allow crossing it from both directions preventing exchanging ideas.

We (none psychotics) have our own personal realities too. It separates us from other realities with a thin line of subjectivity. It is thin because it could be crossed both ways: we allow others to cross it to test our reality and we cross it to test theirs. It goes without saying that all that happens in relative degrees of easiness. Despite the ease of that exchange we still maintain our own reality behind that thin line of subjectivity.

I have three reasons to mention this simplistic conception of the clashes of realities: The last mass murder in Las Vagus, Trumps speech in the UN a couple of weeks ago, and a subtle but important clinical matter.

It seems that the guy who did the shooting in Vegus did not show any signs of psychosis or history of serious cognitive pathology. He did not cross from his side of the line to our realities. However, his act of shooting has all the signs of psychosis of the schizophrenic (thought disorder). An act of that nature suggests a moment or a short period of psychotic breakdown. Could that what has happened? We are accustomed to measure the severity of mental disorder by the severity of the acts that result from them,  not by the severity of the psychical condition itself, which could lay dormant and naturally out the patient’s own judgment. Dormant sever psychoses is seldom explored now a day, because of many positive developments in psychiatric care and many negative changes in our social life. This “crazy” man was going through a breakdown of his line of reality for only few months before he acted upon it. It showed before his overt breakdown in the spree of buying guns and ammunitions beyond any reasonable proportions to just committing his heinous crime. The personal reality of this man jumped the line and came to our world with a bang. His reality replaced other realities by jumping over the psychotic barrier. .

Trumps speech in the UN was another example of crossing a thick line between his reality and the ‘world’s’ reality.  The reality of the situation was a gathering of presidents, prime ministers and rulers of nations, to give homage to the organization that represents the whole world…..not the  place or the time to declare or initiate any national policy. This REALITY did not penetrate the thick line of Trump’s reality, which is confidence in succeeding to manipulate any crowd as he does in Alabama and Tennessee. The barrier that kept the reality of the situation from reaching him is “narcissism”. We all know that there is a gap between I and Me and that there is a difference between saying I am so and so and being that so and so. In Trump’s case there is no gap between the two pronouns and possibly he has no sense of I-ness to build that gap. Thus, reality to him is not an issue to fret about because it is what he says what it is.

Clinically, we work to introduce the patient to that thin line between his subjective reality and other realities. In a way we suggest crossing that barrier. The neurotic’s psychical difficulty is in that regard is what we call phantasy (his reality is phantasmic). The patient’s phantasy is his identity; it is his Me. It is the identity which was gradually he built from his caregiver’s definition of him during growing up. Its phanatasmic quality stems from unconsciously assimilating what the caregivers thought of him and maybe what he should be. It is not phantasy because there was no realty to compare with in his early childhood. Keeping that in mind should make us carful in crossing the line of the patient’s reality and trying to bring it more closely to another- so called- more or better reality. It could be more harmful to lose this phantasmic reality in the process of analysing it as a phantasy. because all what we could achieve by doing so is suggesting leaving something cardinal in one’s identity without having something to replace it.

I remember three cases that baffled me at the time of working with them and I was able to understand few years after my work with them ended. Two of them left the analysis by their request (one very angry and disappointed) when I became more active in bringing their unconscious reality into focus. The third patient was showing signs of regression when I tried to do that and I had to terminate her analysis before I could have considered it properly terminated.

Final statement in that regard: the most difficult and important in psychoanalysis is dealing with material stemming from parental input especially of that input was accompanied by its verbal equivalent. This explains to me the Americans resistance to eliminating the second amendment which was to serve a temporary purpose when it was adopted, As with patients, doubting or giving up a recommendation by parental authority (the forefathers) creates the anxiety of loosing the nation’s identity, without that amendment the US will not be the same. In a previous mass killing in 2015 there was a TV encounter with a young mother surrounded by her three children who just bought a gun saying she has to protect herself and her kids. That was her reality that  neglected that she lives in a country of great police forces and an equally great judicial system. What the forefathers said becomes the ultimate and the name of the one and only reality.

