Is There a Theory of psychoanalysis:

There is an Arabic saying that goes: There is no good in you if you do not say it (the truth), and there is no good in us if we do not listen.

This post is about truth that I am sure of its validity, as I am also very sure of its failure to interest- if not even be disregarded- by most analysts (listeners). The reason is that it is not limited to one definite aspect of psychoanalysis that psychoanalyst could differ about in degrees; it is regarding the very essence of what we all make out of psychoanalysis and the nature of our profession. To make it more concise I will put the issue of this posting in the form of a question: is what we have now in our literature and call the theory (ies) of psychoanalysis- whatever we agree or disagree with it- has to do with the subject matter of analysis(the human subject), or is it about the different and varied stances we take from  psychoanalysing the subject? The prototype answer is that we have ‘knowledge’ about the subject, and we also learn the techniques of applying it in his treatment, and those two aspects combined become psychoanalysis, whatever the knowledge or the training are. We should not ignore or deny that we chose our answer to this particular question depending on the overt or covert intention of the person asking: is he critical or supportive of contemporary psychoanalysis. I am aware of most the variations of answers to this question because we actually do not have a definite or a quasi-definite distinction between what we call theory and practice.

The question still remains unanswered: which is psychoanalysis and which is just the application of psychoanalysis. We used to have a simple formula for practicing psychoanalysis: free association, transference interpretation, reconstruction. But since Empathy was introduced as a factor in therapy, and the distinction between intrapsychical versus interpersonal distinguished three types of psychoanalysis we have become the proud owners of a muddled field of psychoanalysis. This muddled situation is rooted in the origin of psychoanalysis. Freud’s valiant endeavour to pursue the French finding of the splitting or the duality of consciousness he created through practicing hypnosis a unique situation which still effects psychoanalysis.  He was making his own discoveries that were very original, and there were no words to describe or define. He had to improvise a new vocabulary for his findings using everyday language. He was not yet aware or concerned about the distinction between theory and practice, so his vocabulary derived from daily speech, was supposed to signify his conception of what he was noticing clinically. For instance, terms like repressed or conversion bordered the line between the common and the technical. Thus, the vocabulary used in building our literature makes the distinction between the knowledge of the subject matter of analysis and the expertise about practicing this knowledge in psychotherapy very difficult attain (Latin solved the problem for medicine).

Freud opened the ‘Pandora’s box’ and realised that every discovery leads to another or to a more sophisticated meaning of the term. He was not really equipped to improvise a vocabulary (and a semi-language) because of his fast understanding of his findings (the repressed is not repressed but disguised within consciousness). Projection is a phenomenon (mechanism) of identifying someone by certain qualities which analytic work reveals their unconscious pressure on the subject’s own identity. In other words, the most of what we call ‘theory’ is merely common expression of the psychoanalytic findings. Thus, the unexperienced analyst would keep revealing to the patient his projective identification to no avail. Even if the patient finally could notice the analyst’s finding no analysis, still no analysis has been done unless the formation of projection is revealed is revealed to the patient, and mostly through its working within the transference. The reason for that distinction is that applying a descriptive concept as an explanatory term would not dislodge the symptom from repetition compulsion. This process is neither a theory nor a technique: it is the outcome of work of interpreting the patient’s speech to reveal to the patient his objection to the presence of those projected qualities in himself.

In the period after 1915 Freud started to revise his findings (concepts) shedding off old fixed links between signifiers and signified in the vocabulary he improvised. Just as an example: the wrongly named “papers on metapsychology” revised the concept of repression completely (primary and proper), He also eliminated totally any gesture that we deal with drives (instincts) and made Trieb a flexible base of psychical endeavours. He introduced the real meaning of ‘unconscious’ by distinguishing the systemic unconscious as the real unconscious, This dissection made possible for him to talk latter about the non repressed unconscious.

Our question now has to be: what is the nature of the psychoanalytic vocabulary? Is it descriptive or explanatory? Freud’s earlier works were justifiably descriptive. His insights, intuitions, and his genius made him turn the descriptive terms into an explanatory legacy of the human subject. His explanatory concept and remarks were getting more and more about the subject as individual and person, and also in his other capacities. There was no theory of practice because the subject matter of practice is specific to the subject (each patient). In other words: if we know the nature of the human subject (the way he unconsciously creates his identity) and we also know how the conscious material he delivers is weaved with that unconscious that creates his identity we could then make the act of interpreting a practice of psychotherapy.

 we should not rush to consider the explanatory terms, like identification or negation, terms of theoretical importance. A psychoanalytic theory has to be in regard to the subject matter, which is the subject (the patient). The rest of the psychoanalytic terminology looks to most analysts as a theory of practice when it is merely issues, we encounter when we do proper analysis of the subject. Every psychoanalytic session is a repetition of the discovery of psychoanalysis itself.  We start with a subject alienated in his false unconscious identity (the pre-psychoanalysis dogma about the human subject), and we gradually do what Freud did; listen, interpret and gradually reconstruct the patient story (give the details a comprehensive framework (a theory). We learn more about the subject from our experiences with the subjects we treat.

Freud modifications of his views regarding early findings indicated a fundamental shift in psychoanalysis, not just the significations of the vocabulary. The best example is his papers on technique: which came a couple of years before the metapsychology papers. The most intriguing about those recommendations is that they related to what makes analysis possible to do and avoid mishandling transference resistance.  Basically, Freud recommendations are about avoiding sliding into the futility of a real relationship with the patient. The fact that Freud was the worst violators of his recommendations suggests (to me) that he realised what makes psychoanalysis fail and recommended avoiding them.

