Psychoanalysis:   The Difficult Link Between Theory and Practice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Projection and Denial 

    This post is a response to three reactions to my last posting regarding projection as an essential step in relating to another. My point is that we do not have another means to relate to another except by projecting our entity (identity) onto him to start communicating, then depending on the narcissism involved in the situation we would withdraw back some of our projection but never all of it. The objections to my formulation reminded me of a paper by Freud [Negation, 1925, S.E, XIX]. I reread the paper -after more than fifty years of the first reading- to find in it something quite central in projection. According to Freu's paper negating an idea is denying or negating projection: "if you think that I am saying this to prove your interpretation is wrong you are wrong". However, and as Freud says in his paper, negating takes different modes of expression to confirm itself, like admitting to something to deny another. 

    The point I want to make is that in projection (unconscious) there is an implicit negation of something (unconscious) related to what is said, in negation (conscious) there is an unconscious projection involved. As an example: a newly married man was making well known that he loves his father-in-law like a real father and negated that joking about him in public is expressing something different. What I want to clarify is that analytically speaking there is no psychological phenomenon that is not a duality but not a duality of Cs.\Uns. The duality is between two psychological entities of the same nature. So, a projective sentence would be both Cs and Ucs, as its implicit negation would also be of the same nature. Underlining this point makes the analysts look at projection as an entity of duality which would then require to be looked at as an antithesis of its negation. 

    In clinical practice we should examine the bipolarity of each conflict but by also revealing the bipolarity within that main bipolarity. This is the best way to bypass the structural polarity of Cs\Ucs. and get to the psychodynamic of psychological life or at least the therapeutic process. It also shows that a psychical entity has within it a denial of something not openly mentioned. In other words, projection, or the basic link we have with the other, is fundamentally negation of soemthing that either start a relationship or drop it before iy begins, unless the Other can bypass the negation in it.

    Projection and negation are the two sides of the coin of relating. Just think of transference to put this sentence in perspective,

   

 A second and closer look at Projection:

        The most difficult aspect in training in psychoanalysis is to get the candidate to translate his findings in the patient's association into therapeutic insights. Freud's clinical cases demonstrate this point well. He did not offer any therapeutic gestures derived from his great discoveries in the psychodynamics of his patients. Possibly because he did not know then how to do that. Therefore, it is imperative Freud's most important findings was projection. It is rather impossible to initiate a dialogue with the other (interpersonal relation) without at least a period of projection. To understand the other, you have to do some projection as a start, and only as start, and then it is an open field of possibilities of understanding or misunderstanding. 

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        I have good reason to get back to the concept of Projection to present some aspects that were dismissed because the concepts of defense mechanisms are no longer in focus. They were -in the sixties of the last century- and were great psychoanalytic theoretical advancements that took us forward to the notion of the "schools". It was the main and first concept that analysts used to explain paranoia.... leading to identifying psychical conditions by the dominant defense mechanism in it (obsession: splitting etc.). In other words: psychoanalysis, fifty years ago, was dealing with conditions that had characteristics and symptoms, revealing some psychical manifestations related to 'defenses' against the unconscious. Presently, it deals with disorders not disease entities. Psychopathologies that we presently encounter clinically make the old concept of 'defense mechanisms' redundant. Yet, we should look closer at what we are abandoning, because there is more to them than what meets the present eye. 

        Projection was the mechanism of paranoia 'par excellence' that gave a good perspective to the difference between denying an unconscious wish by projecting it on the other (he wants to seduce my wife denying his wish for his wife to be seduced) and to detect the subject's own intention. Projection and paranoia have not disappeared, but "projection" has lost its psychoanalytic meaning and function and is rarely detected. The literature that leads to neglecting the concept of projection ignored two central issues in projection: the narcissistic nature of the projective relationship, and the projective nature of a narcissistic relationships.  The paranoid person is narcissistic, and the narcissist (the average person) relates paranoically to his narcissistic objects (the 'projected' part of his-self in the encounter).  This is a reason to go back to the mechanism of projection since we know now that there is no interpersonal relationship that does not have some paranoid projection in it. We should also differentiate between projection as just an initiation of a relationship and as a personal way of relating..period. Since we all do some projecting in our daily life and the literature is well supplied with works on the subject I will try to move to the social aspect of projection because in many cases it is used consciously to deal with group narcissism. 

