the WINTER/SPRING 2006 AMERICAN Volume 40, No. 1 PSYCHOANALYST Quarterly Publication of The American Psychoanalytic Association SPECIALP EDITION On May 6, 1856, Freud’s SIGMUND FREUD was born in the small members of the American Psychoanalytic 150th Anniversary town of Freiberg, Austria, now the Czech Association and invited guests. This issue seeks Republic. In this Special Edition of The Ameri- to set off a few depth charges to sound the can Psychoanalyst, we celebrate that day, 150 water’s depth and, as though with sonar, to What Cost? Perspectives from the History of years ago, with 11 articles from distinguished map the contours of the intellectual seabed. the Free Psychoanalytic Clinics,” points out Peter Loewen- the powerful impact on Freud of turn-of-the- berg, in his article century social democracy. on “Freud as a We have attempted to stand in the histor- Cultural Histo- ical moment and raise necessary questions rian,” quotes W.H. about the future. So Robert Michels ques- Auden describing tions whether the goal of psychoanalytic edu- Freud as “a whole cation is to train effective practitioners in the climate of opin- community or advance the growth of psy- ion.” Writing an choanalytic theory. And Robert Paul finds that overview, “Pre- contemporary anthropologists, split between dicting the Future evolutionary and biological thinkers and cultural of Psychoanalysis,” thinkers, must be challenged by Freud’s ease in Sander Abend moving between the two realms. Mark Smaller, notes that the in an interview, engages Mark Solms in a dis- high point of psy- cussion about his involvement with neuro- choanalytic treat- psychoanalysis, the physiological correlates ment may be of psychic functions that Freud hoped would past, but Freud’s be established. And Henry Smith, looking at increasing impor- technique, considers the ubiquity of neces- tance in countries sary enactments in the world of transference. of the Middle East We have been pleased so many noted au- and Asia suggests thors have agreed to participate in our forum. a challenge to The humanities, as seen above and below, arguments that he have provided fertile fields for psychoanalytic is solely a product thinking. Naomi Janowitz traces a number of of fin-de-siècle contemporary responses to Freud’s contri- Vienna. Yet Eliza- butions to religious studies. Elisabeth Young- Photo: The Andy Warhol Foundation, Inc. / Art NY Resource, Photo: The Andy Warhol Ten Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century: Sigmund Freud beth Ann Danto, Bruehl discusses the impact of a concept from Andy Warhol 1980 in her article, “At Continued on page 2

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 CONTENTS: Winter/Spring 2006 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION President: Jon Meyer 3 A House Divided Jon Meyer President-Elect: K. Lynne Moritz Secretary: Prudence Gourguechon Where Do We Go from Here? Eric J. Nuetzel Treasurer: Warren Procci 4 Executive Director: Dean K. Stein 5 APsaA Election Results 6 International TAP Edited by Christine Ury THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST Publication of the SPECIAL EDITION American Psychoanalytic Association Editor Michael Slevin Member, Council of Editors Freud’s 150th Anniversary of Psychoanalytic Journals P Associate Editor and International Editor Christine Ury National Editor Predicting the Future of Psychoanalysis Sander M. Abend 7 Prudence Gourguechon At What Cost? Perspectives from the History of the Editorial Board 9 Brenda Bauer, Vera J. Camden, Free Psychoanalytic Clinics Elizabeth Ann Danto Leslie Cummins, Maxine Fenton Gann, Sheri Hunt, Laura Jensen, 11 Freud on Religion: Looking Back at the Future Jack Miller, A. Michele Morgan, Of an Illusion Naomi Janowitz Caryle Perlman, Marie Rudden, Hinda Simon, Gittelle Sones, Lynn Stormon, Julie Tepper, 13 Bringing the Soul into Neuroscience: Jane Walvoord, Robert S. White, An Interview with Mark Solms Mark D. Smaller Dean K. Stein, ex officio William D. Jeffrey, Consultant 15 Education and Training in Psychoanalysis Robert Michels Paul Mosher, Consultant Michael and Helene Wolff, Interpreting Transference Action Henry F. Smith Technology Management Communications, 16 Manuscript and Production Editors Freud: Found in Translation Emmett Wilson, Jr. 17 The American Psychoanalyst is published quar- terly. Subscriptions are provided automatically 19 Freud’s Influence on Anthropology Robert A. Paul to members of The American Psychoanalytic Association. For non-members, domestic and Nonverbal Art and Psychoanalysis: Canadian subscription rates are $32.50 for indi- 21 viduals and $75 for institutions. Outside the U.S. Form Holds Key to Aesthetic Experience Gilbert J. Rose and Canada, rates are $52.50 for individuals and $95 for institutions. To subscribe to The American Gender—Complex, Variable, Debatable Elisabeth Young-Bruehl Psychoanalyst, visit http://store.yahoo.com/ 23 americanpsych/subscriptions.html, or write TAP Subscriptions, The American Psychoanalytic 25 Freud as a Cultural Historian Peter J. Loewenberg Association, 309 East 49th Street, New York, New York 10017; call 212-752-0450 x18 or e-mail [email protected].

