B. Some of the Constituents of Narcissism:

We should not expect narcissism to be a simple psychical entity that has  a simple structure. It is a psychical entity that anyway we look at it (cause or effect) we find ourselves unable to come to a satisfying conclusion about it.

Narcissism is not a term created by psychoanalysis. Its parallels are part of human language since God bestowed on Adam the special status of being different from the rest of his creations. However, analysts, as usual, assume the right to explain anything that pertain to the subject’s psyche. Thus, it became imperative that the term, which Freud coined to mean self- partiality (adulation), has to get a place in our endeavours to explain ourselves (because no other animal is suspect of narcissism). But analysts- did not pay the attention needed to question narcissism: is narcissism a psychical condition created by something else or is it a condition that creates other psychical conditions? A hasty answer to this question would ignore, neglect, or just avoid facing the fact that we do not know yet.

Narcissism is the central issue in our sense of being and also any deviations in that important psychical condition. Our sense of being is narcissistic because it is basically ‘knowing that we know that we are existing’. Narcissus had to exist first for the reflection of his image on the surface of the pond had to materialize in front of him. In other terms, our sense of being could be a result of the nature of our awareness (consciousness of consciousness), or maybe homosapiens sense of being leads to consciousness of consciousness. The dilemma is which causes the other. This question pertains to the issue of structuralism (the nature of the issue) not functionalism (cause-effect and which comes first) because we need to know first what are the constituents of a narcissistic state to decide what is cause and what is the effect of that cause.

The Structural Quality of Narcissism:

Interpreting signs of narcissism in libidinal terms usually misses several features that are most basic and intriguing in that psychical condition. Although underlining those features will get the approval of most psychoanalysts, they will still remain doubtful of explaining or elucidating them because psychoanalysts are accustomed to discover causation within the structure of any psychical feature and not visa versa. An example is dream interpretation: in the Irma dream Freud revealed a wish that he tried to prove it to be accountable for the ‘dream scene’. However, the wish did not explain the dream even after identifying it; it could be said that the wish just initiated that particular dream scene. Therefore, restructuring -building up- narcissism from its content or components is the way to understand it. This is the reason I think the libidinal explanation of narcissisms is useless and is actually distracting from understanding it.

I will start by specifying four features that even ordinary people would relate to narcissism. They are features that I find to be obvious and available for direct observation:

1.There is no narcissism (self- love) that is not accompanied by hate for a counterpart of the self, in the form of another person or thing. 2. If the narcissistic proclivity is reversed for a reason or without an obvious reason the hated person or subject becomes charged with an exaggerated degree of admiration and love (hate becomes adoration). 3. A strong tendency to exaggerate and over “libidinize” positive and negative affects in regard to the narcissistic issue or object. 4. Volatility of relations in which the object of the feeling or emotions is volatile but the intensity of the feeling remains dominant.   

Considering those four features (and maybe few more that other analyst could come up with) show in a simple and direct way that racism in general, the social history of racism, the opinions about the reactions to racism among blacks and whites (persecutor\persecuted) or social discrimination in any form it  takes are product of narcissism. I can now take this statement a step further and say: any social discrimination (gender, sex, class or race) is a matter of narcissism, in which a group does not feel good about another group claiming the right to be equal to their group.

It is the right place to add another idea in regard to the ‘narcissistic hurt response’ the prevailing race (or group) goes through. The gradual loss of the privileges becomes a wall of resistance to give up narcissism when the unprivileged prove without any doubt that they have caught up (sometimes surpass) with privileged adversaries. There is no doubt that Blacks in the USA have caught up with the whites in every aspect of daily life. Therefore, whites are no longer able to expect the inequality to continue a little longer till a total matching is achieve. Copying from A. Richards “Quote for the Day” (without permission) Malcom X said: “When we see that our problem is so complicated and so all-encompassing in its intent and content, then we realize that it is no longer a Negro problem, confined only to the American Negro; that it is no longer an American problem, confined only to America, but it is a problem for humanity."

What Malcom X is saying is clear: Racism is a problem with the human subject and his psychical nature. Therefore, I strongly believe that narcissism is not an individual condition. It is part of social phenomena.  

Social Change and Social Narcissism

A.  Narcissistic Hurt and the Repressed.

      My views on the subject of narcissism is very likely to differ from the common and prevailing meaning that is adopted by main stream psychoanalysts. Since Freud used the term in 1910 to “vaguely” describe the person’s attachment to an image of himself (in homosexuality!) narcissism became a phenomenon resulting from the dynamics of the libido: its objects and investments. As a consequence of creating that term at the peak of the libido theory, and the ease by which the concept libido was able to explain several psychical issues in terms of narcissism, analysts adopted the notion that narcissism is a state of a libidinal deviation; i.e., psychopathology. Kernberg published several very valuable clinical works on narcissism and other related psychopathologies without a hint of incongruity with the libidinal basis of narcissism. Therefore, coming with a different conception of narcissism that has no place in it for libidinal cathecting is not going to be accepted comfortably by main stream psychoanalysis.