        Projection: The Social Phenomenon: 

 I am reading a book by T. Dicks entitled Churchill and Orwell about their views during the Second World War in regard to the war. The detailed account of the mental set and psychological reactions of those two insightful persons to the events reveal that it is impossible for a social phenomenon (groups or masses) to take hold of a group or a nation without projection because it encompasses all other different psychological reaction that come individually. The masses do project first and then react in their own individual ways. What attracted my attention to this rarely considered phenomenon is our reaction to change in projection. I was discussing the situation in the Kraimian  war with a well-informed lady whom I agreed with regarding Putin's position and management of the war. Suddenly she said how much of what was said about Hitler could be wrong as the Western media is doing with Putin now. My first reaction was: no way... Hitler was mentally disturbed. But after a short while I thought of Churchill and how we thought of him as genius when in fact the man was not that giant. I remember as a kid that this is what my father said about him: a British Giant. 

        The issue is that in projecting our own wishes onto others we get in return the narcissism that we lose by choosing as our substitute. Thus, projection becomes the psychical mechanism that preserves narcissism when the person is not in a predicable situation, or relationship.  In the case of individual relationships projection is managiable. The analyst has a choice (based on the kind of patient he treats) to replace projection with reality or let the fading away of projection allow reality to do the job. In group situations it is not possible to replace fantasy with reality because reality loses its personal quality and fantasy becomes the will of the masses. The leader keeps the sense of narcissism active because  

 Projection and the psychology of the masses.

        From February Fourth of last year I kept writing about the war in the Ukraine. Most of what I concentrated on was self-deception. I expected it because the west (Europe) was hiding from itself the actual reason of Russia's act of aggression. The reason is that there will not be Nato forces on the border with Russia but Ukraine could join the European Union. This last condition is Turky's condition. Joining the European union was rejected by the Union several times for reasons bad governmental Standers in the Ukraine. "All is well in the western front".Suddenly the General Manger of Nato visited and promised the Ukraine its membership(which has to  be proven FIRST by all members (24 countries I think), thus there will be forces on the borders of Russia. For more than a year the situation remained the same but with Russia having forces on the border. Then Nato 'manger general' who is known to be an idiot civilian advocate came with the notion that Europeans have their own VALUES and Russia has no rights to prevent the Ukraine from having NATO forces on its own land. On July 7 the USA supported those values and Russia  entered the Ukranian Provinces with Majority od Russian population.

During those 15 weeks I noticed a very clear and alarming political situation of Projection, Narcissistic deception, and a need to hate to continue this drama, and guilt. The Western Europeans needed all that to justify their aggression. Projection was what was needed most because it is feeds both narcissism and hate. to support this point of view I wand to emphasize something about PROJECTION. Cleanses the person from his unacceptable qualities as projecting it is a phantasmic getting rid of it. The negatives and the horrible things they talk about the Russian Doings is totally in significant compared to what the Americans did in Vietnam, the French in Algeria, the British did with all of its colonies. Few countries in Europe did those horrible things through the aggressive ones. Russia (did somethings similar with the parts that constituted the Russian federation and the imperial but by support of Russian minorities.  

The gest of the mater is that the western media has chosen Russia as the villain the could be used to dump on it ALL the sins of the west and project onto it the whole history of their barbarianism and on Putin all what their colonial heroes did to the rest of the world, projecting their guilty social intra-structures on Russia and dragging the Ukranian in a stupid frenzy of projections. 

The end of this drama-comique is a faster collapse of the European empire but with 'people' settling on a gradual sense of equality with some western European keeping on their projected sense of greatness or what Moslems say Greatness is for GOD alone.

 Change and the Inventing of the Future

    The latest International Media conveys the mess that the European Union is lately going through and taking the Ukraine with it. The strange thing is the signs of decay in the structure of the Union while the attempts to revitalize it is by adding new members. This exposed the point of its weakness: development with no planned or defined future. To make it short: development implies-implicitly- creating a new and better future. When I look at Europe now it is clearly with no plan for its future. To clarify what this means I go back to psychoanalysis. 