Question: could we psychoanalysts insist on Eitingon’s model of training for the same reason.  

Hints about the theory of the subject:

After an interesting exchange with a colleague about the “theory of the subject” I replied to some of his queries in the following note, which he seemed to be a greable to publish it on my blog.

I believe we do not have the same meaning for the term “theory”. A theory, epistemologically speaking, is a statement (s) regarding a subject matter in which the theory provides a comprehensive understanding of the link between the structure and the function of that subject matter. I limit my usage of that definition to what I consider a theoretical aspect in psychoanalysis. Freud did not have a theory of psychoanalysis but had three theories about issues he dealt with in investigating the intrapsychic (dreams, sexuality and Trieb (instinct). For example, his theory of dreams goes that way: a dream’s structure is combining the day residue and a corresponding infantile situation in a visual image, in which the unpleasant condition that instigated the dream is changed to a better outcome (fulfilling a wish). The theory also includes an extensive elaboration of the manner the unpleasant instigator of the dream is transformed into the visual nature of the dream. The theory also shows the mechanisms that makes the function of the dream (wish fulfilment) reach its objective through that particular structure (the dream). I cannot see how psychoanalysis as a whole (not as theories of dreams and theories of sexuality and Trieben) could have a comprehensive theory without a comprehensive theory of the subject, as an ontological entity. Let us go to something concrete. Medicine in the middle ages was a practice without a theory; just very few procedures that were practiced, like bleeding patient of fever or infections. In needed a comprehensive theory of the subject (the person who gets sick) to be become a true profession of medicine. Basically, we still believe in some sort of modified theories of catharsis: make the patient get rid of his neuroses by bleeding out his unconscious as confession, without any idea of how revealing the repressed cures. We also aspire to provide the patient with what could replace his neuroses with new fresh psychical constructs. All that without a theory of the subject or even of cure (in first fifty years of psychoanalysis there was a deep conviction that we work according to a theory of pathology and of cure).

        Some physicians in the middle ages started to investigate the ‘intrafunctions’ of the human body and gradually built the theory of physiology in which each organ has a function that corresponds well with its structure. They also considered the whole body a physiologically dynamic functional entity. At the sametime, when the prohibition on anatomy was lifted anatomy complimented physiology with a better understanding of the anatomical nature of the organs. A better conception of modern medicine was thus born. We do not have such a comprehensive theory of the subject equivalent to physiology and anatomy in medicine. Therefore, we can only claim that our practice of psychoanalysis is ‘points of view’. What we have is modalities, assumptions of functions derived from each analyst’s understanding of their signification, and some idiosyncratic vocabularies. What we need is a theory of the subject as an ontological entity (homosapiens). The human subject is the only living entity that has an intrapsychical life, which has distinct manifestations that are absent even in the high primates. The intrapsychical life of the subject gives him the latent psychoneurotic nature., which other living entities are ‘deprive’ of.

       We practice with objectives and criteria of our creation and based on a belief that they are supported by the theory we adopt. This is belief is unsubstantiated  because what analysts used to have is Freud’s ever developing and changing theoretical configurations. After his death every “idealised” analyst had input in the heritage Freud left us. Freud’s importance is in being the first thinker who stipulated firmly that the human subject has an internal psychical life (in contrast with the banality of knowing that we have human reactions) and that intrapsychical life is affecting ALL our apparent human reactions. Better, Freud is the first thinker who pointed out that understanding human reactions will come from exploring the intrapsychical life of the subject. It is important to note that the insight that created psychoanalysis was the product of more than half a century of laborious works that were full of twists and turns. It was not a brilliant insight that hit Freud like Einstein’s first of two insights that engendered his two theories of relativity. It is important to underline this fact because Freud’s significance appears only when he is studied scholarly to comprehend the way of thinking that was prophylactic against the sudden and premature death of his endeavour. This is a better way of idealizing him. Therefore, we need to investigate and study the intrapsychical enough and better to derive from it what we could use to formulated the theory of the subject. This has to be a collective, collaborative work.