Copyright © 2006 The American Psychoanalytic Introduction How we read Freud is still an art of con- Association. All rights reserved. No part of this troversy. New translations of Freud are publication may be reproduced, stored in a Continued from page 1 retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by appearing in English and in French in this, the any means without the written permission of The outside psychoanalysis, “gender,” on psycho- 21st century. Emmett Wilson discusses the American Psychoanalytic Association, 309 East 49th Street, New York, New York 10017. analytic thinking. Eschewing the traditional English and German standard editions in this psychoanalytic approach to aesthetics paral- new, and invigorating, context. ISSN 1052-7958 leling the interpretation of dreams, Gilbert All in all, on publication of our forum, which The American Psychoanalytic Association does Rose investigates the importance of form in could easily have been enhanced by many not hold itself responsible for statements made in nonverbal art. In his two-pronged essay, Peter times over the number of contributions, we are The American Psychoanalyst by contributors or Loewenberg reveals the importance of empa- convinced that psychoanalysis is thriving in advertisers. Unless otherwise stated, material in The American Psychoanalyst does not reflect thy and imagination in historical research and this, the year of Freud’s sesquicentennial. the endorsement, official attitude, or position of understanding and, in counterpoint to Danto, —Michael Slevin The American Psychoanalytic Association or The American Psychoanalyst. points to Freud’s pessimism. Editor,TAP

2 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 FROM THE PRESIDENT

though we never became a membership organiza- polarization are in full sway? The reasons are simi- A House Divided tion and as though no one ever questioned why lar to those 10 years ago: This plan was innovative Jon Meyer there should be any substitute for the direct vote of and complex, requiring thought, and self-interest members in electing their representatives. Nothing held sway. To simplify the objectives behind the The theory, is more democratic than the vote. reorganization effort, there were only two major practice, and insti- Our members invest in the Association through goals. The first was to invest members with directly tutions of psycho- many wellsprings of affiliation: interests in clinical elected representation on the board of directors, to analysis began with work, activism, friendships, continuing education, sci- streamline the board of directors to a functional size, Sigmund Freud. ence, psychoanalytic and psychotherapy education, and to make provision for needed extra-analytic tal- This issue is a beau- and standards. Most members are not ideologues, ents in fundraising, public relations, law, finance, tiful marker of his could not care less about slogans, and do not employ governmental relations, and corporate relations. A effort—of where one-issue litmus tests. Unfortunately, in politics modern board has to raise money, not just oversee he began, the we have slogans (democracy, standards), enemies its expenditure, and it has to provide needed impact he made, (“BOPSists,” training analysts, the “Wednesday expertise and access to accomplish the Association’s Jon Meyer and some of the Group”), litmus tests (firewalls, New York law), missions of protecting psychoanalysis and seeing it challenges facing psychoanalysis in the year 2006. threats of legal schism (compliance, externalization), thrive. The second task was to secure and stabilize A serious challenge and threat face our Association, and, ultimately, a shortage of statesmanship. the major asset of our educational programs in a as we work to reorganize. That work is critical; and There have been efforts before to deal with time of transition. Education is our number one pri- I must turn our attention to it on this, the 150th these chronic tensions through reorganization. The ority, but if our fiduciaries choose to overlook that, anniversary of Freud’s birth. last one, about 10 years ago, crashed and burned in then there should at least be concern about those No one could have witnessed the rancorous the Council for two reasons: It was a flawed plan functions as our major source of new members, proceedings in Council or paid even the slightest and many councilors voted their self-interest. I know now and for the future. One way to stabilize that attention to the listservs without realizing that because I was one who led the charge against what asset was through the mechanism of a subsidiary our governance is in crisis. As the E-news bulletins I viewed as a cumbersome plan and, besides, I was corporation—one of the three possibilities out- show, the Association is doing well yet governance not going to let anyone take away my newly acquired lined by Bjorklund—which would keep BOPS within has been unable to put a framework around our Council seat. What we got as a result was another the Association yet allow some insulation for the most contentious issues. In the absence of that decade of increasing rancor. accreditation and certifying functions. There was not framework, the voices of division have become more strident and self-congratulatory and states- manship has been all but silenced. The report of the “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Task Force on Reorganization (TFoR) promised to —Abraham Lincoln provide a framework for change, but, as almost everyone knows, the reorganization process was derailed in Council and the task force was left REORGANIZATION CRUCIAL even a serious discussion of these major goals and wrecked and demoralized. Instead of a deliberative Now at the end of that decade, we need reor- those options. process, we have threats of externalization, splitting, ganization more than ever and the legal reasons Building up to the American Civil War, there and lawsuits. Anyone who loves this organization are the least of it. The real reason, as Niko Canner was a great divide in values. That divide was not cannot help but be dismayed. astutely observed, is a severely contracting mar- addressed through statesmanship but rather through As in the American Civil War, there is more his- ket—not only for our practice but also for our ideas secession and conflict. In our organization, there is tory behind our problems than is easily summa- and values. We must become more effective. To do serious talk of externalizing accreditation and cer- rized. In brief, we were once a federation of local so, we must resolve these age-old tensions and tification and of institutes going their own way. The programs and that mentality persists in some quar- allow ourselves to think more creatively. Impaneling problem with those approaches—as appealing as ters. Furthermore, there can be tension between the TFoR was an attempt to do that, with the way for they may be to some on the right and the left—is societies and institutes locally and, regardless of it carefully prepared through a series of communi- the likelihood that moving institutes and functions some of the progress of our component societies cations from Newell Fischer and me, a presentation outside the Association will take members with and institutes toward resolving that issue, the tension by Victoria Bjorklund, a mandate from the Council to them and we will split. is memorialized in our Association’s governance. In start the process, and membership ratification of the I want to do all I can to get the reorganization that governance, beyond standing as a monument to TFoR. Following on that painstaking effort at com- process—and I emphasize process—back on track. our federation period and ancient tensions, it is as munication and structure, the task force labored Discussions are going on with leaders of Council and for a year and a half. BOPS to find a way to get representatives of the two Jon Meyer, M.D., is president of the American Given the care and the hard work, why is it that bodies together, meeting and talking. While for all of Psychoanalytic Association. the process lies in shambles and the politics of Continued on page 5