    It took me more than two decades of decent work to notice that the change psychoanalysis achieves comes as relinquishing few personal 'things'. but also, which is more important, restructuring a few important aspects of the future. Thinking of that over the years and revisiting back some outstanding psychoanalyses (I did) I came to realize that the success of psychoanalysis has to be by doing a decent work in reconstructing the past, because this reconstruction is- in fact- the main achievement that the analyst will participate in with the patient.  

     A clinical case is a better way to exemplify the work of linking the past with the present and future of the patient.

    

    The patient was a young twenty-one years old. He was ruminating about suicide "all the time" as long as he was awake. He did not try it but could not think of any other things if he were not involved in something he is doing. He clarified that his obsession with suicide is linked to his father' death that happened several years ago, and he heard once that it was 'possibly' suicide. The patient is the grandson of a successful, rich, powerful, highly respected, businessman who was also the head of a small ethnic population that socialized in repairing and dealing with watches and clocks. The head of the family had all four of his sons in his expanding business. The patient's father was the youngest and hated his life as repair man but secretly.  He insisted on making his son seek a professional career. That was a secret which they both kept from the grandfather.

We reached a phase in the working through in which he became aware of issue like unconsciously he becomes someone else (identification), his preoccupation with sluiced was expressing other wishes pertaining to his relationship with his father, bur suddenly (few sessions) his grandfather took the stage. It seems that having more grandchildren than children, age, changes in the business lessened that man's grip on the family. Despite that, the patient remained captive of his Suicidal Obsession. Gradual construction of the material introduced to the patient a sense of freedom to make his choices without an obligation to please (family motto). It was reconstruction that revealed to the patient a picture of possibilities, with or without the approval of others. He terminated. 

Several or maybe many years later He came to visit. After ending his analysis, he was able to get some money from his mother and move to a far continent under the pretext of exploring possibilities of business in the same area as his family's. He had a plan to do what his father wanted him to do. He preferred to study, got a degree in education, worked as a teacher for a while, studied again and became a school administrator. He left his analysis with " A desire to be a free person".

He did, because as he said " funny I wanted to be a free person, but I am happy now to be a prisoner of what I wanted to be.  

The point is that success, individual or group, depends on what the analyst helps the patient to discover about the freedom he gains from analysis.

The politician also is supposed to free a society from old 'fixation' as is happening now in Europ. This will be my next part of the issue.

 Just a reminder

People who did not and do not accept my notion of the end of the European empire are not following the news in the media, because it is not mentioned much on the USA news. Following the international news supports my idea of the of Europ's declination, which is also derived from reading works by serious historians and strict and serious media in Europe...why because PSYCHOANALYSIS is so boring nowadays.

However, the media is bringing news from Europe that supports, confirms, and proves that great historical achievements are collapsing. The point is getting out of the Cocone of clinical psychoanalysis to use it to understand LIFE.

The last phase in our progress that is making us ALL equal is on the door. what can we say about future psychodynamics<. With new lanes of separation not based on the old of who is up and who is down and for what attributes we should know that we are no longer facing the notion of of are facing new narcissisms....."I am American, and you are Albanian" so we are not equal issues of "Our Democracy and our values" anymore. It will be issues of quite different meanings.

By- By Psychoanalysis ...welcome new psychoanalysis. 

The End of the last Empire

Part 2

This introduction is meant to pave the way for psychoanalysis to contribute to a political scene that does not make sense, as psychoneurotic symptoms and conditions do and are. The European countries who ruled, exploited, and exhausted their potentials beyond the limits of existence-like the Greek, Romans, Babylonians, Inka people did before- are now showing all the signs of a dying empire. It started with the end of the Second World War and the liberation of Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, some smaller changes in the Karibian Islands too. But the most demonstrative of all these changes is the migrations of people of the old empire to the source countries of that empire. Even in its small margins it says that 'the world is no longer divided into master\slave, white\black, poor\rich etc.' One of the most perceptive books of late is entitled: The World is Flate (By: Thomas Friedman). Flattening the world is not fully done yet, and the Ukraine War attests to a foolishly stubborn Europe to hold on to its passee fictitious sense of superiority. That has proven to "always" be achieved by choosing an old inferior adversary who has become an equal to treat as a failure in progressing and catching up with civility....Russia, China.  