Thus, answering the question of what is the nature of the psychoanalytic vocabulary is extremely important because as I mentioned in a previous posting, some analysts use the conceptual framework of their literature of choice as the theory of doing the analytic work. The psychoanalytic vocabulary, or the literature of psychoanalysis that is available to us is a mixture of descriptive terms that we usually differ (conflict) in giving it one meaning like projective identification, and of terms that explain findings like after- effect which to understand it we need to keep in mind both the concepts of transference and the none existence of a sense of time in the systemic unconscious. Therefore, analysts should not mislead themselves by believing that the literature is, or comprises, the theory of their discipline. There are very few works that could be considered theories of the subject (Erickson, Kohut, Anna Freud, Lacan, Klein!, Matte-Blanco, …). However, there is no theory of practice; only recommendations that should apply the same way in practicing any of those theoretical modalities.      

In two weeks, my last book will be available in book stores and book depots. The book is entitled:

Psychoanalysis: A Theory of the Subject.

Overview:

The current literature of psychoanalysis- English and some French- suggests that psychoanalysts are satisfied with what they have already achieved, and are not expecting or aspiring for any considerable changes in the present situation.   There are some  ‘novelties’ in contemporary psychoanalyses that are mainly  related to issues of practice, presumably considered, by some, theoretical advancements too. Some of those novelties are reactions to some legitimate criticisms that psychoanalysts should have look at carefully, but did not. Notwithstanding, the natural advancement of any knowledge has to come from learning from its history and maintaining its established course of advancement. We-psychoanalysts- should identify what constituted the point of birth of psychoanalysis, understand the nature of that birth, look for other similar points of advancement in its history, and know what could be a false advancement in its evolution to avoid misleading ourselves. That is if the future of psychoanalysis is a concern.

Psychoanalysis started with Freud’s attempt to understand three ordinary features in the life of the subject: dreaming, making unintentional mistakes in speech and other ordinary activities (Parapraxis), and joking. From examining those three-none clinical- features Freud revealed the workings of a process that deceives the subject and misleads him away from his real intentions. Those three features in the life of the ordinary subject where the point of birth of psychoanalysis. The interest in knowing more about the subject increased the interest in the subject himself. More observations and discoveries turned into the new movement of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis started as interest in the subject and should remain a theory of the subject, not his psychotherapy or any other appropriate speculation. Freud and his contemporaries continued adding to our knowledge of the subject by examining and interpreting more of the subject’s attributes, including psychopathology. Freud’s rich literature attest to that fact. His work varied from the clinical to the historical and from the banal to the most specific. However, gradually the literature-including his own- dropped in quality and variation.  A new interest in the nature of the subject had to emerge for psychoanalysis to maintain its importance.  Although their were attempts at making changes in the foundation of the Freudian doctrine (Rank, Ferenczi, Steckel, etc …) they were not of much significance and had no lasting impact. They were calls for changes in technique and practice, not additions to the theory of the subject.

The semblance of a new phase in defining the ‘subject’ came with Klein’s views in regard to early infancy and the structuring of inner reality (the intrapsychical). Yet, Ego Psychology was considered by most analysts the natural extension of Freudianism. Klein’s pioneering intuitions and endeavours were not properly appreciated at the beginning but R. Winnicott came up with a most simple and common observation that turned the psychology of the subject upside down. I would like to remind ourselves of Winnicott’s paper on the ‘Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena’.

Winnicott brought t focus a very simple observation about an infant’s innate oral response. From the first hours of his life the infant makes his hand or fingers objects and source of satisfaction and pleasure. Winnicott considered this most known observation an expression of the existence two separate realities that constitute a basic psychoanalytic duality: subject\object. The hand is an external reality that deals with an internal reality regarding oral demands. That distinction gave Klein’s intrapsychic psychodynamics an access to psychoanalytic meanings and interpretations. The recognition of the subject’s intrapsychic life released psychoanalysis from the inherent limitations of Ego Psychology, which was a functional theory of causes (drives) and effects (explanations).

Winnicott’s observation established the duality of subject\object, thus, psychoanalysis reoriented itself and got on a remarkable course of evolution. His observation is a landmark in understanding how psychoanalysis had advanced in the fifties beyond any Freudian expectations. One of the major outcomes of the notion of an intrapsychic life was the creation of psychosexual model development of the subject. In that model the subject  goes through and predetermined stages of development from one the autoerotic zones in the body to the next (this concept and its model of development is a vanished landmark in the journey of discovering the nature of the subject).  However, familiarity breeds boredom.  A slow down and even some distortion of the core meaning of the duality of the subject\object started a process of deterioration of psychoanalysis. The time was ripe for a new leap in understanding the subject.

Jacque Lacan in France put psychoanalysis right in the midst of the structural movement and made several ‘brilliant’ remarks about the subject and his unconsciousness (maybe up to his tenth Seminar). Lacan’s remarks -complicated as they are rightly considered- were the smartest regarding a perspective of the subject and his attributes.  The result of Lacanianism was controversial: most analysts did not appreciate his structural thinking and remained hopeful for a comprehensive functional theory of the subject, while some realized the limitations of functionalism in psychoanalysis. Others, especially in Europe adopted his views and produced a lively version of structural psychoanalysis (French Psychoanalytic Association).The irony is that most the analysts who rejected functional psychology (drives theory) replaced the theory with a poorer form of functionalism (the schools of psychoanalysis, starting from Kohut).