       My interest in the subject pulled my attention to four psychoanalytic Freudian discoveries in the intrapsychical: the wish and wishing, the duality of the I and the Me in self conception, sexuality (infantile and adult) and anxiety. I believe that those four intrapsychical could help other analyst in advancing the theory quickly.  Those four attributes distinguish the human subject from all other living entities including the higher primates. They are also of significant diagnostic value within the homosapiens entity. We can, or used to be able, to relate most of the subjects creative and pathological manifestation to the dynamics of those attributes. Psychoanalysis has to go through the same process that gave medicine its physiology and anatomy; and pharmacology too. Discovering (and or assimilating) the notion that the human subject as a dynamic system of psychological function that integrate to create the psychological human being we deal with, is an essential demand if we want to continue calling ourselves psychoanalysts. I can say that psychology, as an academic discipline has covered a great deal of that territory but got no help from psychoanalysis to compliment the cognitive discoveries in psychology. In other words, the theory of the subject, the physiology and anatomy of the psychological human being, needs to be constructed and seriously construed with an eye on what we still do not know about our intrapsychical life.      However, this is not possible to consider unless we agree on an answer to this question: Is psychoanalysis education or training?

       A couple of years ago I was expressing the idea that training needs a general overhaul and academia should be considered as a way to get to that point. The idea of moving psychoanalysis from the institute system of training to academia, was not well put together in my mind. Thanks to Dr. Arlyne Richards’s sharp mind, she put the problem in this format: education instead of training. What we cannot miss is the psychoanalysts’ preference of training over education. I do not need to delve into the conscious and the unconscious reasons for that preference. However, the main point in answering this question is that psychoanalysis was born as training, not out of choice but out of necessity. There was nothing much to consider the issue of education, and whatever was there to study was piecemeal knowledge. Moreover, Freud and his followers, that will one day require anything different from what they were doing.at that time. They were limited clinicians.  E. Roudinesco (2016) said:” Freud had thus invented a “discipline” not only impossible to integrate into the field of physical or natural science but into that of human sciences, an area that had been steadily expanding since the late nineteenth century. For scientist, psychoanalysis belonged to literature; for anthropologists and sociologists, it attested to the resurgence of the ancient mythologies; in philosophers’ eyes, it resembled a strange psychology that had sprung up both Romanticism and from Darwinianism, while psychologist saw in it as putting the vert principle of psychology in danger” (217). No blaming her but to us practicing psychoanalysts. We did not develop the theory of the subject in conjunction with the other blooming sciences and imprisoned ourselves in a narcissistic imaginary isolation. If and when we will configure a theory of the subject we would then provide the neurologist, the biologist, the geneticist, and maybe the pharmacologist with few hypothesises that could guide their pure scientific research in regard of the nature of the human subject, which distinguishes him from the rest of the rest of the living creatures. We could also do something similar with the human sciences.  One of the most important attributes of the human subject is hummer and laughter. It is more than just a differential characteristic of the human subject, it is also-in a way- a differential diagnostic feature. Moreover, it is a developmental yardstick in the evolution of the human infant. We could come up with many questions to aske the the academic psychologist (adult and child) about this feature and let him create a scientific theory about this human subject’s useful attribute, which is a new and rich method of expression (forget the Alamo, and remember Freud’s book on Jokes, 1905).There is a wealth of issues about the subject that has been dug out by the related human sciences that we, as they, needed to work together to create a more comprehensive theory of the human subject. The training system., especially in our institute system, is physically inadequate to regenerate psychoanalysts. Future psychoanalysts need few years of full time education by academics from the other branches of science. A more enlightened training program has to be developed to make psychoanalysis less restricted and not associated solely with the couch. It is expected that this method of preparing future scientific psychoanalysts will not be accepted by the current candidates of training.  Logically, psychoanalysis in its present state will die in two or three decades. However, I firmly believe that psychoanalysis is the genie that came our of Alaadeen’s  (Freud’s) lamp and no one could put it  back anymore. We will eventually wake up. 