My point of view, which is basically more acceptable to thinkers than clinicians, is that narcissism is a cornerstone in the process of the formation of the sense of being (self defining), and that could make it get a rudimentary link to psychopathology.

      Narcissism-as in the Myth of Narcissus- is identifying one’s self -unconsciously-with what we think is our picture, or what might appear or mean to others. This image (identity) is originally given to the infant by the caregivers and constitutes the core of the sense of “me-ness”. However, the child should gradually formulate his own sense of identity(I-ness) according to his developing sense of awareness and the ongoing realization of the discrepancy between his: I and me. Me, is what the other sees of my ‘I’. However, we should not oversee neglect that the relationship between the I and the   me is in core, if not is the core of narcissism itself. The subject tries and succeeds or fails in not treating himself as an object. There is always the risk of subject’s merging the I and me in one undifferentiating entity. The most glaring model of that “terrible” condition is Donald Trump.

In the process of forming a sense of being, the subject might maintain aspects of the identity he assimilated from the ‘others’, but is expected to develop his own concept of himself. What is important in that twist in having one’s own self-concept is the independence, flexibility, stability of that identity, and the authenticity of the sense of being: only successful in degrees but always an aspiring objective.

    Change is the explicit and implicit enemy of narcissism. Just imagine Narcissus sitting in front of his reflection on the surface of the pond, deeply in love with his self that is there in the pond. Then imagine him falling asleep for serval years (in myths this could happen), He wakes up and looks at his beloved self again. He finds someone else there that he cannot love anymore.  Not knowing that change happens, no one could have been able to explain to Narcissus that changes in the person in the pond have happened to him, himself, not to his image. Change in the material world, history, societies, and other non-psychical matters happens gradually, silently, unnoticeably, and permeates all aspects of the phenomena. In psychical matters, change happens unconsciously, and could not be understood without analysing its indirect manifestations. Psychical changes give signs of their happening but always faintly, indirectly, and through other means and manifestations like the oxidation of a metal, or the fall of the Roman empire. Another aspect of psychical change is sensitivity to admitting the change. Sensitivity to change is very much the core of narcissism because it means the necessity of creating another me, to replace the inadequate present one: I am sorry, that was not me, I am someone else. The narcissistic bind between the I and me make the sense of identity quite volatile because the subject tries very hard to match the two entities of his identity. But the unconscious aspects in them is not equal and one, the I, is more conscious than the Me.  

Change is anti narcissism because of that link between I and me. I believe that I am not racist but I surprise myself by refusing my daughter to marry some one from another race, religions, or social class. In order to make my I and my Me match I have to break the narcissistic bond between them. This is when the return of the repressed exposes my hypocrisy.

Next I would like to deal with social narcissism.

The Return of the Repressed:

Sometimes, in the practice of psychoanalysis, analysts face a sudden resurgence of some old symptoms or psychical conditions that have no clear link with what is going on in the ongoing analysis. This is usually a return of repressed material that did not have been worked out or worked through by the patient and was just severed from the rest of his active psychical life. This phenomenon is usually common in the revival of old phobia, ticks, or unverbalized sates of the mind. It also could become a distracting mechanism from continuing the ongoing psychoanalysis. Rightly, those unexpected changes in the course of an analysis are called a return of the repressed, because they come back in the state that they were previously repressed. Something similar could sometimes happens in a society. A social phenomenon that is not given the full chance to materialize, comes back with venom and gets actualized…a social ‘return of the repressed’. WWII is a good example of a return of the incomplete resolution of the social pressures in Europe that caused WWI (dispelling the local empires).     

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

The reaction to the events of the last few weeks in the USA regarding police treatment of blacks is still quite alive and keeps going on. It proves that it is something more than just a reactive upset. However, there are some features in the continuation of criticizing and condemning police brutality that makes one worries. It looks like the unified stand of the Americans is going either nowhere (back to the legislative corridors), or to the waste basket of the partially understood. Whatever is concluded about the white race reaction or the black race reaction does not answer two questions: does the latest events of police brutality toward blacks suggest a new trend or it is just a coincidence that a few things happened in a short span of time stirring up a sudden flare up? The demonstrations that happened lately and engulphed the whole of the USA and many other societies and nationalities in the world were made, in most cases, of more whites than blacks. The question is: are those demonstrations manifesting a change in the white population or in the black or both? If for convenience we will say it is a change in both races we will be missing that each race has to change something different from the other, i.e., the answer is not simply ‘in both’.

The answer to the first question is that what is happening lately is not local; it is universal, and is not limited just to police brutality in the USA but about social inequalities wherever it existed in the world. Brits in Trafalgar Square were seeing what happened in the USA in regard to that killed black guy as the American version of their version of social segregations and inequalities (which Irked million who voted to stay in the EU). The late change is universal and not limited to abuse of power by the police but related to the abuse, neglect, and the failure of the current systems of governing in the world in regard to the pressing demands of the majorities everywhere.  It is a new view of globalization.

The answer to the second question is that the change that is taking over the world lately is a global change; universal, even with its specificity in certain aspects is still of interconnected issues not just commonalities and parallelisms. The change affects the whole human races directly and indirectly. However, each race or ethnic group seems to contribute to that change in its own social and international condition.