We ended up with different points of view that are allowed and semi-condoned by the IPA in the eighties. The glaring cause of that twist in the history of psychoanalysis is the absence of any subject-matter of the discipline, while complete shift to the profession and the therapeutic modalities became the main concern of most of the struggling societies. We are now psychoanalysts without a subject-matter but with various psychotherapies for the lost subject (literally and figuratively speaking).

What is needed now is variations on the theme of Winnicott’s observation, and his way of unfolding its core. We need to make more observations about the subject and formulate psychoanalytic understating of those attributes. We need new discoveries of the subject’s attributes, and eventually a theory that interconnect those attributes in one theoretical ‘interpretation’. In other words: we need to work toward a theory of the subject based on simple and complex observations of his nature, instead of improvising therapeutic modalities for none existing theory or patients.

This argument brings me to another point that is related to the issue of the vanishing theory of the subject.

The most difficult task I dealt with in my experience -as teacher and supervising analyst -was to make the candidates and young analysts recognize the difference  between using the lexicon of psychoanalysis (or a preferred school of psychoanalysis) as interpretation or part of an interpretation, and Interpretation as a separate act in the practice of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic terminology is limited to giving us a vocabulary to talk to each other, nothing more. Thus, we should consider psychoanalysis a language that pertains to the issue of the subject. It is a description that leads to, but does not explains the process. There is no better example to that distinction than Winnicott’s concept of the transitional phenomena. After separating reality into inner and outer he says: “. . .  it can be said that there is an inner reality to that individual, an inner world which can be rich or poor and can be at peace or in a state of war. This helps, but is it enough?”.

Explaining processes in the physical world is good enough to be called a theory. But in the psychological world we need to interpret the process not just identify and explain it. We interpret a subject’s attributes by deriving their meaning from the lived experience of the subject and from his own words (not a theoretical vocabulary). Interpretation transforms a psychological process into something lived. An example is the term projection. We can talk about it n two metapsychological terms, but still we have to answer this question: what is ‘projecting”. There are two reasons to bring this point to attention because using a psychoanalytic term in an interpretation means the analyst is neither showing the patient has unconsciously revealed something when he was talking, nor showed him how he- the analyst- got to the interpretation of projecting. A patient says: my father had bad temper tantrums that scared me all my life and made me very mad at him. I hated him and wanted to scream back but I was always scared. This could be understood within the conscious connotation of the words the patient used. He would get nothing from an interpretation that his rage at the father made him ‘similar’ to that hated father. But if he is shown that his speech indicated that his fear of the father made him unconsciously become like the feared father, he would understand the notion of identification without using the psychoanalytic terminology. Making that distinction obvious stops turning psychoanalysis into mere communication between two people: one sane and one less sane.  

The evolution of psychoanalysis and the changes that it has to be introduced to it is not matter of having better lexicon, newer terminology, more sophisticated concepts; it is to learn more about the subject himself. Learning more about the subject makes us listen to the patient more than looking for the right mechanism that describes the content of the associations.  A patient reports (complains) that she has, and always had, bad relations with people whom she loved most. She came to realize that she did and still does say the wrong thing to the, even though the right thing would be clear in her mind. It was pointed out to her that she says that she is of two, and the wrong one responds first before she stops it. This remark led to exploring the issue of her duality, narcissism, and problems in separation and individuation. Thus, what the patient said was used to show her that she also says other things without noticing and they would be the right things to say. This remark got her into a process of exploring her unconscious intentions. However, the analyst had to know more about the nature of psychical dualities and the structural core of narcissism to extricate what to interpret. Talking to the patient about the meaning of her symptom instead of improvising dubious ‘motives’ behind her social reactions can only be done when the analyst knows more about the nature of the subject..

Turning psychoanalysis into an act of interpretation for the patient, and an act of explaining among the psychoanalysts requires developing a theory of the subject. We need to know more about the Subject and about the subject we work with. We work to make the patient learn about himself as being that particular subject and not an abstract person who ‘identifies with others, project his undesirable intentions on them, and introject the analyst’s character in order to get cure.

I promoted the idea of a need for a theory of subject to get psychoanalysis out of its rut for sometime. I reached now the point where I am able to put my ideas in a book:  Psychoanalysis: A Theory of the Subject.

If the theory I am proposing is not good, not convincing, or would not mount to anything of value, the book still could achieved its purpose. Write a better theory. There is for sure better theories of the subject than this one; just let us have a theory of the subject.

                                   _____________________

I am attaching the Preface of the book and its Table of Content.

                                   _________________________

Preface

 Early analysts and several weighty thinkers, with penchant toward psychoanalytic thinking, recognized and documented a great deal of facts about the nature of the human subject. Learning about the subject – as such – was triggered by psychoanalysis in the first place and it remained its core endeavor for several decades. However, it gradually seized to be the only source of that knowledge because of the psychoanalysts’ insistence on limiting psychoanalysis to the profession of psychotherapy, meanwhile the theory of the subject was getting expanded and enriched by contributions of other human sciences. A worrying gap opened, and is getting wider, between psychoanalysis and the facts about the subject that other equally capable authorities are gathering. A genuine interest in this issue would reveal a major problem that is rarely addressed. Although psychoanalysts claim to be the legitimate heritor of psychoanalysis, by virtue of being its only practitioners, they did not and still do not have a defined theory of their practice. There are few recommendations about practice in the theory, and the analyst has to rely on his experience in didactic personal analysis and rare remarks usually exchanged in the rest of the training activity.