I wrote this post yesterday as an email to a colleague. I had no intention to publish it. But what happened in Virginia (USA) today changed my mind.

The Crisis of not Being the Only One:

The historical event the US is going through is- in a very brief way- the following.

The USA was the least affected country by WWII. It came out of it with all her industrial and infrastructure bases intact, and relatively with the least loss in its manpower. She was Defacto, the leader of the Western world, and the only power in the world. She replaced the old European colonial countries in their holding everywhere.  She helped Europe to recover and helped in building the Iron Curtain around the USSR (as Churchill recommended). Only very lately (last 35 years) Europe recovered enough to not need the US as a leader anymore, but just as a partner. The world also advanced to the point that having a country as a leader of other counties was a hindrance to progress and to good political interrelations.

This change created a difficulty for the US politicians. Because of the wide spread influence of the USA in the world it entered several wars, far from the homeland, and lost them all. The politicians depended on claiming that they are “making” the US the greatest thing in the history of nations, to play with the emotions of their constituents, who were mislead most of the time (not in the Vietnam war). There was a clear link between failures abroad and some dissatisfaction internally and the increase of the politicians effort of agrondization to mislead. It was difficult to keep the constituents in check without misleading them by increasing the  rhetoric of the Greatest country in the world, the Greatest democracy in the world, the Greatest wisdom of its forefathers (which are all not true). All of Europe is democratic and have a very simple and practical system of election the US could be envious of. WE ANALYSTS know what a wave of self deception comes from, aims at, and leads to.

There comes Trump. He personalized the frustrated Uncle Sam for gradually loosing his status as the leader of the world, and someone who has a hurt  self image. Trump, litraly verbalized those feelings and promised to get the US her lost position as…….. He responded in an adolscents way: will punish you by not being friends again. He was hurt by Europe’s attitude  because he is so uneducated. He did not realize that the USA dragged Europe into several loosing wars and was no longer a wise leader to folow. The USA is  also t reluctant to admit the truth: there are four big political entities in the world: the USA, the European Union, China and Russia, (maybe will be joined by two more in a couple of decades; India and South America). The differences between those four do not mean much in modern times. However, what is even more painful in loosing the status of the leader of the world is the disappearance of the imaginary enemy that the US  will protect us all from. Maybe there was one big enemy to the western world some twenty years ago, but not now. Thus, the US had to invent one and promise to eventually  conquer and save the world from, (a target for projection).

Trump, personalizes the narcissistically hurt USA, and is supported by the millions who are also narcissisticallt hurt because they were always masters of others (Blacks, Chicanos, Immigrants, etc.). Our issue is not in agreeing on trump’s  diagnosis. Agreeing on a diagnosis of trump- that is if it is possible- aims at convincing ourselves that we have something to offer. What would that do but satify ourselves and give each other a pat on tha back? I supported .......’s view that being busy finding a diagnosis for Trump is a distraction…..from the narcissistic mortification, which  a large section of the country is experiencing. Though we cannot treat a country, at least we can put pressure on the politicians to stop exploiting people’s distress and address the main issue: what the USA has to do to live in a world of equals.  