The change in the blacks of the USA is turning the previously shy request for equality into demanding corrections in the circumstances of persecution that go back few hundreds of years.  Blacks are changing their sense of helplessness into a sense of entitlement. Whites, individually, without any doubt in my mind, are fair, law loving and abiding by nature, and quite honest, which is not at all the picture they give as a race or a distinct ethnic entity. Therefore, they seem lately (few decades) to be changing their sense of refinement, goodness and morality into some tangible, actual, and credible things to show that they too are joining the ‘other’ races in changing. Whites have to change their sense of entitlement into a sense of deserving and convince blacks of that. In other terms, despite the different forms of inequalities and consequently in the demands for change, the human races are reacting collectively and reciprocally to the crisis of late. If we do not accept that there are new relationships developing between the conflicting adversaries in the world, we will stand helpless in front of the returning of the repressed between those ethnicities (in India, Myanmar, North China, etc.). The best we could do, without identifying the changes in the old antagonisms, is to come to a partial understanding of the present ‘historical’ moment.

The conflicting adversaries of the past are able now to verbalise their own needs and aspirations better, thus, are becoming more amenable to accepingt solutions.

The WWII and Dissipation of Illusions:

The present sudden and great change in in racial interactions is a return of a significant repressed period of time in recent history.  After WWII there was a great movement of rebelling against foreign occupations in the colonies and the empires. The cry was loud for the liberation of the oppressed and the enslaved everywhere, breaking up the empires and creating new independent countries and nations. This movement was supported by European thinkers and was reflected in the democratic elections in Europe and European style elections everywhere. This  gave the conservative blocks ‘bleeding noses’. This movement was initiated and supported by the leftists in both the liberated countries and in the previously dominating countries. The end of the WWII came with the hope to end the old world of colonization and slavery too. Yet, soon after the “end of the war” the two previous allies against fascism, Western Europe and the Soviet Union, became the new version of the human races’, as if the compulsive need for an enemy to feel secure and superior (paradox!!) was stronger than any hope for peace. The glorious movement of liberation, abolition of exploiting the defeated, equalities, democracy, and ‘racelessness’ was ‘repressed’ very quickly and very cruelly. Repressing the budding aspirations was done by both main powers and with the same paradoxical BS. In the West it was to fight the dictatorial communist system. This was done by creating dictatorships all over the newly won parts of the world (even old democracies). In the East the communist regimes oppressed its people to ‘protect it from the false ideologies of the capitalists and colonialists. 

Those historical details are likely of little interest to most but I mention them to highlight that for some, going around facts is a way of blocking change and  and any area of progress. This phenomenon shows something intrinsic in the return of the repressed. After WWII, repression of the glorious movement of social justice used paradoxical logic as the means to impose repression: set up dictatorships to ward off the threatening dictatorships of the enemy. Giving the communist parties the authority to decide what is anti-fascism was fascistic in itself. The present uprise in response to racial discrimination is threatened by anti-white racism-ironically- initiated by somewhites in different contexts.      

The New and Present is the Return of the Old Repressed. 

Avoiding facts to avoid the necessities of change resulted in creating in Europe four identities that replace the old racial identities. The world is now made up of Europe, China, Russia the USA. Somehow, or naturally, racial discrimination came back from repression in slightly different intensities in those four universal entities. The most entity that has problems with the new era is the united states. Europe has some problems with the immigrating Africans (previously slaves and then the responsibility of the occupiers). China has ‘some’ problems with parts of it that were detached from it by the European and she disclaiming them now as part of it.

The communist party in Russia was smart when it did not stand against the emancipation of the satellite Soviets and is satisfied by being the old nation and country of Russia. The problem is with USA.

The Americans are struggling (sometimes painfully) with their new identity or place in the world. After the victory of the WWII the USA was the only country that came out of it as the “greatest”, the “strongest” ….etc., Gradually the rest of the world recovered from its stupidity and the three other entities caught up and became equal to the USA and surpassed it in certain eras. The struggle to maintain the status of the leader of the world was clearly failed. American Blacks caught up with the whites in many aspects and excelled in some others.

The three changes seem to have happened in the USA lately in regard to racial discrimination:

Blacks have taken good care of themselves and proved that they are as capable and qualified as any other race. Proportionately, they seem to have caught up with the whites in the number of distinguished citizens (the most competent president in the last fifty years! was black).

 More whites have accepted the fact that blacks have proven without doubt their equality to other races. History to them has become more pain and shame than pride and prejudice.

A social gap opened between the whites in the North and industrialised America and the South.

The repressed of the north got integrated with the worked-out sentiments about Our America, while the repressed returned (in desperation) as is in the south and some other pickets of old pride. I can see many white Americans would not accept my view of the return of the repressed in the south of the USA. I would remind them of Donald trump: he is supposed bring back the greatness of the USA. Let us also think of the police in south that after murdering a black citizen and the uprise in the country as a reaction that murder go back and does the same thing twice within a week with two new blacks.