However, the rest of the theory of psychoanalysis has all the elements of a theory of practice, but only if analysts notice and accept that psychoanalysis is not a theory of psychopathology but a theory of the subject as an epistemological entity. In better terms, psychoanalysis is a theory of the subject that could succumb to psychoneurotic conditions in the course of his life. When that happens, and the subject seeks psychotherapy, the therapist has to know first what the healthy condition of the subject is. Physicians have to learn the anatomy and physiology of the healthy person before they advance to the stage of medical practice. Without a theory of the subject – as a healthy being and a subject matter in his own right – psychoanalysis is a useless base for any practice of psychotherapy.

Table of Contents:

Preface

Introduction: A Point of View 

Chapter One:  Functionalism and Structuralism in Psychoanalysis

               Learning or Training?

Chapter Two: Psychoanalysis: The Issue of Its Subject Matter

               A Brief Account of Misguided Efforts

               The Gradual Birth of the Subject

                The Subject in Philosophy

               The Need for a Theory of the Subject

               The Intrapsychic and the Subject

Chapter Three: The Roots of Psychoanalysis in Philosophy

               The Search for an Origin for Psychoanalysis

               A Brief Account of the Western Philosophical Movement

               The Cogito and the Subjects

               The Forerunners of Psychoanalysis

               Conclusion

Chapter Four: The Subject’s Basic Duality and Narcissism

               I and Me

               The Place of Psychoanalysis in Epistemology

       I, Me, and the Other

       The Counterpart and the Particularity of the Psychoanalytic Theory

      The Counterpart and the Intrapsychic

Chapter Five: The Psychology of the Wish

      The Wish as the Prototype of the Psyche

       Thinking in Functional and Structural Theories

      Dreams and Wish Fulfillment

      The Interpretation of Wish       

      The Wish and Its Antithesis

Chapter Six:  Sexuality and the Trieb (Instinct)

      Sex as Trieb

      The Libido Theory: Problem or Solution

      Sexuality and the Wish

Chapter Seven: The Duality of Life and Death

      A Basis for Narcissism

      Life and Death of Trieben and Narcissism

       A Brief Account of the Myth

      Back to Psychoanalysis

       Addendum

Chapter Eight: The Subject and the Unconscious

      The Aconscious

      The Puzzling Unconscious

      The Solution of the Puzzle

Chapter Nine: Reconstituting the Subject

      The Subject Matter of Psychoanalysis

      The Subject in a Structural Theory

      Three Basic Dualities

      I and Me Duality

      The Manifest and the Latent Duality

      The Conscious-Unconscious Duality

Chapter Ten:   Psychoanalysis: A Science of the Subject

       The New Subject of Psychoanalysis

       Psychoanalysis: Skill (Practice) or Science (Education)?

      The New Subject of Psychoanalysis

       Psychoanalysis as a Human Science

       Psychoanalysis and Research

 Chapter Eleven: Psychoanalyzing and Psychotherapy

      The Essentials of Psychoanalyzing

       Interpretation and Reconstruction

       The Freudian Clinical Protocol in Perspective

       The Conditions of Psychoanalyzing

       Freud’s Insight and the Issue of Training

 Epilogue:

 Modern Psychoanalysis and the Issue of Training

 Psychoanalysis and Academia

 Index

References

                                           

3. 

The Individual Unconscious and the Social Unconscious:

The parallelism between social and psychological change is significant in a special way: in psychoanalysis we listen for the details of the past life of the patient to gradually reach the core unconscious thread in those details, so we could then initiate change. The historian does something similar with civilizations. He tries to interpret (analyse) social and political events to uncover the equivalent of the unconscious in social change. This fact raises the question: What is the equivalent of the unconscious in the individual in history or historical movements?

Freud’s discovery of the unconscious started with the intuition (inductive thinking) that there are old psychological events that act upon the present psychological life of the patient and causes his psychological disturbance. This intuition led to the notion of repression (the patient does not mention them spontaneously or even recognize them as the cause of his sufferings). We know the rest of the story of moving from repression to the primary process, leading to the concept of the none-repressed unconscious. Is there something similar to the unconscious in social life, which could shed light on the force of social change and resisting it at the same time?

There is an equivalent:  Karl Marks (F. Engels!) had the intuition that the economy is the main social agent of change in the society, and the change it initiates is salient but silent. Moving from agricultural to industrial modes of production changes the social structure of the society from family-oriented to union-centered society. Thus, all aspect of social systems like marriage and the family starts to change too. Traditions, ethics, values, laws, art, etc., also change as a response to the social change dictated by the new and different economical structures . Resistance to those changes lead to episodes of chaos and temporary break down of order in a society. In some cases boils up to become revolutions, . The unconscious workings of the primary process in the individual are parallel to the birth of new values in the society that serve the new social order; gallantry   social changes the economy initiates in the society. History of social change is the history of cultural evolution.

What brings patients to psychoanalysis is the psychological chaos the past creates in the present and not knowing what is happening.  Resistance to psychoanalysis is always-as we all discover is part of that past, i.e., in the past of the neurotic there is aspect in his past that created a narcissistic self mage that was protective of itself. Hence, there is no psychoanalysis done without encountering a narcissistic resistance against such dissolving that image. Just think of a masochistic patients who resists the analyst who is interpreting his masochistic inclinations.