Revising the theory:

The issue of the theory of psychoanalysis touches the narcissism of the psychoanalysts. We have never had a theory of psychoanalysis and still do not have one. Freud started with hypnosis to discover repression. Thus, he formulated the Cathartic theory of psychopathology. It came from a practice and to explain the purpose of that practice. He continued to discover in practice that the repressed is more complicated than mere hurtful events, so he created a theory based on what practice revealed: the frustration of a certain energy (Sexuality) which he called libido. Libido theory led to a concept of psychotherapy based on metapsychological understandings. Psychotherapy ‘a la metapsychology’ led to the structural conception of the subject. But once again it was not a viable theory because the unconscious was left behind in the topographic model. In all those shifts and turns psychoanalytic theory was an after thought; after an improvement in psychotherapy. Nevertheless,  psychoanalysts were content with having an ongoing process of improvising “psychoanalytic vocabulary”. It gave them a chance to create psychoanalytic templates that made them  look as if they have a theory and know it all.

 After Freud’s death analysts improvised theories based on their preferred practice sof psychotherapy (Ego, Relational, Interpersonal, Self (instead of ego), etc. Two things could be extracted from this fact: We never had a theory but a series of theories of psychoanalysis that reflects ideas derived from several psychotherapies. Secondly, they were not theories of psychoanalysis but theories of practicing psychoanalysis, which is a basic and serious distortion of the link between theories and practices. In respectable sciences theory comes first to engenders practice, not practice that generates theories.  No example required to prove this fundamental fact.     

If we do not have a theory of psychoanalysis what is to revise?

Freud was aspiring all his life (review his correspondence (since 1896) to have a theory of the human subject; better a theory of the normal. He succeeded in leaving us and abundance of ideas, insights, concepts, suggestions, etc., about the normal subject but stopped short of formulating a final theory of him. Thus, we need to revise our priorities in advancing psychoanalysis as  a theory of all that is related to the subject. We seriously need to rethink the issue of selecting, educating, training, and forming the psychoanalysts of the future. Fortunately, there will  still be a place for psychotherapy in that project. We have to revise our knowledge of the human subject because up till now it came from theories of psychopathology that emanated from practices of psychotherapy that were themselves  without a credible theoretical foundation. Imagine an Atlas of Anatomy based on the finding of surgens of all specialities and skills. We have to revise the belief that we are actually practicing a theory.

The issue of what would be kept of the old theories of psychotherapy and what should be removed and  added will never be settled properly unless a serious, honest, and a collective  agreement on doing away with the parochial archaic institute sytem of training. 

The Bad Psychoanalytic Societies

The problem with the badness of the psychoanalytic societies is the lack-even the absence- of a solution to their badness, because they are created and structured to be bad.  The psychoanalytic societies are descendants of the ‘secret committee’ of the 1912. That committee was meant to protect Freud from his adversaries. It was not formed for a good purpose. It was established by Jones to  maintain certain  secrets, and the secret selection of a group of privileged analysts, who would be entrusted with the protection of Freud, and protecting psychoanalysis from the deviations of the open  members of the societies. There is no place in this post to detail how this secret committee became the porotype of all our psychoanalytic societies. Anyhow, the psychoanalytic societies are not meant to be nice; on the contrary, they are supposed to be bad because they are protecting certain people and maintaining their privileged status secret, with the assumption that those are the guardians of the profession and the good analysts. Their positions in the organization are secure for life and they oversee the choice of the next generation politicians. We encounter this type of societies only in illegal organizations. Honestly, I do not mean by that to be sarcastic or mean. I just see blatant resemblance between certain illegal organizations and our organization, and I do not know of any professional society that runs the way the psychoanalytical societies are run.

As long as the psychoanalytic societies are overtly meant to protect psychoanalysis from the deviations of its members but actually and covertly protects the privileges of some members, psychoanalysis will be degraded and the internal relationships between the members will also deteriorate. The result of that is  neglecting the standards of professional communication, acrimonious groupings, and a tendency to splitting. I am sure that we all notice those three results in our past and current status of the psychoanalytic societies.