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 3 FROM THE BOPS CHAIR

public interest Where Do We Go from Here? functions. The Eric J. Nuetzel Task Force on Reorganization We are a deeply divided organization. The tradition of the Association has been to has recom- Although we are past the vote on the “local delegate educational public interest regula- mended that we option” bylaw amendment and have learned tory functions to BOPS. The resentment of the form a successor the recommendations of the Task Force on authority granted to BOPS through our bylaws to BOPS, a Reorganization (TFoR), we remain unsettled. has contributed to the chasms in our Associ- Council of Insti- The proposed bylaw allowing institutes the ation. Unfortunately, injustices have occurred in tutes that would Eric J. Nuetzel option of opting out of the certification require- our Association at least in part due to decisions be structured as ment for training and/or supervising analyst of BOPS. No one likes injustice and those a subsidiary corporation. The subsidiary cor- (T/SA) appointments and preventing the Board performing regulatory tasks in the public’s poration for education will only be feasible if on Professional Standards (BOPS) from using good are obligated to try to prevent injustice the membership supports its formation. Many certification as a requirement for T/SA appoint- of any kind. Although BOPS has continually on the TFoR, in the membership, and on the ments was not adopted. Yet a significant ma- tried to meet its obligations in a thoughtful, Executive Council do not. The idea of a sub- jority of our members supported the change. deliberative, and scientifically sound and fair sidiary corporation is anathema to many for a The divisions in our organization remain and way, it has become a political target. Things are variety of reasons. In 2003, the Ad Hoc Com- will not go away easily. So, where do we go unlikely to improve for the Association, BOPS, mittee to Study Certification recommended, from here? Where can we go from here? and the public interest functions unless signif- among other things, the complete external- The efforts by the Certification Research icant changes are made. ization of certification. The TFoR’s recom- and Development Advisory Committee The psychoanalytic world is larger than our mendation for a subsidiary corporation is a (CARD) to assess and improve our certifica- Association, and our Association is larger than compromise that would keep these functions tion procedure are known widely and are those who identify with our institutes. Tensions within the organization while also preserving well underway. Still, the efforts of BOPS in inevitably arise. Standard setting, accrediting, and some autonomy in the setting of educational this regard are unlikely to satisfy critics of cer- certifying bodies require functional independ- standards, for the accreditation of institutes, and tification. The affect associated with the criti- ence to work effectively in the public’s interest. for the certification of graduates. cism goes beyond arguments about reliability and validity. The fact is that many have felt injured by our certification procedure, by Things are unlikely to improve for the Association, other decisions of BOPS, and/or by decisions BOPS, and the public interest functions unless within an institute regulated by BOPS. Such injuries can lead to the conviction that our edu- significant changes are made. cational system is deeply flawed. Regardless, BOPS, as obligated by our bylaws, does its best to do a creditable job with its public This is what our current bylaws intended to In the Fall/Winter 2004 issue of TAP, I urged interest tasks (standard setting, accreditation, accomplish. Although our current bylaws have the membership to accept a subsidiary cor- and certification) in a difficult political envi- checks and balances and a separation of pow- poration for the educational regulatory func- ronment. We can and should do better. We ers to manage inevitable organizational ten- tions of BOPS as an evolutionary step (TAP can start by asking, is our system fundamentally sion, reorganization is necessary because our Vol. 38, No.4, p. 5). As events have unfolded I flawed? What would be best for our Associa- bylaws are out of compliance with New York have developed concerns that the subsidiary tion and, more importantly, for the public and State law. Change is also necessary because model may be flawed for two reasons: It may for our profession? Should all educational pub- our members want it. If the public interest institutionalize one of the many splits in our lic interest regulation procedures of our com- functions of BOPS are to continue, we need to Association, membership functions versus ponent institutes and graduate members take ask whether the public and the profession are educational functions, and it does not accom- place within our Association? Many on all sides best served by having these functions within plish what is needed—real independence for of our Association’s political spectrum believe our organization. the public interest functions. they should be conducted by a body or bod- The time for change has arrived; we cannot ies external to our organization. BOPS SUCCESSOR have it both ways. For our Association, this is a basic issue. Standard setting, accrediting, and certifying Eric J. Nuetzel, M.D., is chair of the Board We need to give serious thought to our struc- bodies must be autonomous to have integrity. on Professional Standards. ture, mission, and the proper place for the Continued on page 5