  

Psychoanalysis and Academia

Resistance to Change

It is uncanny that this part of the posting I meant to dedicate to change in psychoanalysis, but has to be interrupted to keep our attention devoted to a more significant and ‘amazing’ change that is sweeping the whole world. I do not know anything that immensely great has ever happened before at any time in written. Because history can only be understood retrospectively the world-change regarding race issues might take few decades to be properly interpreted [not a Trumpian sexagenarian]. Psychoanalysis could step aside for now and for as long as we need to set up afoot the complex process of interpreting this remarkable transformation in human awareness and evolution.

                    

I will only outline now and here the framework of my ideas about change in psychoanalysis, so if some analyst in the future find the required space in time and interest to revisit that issue, he will possibly find in them relevant starting points.

                         -----------------------------------------------

I finished the last part of this posting by emphasizing that when we think of hope for change, and of accepting that psychoanalysis could move to academia, we should keep in mind the natural resistance to change, and the conflict of interest of senior analysts in that regard. They are supposed to lead the movement to ‘academize’ psychoanalysis but sch a change will also change their role and status of seniority in psychoanalysis. Change in psychoanalysis is not a matter of accepting or rejecting something new. Change in psychoanalysis is a complex personal matter that touches different layers of personal affinities which should be considered- at a first stage. Those problems need to be resolved before offering any concrete steps to make the change to make psychoanalysis an academic subject.

Change is the fabric of exitance; both the existence of animate and inanimate objects alike. The difference is that animate subjects like to believe that they can interfere with their inevitable change. The higher the subject in the hierarchy of evolution the stronger is that belief. What is more problematic, especially with humans, is that we create inanimate and some animate objects, therefore we do not deal only with our own changes but also with the changes of what we create.

Psychoanalysts have changed and continue to change. The subjects of psychotherapy and of psychoanalytic thinking in general also have changed and continue to change. How can we deal with these interacting changes? Could we accept that moving psychoanalysis from the influence of the model of the IPA to the influence of academia is not to save its practice from vanishing, but because psychoanalysis “naturally” has changed? Recognizing and accepting that we are not- right now- doing the right things by our discipline requires tolerating a narcissistic injury, and that we moving to remedy the situation and not to remedy our pride. I am not using the term “narcissism” in the banal meaning self-aggrandizement, but narcissism as an issue of the duality of the subject and his image (imagined). Can we deal with a new duality regarding self perception in an academic role!

Changing from the IPA Model of Learning and Training:

The model of training and learning of the IPA is based on transmitting knowledge and expertise from generation to generation through the direct contact between teacher and student. This was the favoured method of learning in the different trades before schools and teaching institutions existed and universities prevailed.  Academic learning and training, which is the foundation of professionalism, is based on having the required body of knowledge available independently of the teacher. The material to learn is not the professors’ creation but the amalgam of knowledge that was accumulated and scrutinized over many years and experiences. Medicine in Harvard is the same medicine that a student in Barcelona will learn. Even demonstrating the practice of the material in those two academic centres may differ, but mostly in the colour of the gowns the student wears in the examination room. In our present IPA institutes (or an equivalent) there is no means to compare ad match the content and quality of training. The separation of the material from the professor’s idiosyncrasies and the student’s vulnerability to those idiosyncrasies is the basis of academic teachings.  The changes to psychoanalysts and psychoanalysis require us to bring the academic modality to psychoanalysis not just fitting psychoanalysis in an academic department and hope for the best

Four major questions popup in that regard:   

 Where would psychoanalysis fit in academia?

As a component of the academic system who will be responsible for building and maintaining its syllabus?

What will be the orientation of the syllabus be: Humanities or psychotherapy?

How are we going to help in establishing psychoanalysis as an academic entity?  As an academic entity psychoanalysis will require a good dose of “scholarly” work, which there are very few of us who could deliver. Put as a question: Are we going to continue teaching the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality or are we going to show in scholarly way how Freud (and other thinkers) develop their intuitions into a comprehensive discovery?   

These are some things we should think well about. Approaching the subject with academicians requires attention to some issues we might not be aware of. One, which is of evident significance, is: are we moving psychoanalysis as it is now to academia or are we going to accept changing present psychoanalysis into an academic subject to be part of a larger filed of knowledge. No academic institution would accept to house the IPA model of training and learning of psychoanalysis as it stands now. The reason is that academic learning is something the student has to acquire not to emulate.

What I am stipulating here is not difficulties or obstacle in the way of moving psychoanalysis to academia; they are the issue that we should work out with the help of the academics to fix. If our problem is to improve that standers of psychotherapy so patients start coming back for therapy, we could do that without psychoanalysis. There are great programs in European universities for psychotherapy, But if we want to improve ‘psychoanalysis’ we should think of moving it to academia to become part of the human sciences.