In my last year as undergraduate and early graduate studies (mid Fifties) I learned from my professors few things about the “controversies’ in London, and more about the split in Paris. But what left a lasting impression on me (because I witnessed and live an episode in it) was the Lacanian convulsions to separate with his group from the French Association when he felt strong enough to do that. When I moved to North America in the early seventies I read about and noticed from distance some of the shenanigans in the APsaA in the past, and followed more closely the crisis in the West coast organization when Bion was invited by some, and the Kohutian disappointment for missing the chance to be the president.

The psychoanalytic societies (almost everywhere in the world) are doing the same thing: the senior members who rule the society leave psychoanalysis to God to save it and they take care of their own especial privileges. The appeal to change has to go through them, therefore it is very illogical to expect any change. Added to that, the ordinary member does not have any notion about what has to be changed and to what. I know. I lasted eight years as a member of the training committee and four years as associate director of the institute. I witnessed  few things that are very difficult to change and are out of the reach of the members, even to the training analysts who are not fully cooperative in running matters.

 Arnold Richards asked this question in one of his last communications: Some feel that it would be better for candidates and institutes that the training analyst not be part of the political and organizational structure of institutes Is that practical? Is that possible?  Worth discussing?

I think it is worth raising but not worth discussing. First, who is going to separate the privileged from his privileges? Second, this is not possible because you cannot separate the privileged training analyst from the privilege to also be  a politician. Third, the present situation in the psychoanalytic societies, as was the old situation too, is a product of the system of training; it is engrained in the way the societies are formed. Better, the system of training is the safeguard against changing the status quo in the societies.

The Eitingon system of training was originally established to organize (control) the membership to the psychoanalytic society. Training was the means to streamline the wishers to join the society by creating a frame work for choosing those wishers based on what was available at the time to identify the serious from the not serious.  After decades of discussing, arguing, criticizing, complaining of our system of training there is an unhealthy refusal to see and acknowledge that the Eitingon system of training came out of the necessities of the period, and is not dictated by anything related to the purpose of training as such. What I mean is that training in Eitingon’s time was not instituted to train but to choose the proper members, while now it is presumed to be for training. Training was and still is a pretext to choose the candidates whom we consider suitable…to what!! I say that because:1) there is an obvious decline in the appeal for training which practically speaking ‘leave us no choice’, 2) the standards of candidates and graduates show signs of continual deterioration (my experience in Canada, and the calibre of discussion that we get on the net suggest that).

There nothing in the theory of psychoanalysis itself, or the demands put on the practicing psychoanalysts by the ethics of the profession that could explain the reason for opting to still adopt the Institute System of training and continue it from Eitingon’s time. Giving up that system is not sacrilegious. We should do what Eitingon himself did: build a training system that suit our time in regard to the psychoanalysis we have now, decide what means of training are available to us, what type of trainees we expect to get, and what do we expect of the new psychoanalysts.  Up till now we still keep the tripartite model in training future psychoanalysts: learn Freud’s work and some of his collaborators’, undergo a relatively good period of psychoanalysis for therapeutic or didactic purpose !!1, and practice clinical psychoanalysis under supervision of few senior analysts. The purpose of that system of training was and still is to train practitioners  psychotherapy.  All that is done in specialized institutes administered by senior analysts; which gives training the meaning that was once  there for training for a guild (trade).

 To go back to Richards query, I would say that the present system of institute training is backward, primitive, is unsuitable for psychoanalysis of today. Whatever patch work will be done to it, it will still graduate immature analysts whether professionally or emotionally. Because the bad psychoanalytic societies are creatures of bad institutes there is no chance that psychoanalysis will survive. The natural step forward is to start negotiating with universities to accept psychoanalysis as one of its programs with the idea that gradually we will phase out the institute system completely and get the graduates the recognition of the IPA. We have to do that quickly before psychoanalysis loses whatever is left of its credibility and the universities would not consider our appeal any more.    