4 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Gourguechonelections Chosen President-Elect; “Local Option” Bylaw Falls Short at 56.9 Percent

With 41 percent of APsaA members voting, current APsaA Secretary Prudence L. Gourguechon defeated APsaA Treasurer Warren R. Procci in the race for president-elect. Gourguechon won 689 votes to Procci’s 633. Gourguechon’s election left one year of her term as secretary unfilled. According to APsaA bylaws, the Council votes to fill the term in such circumstances. Jonathan House was elected at the January Council meeting to complete Gourguechon’s term. Opposing House in the Council election were Lee Ascherman, Christine Hradesky, Richard Lightbody, Mary Scharold, Sherwood Waldron, and Sandra Walker. In the fall election for councilor-at-large, the members elected Elise W. Snyder and Robert Tyson. Ralph Fishkin and Sandra Walker also ran for these offices. President-elect Prudence L. Gourguechon Two bylaw amendments appeared on the fall ballots. The “local option” amendment, which would have removed (and prohibited the BOPS from re-imposing) the certification requirement not only for TA/SA appointments, but also for service as officers and fellows of BOPS committees, received 56.9 percent of the vote. Institutes would also have had the option of continuing to require certification for TA/SA appointment. The other amendment, to accept International Psychoanalytical Association graduates as APsaA members without further vetting, received 91 percent of the votes. As bylaw amendments require a two-thirds vote for passage, only the bylaw governing IPA graduates was passed.

A House Divided Where Do We Go from Here? reside elsewhere, outside of the Association. It Continued from page 3 Continued from page 4 is time to recognize that the public interest and the good of the profession demand change. us I hoped for a positive response, my efforts were As I think we all know, their decisions may not So does the educational atmosphere within rejected the first time I tried. It is so important that be popular. As attached as many of our mem- our own institutes. BOPS will safeguard its I will try again. Refusal to talk with others who dis- bers are to the public interest functions of public interest functions as we work out a agree may be politics as usual but is neither respon- BOPS, these functions should be outside the way to assure their survival in an external sible nor statesmanlike. Association. Whether and how this can be form. Meanwhile, BOPS cannot remain static. Springfield, Illinois, was Abraham Lincoln’s home accomplished is another matter. What is clear One of the most unfortunate aspects of for most of his adult life before he became president. is that we cannot continue with a system the conflicts and tensions within our Asso- As a kid growing up in Springfield, I was steeped in designed over 50 years ago for a vastly dif- ciation is the polarization and resultant rigid- Lincoln’s life and his quotes. On June 16, 1858, in ferent psychoanalytic landscape. Clearly, the ity on all sides. This creates an environment Springfield, Lincoln delivered a speech attempting psychoanalytic world is changing, and the in which creative thinking about improving to address the growing divide in our country. In its Association needs to change with it. Institute education, including the public interest func- most memorable line, he said, “A house divided representation and supportive educational tions of BOPS, is in short supply. The atmos- against itself cannot stand.” Unfortunately, that fore- functions of BOPS should continue to reside phere in our Association is not helping us thought has never seemed more to the point and within the Association in some way, shape, or improve the education of our candidates. the warning has never seemed more urgent. Lincoln’s form. Education is our membership’s number As we move through this transition, I urge us concern rings as true now as it did then and, if we one priority. The public interest functions of to remember that safeguarding and improv- have trouble listening to each other, we should at educational standard setting, institute accred- ing candidate education is the fundamental least listen to the lessons of history. itation, and graduate certification need to concern of BOPS.