Psychoanalysis and Academia*

A Glimpse of Hope, but Just a Glimpse

It seems that it became obvious to psychoanalysts in North America that tinkering with the present state of affairs in psychoanalysis is not going the stop its deteriorating condition. Only lately, there seem to be an awakening interest in linking or looking for ways to relate psychoanalysis to academia. There is some hope there, but just a glimpse of hope. The reason for my guarded hope is two-fold:

A.   For the last two decade or maybe a little more (actually since 1995) it was clear to everyone in the practice of psychoanalysis, including the governing body of the IPA, that psychoanalysis is becoming an endangered specie. In 2000 I published a book on the crisis concentrating on putting together a comprehensive picture of the fundamentals of the core theory of psychoanalysis, and cautioning for the demise of psychoanalysis if we let go of the basics of its doctrine. The book did miserably for over ten years, and it is now close to being out of print. So mush about the book but there has been sort of an awakening to the fact that the crisis is real. Yet, all the attention in North America is about the deteriorating state of the practice of psychoanalysis and there no mentioning of the state of psychoanalysis itself. I will come to that later.   

I was witnessing the deterioration in North America, at the same time getting wind of the European’s attention to Academia-not only as escape hatch from a sinking ship-but as a new conception of psychoanalysis. In North America there were several desperate and serious attempts at reviving the “practice” of psychoanalysis which all came back either with failure or suggestions of changing psychoanalysis itself. Desperation is eventually leading to a glimpse of flexibility and hope that analytic circles are considering academia a proper and possible consideration; a last resort not an actual solution.

B.    All the replacement theories of the classical theory proved to be theoretical soap bubbles, and they burst one after the other without catching the attention of analysts or patients. The call to consider academic learning and training as the venue to take is not, anymore, blasphemous. Nevertheless, it only meant taking our failing psychoanalysis to academia to get resuscitated. If we want to change the situation, we should bring academia to psychoanalysis not the other way around. Academia is not school building, budgets, resources, etc., Academia is a way of thinking, an attitude regarding knowledge that could help in improving the practice of that knowledge.  Despite the exitance of some psychoanalytic institutions that are affiliates of reputable universities in the USA, psychoanalysis-even in those institution- avoid declaring themselves as purely academic, because ‘we’ use the term in its popular meaning of theoretical, idealistic not practical (practice).  Possibly, the main obstacle in the way a proper link between psychoanalytic learning and training and academia in North America is matter of reputation: real psychoanalysis is the one you can get in the purely IPA institutes, which allows being elected to its membership.

 In Europe, psychoanalysis is already well entrenched in academia. Presently, there are academic institutions all over Europe that either opened themselves to psychoanalytic education with attached training in psychotherapy, or offer post graduate degrees in psychoanalytic research, or both. However, the existence of universities (in Europe) specialised in psychoanalytic teachings, or noteworthy departments of psychoanalysis in other major universities, reveal ‘points’ of debate that have to be addresses sooner than later.

The people who advocated and established the presence of psychoanalysis in academia are psychoanalysts who got their training (status as analysts) in the IPA system of training institutes. They are also the main professors in those academic institutes. This fact creates the first point of confusion: What is the difference between learning and training in the IPA system and in what takes place in Academia? Do we have to have two systems if the faculty is mainly the same? If there is a difference why do we create it or not try to eliminate? Why make the change, maintain it, and apologize for continuing it?

The Advantages of Academic Training:

In any way we try to compare the two systems we will notice that the time dedicated to getting an academic degree in is psychoanalysis, even just at the master’s level, is much more than what is offered in the IPA institutes for a full period of training. The syllabus in the academic departments of psychoanalytic studies are -at least- well defined and constitute a curriculum that could be judged in terms of quality and fulfillment of objectives. The system of the seminars in the IPA institutes lacks clarity, cohesiveness, compatibility with what was delivered by another faculty or in a similar institute. Teaching in institutes is more or less dependant on the faculty’s theoretical bend and interest in the subject he presents to the class.  The academic faculty teaching psychoanalysis has to cover the subject in a systematic way and make sure that all its aspects of the syllabus are covered are delivered in manner that allows other faculty know what the student has been informed about. Quality and measures of assessing that quality exist firmly and clearly in academia, while they are not adhered to as a tradition in the IPA institutes.

This point of confusion leads to another more drastic in importance. The programs of psychoanalysis in those universities are recognized and accredited by the university, which bestows its credibility on its educational system as whole. This is the rule in all respectable professions, particularly the ones that deal with citizens.  It is the rule that is seriously followed in clinical psychology, psychiatry and clinical social work. A system of that nature gives the academic degree in psychoanalysis the status of a professional certificate, and the credential of that program comes from an accreditation of the university.  The graduates from the IPA institutes have no professional credentials except the ones they acquired in their academic specialization as professionals.  This point highlights the issue of professional credibility which training in IPA institutes does not guarantee. Rightly so; there is no unified measure of learning, training, assessing and evaluating the curricula in that system of training except the opinion of the training analysts (no wonder that the relationship with the faculty in the IPA institutes is always coloured by personal factors).

Everything related to deferring learning and training in psychoanalysis to academia shows the big advantages of doing that. Yet, even analysts who support the academic model are obviously not taking the sensible and necessary step of closing the IPA shop and expanding the academic shop. The reasons I heard about this dilemma ranges from nostalgia to the tradition to ‘ower’ independence that would be lost in academia. In addition the is fear of other human sciences absorbing psychoanalysis and making it merely a subspecialty in a larger domain. There is nothing to fear in that context except limiting the flexibility of improvising new schools of psychoanalysis haphazardly and irresponsibly.