Idealization and self dception

I previously published a post on idealization in regard to its deleterious effect on training and interrelations within the psychoanalytic organizations. The gest of my post was: idealization is a way to give one’s self greater value than it deserves by idealizing something or some person whom we are in relation with. Idealizing psychoanalysis is a way for analysts to feel bigger than themselves (and others). Idealizing a TA is an obvious symbiotic exploitation of superiority and identifying with the TA.  Idealizing the theory as it stands now, or our special training in our special institutes as something unattainable anywhere else is blatant efforts to idealize ourselves. There is a serious problem in that position: only us (less than 3500 members) believe in our superiority, because we relate to each other not as analysts to analysts but as mirrors to each other..  

Today’s quote (Arnold Richards) comes from Anna Freud: "Papa continually emphasizes how much remains unexplained. With the other psychoanalytic writers, everything is always so known and fixed." This is a waning to us all. Complicity to idealization of psychoanalysis and to everything related to it will kill it without effort from us to save it: Save what, psychoanalysis! Psychoanalysis is perfect and it is our saviour! This kind of narcissism survives on self deception. .Did you notice that when we agree with an opinion on the open line we routinely praise the college and when we differ we remind ourselves of the magnificence and  insignificance of the disagreement.   

About the Postings on the Theory of the Human Subject.

It was my ambition, in the last few years and since publishing my book on future psychoanalysis in 2015, to show that psychoanalysis did not just create a theory of psychopathology and psychotherapy but was essentially a theory of the human subject. I tried lately to write a short exposition on the issue of the human subject and publish it in parts in my blog. After a short time, I realized that this task requires the efforts of a group of analysts who realize the significance of deducing a theory of the human subject from the literature of psychoanalysis. Moreover, I had a difficulty in putting my ideas in a concise way. There were many side ideas that kept diverting my attention. They did not belong in a blog because they were more evolved.  They were important enough and have clear intrinsic relationship to the contemporary unsatisfactory condition of psychoanalysis to go over them lightly. They prove that  the absence of a theory of the human subject, if not a cause for the deterioration of contemporary psychoanalysis, at least the existence of such theory is vital in reviving psychoanalysis. What I mean is that neglecting the need for a theory of the human subject that compliments the clinical point of view  was the reason or the cause of the present unsatisfactory condition of clinical psychoanalysis and its loss of credibility.

This is talk but no action. The action, in my case, is to ‘put my pen where my mouth is’. This is what I decided to do: write a book or a booklet on the theory of the human subject, instead of tinkering with a posting on the subject. I have an altruistic reason for taking this decision. Psychoanalysts acknowledge the existence of a crisis that is unavoidably going to end psychoanalysis in a couple of decades. They have no alternative, and maybe no better thing to do but to let it die. However, the psychoanalysis that they are unable to save is not “psychoanalysis”. The example to this paradox could come from politics. Communism died a couple of decades ago when the Berlin wall was demolished, Marxism did not die but even proved to be the only theory that could explain the collapse of communism. Marxism has always considered communism a stage in the evolution of history, thus it should reach the point when it had to collapse. Psychoanalysis (Freudianism) emphasizes the significance of development and maturity as its product. After decades of justified idealization of Freud followed by unjustified adulation of some of his companions and followers we should have matured enough and started to create our own psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a theory of the subject who is not anymore the Viennese Herr. I hope that in few moths I will be able to fined a publisher to publish my booklet on the theory of humans subject.

Two questions I think could clarify the subject of this theory. Does psychoanalysis have anything to say about “me” who is not neurotic or psychotic in any shape, form, or degree!!!? If it does not, is that because it has nothing nice to say about people?   

I intended to publish the second and last part of my posting on Trump this weekend. I think it is much better to let the events that started today to do the finishing.
 
Before I leave the posting I want to mention an improvised diagnosis made by a bright psychiatry resident at the weekly case presentation at Ste. Mary's hospital in Montreal few decades ago: Counter phobic character disorder....It might be useful following what is going to happen in the next few  weeks or months.