On the Borders of Personal and Political Narcissism

A. The Core of the subject’s Sense of Being.

Listening to Trump-the other day- delivering the State of the Union (The annual report regarding the current and the proposed plans of the government for the future) brought to my memory Nasser’s speeches to the Egyptian people. In the fifties and the sixties of last century (Nasser was an army colonel who led a military coup, in 1952, to end monarchy in Egypt. He evolved to become a political idol for the Egyptians and the Arabs in the middle East from 1956-1970. He was also considered in the Western Hemisphere the main political villain). Nasser's speeches were always a puzzle to me: what makes millions of  Egyptians, and tens of millions of Arabs in other countries, of all walks of life, adore and idealize that man!! (It also puzzles me that millions of Americans tolerate Trump's shenanigans and still give him some notice, and elect him as president).

The answer came to me listening to Trump the other day: create an imaginary adversary, say that his attempts to misguide have failed, and that he has been defeated or in the way to defeat. Any lies, misrepresentations, claims of victories even if defeated, and demeaning the adversary whatever the situation is will be accepted by the masses. From previous experiences, the masses do not deny facts but negate them: “it is true that we lost but it was because of the referee". Trump’s State of the Union Speech was exemplary of that mass deception. He set up several imaginary enemies of the US and bragged about his administration dealings with them, claiming his success in defeating them all. The ridiculous popularity of that man does not come from fooling people, but from making them fool themselves. However, Americans were waiting for sometime for someone to make them fool themselves and there comes Trump!!!!!!!

(Matter of fact, Nasser never lied to people but by making that imaginary adversaries the focus of their attention people did not pay attention to the narcissistic trap set up for them to fool themselves. This is the invisible barrier built by leaders between the masses and reality.

Reaching this point in my thinking led me to formulate a question that was always central in my efforts to understand Narcissism: Why do we need some one or something to Hate (liberals, socialists,  Nato members, Mexicans, etc.) in order to be able to Love ourselves (the strongest, the most democratic, etc.). Sometimes even out of the same narcissistic demand we create an ideal image of the adversary to debase ourselves (China is outsmarting us, the Mexicans are abusing our laws, etc ). I just want to underline the point that the existence of individuals, families, nations, sport fans, etc., is always based on an I and an adversary, opponent, enemy, or just a reactive "not me". The core of our sense of being is a duality or the duality of me and the not me. I does not exist on its own. Put it in another way: any sense of identity requires finding or creating an anti- me or anti-us.

The duality of the subject and his anti is normal and the natural way of acquiring an identity. But most of the times it goes astray resulting in problems. Trump, with his personal difficulties, creates that confusion in his base. He tells them that they are idiots and the laugh of the world, but that they are also the greatest and the envy of everyone else. He does not do that intentionally or by design; he is not that smart or a thinking person to have defined intentions. He does that as a reflection of his own image as an envied idiot.

Explaining the duality of the subject’s identity is the most central issue in our work that we pay less attention to it that it demands.

The Duality of the Subject’s Identity:

The duality of the subject is part of acquiring an identity. In a better wat to put it we should realize that our identity is a dual entity. The subject cannot get a sense of identity unless he also senses that he is not someone else. The subject is identified-in part- by the other, but that should not preclude- in the heathy person- the presence of a core of subjectivity that responds to the demands of the other without loosing its uniqueness.  This nature of the subject’s identity is not due to the coexistence of the conscious and the unconscious systems; it is due consciousness of consciousness. The stability of that consciousness of consciousness affects the kind and degree of psychopathology.

The duality of the subject’s sense of being is there from birth. At birth, the infant has no sense of being (existence) but he senses the being of the care-giver. So, the first consciousness is consciousness of the other; not about the self. The other’s reactions to the infant builds- in a slow and sometimes confusing way- the infant’s sense being, or his consciousness of his being. The initial step in developing an identity or a sense of being becomes the work of the care-giver (s) and his or her’s psychodynamics. The psychodynamics of that process and its results is and still is “our” field of interest and expertise. We all know the possibilities and different opportunities in what the infant will end up acquiring as an identity: is it his free choice or what he was told to be, and with what kinds and degrees of distortions.

The innate gap in the duality of the infant’s identity “demands” an anti-me for the sense of I-ness gets established. Thus, it is obvious that being told who he is (good\bad, stubborn\obedient, etc.) will ultimately clash with his own sense of himself. Even if the child accepts what he was given as an identity it will always be an image of himself, and not he himself. Thus, duality is the nature of the human subject: he is the I that he senses and a me that was given to him. In better words: to own an I that speaks for the subject a none I has to subside and not annul completely the I (Trump’s base is people who are unable to shed off the me he has given them to know their other and get in touch with their true selves).

Psychoanalysis looks as if it is the birthplace of these findings. It is not. Duality was born with the homosapiens’ consciousness of consciousness, which was first a duality of I and religious feelings (animism, spirituality, deities, organised religions, etc.). Philosophers -particularly the Greeks- tried to understand what is the subject that is defined by the ‘other’, but were not very successful. Then came Descartes in the seventeen century to reveal that duality is within the subject and not between the subject and something else that defines him: The Cogito is the declaration of the inherent gap in existence: I the thinker affirm the presence the I that exists (both are the subject). The rest of the matter is what led French psychiatry to notice the division of consciousness and for Freud to discover the nature of that separation.

What we deal with in psychoanalysis relates to the nature of the duality of the subject and what happens within that gap.  The most central is the relationship between I-Me and the kind of the link between them.  

