Interpreting Dreams and Interpreting the Dream Process

A Personal Experience:

This personal experience is not a lesson that others could benefit from. It just explains my divergence from what is commonly agreed upon in the psychoanalytic circles: interpreting psychical issues, pathological formations, unconscious material, matters related to transference, etc. I followed that model for the first three decades of my involvement in psychoanalysis (1957\58- 1989\1990). In my learning and training, practicing and teaching & supervising, and in my writings in psychoanalysis my main orientation was about dealing with psychical things. However, I did everything possible to adhere to the classical conception of clinical practice: deducing the unconscious from the conscious, interpreting the unconscious, and reconstructing the past in light of the new interpretations. With time, I became increasingly frustrated and disappointed in my specialty of psychoanalysis because it did not correspond to what the patients wanted to be done in treating them. The candidates, indirectly (sometimes directly), wanted to learn about the psychical formations they were dealing with more than being guided in the process of practice by putting the emphasis on understanding the terminology used in their list of readings. In teaching, the candidates were learning the same thing for four years from six or seven TAs. My frustration tempted me many times to go back full time to clinical psychology and psychodiagnostics.

Two remarks set me free to learn and do analysis the way I am advocating now. I met Izsak Ramzi in Helsinki and spent an afternoon with him (he comes from Egypt and I just heard of him). He suggested that I move my membership to the “American”. When I expressed some reservations because of its heavy Ego Psychology leanings he asked me few questions about my objections to ego psychology (despite my admiration of a few of the giants of ego psychology then) and he replied: ‘it is good that you know what you do not like in Ego Psychology. It is better than accepting it without knowing why. You will get what suits you from this significant advancement over meagre psychodynamics that stifled psychoanalysis till now’. More or less, he assured me that I will benefit from being anti-ego- psychology if I eventually knew what I wanted from psychoanalysis. In this way he brought to my attention that there is a difference between psychoanalysis as knowledge and as practice.

The second remark came from Dr. C. Scott, a Kleinian as Kleinians should be. He said: “If you understand what the patient said or trying to say then be sure that you are not doing all what he expected you to do: ‘know and understand what he did not say yet’. I realised from those two remarks that I could look for and find the psychoanalysis that makes knowledge of the human subject an open and evolving exchange of discoveries with related fields. Psychoanalysis is not a practice, it is the skill, the art, the ethos of observing and working on freeing psychical phenomena from stagnation whether it is in an individual or in other psychological form. Nothing more stagnant in psychoanalysis than the formalities of practice (putting the patients’ speech in the pigeon halls of empty vocabulary and concepts).    

Those two moments and comments [with a few more from others] made me slowly but continually realize that psychoanalysis is not working with dreams (or similar things) but with dreaming (you should have noticed that the word dreaming means more than what happens when we are sleeping). In a more specific way: there is more to the addict than his addiction. Unfortunately, analysts, instead of improving and expanding their knowledge of the subject they kept changing the aspects of practice by coming up with new vocabulary and schools. Improving psychoanalysis (or even just avoiding its deterioration), has to come from a better understanding of its subject matter and not from varying its psychotherapy.

Freud’s Irma Dream: SE. Vol.4, Chapter II.

The Irma dream is the first dream Freud interpreted. He said: “‘interpreting’ a dream implies assigning a ‘meaning’ to it-. . . replacing it by something which fits into the chain of our mental acts” (p. 96). The dream was a scene that puts one of Freud’s problematic patient in the midst of a gathering that included some known physicians. The theme of the dream was Freud’s effort to exonerate himself of making a medical mistake with that patient and putting the blame on her and the physician who gave him the bad news about her. Freud reached a conclusive decision about his dream and stated: “The dream represented a particular state of affairs as I should have wished it to be. Thus, its content was fulfilment of a wish and its motive was a wish (ibid. 118-119. I believe that analysts, and none analysts too accept Freud’s idea that a dream is a whish fulfilled, because the dream as a scene is a scene -in the present tense- of a fulfilled wish: [Irma proved to be the cause of her misery and Otto is part of the problem. Moreover, those respectable people are not respectable at all].