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 5 international Edited by Christine Ury TAP International News It is hoped that the official recognition of a Montreal Psychoanalytic university status for psychoanalytical training Consultation Center and education, and the integration of psycho- The Montreal Psychoanalytic Society (Société analysis with other academic fields, such as supported by the government). In Montreal, Psychanalytique de Montréal—SPM), the French psychology, medicine, public health, social serv- however, patients will be asked to pay a minimal branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, ice, linguistics, law, and education, will provide a fee, even if it involves only a token, to be sure that has created a psychoanalytic clinic, the primary stronger and better presence of psychoanaly- they will be implicated in their own treatment. aim of which is to make psychoanalytic services sis in the community. The Montreal center has received an IPA accessible to a particular patient group. The Developing Psychoanalytic Practice and Train- committee working on the consultation center ing (DPPT) grant to begin its fundraising was mandated 10 years ago by the SPM to APsaA News campaign to publicize the benefits of the psy- propose a model with the social objective of Electronic Medical Records choanalytical approach. addressing the mental health needs of those The health care system in the United States, who have limited financial means—young once among the finest in the world, has been Mental Health University Created By adults, precariously employed workers, recent steadily deteriorating for the last 14 years. Psychoanalytic Association in Argentina immigrants, single parents, or people living on The reason can be summed up in two The University Institute of Mental Health unemployment or welfare—and who suffer words: “managed care,” a system in which (IUSAM) of the Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic from severe depression, borderline or narcis- economic control over the delivery of health Association (APdeBA) celebrated its official sistic pathology, and certain types of psychoses. care is turned over to private, for-profit com- recognition as a fully accredited university in To meet its objective, the Montreal clinic has panies. This system is now infiltrating other November 2005 . According to Sara Zac de looked to existing models such as the London countries. Filc, ex-president of APdeBA, the creation of Psychoanalytical Clinic and the Tavistock Clinic in In 1993, faced with the threat of the Clinton IUSAM has been the result of a nine-year England, and the Centre de Consultation Jean health plan, which would have made man- struggle with the Ministries of Education and Favreau and the Centre Jean et Evelyne Kesten- aged care the national standard and private Health to gain acceptance of the degree of berg in France. Isabelle Lasvergnas, an analyst practice illegal, the American Psychoanalytic psychoanalysis given by APdeBA. In Argentina, and sociology professor who chairs the com- Association joined a vigorous and ultimately local universities can give graduate degrees mittee of the Montreal clinic, has studied these successful campaign to protect private prac- in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis (not fol- four clinics and describes them as having the tice. From that beginning, APsaA has become lowing IPA’s standards), thereby giving their same social preoccupation, namely to treat indi- a highly visible and effective force in Con- graduates a position of advantage as compared viduals with severe pathology who have poor gress for the protection of the rights of our to graduates of APdeBA who receive a much financial resources. The Montreal clinic will con- patients, particularly the privacy of mental more comprehensive training. tinue to have close contact with the French and health records. IUSAM-APdeBA will provide university edu- British clinics and draw on their experience in The current legislative threat is electronic cation in three areas: 1) exclusive training in modifying the classical psychoanalytic frame. medical records (EMRs). psychoanalysis according to IPA standards Along with a one-on-one therapy or analysis, the The EMR legislation as introduced into (training analysis, supervisions and seminars); British model emphasizes a psychoanalytically- Congress removes all control over health care 2) a psychoanalytic understanding of mental oriented group approach; and the French clinics information from every citizen. Current federal health through the lens of culture and the have evolved an analytic type of drama therapy EMR legislation overrides state privacy laws community, e.g., violence, alienation, migration, based on free association rather than role play. and makes no provision for patient consent social trauma, inequity, etc.; and 3) a psycho- Because of decreasing financial support for prior to the routine release of personal health analytic and interdisciplinary training in the mental health and long term dynamic treat- information. mental health and psychopathology of indi- ments from the Quebec government, the Mon- This legislation directly threatens all psycho- viduals, family, and group structures. Child and treal center is following the example of the analytic and psychodynamic therapies, includ- adolescent psychoanalysis according to IPA British clinics, which are privately funded by ing private practice. If psychotherapy records standards will also be a requirement. donations (in France the clinics are completely are no longer private, patients will be reluctant The University Institute will also increase the to participate in treatment and confide in their services offered to the community by APdeBA, therapists. APsaA is taking the lead in Con- Christine Ury, D.Ps., is associate editor such as low-cost therapeutic assistance or ana- gress to modify these bills. For instance,APsaA and international editor of TAP. She is a lytically-based psychotherapies, cultural activities, recruited 30 mental health organizations to faculty member at the Canadian Institute training, and advice to state and local govern- send a letter to every member of Congress of Psychoanalysis and has a private ments; and providing educational opportunities calling for the inclusion of patient consent in practice in Montreal. to professionals from other disciplines. any EMR system.