Politicians of the kind of Trump and Nasser play with that natural duality. First, they chose a false “other’ who defines a false I for the mass. Once this is achieved, they make the false I defines itself the way the politician wants it to be. The whole political scene looks as if the masses are in possession of their will and they support leader because of his ideology. The fact of the matter is that leader shifted their narcissism from the real Me to a false I.

The Issue of Change in History and in Psychoanalysis.

2. The past and present in history

I have to state from the beginning two ideas that I base my argument about history upon. First, history is not the making of individuals; it makes the individuals. It is   the expression of tacit social changes and unnoticed evolution in certain related areas like modes of production, distribution of wealth, ethics, education, and culture. What happens in those areas are not events but ‘phenomena’. As in an issue close to us, the birth of psychoanalysis was expressing a turning point in the advancement of western philosophy, which reached a stage where the unconscious (a philosophical discovery at first) had to be included in understanding the subject; the subject matter of philosophy. Freud found the way to doing that. Second, the individual who looks as if he is a major historical pronouncement or the initiator of major effective events, is only the title name of the historical phenomena. The phenomena would be already formed and remained dormant waiting to be born and declared at a convenient moment. Freud was not the creator of the phenomenon of psychoanalysis, he was the agent of a new phenomenon of a social demand to recognizing the unconscious in any future understanding the subject.

In psychoanalysis we deal the subject as an individual. In history we deal with human phenomena while the individual occupies a minor place in arguing the phenomenon.

                                                  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

Two weeks ago, I finished reading a recent history book by James Barr entitled: Lords of the Desert, with the subtitle: Britain’s Struggle with America to Dominate the Middle East. The book is an amazing recount of the thirty years that followed the end of WWII in the middle east. I lived those years fully, and remembered every detail he mentioned-correctly- in his book, the political characters who were active at that time, his knowledge of their interactions, and the meaning of the events he described, which were amazingly accurate and detailed. The book corroborated the main ideology of the political activists at that time: ‘fight the British occupation and dissolve the British Empire in the Middle East’ (Egypt was a British colony from 1882 to 1954). The news we used to receive in Egypt during that time was that several residual European Empires were also dissolving in Africa. There was a prevailing belief that what we achieved in Egypt will lead the oppressed like us, worldwide, to get their freedom from foreign occupations. In other terms we were making history and characterized our political activity as the beginning of the end of the age of empires (countries dominating countries and nations dominating other nations).

When I left Egypt in 1971, I gradually realised that Europe on its own (without any help from Egypt!!) had already renounced the principle of imperialism and ended its occupation of other countries. This happened with little local native resistance, but definitely without the contribution of the activists in other countries. The Soviet Union, which inherited the Tsarist’s empire, was giving the east European countries the status of Soviets in preparation for an impending change, which took place twenty years later. The revolutionaries anywhere, were not making history, they were merely agents of history activating and fulfilling its demands and expectations. They finalize processes that start earlier and just need to come to conclusion. However, the change in history, like change in individuals, is always subject to resistance. Societies reject change at first, and use self-deception, like patients do, to make it fail. It does not fail but it just gets delayed. Serious resistance to change was the reason behind all the wars that devastated humanity for millennia.  WWI dissolved the Ottoman empire, the Tsarist’s Russian empire, and the Hapsburg empires. But some minor European empires that emerged in Africa and in Asia in addition to the remainder of the British empire resisted the change to abolish imperialism, hence, WWII came to complete the job.

Reading, interpreting and reconstructing history give clues to what really happened, also to what might happen following the present of that history. Like in psychoanalysis, the historian exploration and interpretation the past requires reconstruction of the analysed material to achieve to predict future possibilities. It did not take years after WWII to completely abandon the notion of empires in any form it might take. The peaceful concept of alliance, which is recently giving its place to globalization, is currently used, but sometimes to hide some remnants of the old dealings. However, this anticipated outcome of change in the course of history’s evolution faces desperate efforts to prevent it from happening.

The USA was the main factor in the actual and material end of WWII, which is supposed to have ended the concept of imperialism. It was also the most effective country in establishing the international organization for the preservation of peace in the world. The resistance to that change remained very strong in the USA and several other minor international powers. The USA continued and still continues getting into wars (Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) with an implicit conviction of the existence of Western superiority and domination of the world. It keeps that notion alive, with even the existence of the traditional and long-lasting historical foe; Russia. It also continues harbouring the fantasy of leading that imaginary empire. The USA a major force of change yet it still resists. As in individual resistance too, self-deception plays a great part in the process of resistance.  However, there are a number of countries around the world which also resist change and the evolution of history (India, Hungary, some Arab countries, etc.) and are paying dearly for that futile effort.

The main difference between a patient resistance to treatment and the societal resistance of a nation to evolution is the role of narcissism in both. In the individual, change comes from giving up what is unconsciously considered defense against a controlled danger that attacks from inside, while in nations is giving up what it considers protection from danger coming from outside. This difference deserves further elaboration but I prefer not to do that. I lived long enough in a part of the world that nations resorted to almost criminal measures to prevent the evolution of history, and learned that fighting those conscious and unconscious urges hardly gave results. However, there are lessons to learn from that. Before patients seek psychoanalysis as therapy (which they will resist) their vocabulary regarding their condition changes from complaining to either mention their suffering sardonically or the notion of therapy sarcastically. The reasons are obviously related to narcissistic mortification they feel for needing help. In nations, either a leader emerges using vocabulary which would keep reminding the people of their low present status and whip them to avenge themselves (Hitler), or another kind of leader who demeans his people to get them moving because they are the envy of the world (Trump). 