If Freud was a patient reporting that dream to his analyst the analyst might have also shown him that his dream expresses a latent sense of insecurity regarding his belief in his superiority. It also shows aggressivity if faced with disappointment. Maybe the analyst would have tended to integrate this feature of Freud’s personality in a wider range of his life experiences. Great….. but what about the process that generated ‘such’ dream! What about his unreasonable hostile reaction to criticism, his tendency to do away with the limits of reality in turning everything in the scene into a theatre for his grandiosity! What about the irrationality of proving his point (the infiltrated skin on the left shoulder ibid, p.113)? Better, the fulfilled wish in the dream exposed Freud’s manner of wishing. Interpreting a dream is only useful if it reveals the ‘internal structure of the person’s psychical structure. This applies to the work of psychoanalysis as a whole.

We listen, understand, interpret, so the patient knows more about his dealings with his intrapsychical life. Knowing more about the unconscious intrapsychical life that is derived from dreams, acting outs, transference conflicts, etc. is the main-if not the only- initiative for change. Interpreting dreams, uncomfortable relationships, certain decision and the likes, have be to means to reveal to the patient the nature of his intrapsychical life. We interpret psychical ‘things’ to get from that better view of the intrapsychical.

 

C. Part Three

Psychical Issues and Psychical Processes

An Important Distinction to Make:

The first forty years of the history of psychoanalysis, and a few more years after the publication of The Ego and the Id, were spent by Freud and the pioneer analysts in discovering new aspects of psychopathology. They generated and formulated a vocabulary for their findings.  They chose words that described or explained the dynamics of the observed processes behind psychopathologies, even the untreatable ones. They gradually became ambitious and tried to turn their theory of psychopathology into a comprehensive theory of the human subject. Freud’s book of the Ego and the Id (1923) was the first identifiable attempt at transforming the discoveries of psychopathology into a psychoanalytic theory of the subject. The ‘title’ of the book, when translated into English, created a subtle but a lasting distortion in the sought-after theory of psychoanalysis of the subject.

The theory remained up till now an illusive prospect because of the kind of distortion created by translating Ich (German) into Ego instead of I (the pronoun of the first person subjective). Ego (Greek for I), turns the subject into an object (I can say I am happy but cannot not say ego or my ego is happy, although a Greek could say Egho happy). The inclination to turning whatever is subjective into a psychical object or entity was and stayed the dominant trend in the translation of the ‘Standard Edition’. This trend-in my opinion- was expressing the translator’s ‘wish’ to turn psychoanalysis into a theory of human entities and psychical things instead of a theory of the subject himself[i], thus giving the impression that psychoanalysis-like physical sciences- deals with issues. There is a basic and fundamental difference between an analyst saying I interpret my patient’s dreams and another saying that he interprets the patient’s dreaming as one of the psychical processes that he deals with in analysis. The first makes the dream a psychical entity, and the second uses dreaming as a process that turns something subjective (wish) into a psychical signifier of the subject’s ways of fulfilling his wishes. The wish is not material for psychoanalysis, wishing and its nature in a state of dreaming, fantasies, enactments, etc. is material for psychoanalysis.

Freud and the early practitioners initiated a genuine and powerful movement of discovering new aspects of the subject that were unnoticeable before psychoanalysis.  They used the common vocabulary of everyday life to define their novel findings. There was nothing particular about their findings that could have engendered new vocabulary. There was nothing unusual in what they identified that required ‘inventing’ new meanings for the used vocabulary. However, what was unusual about the psychoanalytic discoveries is the richness and details of the meanings implicit in the spoken language. For instance, repression as an analytic term meant the usual disappearance of an unacceptable issue from consciousness. But it also signified that the ‘repressed’ is predisposed to taking disguised forms of itself to still remain out of consciousness but still could be deduced from its repressed form. 

Psychoanalysis did not create a new vocabulary for its discoveries, like the theories of the physical world usually do; it created theory regarding certain new aspects of the human subject, used the common vocabulary in more meticulous and particular ways, revealing its hidden connotations. The necessity to use regular vocabulary to express psychoanalytic discoveries was basically the outcome of something that we do not pay attention to: the vocabulary of the current psychoanalytic literature is not of entities or things psychological. It is a vocabulary that denotes processes that pertain to the person as a human subject. Repression would mean nothing or very little if we do not know the psychodynamics of the process of repressing. Repression is removing a psychical issue from the field of attention but transforming it into another that could just hints to its original meaning. Another way of putting it: the vocabulary of psychoanalysis is not about psychical issues, events, entities, things: it is the vocabulary of psychical processes, i.e., the vocabulary of psychodynamics. If and when this quality is neglected or ignored psychoanalysis will become a practice of correcting faults in a person or psychotherapy (a ‘lower’ level of practice).

