A Plea to My Colleagues the Psychoanalysis.

It is difficult to accept being disliked. It is more difficult to accept being disliked because you are wrongly accused of being wrong. Worse of all is to be right but just because you are disliked you are deemed to be wrong. I am not talking about myself, but about Putin!!

Putin is disliked and even hated for having been KJB. It is not unusual to assume that secret services-of all countries do bad things as part of their daily work, therefore a Russian KJB must have don bad things, and Putin is hated for that too. But when the situation in the Ukraine is related to one person and its history and background are summarized and explained by one person’s psychology, we should then question our judgement. Few days ago, I pointed out that psychologizing history is a temptation we should resist. The result of psychologizing the present crisis is obvious: instead of asking “who is Putin” we are now we are asking the most naïve answer to another question; “what is Putin?”. Do you see the difference in the answer to those two questions? One is inquisitive and the other affirmative.

What is happening now started in 1945, just after defeating Germany in the war. As Churchill said ‘we must drop an iron curtain between us and the communists to stop them from affecting our countries’. A NATO was born to face the allies of yesterday. Psychologizing social and political phenomena is a European Disease since the fall of the Roman empire. If it was not Catholic versus Protestant it will be Anglo Saxon versus Slaves or Germanics, etc. And now it is between NATO and NOT NATO.

My plea to my colleagues is to forget for a year or two the issue of the training analyst, join forces with other human science professional a stand against psychologizing the real, facts, and deal with what is true in our daily life. We are on the verge of madness, and we should never stop reminding ourselves that whatever our specialization we are human scientists.

 2. Language and its Deceptive Power:

        All livening creatures communicate with their peers somehow and in some way. Most of the time we humans do not know how the communication between all those creatures  happen (changing places in a flying flock of migrating birds) without language. Humans are the only creatures which communicate through language. Among the inherent characteristics of language is the power of adjectives to replace the signified object. This characteristic is very common in human sociology. A person is typified as such and such.  Typifying psychologizes the object, i.e., “this man committed a crime” soon after, a characterization of that person as a criminal appears and is followed by several derivatives of the adjective criminal. The characterizations become the person himself and he becomes an open filed for psychological speculations. Yasser Arafat had characterizations to each of his adversaries, and his claim to fame was having a war against some those Jewish characterization. He was-thus- not fighting for a cause but fighting for principles. He even catheterized himself as a warier. 

    This is what is happening now in Europe: Western Europe is not fighting for expanding NATO to stop an indirect threat of the Russians. It is fighting for a cause (our Western values). How did that danger come about now and Why?? I dare not say, because Europe is now younger in age, its old bloody history is not part of its memory, a group of inexperienced and seriously ignorant young politicians are taking charge of the  blossoming new Europe and it is Hard to say it thanks to the atomic bomb there will not a chance for those (idiots) to drag us in a third world war.  

    Psychologizing and moralizing the problem is pathetic and  makes the politicians who raise the banner of morality the new danger that reminds of the beginning of Nazism. Morality and values and OUR this and OUR that are not issues in this centry because they  were wrong then and are still wrong now. Our Western Values versus their !!!values, and Their Morality and Our Morality is a prescription for disasters even though it is not atomic(we Hope). The pond that could reflect the Images of Millions of Narcissistic idiots exists in all of us. The only serious difficulty in dealing with narcissism is the healers of narcissism could be narcissistic too.

Are we serious about what is happening now or are the young inexperience politicians of today repeating the stupidities of Yasser Arafat ? I am afraid that history-sometimes- repeats itself with very small changes.

 Psychologizing Hate and the Present Political Crisis.

I start by saying that the present international political crisis is useless to discuss because it is crisis caused by the nonexistence of definitive distinctions between Facts, Reality, and Truth. The absence of those distinctions is intentional and not accidental. The intention to one day Ukrainia would join NATO was there for many years, and a year and a half ago it was whispered as an invitation to join the European trade market. This subtle invitation created high aspirations in the Ukrainian you people (one was elated and saying yes, we want to be Europiean). But..but according to joining the European market the country joining has to become a NATO country. It means NATO would be in physical proximity on the border of Russia. There is a catch to this issue: Up till Merkel retirement the notion of expanding NATO beyond its present boundaries was not even considered worth public denial. But now a sixty year old unbalances Ursula von ben Leaden) and six feet tall conceit (     ) feel that the time has come when they should rule the European Union and not hesitate to deviate from what () called “Our Values”.  Our Values is an American catchphrase and not European.