6 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary EXPLORATION AND ELABORATION Predicting the Future of Psychoanalysis This leads me to a consideration of the Sander M. Abend second topic, the ongoing exploration and elaboration of psychoanalytic theory, or the- It is no secret that psychoanalysts today outright rejection of its precepts, or, more ories. Every psychoanalyst and student of harbor considerable malaise about the future subtly, as a partial acceptance qualified by psychoanalysis is aware that our profession’s of our profession. Predicting its future invites emendations, omissions, or additions that dis- theoretical edifice has evolved in an atmos- speculation that is divided between optimism, tort or obscure its essential core. phere of controversy, sometimes civilized, perhaps influenced to some degree by wish- often competitive to the point of outright ful thinking, and pessimism, consequent to hostility. Personal rivalries, passionate loyalties, certain economic, demographic, and cultural and near-religious fervor have engendered trends that contribute to our current concern. splits, and given birth to entire schools of In trying to divine what lies in store for us, it thought and practice, all claiming a place will be advantageous to consider the legacy under the mantle of psychoanalysis. I believe of Freud’s revolutionary thinking separately that in our present state of knowledge it is from the subject of the continuing evolution not possible for us to arrive at an objective, of psychoanalytic theory, as well as from the much less definitive, comparative evaluation prospects of psychoanalysis as a therapy, of the differences in approach, emphasis, and although these three topics are obviously belief that characterize the various psycho- interconnected. analytic theories that confront us today. It is perhaps an article of faith from one Other analysts express their preferences on whose intellectual development and profes- the basis of their own education, convic- sional life have, in large measure, been deter- tions, and clinical experience, just as I do. mined by the compelling power of Freud’s As I have suggested, even modifications to great discoveries, but it is extremely hard for the historical core of Freud’s work can be me to imagine that the insights into childhood seen either as useful refinements and nec- psychological development and the under- essary development of Freudian psychoana- standing of adult mental life, especially its moti- lytic theory, or as subtle or frank challenges vations and mechanisms, that he presented to fundamental ideas and opinions which to the world will ever fade into obscurity. other analysts still believe to be correct, or

Indeed, any student of history, mythology, Museum, London Photo: Freud even crucial to the psychoanalytic enter- literature, or anthropology cannot fail to be 1866 Sigmund with his father Jacob Freud prise. Still other alternative psychoanalytic impressed by the explanatory value of his thinkers take much more profound exception fundamental contributions to our knowledge This is not to suggest that Freud had the last to the Freudian corpus and set forth sub- of human psychology and behavior, that is, word to say about everything psychoanalytic. stantially different approaches to the under- unless he or she has personal reasons to deny To be sure, he was sometimes incorrect or standing of development, of psychopathology, their importance. In fact, one of Freud’s most incomplete, and many of his successors worked and normal behavior, and to the practice of significant contributions was his appreciation of hard to refine his contributions, just as others psychoanalytic therapy itself. Sotto voce dis- the source and nature of the rejection of his offered alterations of a more profound nature. missals of opposing theories and theorists as findings by many of his contemporaries, and Nevertheless, the essence of Freud’s grasp of misguided, or as inspired by resistance, or on that is still evident today, both inside and out- human psychology has been absorbed into the other hand as hopelessly and blindly side our profession. This resistance, as he our intellectual life and culture, not to mention outmoded, are as familiar in our profession’s would have called it, takes the form of either into our understanding of development and history as is our record of clamorous debate. psychopathology, even in the face of the strong Some schisms, such as the celebrated strug- Sander M. Abend, M.D., is training appeal engendered by resistance. It is also gle between the followers of Melanie Klein and supervising analyst at the New York noteworthy that the interest in Freud’s ideas in and those of the Freuds, have progressed Psychoanalytic Institute, past editor-in-chief countries in Asia and the Middle East, where from contentious rivalry to tolerant co-exis- of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, past chair psychoanalysis is growing in popularity, strongly tence within the house of international psy- of APsaA’s Committee on Psychoanalytic suggests that his crucial discoveries are not so choanalysis. Other differences have been Education, and a member of the Board of constrained by fin-de-siècle European cultural less compatible and more bitterly divisive, as Representatives and Education Committee of norms as has been maintained by some critics is well known. the International Psychoanalytic Association. of Freudian psychoanalysis. Continued on page 8