      Anxiety and Narcissism:

The trend to translate the S.E. in the way Strachey did was a simplistic and crude attempt at making psychoanalysis sound as if it is a theory of ‘things- human’ (thus could eventually qualify to be a science of psychopathology). The things- human could be turned into a subject-matter for theories[1].  The pervasive tendency to do that (see: Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety (1926) has distorted psychoanalysis and flawed the meaning of its vocabulary. That distortion gave the impression that a theory of psychoanalysis is a theory of psychodynamics (A theory of faith is not a theory of religion). Anxiety, which was considered before caused by ‘frustrated’ libido, became a cause symptom formation. A new issue emerged: castration and its anxiety. Castrations was one of the central notions in understanding the Oedipus Complex[ii] It is now (after more than two decades) the instigator of anxiety. The details of hose concepts (vocabulary), confusing as they happened to become in the S.D., put the main issue of anxiety within the duality of the I and the ME. It clear that the vocabulary of psychoanalysis without a theory could if not is confusing one has to be well versed in their source before using them as theoretical concepts.

What is even more distorting of the theoretical situation in psychoanalysis was not making the distinction between language and vocabulary: vocabulary does not make a language but a language gives vocabulary its communicative functions. Thus, the vocabulary of psychoanalysis has no meaning or expressive connotation outside a clear comprehensive theory of psychoanalysis itself. For instance: does identification denotes a psychodynamic process which renders the subject and the object become alike, or the case where both subject and object are alike should just call it identification. This simple and subtle distorted beginning of psychoanalysis invited the new generation of psychoanalyst to complicate matters further.

The third generation of analysts, leaned to understanding the psychodynamics of the discoveries based on what the vocabulary linguistically suggests. By doing that they the shifted the emphasis from looking for the subject matter of psychoanalysis and gave the causal relationships between the pathological symptom and its psychodynamic a central place in the concept of psychoanalysis. Analysts used the terminology of describing psychical findings as explanations (causations) of the psychopathological phenomena (the patient introjected the mother’s passive aggressive trends). This way, psychoanalysis became a verbal medium of common terminology use with a different meaning.  

A preliminary step toward a subject-matter of a theory of psychoanalysis is looking closely at the subject that psychoanalysis tries to study and define, and ultimately be useful to. I will mention just two attributes of the human subject (not his manifestations) that qualifies him as the subject-matter of psychoanalysis. This banal distinction between the subject and his attributes is the key to defining the subject-matter of psychoanalysis and the essential step in knowing why psychoanalysis is the theory of the human subject, not the reverse.    The human subject’s is the only life-entity that has a psychological life. Some animals display effective reactions similar to those human display. We are able to bestow on them some verbal connotations. However, the are reactions but do not qualify as messages.  ( the only living organism that does not respond the internal or external stimuli without turning them first into a subjective issue, and responds only to the subjective issue he created. The human subject does not feel hunger and eats; he feels a desire for certain foods and tries to get what he specifically desires. Moreover, the human subject could feel hunger for other things that have nothing to do with eating like love, fame, wealth, etc.

 The human subject is not just a higher-ranking mammal; he is the only mammal who developed language which translated his vital needs into psychological demands. The psychological demands become his real source of stimulation. The psychology of the human subject is caught in the process of turning a need into a psychological demand. The subject matter of psychoanalysis is that particularly human attribute. 

 

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1.In a meeting in Los Angeles 2019, Mark Solms, who is supervising the new edition of the Standard Edition, confirmed that those kinds of distortions will be corrected in the new edition, and the translation will adhere to the intended content and   style of the original German text.

. 2.. At the beginning, Freud and the pioneers of psychoanalysis considered anxiety the result of transforming the frustrating libido into anxiety. Then, came the notion of castration in the dynamics of the Oedipus complex and anxiety was associate with castration. We know now that castration anxiety relates more to that concept of narcissism which a better concept to explain anxiety as the result of concerns about the person’s identity. But we still have to find our way to know if the anxiety relates to affecting the I the Me.

 

 

               

                             Part two:

Psychoanalysis will no longer be learned in ‘institutes’ of psychoanalysis. It will be part of the world of knowledge in academia not confined to the world of apprenticeship in the institutes. In light of the anticipated radical changes in its learning and training analysts should not feel sorry for what they know and have to discard. They better begin working on an advanced theory and practice of psychoanalysis.  One of the primary issues we have to deal with is the development of a language that could be understood and spoken by other academicians. We also have to work on the subject-matter of a theory so that we could exchange knowledge with other professional about what is overlapping between their theories m and ours.    