Here comes Putin: quite intelligent, highly informed about modern politics, professionally he learned to analyze politicians and their perceptions and personality. He knew that the issue of NATO will be back when the old, experienced politicians will go. He has the wisdom of not having NATO directly on the borders of Russia and better to have a buffer zone. Yet, the novel inexperienced European politicians had no experience to make the distinctions between facts, reality, and truth. The fact is that Russia will not allow NATO to go beyond certain limits. The reality is that Europe will not expose itself and the world to an atomic war. The truth is that Putin is reacting and not initiating a crisis. What would those politicians do: discredit Putin, psychologize the crisis so the attention moves from the reality of the issue to some psychical verbiage, and could soak themselves in the luxury of mixing hate with love, fantasy with more fantasy, and best of all exercise power in their imagination.

Watching the desperation in the west to ward off reality, failing to come up with something veritable, brings to my mind Yesser Arafat (died in20120). He is a Palestinian leader of an organization that assumed the function and responsibility to stop Israel from setting roots in Palestine. He Psychologized himself and his movement, thus when they died they still died as heroes!!

 A Psychoanalytic Quandary

Academia or not Academia

I am back to my blog because either I am misunderstood or misrepresented. 

    My files show that I introduced my view about training in psychoanalysis in mid-2018. I started carefully because Iwas. critical of my own training. As a training analyst I was also seeing the ineffectiveness of the IPA apprenticeship system of qualifying candidates to work independently. I was leaning more toward the academic model of learning but was convinced without doubt that psychoanalysis should not be. just part of a university program (like psychology or sociology) but has to be a program in its own right. At the same time, when the weaknesses of the apprenticeship model of training were on my mind a new issue started to catch the attention of the American Psychoanalytic Association: the issue was the training analyst. That issue took most of the attention in the psychoanalytic communities (in north America) and the issue of the quality of training took a back seat. The most interesting thing about which is of greater importance to occupy the center of attention was this: apprenticeship requires if not demands and depends on the concept of the trainer. Apprenticeship is founded on the function of the “master crafts man” who is at the end has to qualify, certify, and license the trainee. The issue of the training analysts is still a problem in psychoanalysis, when the real problem is apprenticeship itself, which demands the function of the trainer.

    My call for moving psychoanalysis and its requirement to academia was met with serious and hard rebuke. Only in the last eighteen months that the notion of moving analysis to academia has been accepted and now has advocates who a few months ago were against changing anything in the training of psychoanalysts. It is annoying that some of the old adversaries to idea of moving psychoanalysis to academia came out now to claimed being advocates of that opinion from the beginning. It is more annoying to assert that claim without having an idea of how it could be done. This is more than annoying (what??). The best of them did not come up with anything more than just moving the address from an IPA institute to the nearest agreeable university…just get anew postal code.

     No. I did not mean to ‘house’ psychoanalysis in the nearest buildings of academia: I meant change psychoanalysis from some bizarre kind of knowledge (I will argue that a little later). into an academic branch of knowledge: Do not move psychoanalysis to academia, move academia to psychoanalysis.

 Degradation of Psychoanalysis:

    If in learning LAW, you get it that not all are equal in front of the law it is better then not studying the laws that differentiate between people on other bases than their rights. Similarly, in psychoanalysis, if transference manifestations are ignored, interfered with as in the current trends of intersubjectivity or did not underline that transference is the material that will eventually be reconstructed to effect the desirable changes in the patient, you will be better off to avoid training in psychoanalysis and seek another modality of psychotherapy. Transference is a natural outcome phenomenon of the neutrality of the psychoanalyst.  Therefore, the lack of ability to find in the patient’s free speech (not free association) the early features of the formation of his intrapsychic structures of his psychopathology, means that there is no psychoanalytic work that exists in that case. Transference is the material of psychoanalyzing and restructuring which are the basis of therapeutic work.