Trump as Historical Phenomenon:

Americans are very proud of their history and their achievements in that relatively short time. They were not usually very vocal about their pride and let their achievements speak for themselves. When it was reasonable to boast a little, it was always done graciously.  Until 9\11 American history was taking its natural course of evolving, changing, and keeping the USA part of the world.  However, after the shock of 9\11, and for the first time in its short history the Home Land was vulnerable things changed both superficially and radically. 9\11was a serious narcissistic shock to a nation that was the most loved, admired, and believed to be apart from the usual international squabbles. It was a very noticeable, after that narcissistic bad surprise, US politicians used more and more the vocabulary of bragging (the adjectives of exaggeration, the extreme in comparisons, and did that in almost a ritualistic manner like making the sign of the cross before mentioning the sacred thing). Hardly, any politician did not add to the words US or America the adjective of the best the richest the strongest, etc. Even Obama, who is cultured and savvy abut international political affairs would get into the ritual of reminding the listeners of the greatness of his country, from time to time. The country was hurt and needed that reaction which after a while had to change and the USA takes its place among the rest of the world. This natural course of evolution did not settle down well with the Americans who have less to brag about. The rage of narcissistic mortification demanded the continuation of defiance and segregation (s).

Trump came to personalize that phenomenon. He-in spite of his wealth and the other things he possesses is despised. But his defiance and amplification of the contradistinction he still attract the support of those unfortunate ones. However, we should not forget that he-somehow-presents his base a dilemma: he raised the motto of going back to when the US was great, which on cognitive basis is contradiction: the need to be better in order to be good again: does that mean the USA was not good before?

There is a short extension to this post. Till then than.

The Issue of Change in History and in Psychoanalysis.

Prologue:

There are some political events happening now in the USA, which some of us in Canada follow attentively, with great amazement and apprehension too. Those events have exposed several shortcomings in the current US democratic system. Overlooking those issues created a sense of confusion about the ways issues are discussed and solutions are suggested. The discouraging thing about that state of puzzlement is not  mentioning or suggesting the possibility of change.  Americans tend to idealize their 'forefathers' who founded their country, more than two hundred years ago, on principles that could have and actually had dazzled the world with their novelty and progressivity.  But after two hundred years , being now more than three hundred million people who are diverse even geographically, the USA's democracy still depends on two political parties that were formed over two hundred years ago, and were speaking for the issue of that time. Things need to be reconsidered because listening to the active politicians (not just the regular citizen) one cannot miss the uneducated understanding of the vocabulary they us, and the almost total denial that  two hundred years have passed since those concepts were misconstrued. Resisting the notion that things change, and could get better if they do, 'looks' to many as betrayal of the loyalty to the forefathers. 

The reason that this state of matters concerns us in Canada, and possibly everywhere else in the world, is the important place the US occupies in the world. The significance of this point was forcefully demonstrated during the last three years when an unqualified person took the helm in that important country. Although the American establishment was capable of curtailing his harm he still kept the world on the edge and caused a lot of harm and pain to some communities, worldwide. They are also resistant to acknowledging that the US now is member of a modern world and not what it was after the WWII: the leader of the 'civilized' world. 

Noticing the strong ambivalence the Americans are showing in regard to change made me think of the current events, and the phenomenon of Trump, in terms of both the patients' resistance to change and the analysts’ resistance to change their system of training. As analyst I understand resistance to change to be routed in a state of narcissism (self image). Self image, whether in a person, an organization or a nation is Narcissus's reflection on the surface of the pond which he fell in love with. That image, though it is just the image, replaces the actual body that engendered it. Even if the self image is the cause of great pain giving it up without a replacement creates a narcissistic void, which is filled with rage.  In psychoanalysis (if it is done properly) the work of analysis builds the narcissistic replacement for the vanishing one in a gradual way. So, giving up the image- partially- to include the real scenes of the self in one's narcissism also happens gradually and such change becomes a relief. This process is more difficult in the narcissism of organizations, because it requires willingness to get rid of the past, confidence that a replacement is possible, and available, and an equal willingness to acquire it. This difficulty is what is standing between psychoanalysts and getting rid of the IPA model of training. In nations, the possibility of giving up a national identity to get a new one depends on the political activists who would make that exchange palatable to most. 

This post is an attempt at examining the nature and fabric of change, which the political events in the US could benefit from if the psychoanalytic experience may be considered. Change in psychoanalysis starts with resistance (this is not the problem). When resisting fails to stop the process of analysis the patient rejects the the interetations. When rejecting the work of interpretation does not work either self deception tries to nullify the pain of the impending narcissistic void. Yet, eventually change happens whatever the means are to stop it from happening: change is not matter of preference or choice; it is unavoidable and sometimes it is a duty. 

Could we make sense of the events in the US in the way described, using psychoanalytic principles?