 The problem with psychoanalysis since its birth is ignoring that there is a difference between the subject- matter of “psychoanalysis” and the practicing of psychotherapy. If psychoanalysis is only psychotherapy, why then do have so much vocabulary about unrelated issues of psychotherapy! The lack of distinction between those two issues was caused by Freud discovering psychoanalysis while doing psychotherapy. A blind- almost infantile- identification with Freud as a therapist rebuffed some great thinkers from joining him and us after him. The theoretical base of psychotherapy itself could have and still can benefitted from inputs of that nature.

Psychoanalysis: Theory and Practice.

If psychoanalysis is more than just psychotherapy (which it is) what could it about. The main point in answering this question is knowing what we analysts do when we practice the psychotherapy of psychoanalysis. Do we analyze the patient, his speech, or a psychoneurotic structure? I hope that it is noticeable that whatever the answer of any of those questions might be the analyst has to have a theory, in which those issues are of some sort of theoretical entity and could be subject matter of that act of therapy. If that is achieved psychoanalysis would be more than just some vocabulary that is not even constituting a language.

There is a fundamental preface to this notion. The last six centuries were the age of philosophy. Philosophers’ work during that period was understanding the nature of the human subject (the subject matter of philosophy). They reached the point where a contradiction in his nature needed to be dealt with. Freud was the one ‘destiny or time has assigned to reveal the duality of the human subject, and it became the subject-matter of the Freudian theory of psychoanalysis. I will explain this point without preliminary discussion relying on the contributions and  discussions of other colleagues’ and some material I published lately.

Acknowledging a distinction between the intrapsychical (the subjective psychical aspect of the person) and the interpersonal (the psychological aspect of relating to others) depicts two human conditions: a subjective sense of being, or the I am, and an objective sense being an  he or the object me. The formation of the very personal intrapsychical structure is made possible because the human faculty of language which allows distinctions of that kind. Language as a mental capacity creates a gap between the subject as I and an object Me. Our psychological life is there in that gap. The subject-matter of psychoanalysis, or what analysis is analysis of- is the linguistic bridging between the subject I and his objective me (a counterpart or the I). Without this particular subject- matter our vocabulary will have no psychoanalytical content. Cicero as I sublimated his urges of superiority as a me, benefitting from his verbal endowment to fulfill his narcissistic inclinations. If we did not have in mind the that Cicero transformed his intrapsychic urges into fulfilling behavior our usage of word sublimation would be misinterpreted.  Vocabulary is meaningless until it sets up the context in which it will attain its meaning. What we have till now-in psychoanalysis- is mostly vocabulary that has confusing meanings and creating different psychoanalytic languages.  Psychoanalysis does not have a theory yet, but has some vocabularies, and a shadow of a subject matter.

Temporarily, I would say that the human subject presents us with a phenomenon that is very difficult to fathom: his duality. It is a duality that is inherent I would even say that the subject-matter of psychoanalysis is that duality of the human subject’s existence. I do not mean by that the dualities of conscious and unconscious, manifest and latent, past and present, primary and secondary, metonymy and metaphor; I mean the duality of identity: I and me. The other dualities, which we are more familiar with are onlypossibel to exist because of the nature of the person is inherently dualistic. 

I think that language, which is a human characteristic that does not exist in any other life entity facilitated and allowed a dichotomy within the human mind to take 'hiself' as an object.    

 

The Theory of Psychoanalysis

A.  What and How

It is obvious that psychoanalysis (in the USA) is clearly going through major and sweeping changes in theory, learning and training, and the process of qualifying its practice in future related professions. It is equally obvious that important and serious effort and work is needed for that change to happen successfully; preferably with participation from the existing psychoanalysts who could guide the new generation to what would contribute to that change.

I strongly believe that a starting point in that direction is the theory of psychoanalysis. We do not have a theory of psychoanalysis yet. What we think is our theory is just some vocabulary that does not even have an agreed upon meaning.

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Preface:

Psychoanalysts, and mostly in North America, believe that we have a theory of psychoanalysis, if not even more than one. What we have is just psychoanalytic vocabulary, which in our opinion qualify as a theory, because we believe it to be originating from an established theory. Generally speaking, vocabularies are enough to a theory and are not necessarily product of theory. They have to constitute a distinct language because the meaning of words and their communicative function- a precondition for language- are decided by the way the material of the language is interconnected.