    A new development in the developing psychoanalysis in North America is called intersubjectivity. It is gaining. favored pace among some analysts. It is defined as giving the subjective lives of both analysts and analysands an equal place to participate in the process of psychotherapy. From whatever I have read and concluded from the writings of those analysts they missed the point in the logic of the neutrality of the analyst. The analyst should be neutral to provide the same screen to all patients to project their own issues. Intersubjectivity encouraging the analyst to engage the patient into their own intrapsychic issues. It does not take long for the two to enter a very unproductive situation. Moreover, letting the patient in on the analyst own issues is an undesirable imposition on the patient’s relationship with ‘his’ analyst. Strictly speaking, the patients come to talk about themselves not anyone else not to listen to the analyst’s chagrins. In a recently published clinical paper the analyst was confronted by the patient asking at a point: “what about me”.

    The idea of moving analysis to academia is now accepted in Europe and probably in other places in the world. However, what I know about its acceptance in Europe is limited and could not generalize from it a unified approach to examining the details of the suggestion. Nonetheless, logically I think that academia will provide a better environment for psychoanalysis because of an obvious reason: psychoanalysis itself has evolved beyond the limited boundaries of its original field of competence like psychotherapy of neurotics, and ineffective attempts at dealing with a wider range of psychopathology. In fact, and interest, the widening scope of psychoanalysis came from the academic description and formulations of psychoanalytic ideas and hypothetical constructions. The notions of psychosomatics, psychoses, and personality disorders are academic reformulations based on core psychoanalytic concepts like libido and cathexes. In better terms academia did to psychoanalysis more than what it gained from it.

Academia and Proper Psychoanalysis:

As a psychoanalyst my work is to find within the patient (or the subject matter of my work) something that is implied within what is consciously expressed. If I stick to psychopathology and psychotherapy, I might get to the point more clearly.

    The patient talks about issues that are related to HIS self. Within what he says I hear what was not said but the patient is unconscious of them and unconscious that he said them withing his normal speech. The unconscious as is the case relates to older order of things or his intrapsychic entity. The next part of my job is to be able to understand that unconscious entity. That comes from the way the patient treats me (transference) and the verbal way he expresses himself (his linguistic peculiarities). The significance of paying attention to this aspect of free speech is that each patient uses LANGUAGE in a way that could reveal when and what happened in his childhood to contribute to his intrapsychic entity. Language is the best but also the only key to understanding the unconscious. I mean here by language the cognitive and metal link between humans. I Give an example of that from a piece of Freuds. In Volume 10 of the S.E. and on page 200, Freud interprets a dream by his famous patient the Rat man. The image of the dream: SAYS”: I would marry her for her money not for her ‘beaux yeux”.

    We need to learn the intricacies of language. This is not available in the IPA system of training and requires the expertise of a specialized academic.

    The unconscious material is always or could always be noticed in the patient’s usage of metaphorical and metonymical expressions of ideas. The most important and neglected aspect in learning psychoanalysis is that we do not learn language from our parents or adults; we learn from them how to use it to express ourselves. We learn from our caretakers how to express ourselves and then get to develop our own way of talking. It is quite easy to understand that point by acknowledging that we usually talk like one or more of our care takers. The significance of this observation is in revealing the importance of the unconscious linguistic modes we learn to say things we are unconscious of. This too, is not available in the IPA system of training and requires the expertise of a specialized academic.

    We come then to learning about childhood where the origins of the linguistic phenomena start. It is possible to give transference a verbal connotation (the patient treats me as a not accepting father, or as demanding mother, etc. This is usually where countertransference seeps in with little attention from the analysts. However, what I want to underline at this point is the good and very good conception of childhood to be able to see what transference brings to the analysis. Learning about childhood in psychoanalysis is different in important ways from just knowing simple facts as when toilet training should begin. What we need to learn about childhood in learning psychoanalysis, and the complexities of each stage in development. What is meant is that looking at several things that happen together at a certain period of growing up and not isolated features that appear at the same age. For instance, Eric t Erikson’s child psychology combines the biological demands, the structuring of identity, the object relationship, the mechanism of defense, in a stage that he gives a specific significance to, like the anal phase. Learning child psychology this way put the transference relationship with analyst in a context…in a meaningful psychoanalytic perspective. THAT is not available in the IPA system of training. We need to learn how to deduce from the style of speech the patient uses the point of fixation, the kind of fusion between the conscious and the unconscious to help the patient to put himself together. All that has to be done by academics in academia. This needs a few years of full-time dedication to learning. We should by now have realized that psychoanalysis is not just what therapsits learn in their isnstitutes. 