Psychoanalysis-in academia- will get and take more time to learn and train, its syllabus will be organized and delivered in manner that eliminates the chancy ingeniousness of some faculty, and would finally adheres to the academic standers of quality. Psychoanalysis becomes a respectable profession instead of remaining a guild, as it is now.

However, resistance to change and the conflict of interest of the senior of analysts who are supposed to lead the movement to ‘academize’ psychoanalysis are issue to consider when we think of hope. This is another issue.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*In a previous posting I was introducing the issue of structuralism in psychoanalysis as a neglected point of change that affected psychoanalysis since the nineteen thirties. It is a central issue in the humanities since, and specifically in the arguments with Lacanian psychoanalytic thought.That topic was unfamiliar with most North American psychoanalysts. However, I received an email from a colleague asking me if there is something wrong with me and if I needed some help.

This posting too contains some unfamiliar ideas about the topic of academia and psychoanalysis. I want to assure my colleagues from the beginning that I am OK and do not need  help regarding my mind. 

The Unconscious’s Search for Consciousness

The two concepts of consciousness and unconsciousness are the most principal concepts in psychoanalysis. Consciousness is easy to define and deal with because it relates to awareness and is the condition of regular mentation. However, the concept of unconsciousness is most puzzling. The prefix ‘un’ when added to consciousness, it opens the door for multiplicity of meanings ranging from ‘not’ conscious to the reverse of consciousness, which is not within the field of psychoanalysis. Freud and analysts after him used the term unconscious in a variety of capacities, which is not unusual in human sciences. But, the absence of a recognized meaning of unconsciousness in keeps psychoanalysis deteriorating because it allows false psychoanalyses to compare with what is supposed to be the right one.

This post is an attempt to address the puzzling question of psychoanalysis: what is unconsciousness? Is it something we assume its existence; thus, we keep searching for it-in psychoanalysis- almost in a sleep walking fashion? Or is it something we feel its presence in us but do not know how it existed in us in the first place! We should remind ourselves that the unconscious (adjective) existed in our life form the beginning of the distinctiveness of homosapien from the rest of the primates. It started to raise eyebrows only when Freud brought it to our attention. He began talking about  the unconscious as noun (something specific) but gradually realised that ‘unconsciousness’ is an adjective of different and varied psychical process. He was even more ardent in giving it a primacy in psychical life, considering it an integral part of anything conscious issue.

A question arises in that context:  How could someone who is fundamentally conscious learn of the existence of unconsciousness, i.e., become conscious of unconsciousness?

Background:

Freud’s discovery of the unconscious was a long trip. He recognised that part of consciousness could be forced out of consciousness in some circumstances creating what he called repressed unconscious. Then he realised that consciousness is not the natural state of affaires because it is selective and the rest the mental activity gets systemically removed from consciousness and become an unconscious system. Later, he realised that the systemic unconscious leaves disguised marks in in consciousness. Those marks, he called none repressed unconscious. In real terms, the none repressed unconscious (conscious but disguised) means that both consciousness and unconsciousness coexist in the same psychical act. They are not qualitatively distinguishable or different, yet one gets a place in attention while the other has to be deduced.

Having that in mind and also being curious to know how could we extricate the unconscious from consciousness since they coexist, made me wonder about myths as a possible model of the hidden unconscious in consciousness. In a late posting I wondered about Jocasta’s part in the Oedipus Myth, or her disguised role in making the myth be about to be about the taboo of the incest. I got into an interesting but short exchange of views with a senior and very experienced analyst regarding psychoanalysis and mythology. The main point in the exchange was whether psychoanalysts could say something about myths, or do myths say something to psychoanalysts. In the first case myth would be treated as historical events (conscious material) thus its characters could be treated as personifation[aF1]  of regular human attributes. In the second case a myth would be an implicit (unconscious!) statement about a human condition disguised in a situation (not an event). We are still creating myths; the Pope is still creating saints, and none religious people create mythical heroes from politicians, artists, and others. Americans’ adoration, if not idolization, of their ‘forefathers’ is modern myth-creation and its unconscious message is not very unconscious. Therefore, the effort to look at myth as a way to understand unconsciousness seemed reasonable. The distinction between a myth and a historical event is in the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious in both. In the myth, the unconscious is hidden within the seemingly quasi conscious events. This is what gives the myth its unconscious messaging quality. The Oedipus myth is not about some characters manipulated by ‘destiny’ to set up a human drama; it is a human drama, created unconsciously by conscious minds to say something unconscious about family intra-dynamics. The Oedipus myth is -unconsciously-about the taboo of incest in family structure (The taboo of incest is the most important achievement of homosapiens in regard to separating themselves from the rest of the high primates). A historical event – on the hand- is empty of any unconsciousness even if it implies that it will unconsciously cause future changes.   