We have to ask: what is psychoanalysis a psychoanalysis of; or what is the subject-matter of psychoanalysis. I expect that most analysts will say who needs to know: we know what we do and we do it. This reply is unsatisfactory in light of the radical changes that are approaching. Psychoanalysis will no longer be delivered within ‘institutes’ of psychoanalysis. It will be part of the world of knowledge in academia not confined to the world of apprenticeship. Therefor, it has to develop the language that could be understood and spoken by other academicians. It also has to have subject-matter of a theory that be the link between itself and other academic topics.     

 What is psychoanalysis a psychoanalysis of?

The problem with psychoanalysis since its birth is ignoring that there is a difference between the subject- matter of “psychoanalysis” and practicing psychotherapy. If psychoanalysis is only psychotherapy, why then do have so much vocabulary about unrelated issues of psychotherapy! The lack of distinction between those two issues was caused by Freud discovering psychoanalysis while doing psychotherapy, and by a blind- almost infantile- identification with Freud we limited ourselves to psychotherapy, or took the feature of the therapeutic act as a theoretical background.

Psychoanalysis: Theory and Practice.

If psychoanalysis is more than just psychotherapy (which it is) what is it about. The main point in answering this question is knowing what we analyse when we practice “psychoanalysis”. Is it the patient? His speech? Neuroses? I hope that it is noticeable that to answer any of those questions the analyst has to have a theory of psychoanalysis in which those issues are of some sort of theoretical entity and could be subject matter of that act of therapy. If that is achieved psychoanalysis would be more than just some vocabulary that is not even constituting a language.

Whatever vocabulary we have to describe the patient’s condition, or even offer a causative explanation for it we will still not reach the point of defining what psychoanalysis is psychoanalysis of…. The reason is that the subject matter of a theory is the required need for that theory in particular. The theory of evolution was reached because change (its subject matter) caused the urge to get an explanation of that subject matter.

 Psychoanalysis and its Subject Matter.

The last six centuries were the centuries of exploring the nature of the human subject. Philosophers’ works during that time was making strides in understanding the nature of the human subject (the subject matter of philosophy). They reached the point where the contradictions in his nature needed to be dealt with. Freud was the one ‘destiny or time has ‘designated to discover the duality of the human subject. The duality of the human subject became the subject-matter of the Freudian theory of psychoanalysis. I will explain this point without preliminary discussion relying on the contributions the discussion of other colleagues’ and some material I published in my last Book.

What distinguishes the human subject from the rest of the animal kingdom is the existence of an intrapsychical structure that is distinctively subjective. The intrapsychic is the psychological nature of the person, which does not exist in the rest of animal Kingdome. [Object relations are reflections and products of the person’s intrapsychical structure]. The formation of the very personal intrapsychical structure is made possible because the human faculty of language. Language-existed because of the human to be aware of self as subject and as object too.  This mental capacity creates a gap between the subject as I and an object Me. Our psychological life is there in that gap. The subject-matter of psychoanalysis is the linguistic bridging between the subject and his counterpart or himself. The duality of the subject is not between things like conscious\unconscious, impulse\resistance, ego\id; it is the duality of subject\object (as I will show a little later) in addition to several others, of that nature.  Without this particular subject matter our vocabulary of will not be psychoanalytical.  Cicero sublimated his urges of superiority, benefitting from his verbal endowment to fulfill his narcissistic inclinations. If we did not have in mind the that Cicero transformed his intrapsychic urges into fulfilling behavior our usage of sublimation would be misinterpreted by the listener.

 

Letting Go of an Old Belief:

Psychoanalysis is what we learn and train in IPA and IPA like institutes. Outside that set up we will likely encounter deviations from ‘true’ psychoanalysis.

One Consciousness not two:

I just received a personal email from a senior and very insightful colleague regarding the interest of young psychologist-in academia- in psychoanalysis. My colleague expressed the wish to be excluded from any possible open discussion of that matter on the member’s listserv. Therefore, I will mention two of his new and valuable ideas without mentioning his name.