 A Psychoanalytic Quandary

Academia or not academia

I am back to my blog because either I am misunderstood  or misrepresented. My files show that I introduced my view about training in psychoanalysis in mid-2018. I started carefully because  I was. critical of my own training. As a training analyst I was also seeing the ineffectiveness of the IPA apprenticeship system of qualifying candidates to work independently. I was leaning more toward the academic model of learning but was convinced without doubt that psychoanalysis should not be. just part of a university program (like psychology or sociology) but has to be a program in its own right. At the same time, when  the weaknesses of the apprenticeship model of training were on my mind a new issue started to  catch the attention of the American Psychoanalytic Association: the issue was the training analyst. That issue took most of the attention in the psychoanalytic communities (in north America) and the issue of the quality of training took a back seat The most interesting thing about which is of greater importance to occupy the center of attention was this: apprenticeship requires if not demands and depends on the concept of the trainer. Apprenticeship  is founded on the function of the “master crafts man” who has at the end has to qualify, certify, and license  the trainee.[this is the history of the trade unions in Europe  since the fourteenth century]  the issue of of the training analysts is still a problem in psychoanalysis, because we do not want to concede that the real problem is apprenticeship itself.

My call for moving psychoanalysis and its requirement to academia was met with serious and hard rebukes. Only in the last eighteen months that the notion of moving analysis to academia has been accepted and now has advocates who few months ago were against changing anything in the training of psychoanalysts. It is annoying that some of the old adversaries to idea of moving psychoanalysis to academia came out now to claimed being advocates of that opinion from the beginning. It is more annoying to assert that claim  without having an idea of how it could be done This is more than annoying (what??).The best of them  did not come up with any suggestions more than just moving the address from an IPA institute to the nearest university agreeable to accepting psychoanalysis in its programs.

 No. I did not mean in my persistence since mid-2018  to ‘house’ psychoanalysis in  the nearest buildings of academia: I meant  change psychoanalysis from some bizarre kind of knowledge( I will argue that a little later).into an academic branch of knowledge: Do not move psychoanalysis to academia, move academia to psychoanalysis.

 Degradation of Psychoanalysis:

If in learning LAW you get it that not all are equal in front of the law it is better then not to study the laws that differentiate between people on other bases than their equal rights. Similarly, in psychoanalysis, if transference manifestations are ignored, interfered with as in the new trends of intersubjectivity  or  did not emphasize  that transference is the material that will eventually be reconstructed  to effect the desirable changes in the patient, you will be better off to not waist time  training in psychoanalysis. Better is to seek another modality of psychotherapy. Transference is a natural outcome the phenomenon of the neutrality of the psychoanalyst.  Therefore, the lack of ability to find in the patient’s free speech(not free association) the early features of the formation of his intrapsychic structures of his psychopathology, means that  no psychoanalytic work existed in that case. Transference is the material of psychoanalyzing and restructuring which are the basis of therapeutic work. This point should be thoroughly highlighted because the main issue is not collecting some old concepts and terminology and call that new psychoanalysis. Moving psychoanalysis to academia is the first step in a long trip towards a new psychoanalysis.

The idea of moving analysis to academia is now accepted in Europe and probably in other places in the world. However, what I know about that is limited and could not be generalize for lack of details. Nonetheless, logically and from the little I know and I am sure that academia will provide a better environment for psychoanalysis  to progress  and undergo the heathy process of benefiting from the input of the other specialties. My confidence in this point of view comes from the fact that psychoanalysis evolved beyond the  limited boundaries of its original field of  competence, which was psychotherapy of neurotics, and ineffective attempts at dealing with a wider range of psychopathology  nineteen fifties and sixties As a matter of fact, and  of interest, the widening scope of psychoanalysis came from the academic description and formulations of psychoanalytic  ideas and hypothetical constructions of psychodynamics.The notions of the psychosomatics , psychoses, and personality disorders are  academic reformulations base on core psychoanalytic concept like libido and cathexes. In better terms academia did to psychoanalysis more than what it gained from it.

Academia and Proper Psychoanalysis:

As a psychoanalyst my work is to find within the patient (or whetever is the subject matter of my work)something that is implied  within what is consciously or intentionally expressed. I will get back  to psychopathology and psychotherapy soI might get to the point more clearly.