 

        Social matters affect the individual more than parental influence does. There is also the group meaning of certain issues like religion and morality which get additional psychological importance within their social context. That is the reason psychoanalysis should find a place in social sciences. That means psychoanalysts should bring out its method of thinking and not to twist other ways of thinking to fit psychoanalysis. Few postings before I dealt in a limited way with some psychodynamics in social contexts; like the psychodynamics of group hate, projection, self-deception, and how they will be the fabric and background of the way the Ukraine Issue will be understood and managed. I anticipated what would happen if the politicians did not open their eyes to see the danger of the ideas the media will promote. I also underlined the effect of just two European politicians (Ursula van Der Leyen!!) and Stoltenberg!!?) who occupy especially important political position, like Manager of NATO and president of the European Union. I made that an issue because it was obvious the Ukraine, that small peaceful country had been foolishly and maliciously tricked into believing what those two pompous idiotic politicians were advocating... joining the EU and NATO. 

According to the rules of the European Union and NATO itself the Ukraine could not become member of those two organizations without first getting the approval of the 24 current members. Those two politicians were calling for something that would take three or four years to happen and could fail as it did with Turikia. Those two people simply do not care about the Ukraine; the just think again of European (our). The point I am making is that China, Eastern Europe, few countries in South America, some others in different parts of the world are more advanced than Western Europe for it to claim its superiority and relying on demeaning others to feel superior and not getting better than others to feel deserving.

This is not the issue of this post but just a reminder that psychoanalysis is vey much needed at this time of 'a ridiculous war', to expose the childishness of some European politicians who hold important position in that organization. The issue is not to ignore that social psychology and group psychology are the subject and object of development and evolution (getting better in goodness or badness too). The trick is what psychoanalytic principles could guide the thinker in understanding social evolution. As a psychoanalyst I will consider group-hate, projection, negation, denial, changes in fixed repressed ideas or believes, expressing suppressed unconscious thought as thoughts of common knowledge, all that as the new wrap of social development and evolution. Those are our legitimate field of study. I will treat the current events that are proclaimed old or suppressed realities as manifestations of upcoming major social and political changes that we should expect to happen and prepare to deal with.       

        The basic undeniable fact is that everything we deal with in life is in a state of change and evolution, as our own minds also change with that. Thus, resistance to change and stopping things from evolving creates illusions that we can go back to the past to understand the present and the future. Someone like me that has lived long to remember what happened between the east and the west, the socialists and the capitalists, Russia and the West, (from Stalin to Putin and from Eisenhauer to Lesinski), I Can see the backwardness in even the vocabulary of propaganda and anti-propaganda. The main point is what will be a test to acknowledging social evolution and change; so, from food gatherers to food manufacturing and from the temporary family of males and females to Empires that kept evolving for centuries (Greek, Mongol, Assarian, Babylonian, Roman.,etc.... ). We reached the end of the last empire in known history: the European Civilization or the European Empire   

       One of the most perceptive books of late is entitled: The World is Flate (By: Thomas Friedman). Flattening the world is not fully done yet, and the Ukraine War attests to a foolishly stubborn Europe holding on to its passee fictitious sense of superiority. That has proven to "always" be achieved by choosing an old inferior adversary who has become an equal, to treat as a failure in progressing and catching up with civility. This is the seat of what we call projection because the issue at hand is not the other but the self. What the media is fabricating about US to distract from the truth [ known to the enemy as well as to people but is kept from the spectators and the donners]. It is puzzling that Russia the barbarian, savage, backward, dictatorship has changed politically and let go of colonizing its previous east European allies, while the civilized west is still countries to the what looks like the old Wasow Alliance.

The falling Western Empire is revealing the core nature of its people: relied on demeaning others to feel superior and not getting better than others to feel deserving.

Spingler was of the opinion that civilizations along with their political structures move from east to west. Even though if there were important details that could undermine this brilliant idea at least the merit telling us a lot about the Ukranian War and the obsessive compulsive hate of Russia and hoping for the dying Empires of Russia and China.   

Psychoanalysts have a great deal to say about some social phenomena because they share similar psychodynamics. I wrote few posts about the psychodynamics of group hate, projection, self-deception, and how they will be the fabric and background of the way the Ukraine Issue will be understood and managed.

        The end of the European empire and its death is unique, but that is normal because each empire is part of a whole and a point in an ingoing process. What is unique-in my view- is that the coming empire will start as a world empire not a national empire. Therefor, analysts should consider that when they get into professional debates in the future.