Few days after that exchange with my  colleague I remembered a discussion-of few years earlier among some friends about Greek Tragedies and the birth of Theatre (one of the people present corrected the notion that ‘theatre’ is a Greek invention stating the discovery of a hieroglyphic text of a play in one of the historical digs that went back to the second pharaonic dynasty (of the fourth century BC). Remembering that meeting reminded me of a very interesting and extremely important question that the archeologist in the group raised: Why did we (whoever the we were) created Theatre? A little later it came to my mind that theatre, whether Greek or Egyptian, began in parallel to the early creation of myths: theatre was devoted -then- to performing the popular myths of the age. The enactment of myth was also part of celebrating religious occasions. Theatre was the spoken text of mythology ‘par excellence’.

 As psychoanalysts, we learn that dreams are wish fulfillment. A dream is a scene in which the wish is already performed and fulfilled (the Irma Dream). Therefore, it is safe- at least- to say that acting a myth on theatre makes it come across as a real event or as an actuality. It also becomes a scene of fulfillment and frustration of conflicting wishes. The theatre goer watches a fictional scene as a reality for the duration of the acting, at least, without noticing or being aware (unconscious) of his state of mind that did not make the distinction between reality and fiction. This is exactly what the dreamer does by not waking up whatever the dream is saying. It is also safe to say that the great evolution in theatrical creations worldwide, including movies and other contemporary means of expressing ideas is still functioning as enactment of something dormant and silent within the subject, i.e., unconscious. Watching an enactment paralyzes or abolishes the critical functions of consciousness for a while. Just as examples: in “Gone with the Wind” Gable and Lee acted a dramatic story that could have actually happened during the Civil War in America. However, people watched the movie as a story but in the back of their minds it was also the story of the North (Gable) and the South (Lee), and the tragedy that at the end finally made Gable (the North) “walk out of his marriage without giving a damn”.  Myths are made of the fabric of dreams, as theatre is made of the fabric of dreaming.  

I reached a comfortable position in regard to the possible relation between consciousness and unconsciousness from comparing myth to history. Put a little better, a myth is unconsciousness disguised in what looks like conscious, while history is consciousness disguising as unconsciousness intention.

The puzzle got a little clearer but the problem remained unsolved clinically. Where is the conscious and the unconscious in the work of psychoanalysing?

A Surprize in a Gift:

A few weeks ago, a friend gave me a book as gift, entitled “Hermopolis” (Author: Mervat Nasser). Hermopolis is the name of an old city that existed in Pharaonic Egypt (there is still a city near its original place). The book deals with an ancient book of wisdom entitled Hermetica. Hermetica is initially a text that combined the wisdom and philosophy of the Pharaonic God Thoth or Tehuti, and Hermes the Greek God. It originated in the old Egyptian city of Hermopolis, then moved to Alexandria to get assimilated in the Greek text, and was known since as The Hermetica.  Tehuti, the Egyptian God was ‘lord of the divine words who invented the hieroglyphs. He also put thoughts and speech into form [thus] encapsulating the ‘information’ of the world into the words (logos)” (Nasser, p.16.).

This piece of information about Tehuti surprized me, if not shocked me. Egyptians, created their spoken language and realized the core of its nature but did not consciously own their discovery. The detail of Tehuti putting thoughts and speech together into form [thus]encapsulating the ‘information’ of the world in words (logos) is evidence that the Egyptians were conscious of the intricacies their language, but just retroactively (knowledge that came back to them from the God they themselves created).  They spoke and exchanged ideas, feelings, and many other psychical issues correctly, and did that without any conscious effort. Yet, they had to created a God whom they considered the initiator of that magical world of speech and meaning to explain the marvel of language. They also invented a way to write that speech so people could know about things beyond the time of speaking but ascribed that too to Tehuti. What surprised me was the process of unconsciously creating language and also creating the God who made what is done unconsciously become conscious. This could well mean that consciousness is an after-effect, a re-cognition, or a reaction to unconsciousness (I published in 2014 a book suggesting that we should call the psychoanalytic unconscious ‘a-conscious’, to bypass the notion of the primacy of consciousness). The evolution of human mind allowed humans to gradually  reclaimed most of what was previously attributed to the God(s).  We could assume that basically myths are product of something similar to the creation of the Gods, i.e., they represent affairs and concerns that preoccupied humans at the dawn of civilization, but unconsciously.  