The patient talks about issues that are related to HIS self. Within what he says I hear what was not said but the patient was unconscious of talking about them. He he said them withing his normal speech. The unconscious in this case is related to older order of things or his  which exist now as part of the intrapsychical component of his-self. The next part of my job is to understand that unconscious material. This comes from two sources: the way the patient treats me (transference) and the verbal way he expresses himself (his linguistic peculiarities). The significance of paying attention to those aspect of free speech is that  each patient uses LANGUAGE in a way that could reveal the period and the circumstances when and what happened in his childhood to contribute to his intrapsychical entity[ I am hungry for love OR. I angry because whatever I give him or do for him is not enough. Language is  the best but also the only key to understanding the unconscious. I mean here by language the is. The cognitive and metal link between humans. I give an example of that from a piece of Freud’s work  In Volume 10 of the S.E. and on page 200, Freud interprets a dream by his famous patient the Rat man. The image the dream expresses:SAYS”: I would marry her for her money not for her ‘beaux yeux”.

We need to learn the intricacies of language. This is not available in the IPA system of training and requires the expertise of a specialized academics to teach us.

The unconscious material is always or could always be noticed  in the patient’s usage of metaphorical and metonymical  expression of ideas The most important and neglected aspect in learning psychoanalysis is that we do not learn from our parents or adults; how to speak. or  how to use it to express ourselves. We learn from them how to express ourselves and then get to develop our own way of talking. It is very easy to understand this point by acknowledging that we usually talk like one or more of our care takers. The significance of this observation is revealing the importance of the unconscious linguistic modes we learn to say things that are unconscious to us.This too, is not available in the IPA system of training and requires the expertise of a specialized academic.

We come then to learning about childhood where the origins of the linguistic phenomena start. It is possible to give transference a verbal connotation( the patient treats me as distant unapproachable father, or as a demanding mother, etc. This is usually where countertransference seeps in with little attention from the analysts. However, what I want to underline her is the importance to learn much and good(very good conception of childhood) It is the the key to seeing what transference bringing to the analysis. Learning about childhood in psychoanalysis is different- in an important rom just knowing simple facts such as when should toilet training should begin. What we need to learn about childhood in the learning of psychoanalysis is the complexities of each stage in development. What is meant by that looking at several things that happen together at a certain period of growing up. Eric t Erikson’s child psychology combines the biological demands of the stage of the child’s development, the structuring of his identity, the object relationship, the mechanism of defense, in a stage that he gives a specific significance like the anal phase. For instance, learning child psychology this way put the transference relationship with the analyst in a context…in a meaningful  psychoanalytic perspective. That is not available in the IPA system of training.

All that has to be done by academics in academia We need to learn how to deduce from the style of speech the patient uses the point of fixation, and the kind relations between tween the conscious and the unconscious to help the patient to put himself together  This too could help us to how to formulate our interpretations  (conceptually and linguistically).This  needs few years of fulltime dedications to learn from academicians, thinkers, and psychoanalytic practitioners are familiar with the distinctive nature of the psychoanalytic way of thinking.

Training by apprenticeship, the part-time and short period dedicated to training  the absence of clear dedicated literature to issue of training, the absence of a psychoanalytic theory, the loose used vocabulary, etc., requires honest work to move  psychoanalysis to academic learning. It is expected that in the best case it will take few years of  develop academic psychoanalysis but it should be be doen.

 The Lifeline for the Existence of Psychoanalysis

         After more than eighteen years of using this blog to express my views ‘freely’ about certain issues in psychoanalysis (despite the language barrier, and the disapproval and disagreements of many analysts) I believe it is time to stop and retire it. Thinking of a topic to end this blog came to my mind in a spontaneous way after days of useless internal debates. A later posting created some interest in Japan which reminded me of the 1981 International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Helsinki. In that meeting- and for the first time as much I know- a delegation of Japanese colleagues was visiting the meeting. They moved from presentation to the next as a group, which attracted attention and raised some ambivalent remarks. I did not see that group again in the next meetings I managed to attend- almost regularly- till 1999 in Chile, or the occasional meetings I attended later. The IPA meetings were occasions to know new analysts from other countries, see again friends from the old acquaintances, and to know about what is happening to psychoanalysis in those countries. Those meetings were a great opportunity to learn and think about analysis from different perspectives.