He stated that the interest of young psychologists in psychoanalysis is due to the on-going deterioration of the condition of teaching psychology (post cognitive psychology) in departments of psychology. I do not have first hand knowledge of that but from past experience I can see the correctness and weight of such idea.  The second is the best characterization I encountered of the psychoanalysis we presently train young analysis in (I wish to get the sentence and the permission to publish it). In summary, psychologists are studying a dying science because there is nothing that could be new or different in studying psychological cognitive functions now (memory, conflict solving, etc.) than what was there to study twenty years ago. His description of contemporary psychoanalysis underlines the troubling issue of the use and abuse of the vocabulary of “psychoanalytic” observation as its theoretical foundation. His characterization of psychoanalysis and the observation about the psychology of conscious function is the best understating of the need of psychology for learning about the intrapsychical dynamics, and psychoanalysts’ need to change the substance and the method of learning psychoanalysis. Psychologists have to open up their science to the unconscious processes that shapes the intrapsychical dynamics, and analysts have to know that personal analysis was and still is the only way to experience how psychoanalysis is done, therefore make clear the link between what is done in analyzing and what is taught about it. There is no literature or scientific material that could teach how analysis is clinically done. This ‘fact’ should make learning and training in  psychoanalysis centered on what we work on changing in therapy, and how its done through psychoanalysis not via correcting cognitive failings.

      The significance of my colleague’s two remarks, which unfortunately will not be properly presented by me, is in making us see that psychology without learning about the unconscious dynamics is a dead science. He also makes it clear that psychoanalysts without a clear and good definition of consciousness will be without a subject matter. The human subject deals with his psychological life in two ways at the same time:  one conscious and the other is unconscious. The issue is that we deal with our life both consciously and unconsciously at the same time.  There is only one consciousness in each human subject, but aspects of that consciousness are not always within the fields of the subject’s awareness. There is no consciousness without its own unconscious counterpart.  The unconscious is one of the different conditions in consciousness. I need to emphasize a point: unconsciousness does not suddenly jump into the patient or the analyst consciousness but reveals itself through, within, or by the distortion it creates in consciousness.

Therefore, we should approach the new wave of interest in psychoanalysis as the natural and healthy awareness of psychologists to the fact that any cognitive, emotional, mental event is subject to the influence and the contribution of unconscious aspects that we are unaware of, and we need to uncover to make our consciousness meaningful. Most importantly, we should consider the psychologists recent interest in psychoanalysis not an invitation to participate in the academic world of psychology, but a call for unifying the conscious\unconscious duality in one psychology that envelops the subjects’ psychological life (from sickness to ingeniousness). We should work on modifying our conception of the unconscious to meet the psychologist expected effort to acknowledge their need to advance their understanding of the human subject. Psychologists still have some good work to do in regard of the cognitive, emotional and mental phenomena that require different understanding with adding the unconscious as vital constituent of psychologic life.

Accepting that there is only one consciousness that in some conditions escapes attention is the way to free psychoanalysis from its isolation from any meaningful status. The notion of one consciousness that encompasses several dualities will make the idea of uniting psychology and psychoanalysis a logical and a natural thing. However, this notion is a big pill for psychoanalysts-medical and none medical- to swallow. Psychoanalysis has been a practice that several professions could seek training in it.  The creation of the new science of psychoanalysis will reverse this situation: instead of different professions getting training in psychoanalysis, psychoanalysis will create different professions that need solid basis in psychoanalysis.

It is useful and very important to note that the push to change psychology to become more than a science of the conscious psychological functions, and psychoanalysis’s to be more than a discipline of psychotherapy, happened in a natural way: unconsciously. It is not happening because of individual calls but as the outcome a need for change. It is rewarding to wait for normal change get rid of the declining old.

 

The Link Between the Social and the Individual:

 In the previous part of this posting I postulated that the social precedes the existence of the individual and the psychological is a product of the social. My basic argument is that a gathering of individuals in some sort of a group changes their individual psychology, strongly implying that every group of people has its psychology, which goes beyond the psychology of each of its members separately. The other point is that the individual psychology of a member could undergoes changes while social psychology is not affected by the psychology of the individual, except when we deal with issues pertaining to leadership.