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 7 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Future of Psychoanalysis Others are more concerned with promoting frame better, more useful questions and the- Continued from page 7 adherence to and refinement of the point of ories of their own. One cannot with confi- view they deem to be most correct and use- dence predict a time frame, but this frontier is The past two decades or so have been ful. The safest prediction would appear to be sure to constitute the most vital integrative marked by a dramatic shift in the atmos- that divisions and controversies will be with us challenge that faces the next generation, or phere of psychoanalytic debate. Interchanges going forward, despite the efforts toward generations, of psychoanalysts. between proponents of differing views, theo- understanding and assimilating provocative ries, and technical precepts have become much new ideas that we see all around us today. PROSPECTS FOR more frequent and better publicized. Com- One rapidly accelerating field of research PSYCHOANALYTIC PRACTICE petition remains, to be sure, but genuine efforts which is certain to provide data that pose As for the practice of psychoanalytic ther- to clarify and demonstrate these differences, many interesting challenges for our theories, apy proper, the one thing we can be sure of and to expound the assumptions and obser- and which will present us with new knowledge is that the salubrious environment that pre- vations on which they are based, are every- that inevitably will require integration into our vailed in the heyday of psychoanalytic popu- where evident in our conferences and our psychoanalytic point of view, is that of neuro- larity following the end of World War II will professional literature. Some analysts in all science. Despite the preference of those who not be seen again. Psychoanalysis actually camps remain unmoved and unchanged in would see psychoanalysis as strictly a social sci- inadvertently contributed to the erosion of their views by these interactive efforts, while ence, informed by a philosophical, linguistic, or its predominance by giving birth to derivative others may seek at least a partial inclusion of literary tradition, my own background in med- forms of psychotherapy which demand less other approaches and ideas into their own icine leads me to assert with conviction that of patients and practitioners alike, but which intellectual and technical arsenals. the psychological realm is an expression of are beneficial to many individuals who might It is difficult to assess the impact of this brain function, and that brain function in turn otherwise seek psychoanalytic treatment. changing climate on present day students of psychoanalysis. Some must be stimulated, others confused, and most, if not all, primarily influenced by the attitudes and atmospheres Despite the preference of those who would see of their own institutes and teachers. Passion psychoanalysis as strictly a social science, informed by a and misunderstandings surely persist, and are likely to continue to do so for the foreseeable philosophical, linguistic, or literary tradition, my own future. background in medicine leads me to assert with conviction All the same, it is impossible to overlook the intellectual ferment of our times, and I believe that the psychological realm is an expression of brain it is fair to think of this change as a normal and function, and that brain function in turn is unavoidably healthy developmental step in our field. At least in some quarters, psychoanalytic education affected by psychological factors and forces. is far less parochial than was true in the past.

NEW IDEAS Other recent trends also deserve notice. is unavoidably affected by psychological factors This competitive environment has become New ideas about early childhood develop- and forces. We will not long be in a position to even more problematic for psychoanalysis ment have entered our discussions of theory ignore the findings of the neuroscientists, nor as a result of the introduction of effective and practice, and this emerging modification is it a useful enterprise for analysts to be con- psychopharmacological agents, and, later, of of traditional thinking promises to expand the cerned with measuring the emerging data behavioral therapies focused on rapid symptom intellectual controversy we are experiencing. against Freud’s century-old neurological spec- relief that does not depend on investigating It is too early to say whether radically different ulations. Our task will be to learn from one unconscious factors and underlying causes. views of development, pathology, and treat- another, that is, for analysts to understand The appeal of these alternatives is certainly ment will become schismatic influences or what neuroscience can teach us about the based on economic factors, no matter who will be absorbed into the fabric of our pro- coherence, aptness, and utility of our theories, pays the costs of treatment, but it also rests in fessional culture. Certainly there are a number beliefs, and tactics, or, more important still, no small measure on the promise of providing of figures among our important thinkers and confront us with the deficiencies and inaccu- relief without requiring people to come to teachers who seem to be devoted to grasp- racy of our hypotheses and practices. We in grips with the disturbing content of their uncon- ing and embracing even quite diverse ideas turn can lend our special expertise to the scious minds. Adding to the problem was the about psychoanalytic theory and practice. biological observers in order to help them Continued on page 29