        The interest in my blog in Asia – although quantitatively not impressive – is interesting in terms of locations. There is even one reader from Korea. This observation made me ask-lately- what keeps psychoanalysis alive till now. It is not the same everywhere, and it has no identifiable theory or even a definable system of practice.  The vocabulary psychoanalysts use is arguable and not of clear denotations. Psychoanalysis- in all measures of validity- is quite easy to ignore. However, pragmatically speaking there is nothing that managed to replace ‘psychoanalysis’ in modern international cultural life. The question, thus, should be: what makes PSYCHOANLYSIS survive almost everywhere despite all those shortcomings? Is it actually surviving, or is it only its name that finds a place in most cultures? Psychoanalysis -with the exception of North America- evolved, academically is approved as a university specialty (not just tolerated or offered it as an elective). There is even a University of Psychoanalysis in Berlin. It became part of the cultural fabric of transformed societies. In some of those countries psychoanalysis is still respected as a psychotherapeutic method, and it is not in the same tight spot as it is in the USA and Canada. In North America psychoanalytic organizations are no longer making the strict puritanical distinction between psychoanalysis and any other psychotherapy for one reason I prefer not get into and another which is a serious dwindling of the people of classical analysis to patients.  

    In the twentieth century this took a new tur 

    But when psychoanalysis was invited and introduced to the USA's guardians of the heritage in 1909 those three lifelines were disconnected and only one replacement was offered to keep it alive: make it useful, expedient, of practical value; make psychoanalysis a profession. It happened and the outcome was slow but drastic: it separated psychoanalysis from its European origin: the Accordion was replaced by some Harmonicas. Putting all that aside we come to the real problem: The USA has One Forth (25%) of all the psychoanalysts in the world. England til1950, had analysts who were also thinker Like Bion, Glover and Klein!! They were psychoanalysts who were turning ordinary talk into ideas that could explain other ordinary talk and turn it into something of striking meaning. France was steaming with ideas that psychoanalysts along with some ingenious thinkers- who were not analysts- revived the philosophical robust vigor of the centry passed.

        In North America the case is different for psychoanalysis, and the efforts to keep it afloat is not very assuring. If I do not hold back my critical psychoanalytic thinking, I would say American Psychoanalysis uses the different efforts to keep it alive as a resistance to really knowing the reason for its decline. But if I just want to offer a suggestion without the courtesy of being a psychoanalyst myself, I suggest (advise) considering this point of view. Psychoanalysis was born and survived in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Europe was still the hub of Western culture and philosophy. It was also pregnant with the notion of the universality of human knowledge.  Although it had advanced cultures for many centuries it was able a little later in the nineteenth century to develop the idea that the human subject is still short of being understood and more work must be done to resume the search. The discoveries in the nature of consciousness represented to many a riddle that is waiting for an explanation. The philosophical findings and the great novels that were written by psychologically gifted novelists. Starting by Shakespear passing by many other European novelists and gaining from the great Russian writers proved that Western civilization and cultures got the foundational meaning of the essence (intrapsychic) of the person and his psychology. Before you jump to criticizing the idea, I want to clarify it: psychoanalysis must have a cultural life in its society to mean anything; without which it will be like classical music without the existence of classical literature, art of painting, architecture even good wine making. Psychoanalysis is PART of a general human movement. This is how Western culture, or any defined culture affects psychoanalysis: analysts are products of their culture and with no culture that envelops them and psychoanalysis they will be nothing but professional artisans.

This cultural Europe gave psychoanalysis three lifelines that North America did have to offer when psychoanalysis was introduced to America to stay.

The first lifeline was that analysis that came to Europeans extended its main idea of exploring the human subject to learn about his psychopathology too. However, psychoanalysis of psychopathology started from nonpathological issues (Dreams, parapraxes, and Jokes). It conceded that the human subject-not only the patients-is still a dilemma that invites exploring to extend the philosophical endeavors of the centuries passed.  The second lifeline was that psychoanalysis is not an isolated knowledge, but it is an item in a culture, i.e., it has things to say about psychosomatics as well as about falling in love and understanding what is not said in what is said.  The third line of life is its need to keep an eye and an ear on the flourishing evolution of the surrounding human sciences to stay in line with them, this notion came from the eagerness to apply psychoanalysis to those sciences. Psychoanalysis was born in an environment that had the basic ingredients for its survival and had a place ready for it to occupy.