The recent predicaments the USA society is facing brings to attention a gradual closeness happening between whites and blacks, radicals and conservatives, higher and lower classes; even Republicans and Democrats. This is major change. Thus, the link between the social and the individual is the main issue in the phenomenon of change, as such. Change is always that gradual narrowing or widening of gaps between opposites in the society. In other terms, when we look closer to social change, we could notice a tendency to turning the social into psychological or separating the psychological from the social: at the present time whites are psychologically prone and inclined to condemn what was -maybe- accepted or ignored a few years or months ago. The point is that psychoanalysts reject to give social changes the deserved attention because they do not know how to fit that change in a psychological formulation of problems. As an example, dealing with racial discrimination from the narcissistic point of view is something recently accepted and integrated in the analysts view of the return of the repressed. Yet, if we introduce the notion that Blacks too have narcissistic issues that needs to be considered part of understanding the contemporary picture of racial discrimination, psychoanalysts get flustered because they thought only of a situation that their basic analytic training could make them deals with. (I can vouch for that from the responses I get to suggesting addressing Blacks’ narcissism in our thinking. The main objection is a wrong understanding of narcissism as self-love, and anything else would complicate of dealing with social narcissism and dividual narcissism (of blacks).

The move from the social to the psychological is a movement that most psychoanalysts neglect that it is happening all the time, even in the psychoanalytic organizations. As neglecting this fact in a society leads to social unrest and missing good chances to move ahead. My thought about that is coming from being an analyst and having experiences with my colleagues’ resistance to notice the forces of social change and the reluctant of the ‘individuals’ give up their dissections. Not being classical (or what one has learned in his training) is a common resistance to change in psychoanalysis.

Coming back to the main issue: the gradual and unavoidable social change changes the methods of rearing the young, male-female relations, and moral and familial concepts among many other things related to daily life. Social change creates new “human subjects”. Analysts, particularly in the USA are unable to look at psychoanalysis from the point of view that they can acknowledge change and still remain devoted to their traditional ways of thinking. Because what changes in the society is the individual and in the psychoanalytic society is the analyst then we could say that the subject matter of both ‘socials’ maintain their inner cores: a contemporary subject will be as moral or immoral as his ancestors but according to a new system of morality. In psychoanalysis, a modern analyst will remain advocate of psychoanalysis but with a better understanding of its discoveries about the subject. An example, a modern analyst will not understand narcissism as withdrawal of libidinal investment to the self, but as a disturbance in the sense of identity. The subject of the twentieth century deals with sexuality differently but guilt about sexuality would  still remain present in modernity.

We come now to the third point: is there a psychoanalytic theory of the society? Psychoanalysis is a theory of the subject. Any changes to the subject that is resulting from social change will require psychoanalysts to look closely at the psychodynamics of that new subject. It is expected that the psychodynamics will remain the same (defense mechanism or the usage of metaphors as the means of expressing the unconscious. The changes in the Oedipal triangle will be different and expressing the difference in new patterns of attachments will be the contemporary analyst’s job.  This change will dictate changes in the meaning of love, aggression, loyalty, etc. That might need reformulating aspects of the ‘social’ according to those changes but  the permanency of the psychical will not be affected by the social in a manner that will turn the subject into a human object with no psychological life.

 In a broader conception we could say that psychoanalysis will have a new theory of the subject of the ‘social’ of the time. The subject of the twenty first century will be replaced by contemporary issues that pertain to modernity. Although the ‘social’ is a multifaceted topic (economics, familial rules and structuring, morality and spirituality, etc.,) all those facets get internally organised in a way that permits the sociologist to have new social theories, but psychoanalysis will be limited in what has to be changed.

Psychoanalysis and Social Events (USA).

The psychoanalysts’ contributions to evaluating and understanding social phenomena is not a simple matter, because it requires moving from the field of the psyche to another field of phenomena that they have little or no experience with, i.e., the social. This shift is like shifting from medicine to epidemiology. Talking about a medical problem in clinical practice is not like talking about the same medical problem in socio-epidemic phenomenon. The main point is that we cannot apply the same understanding of the individual (criminal mind) on a society that is suffering from an increase in criminality. The social is made of hundreds and thousands of different individuals. Even a small group of individuals who are alike (psychoanalysts !!) act differently as a group; their psychology as individuals change and a different spirit takes over.

This point of view has to deal-I think-with three issues: 1. what creates the other, the social or the psychological, 2. what could be the link between a social theory and theories of the individual,3. Is there or could there be a psychoanalytic theory of society?

I believe knowing more about those three issues will ultimately allow dealing with another perplexing question: do people create their leaders or is it the leaders who influences people? Is it Alexander the great who encouraged the Greeks to invade the world or was it the Greeks who were eager to go beyond their group of islands and created Alexander to actualize their desire? 