The Primacy of the Unconscious:

 The combination of the book of Tehuti and the myth of the God Hermes in early Greek thought created the book of Hermetica (the first-second centuries AD). Hermetica became a main basis to build upon future thought, knowledge, and culture. Better, the principles of learning about things stayed in the roots of Hermetica. The authors of the book about Hermetica tackled this fact almost unconsciously. In 1460 the manuscripts of the book were translated by Cosimo De’Medichi and given to the Platonic University of Florence. Mervat Nasser, the  author of the book I got as gift, is an Egyptian psychiatrist (British educated and trained) gave a brief but elegant journey from the date of the translation of the Hermetica to modernity, revealing the direct and indirect impact of the Hermetica on the evolving European thought from its origins to William James and Carl Yung. She did move from the old to the recent, showing in a very palpable way how the book Hermetica continued to influence human thought-indirectly- till now. The way the whole matter of the Gods who knew the what and the how, and the continuation of unfolding knowledge to actualize more revelations over the years, forced on me the idea that knowledge is discovering the unconscious unconsciously. What I mean is that moving from the belief that Tehuti created language to De Saussure structuralism, in the early thirties, is a continuous unconscious process of searching for consciousness and turning it into knowledge. I would say that ‘knowledge’ is a human product that starts and grows unconsciously, and gets more sophisticated but remains disguised so the subjective achievement remains unclaimed until it acquires the quality of consciousness. Similarly, Feud’s concept of the none repressed unconscious is the final upshot of the concept of the unconscious as repressed consciousness. Lacan’s reference of the unconscious as “the other” (the not me) is consciousness of the unconscious. Moreover, when we go back the split of ‘unconsciousness’ of consciousness we could trace back to Descartes’s Cogito. 

The Clinical Dealing With Unconsciousness.

The pharaonic Egyptians first created Tehuti out of the fabric of unconscious imagination, then let him bring to their domain of consciousness what they have already unconsciously knew. This process kept going, as Nasser condensed well, until it reached Freud who gave us the conscious knowledge of the unconscious.  A young bright candidate was ‘keen’ to know how the analyst reaches the unsaid in what is said. During that particular part of her analysis she mentioned the movie of the Wizard of OZ frequently, and she pondered the symbolic meaning of the Wizard’s deeds in the movie. From the way she talked about the Wizard I likened him to her as the analyst. The wizard realized the unobvious that remained unconscious to the three disgruntled characters.  He gave each the equivalent of what they unconsciously wanted: courage, mind, and compassion represented in something obvious that is equivalent to tuning the unconscious into consciousness. Although my intervention did not seem to engender the desired insight about the unconscious transferiantial nature of the character of the wizard the analysand made major and foundational progress after that intervention.

The issue is how could we notice and interpret the unconscious in the conscious material he conveys to us. We all ask the patient to ‘free associate’ and tell us what comes to his mind without censorship. Free association- as a way of talking- is not possible, because of the transcendence of consciousness over that lower level of consciousness. A Lacanian supervised brought to my attention what I should convey to the patient about the process of analysis: talk freely in order to know, not about what you already know. The patients who are capable of doing that, or whenever they are capable of doing it show something particular about their analyses. They talk, know, then become conscious of what they have said. They invariably realise that they said something they dis not notice till the analyst showed them. A better way to say it: the patient talks to find out-sometimes- by the help of the analyst that they unexpectedly understand something that was implicit in what they said. A patient commented on the analyst’s silence and limited participation in process by saying ‘like my father who was a man of little words’. He continued to say that he became worse after my mother’s death and his condition worsened. I heard him ‘not saying that his father’s depression got worse’.  As I made that unconscious notion come to focus the patient came up with a rich description of his family history and his father’s depression and passivity. A great deal of reconstruction was thus possible. The patient’s new understanding is new consciousness. The unconscious turns into consciousness only if it becomes knowledge. Consciousness emanating from knowledge is the material for a better awareness of the identity.

Back to our Main Question:

Like the Egyptians who sought after something to display their knowledge of their language by creating the God Tehuti, the patients display their knowledge of heir unconscious wishes in symptoms and several other features psychological life that are in the fall in sphere of consciousness. The idea that the unconscious is separate from consciousness and has to be retrieved from other location in the psychical structure is the error that analyst easily do, and that needs arguing. What we suggest to the patient to do is to free associate and tell us anything that come to his mind. If the patient does that (thanks to its difficulty if not impossibility he does not do it) the analyst would not have material to work with; only quasi psychotic gibberish. A Lacanian supervisor’s gesture clarified to me three core ideas about psychoanalysing:

A.      Whatever the patient says carries a corresponding unconscious meaning within it. Extracting the unconscious from the related conscious material is the work of psychoanalysis, and what distinguishes a good psychoanalyst from a not so good one. 

B.      The way the analyst reaches and underline the unconscious to the patient requires from him to be carful in his choice of words. The same material will come back in a different context and should have the chance to be reinterpreted, and get an interpretation that is similar or complimentary to the previous one.

C.      Handling the elicited unconscious requires from the analyst to make it come from the conscious material that it came in its context. Otherwise the interpretation would more of information than the conscious equivalent of the unconscious revealed. The patient has to notice the existence of something unconscious in what he imparted for the unconscious turns into consciousness.

Conclusion:

The unconscious is disavowed consciousness. It is conscious material which the subject does not acknowledge owning at a previous time. Disavowal is not denial or negation of a link with the conscious material, it is total absence of recognition of the material. Thus, the patient I mentioned above did not at any previous point in his relationship with his father realised that his father was depressed; he was just a man of few words. Literally speaking he was unconscious of depression until depression hit him as an undeniable description of his father condition, which worsened with the depression for loosing his wife.

Unconsciousness is disavowal of consciousness.  

---

 [aF1]

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.