    But when psychoanalysis was invited and introduced to the USA's guardians of the heritage in 1909 those three lifelines were disconnected and only one replacement was offered to keep it alive: make it useful, expedient, of practical value; make psychoanalysis a profession. It happened and the outcome was slow but drastic: it separated psychoanalysis from its European origin: the Accordion was replaced by some Harmonicas. Putting all that aside we come to the real problem: The USA has One Forth (25%) of all the psychoanalysts in the world. England til1950, had analysts who were also thinker Like Bion, Glover and Klein!! They were psychoanalysts who were turning ordinary talk into ideas that could explain other ordinary talk and turn it into something of striking meaning. France was steaming with ideas that psychoanalysts along with some ingenious thinkers- who were not analysts- revived the philosophical robust vigor of the centry passed.

     In every corner of Europe in the late nineteen century and early twentieth a cultural Kitchen was cooking the mental food that psychoanalysis provided its ingredients. Psychotherapy was one of the nonexciting daily breads.  Psychoanalysis turned the cultural, in its philosophical, artistic, literary, and indirectly orality into a completely different ethos.  The point to make here is that psychoanalysts in Europe considered themselves part of a whole and there was mutual acceptance between the practicing psychoanalyst and the thinkers of all fields of thinking. Psychoanalysis was continuously enriched by and enriching of its culture. 

        This is what is missing in psychoanalysis in North America. In north America psychoanalysis is a profession of psychotherapy, and the psychoanalysts either pretend or actually believe that psychoanalysis is not originally part of another theory. At this point we face the hidden problem of Narcissism and the psychoanalyst's identity. It is difficult to explain that to the narcissist because it hurts his narcissism, but I will try. The human subject with his qualities can only know himself from his reflections…money, success, lake of importance, failures, etc. Psychoanalysts are as narcissistic as lawyers, rickshaw boys, etc. They need mirrors and if there are none, they will invent one. But somehow, they created a fantasy mirror which doe does not reflect their true entity; it reflected uniqueness and superiority. Therefore, we tried and successfully managed to maintain that image for a few decades. But psychoanalysis is a theory of the human subject. Therefore, the thinkers, the intelligentsia, the academicians, and serious amateurs and enthusiastic were able to learn, use, and contribute to that psychoanalysis extremely valuable thought, and better quality. In Europe analysts welcomed those contributions. The mirror there reflected a different image than the psychotherapist. The story is that psychoanalysis in the world (except for North America) is vitalized, enriched, found its place in the intellectual world and Narcissus did not need a fantasy image anymore.

In North America there is no external input in their identity as psychotherapist. They respect only psychoanalysis that is a product of “psychoanalysis”. They would deny that, but I will ask them: would you consider Foucault and Sartre, Vygotsky, and Ortega y Gasset psychoanalysts when you notice that their work on psychoanalytic issues surpasses our work. Would psychoanalysis-or anything else-remain of value if it does not get revived by the minds of other interested thinkers? Could psychoanalysis live on recycling its works? I asked a colleague who knows the American mind better than me if there are American thinkers whose work should have been integrated in American psychoanalysis. He stated that there are no thinkers in the USA who have the same prestige that European thinkers have amongst people in general and analysts in particular. I have no reason to disbelieve him, but how could a nation of more than three hundred million with the caliber and number of the academic institutions it has not produce thinkers in the dozens. 

This could only happen if propel reject novel thinking. Analysts in North America are that kind of people: they lose the foundation of their narcissism if they allow none-analysts to talk and show something their clinical work does not show. Maybe, and just maybe, there are ether social factors that are enforcing that viscous narcissism to be maintained  and north American psychoanalysts are falling victims of them.

 

                I just received a copy of the second edition of Textbook of Psychoanalysis edited by Gabbard, Litowitz and Williams. I deeply regret to base my previous view regarding the lack of textbooks of psychoanalysis on an old impression and a wrong one of the first edition. Th second edition is of great volume and should have its place in the training of candidates. 

        My apologies and regrets. The Textbook of Psychoanalysis-second edition- is a particularly important addition to literature.