1. Past and Present in Psychoanalysis:

Clinical example:

A young female patient was unhappy about her loose moral standards that make her have sexual relations with the husbands of her female friends. Moreover, when she had a relationship with a man, she tried -almost compulsively- to befriend his wife. She came to a point at which her life was no longer manageable with rumors, rejections, and loneliness and bad sense of enjoyment. At the beginning of her analysis she always related her loose morality to her mother’s “immoral mothering”: openly favouring her younger sister because she was prettier and looked like the mother. She accused her mother of being a bad moral model: “Mothers are supposed to love their kids equally and it is immoral to make distinctions of that sort and ignore my feeling”. She kept repeating that her behaviour with men and friends is only looking for attention and feeling that she belongs to people. Her associations were mainly rhetorical and about her mother’s and sister’s embarrassing selfishness and social immoral neglect of other people’s feelings. She was always recalling two childhood painful memories: her mother refusing to make her hair and ordering the maid to do it, while insisting on making her sister’s hair, and overhearing her mother once making a negative remark about her looks to a visiting relative and predicting for her a life without marriage. Her immoral sexual relations started to make sense to me but I refrained from tackling that point for a long while, because she was emeched in her resentment of her family situation to a degree that needed more time to express and listen to herself doing that. She could not fathom yet or enough the circumstance that constituted the past of her present.

In a suitable moment I mentioned the difference between her immorality and what she considered immoral of her mother. She did not pay attention to my remark, but this led to a gush of bitter memories of her mother’s authoritarian nature and her failure to get close to her ‘rejecting mother’ because she was impatient with her, as she was with the maids and the driver. It took some time before mentioning her father whom she also described as domineering, but to her mind in useless matters.  She sarcastically mentioned how he was once furious and insisted on her going to the hairdresser with her sister.  I mentioned then that there are different kinds of authorities like her father’s and her mothers. She suddenly paid attention to my previous distinction between the two moralities of hers and of her mother’s.  Gradually, the meaning of morality expanded to encompass any sort of abuse of privileges, misuse of status or authority, and the patient realized that she was mad at her mother for all sorts of other things, not only her attitude toward her and her sister. Working through and interpreting matters in light of this expanded sense of deprivations revealed other confusions about anger and humiliation. Her puzzlement about anger and humiliation revealed preconscious aspects in the transference for a wish for her father to have done something about the situation. The analytic situation was reflecting a sense of desperation:  her persistent complaint was that the analyst, not analysis, is the solution to her confusions.It was easy to make translate that idea into an analytic insight that ‘only father could straighten the situation, but he is not paying any attention to what is happening in the family’. 

Her history became an unbearable transference present. Working on the confusions she lived and exercised in regard to matters of values, rights, power and authority resulted in some positive changes in family life. She reported that her relationship with her mother and sister improved, and, especially when her father – unexpectedly- noticed and showed some signs of interest in his role in the family. The patient’s sexual acting out was becoming less demanding. At that point the patient suggested termination and I agreed because I was not confident that opening the issue of her sexual improprieties will be dealt with properly within a reasonable period of time. Analysis ended at that time with the noticeable improvement mentioned but the link between the past and the present was not dealt with properly.

I understood what happened to lead to termination, but did not understand the rest of the patient. I was unable to understand the process that led to the father’s appearance in the scene, let alone the issue related to the patient’s sexual inclination. Termination did not really happen, because the past of the present was not revealed to exchange meanings with the present. Yet, something noticeable I could be mentioned in that regard (I could be deceiving myself): the patient’s past of confusing family dynamics determined that her psychoneurosis was going to be of a confused young woman about morality, and also determined that cure would happen when she learns the nature of an orderly perception of matters and and social demands.
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After years of practicing psychoanalysis in the classical manner of: patients’ associations, interpretations that would reveal to the patient- bit by bit- the unconscious processes in his transference, and reconstructing the intrapsychical psychodynamics, also a bit by bit, I was left with a puzzling issue that was even problematic. How doing what I do as analyst initiates change? Parallel to that-as I will mention a little later: what instigates change in politics? This question was raised because -for me-the change in the process of psychoanalyzing was always unexpected, even the outcome seemed unrelated to what I thought I was dealing with. In other words: I did not know while I was working what instigates the change and how. Only retroactively it was possible to come to some insights.  Although I accept the parallelism between psychoanalysis and other human phenomena, which are also difficult to understand on the spot, and are always understood retroactively, I still could not accept that a practicing psychoanalyst would not know how his work works!

Few years of puzzlement about how to understand the process of psychoanalysis made me discuss the issue with a senior analyst of Lacanian leanings. I asked: why the process of cure can only be recognized after the fact and not during the work. He said that the primary process does not make distinctions between the three systems of Cs., Pcs., and Ucs.  Therefore, we do not know what system is affected by our interpretation. We cannot predict or correctly anticipate the reactions and the changes our interpretations generate, because each system has its own way of responding to a proper interpretation, and changes differently from the other systems.  Therefore, a good analysis (based on good interpretations) takes its course and declares its end without any fanfare. I took his remark a little further: trying to predict or anticipate outcomes of limited aspects of the material indicates that I am not doing good analysis. Analysis is a process that opens the way for all the sorts of freedoms that the psychoneurosis blocks. Analysis opens the way to freedom of sexual enjoyment and also of refraining from meaningless and destructive sexual relations. Psychoanalysis is a process of understanding but retroactively: that patient understands while and after associating, and the analyst while understanding and interpreting, not before.

Dealing with a past that is still lived in the present, as in the psychoneuroses, and aspiring to change it, raises this question: what happens to the changed past? In psychoanalysis we try to make the means for changing remain active and usable by the patient ‘for ever’.

In a nutshell: reading the present could reveal both the past and the possibilities of the future. This is the common issue in “psychotherapy”, i.e., to what degree the patient’s past will get better defined and is not going to remain a set of memories. This change happens when the patient realizes that his past was lived experiences that are compulsively repeated a distorts the present. In psychoanalysis we cannot free the patient from his past but we demonstrate to the patient how to avoid being misled by it and keeps alert to that possibility in his present.