1.    The Social and its Psychological Counterpart:

The late events of unrest, demonstrations, obvious political conflicts, and raising the issues of race discriminations in the USA could be explained by clear and blatant police racial bigotries. Putting the issue in this way proves that there are other factors that are not considered: police bigotries is not a new matter and was evident- in the same manner-for a long time before. The percentage of black incarcerations compared to whites is another evidence that what happened lately has been happening before too.  It seems that nothing new is recently started to change. Yet, the rise of the white people in solidarity with blacks and their adoption of the spirit of objecting to police behaviour is something new. It is new because that change is not response to changes in the circumstances; it is change in people white they are or black. It is a change in the American society not just its black minority. Moreover, this change is not in the ‘material’ conditions of people (income, education, class structure, etc.). The change that happened lately is a change in the psychological characteristics and attributes of both blacks and whites.  As a foreigner, who is observing from a distance, black Americans have produced a strong evidence that they are as capable as the whites, when they find the stance, and they serve the country as well as whites do with the same dedication and skill (federal and local governments, media, etc.).

However, some Americans, and not just a few, could no longer build their narcissism on the old conviction that blacks are inferior people. They also could not ameliorate deep rooted hatred and aggression toward blacks to be simple despise and disregard. Psychologically, the whites who still do not accept equality of the blacks are preserving old means of maintaining a narcissistic feeling of distinction, and transmitting it from generation to generation. The unobvious but proof to the still existence of those resistant attributes is their sudden and sporadic displays in social relations. They come out like the return of the unconscious in individual cases.  To say it briefly “the social pre-exists the individual but uses its tools of expression as the means to make a statement”.

2.    The Suddenness of Social Change:

Social changes that create new individual awareness (counterparts) look like a sudden turning point in a regular stream of affairs. As an example, the gradual industrialisation of the North in the United State gradually created few businesses and businessmen (Carnegie, Roosevelt, Morgan, …)  which and who wanted to expand in the south and modernize that part of the US. Notwithstanding their progressive intentions and the leadership of Lincoln, they also realised that they will benefit from the war itself (W. Scheidel), 2018). The minds of the northern Americans and the new emigrants made the civil war a possibility, a fact and an act. At the same period of time, the no change (fixation) in the south maintained the notion of farming and slavery unchanged, therefore they denied the change in the balks around them. All big historical events happen in the same way because they surprise the people themselves who unconsciously changed. The equivalent to that in the individual is the impact of an interpretation on a patient while he is preconscious of what he was relaying to the analyst.

Therefore, it is important when we try to understand what is happening now is to listen to what those acts are saying to us preconsciously. They are not saying that they believe in slavery but they say we still believe in racial discrimination: Why, and why more policemen than expected of law enforcing people? More than that: the events are saying (preconsciously): they are not like us. The events happening now in the streets of cities and town in the USA talks about unusuality in one of its forms. This is not a racial matter. Racial discrimination is ‘used’(preconsciously) to object to other inequalities. The dream of Americans was always equal opportunity. The present-day dream is looking for the value that supported that dream till now.

3.    Thank God that very few people listen to psychoanalysts when it comes to social matters; or they would have lost trust in us as therapists too. As a preparation for the point I want to make I would like to mention a short exchange with a colleague, many years ago, about ‘socialising’ psychoanalysis? He claimed that we know all what it needs to understand human phenomena, whatever,

I asked why Wars? He said it the natural aggressive endowment in us. Why aggression in us is a natural thing he replied because introjection persecutory object that we need to keep getting rid of. I stopped the discussion there because Klein’s vocabulary will keep him going uselessly.  Sadly, analysts in American association jumped on a term-otherness- as the key to riddle of racial dis crimination.

In reality, in child psychology, the child recognises his mother’s image in mirror few weeks before showing any sign of know who is the other child who sits on his mother’s lab. We know ourselves as others and we remain otherness to ourselves for ever. We say I and one as exchangeable pronoun. This approach to explaining racial discrimination stop sat the point of departure. It is not otherness but the rejection of separateness is the problem. A British is otherness but a black American is an I that I hate. Let’s look at that closer because white persecutors could be diverting their self hate away from themselves.

I do not believe there is psychoanalytic theory of the social, as there is no sociological theory of the psychical. That does not answer the question that is the core of the next part of this posting: since there is a link between the social and the individual could there be a theory about that link; could we have some guiding principals to examine the link between racial discrimination and the evident need for social changes in the American ……..etc.?