8 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary At What Cost? Perspectives from the History of the Free Psychoanalytic Clinics

Elizabeth Ann Danto

In 1918, psychoanalysis found itself in crisis. “Therapeutic activities are not far-reaching,” Freud lamented, and “even by working very hard,” the analysts’ results “are almost negligi- ble [given] the vast amount of neurotic mis- ery…. At present we do nothing for the wider social strata.”1 Freud’s solution to this impasse was to create “institutions or outpatient clin- ics…[where] treatment will be free.” And in the next decade, in Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, and London, some of the movement’s most interesting thinkers, like Sandor Ferenczi, Ernst Simmel, Edith Jacobson, Otto Fenichel, and Wilhelm Reich, followed Freud and indeed made psychoanalysis accessible to students, artists, craftsmen, laborers, factory workers, office clerks, unemployed people, farmers, domestic servants, and public school teachers. By 1924, public interest in psychoanalysis “actually moved faster than…the medical pro- fession,” Paul Federn wrote, and the Viennese Museum, London Photo: Freud 1922, at the Berlin Congress: left to right, back row, Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, demanded psychoanalytic information, referrals, Ernest Jones; front row, Freud, Sandor Ferenczi, Hanns Sachs and advice from their doctors in virtually all areas of specialization.2 Psychoanalysis even for the profession. The number of free-stand- the analysts should agree that “the factor of the found its way into the tabloids of the day. ing outpatient mental health clinics decreased patients paying or not paying has no influence “Lonesome: You are 29-years-old, intelligent, dramatically in the last decades of the 20th on the course of the analysis.”5 Eitingon’s line educated, with a good job and you long for century, from 51.4 percent of all outpatient of reasoning followed Freud’s own social dem- a companion who would share with you sor- services in 1970 to 25.3 percent in 1988.4 ocratic idea,“that the poorest man should have row and joy…. This is no doubt a case which Moreover, the press for affordability has just as much right to assistance for his mind as necessitates psychoanalytic treatment. Con- become an increasingly dominant controversy he now has to lifesaving help offered by surgery,” sult with the Psychoanalytic Ambulatorium, within the clinics, institutes, and other organized and that the fee—or lack thereof—was as Vienna, Ninth District, 18 Pelikangasse,Office providers of mental health services today. In much the clinician’s issue as the patient’s. hours from 6 to 7 p.m.,” answered the maga- other words, the moment bodes well for psy- Unlike today’s low-cost clinics, the Poliklinik zine columnist from Bettauer’s Wochenschrift.3 choanalysis to re-examine how the profes- and the Vienna Ambulatorium (the cooperative Nearly a century later, “neurotic misery” sion re-invented itself 90 years ago. clinic associated with the Vienna Psychoanalytic remains widespread, clinicians and consumers This re-invention may already be underway. Society), were free clinics literally and metaphor- are peeved, and at one time or another, the Since 1998, the Association has encouraged the ically: They freed people of their neuroses and, professional journals speak to the decline in efforts of community-based programs around like the municipal schools and universities of psychoanalytic practice or issue a postmortem the country, and most institutes (as well as Europe, they were free of charge. In the heady private practitioners) maintain a range of low- climate of progressivism and social movement Elizabeth Ann Danto, Ph.D., is associate cost services. To support these endeavors, between the two world wars, psychoanalysis professor of social work at Hunter College– however, analysts must wrangle with the issue was believed to share in the transformation of City University of New York. She is the author posed in 1925 by the German psychoanalyst civil society and the new outpatient treatment of Freud’s Free Clinics—Psychoanalysis Max Eitingon: For a clinic to be successful, as centers were to help restore people to their & Social Justice, 1918-1938, published by Eitingon explained in his annual report on the inherently self-regulating and productive selves. Columbia University Press in May 2005. Berlin Poliklinik (the Berlin Society’s free clinic), Continued on page 10

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 9 Freud’s 150th Anniversary At What Cost? effectively redistributed taxes toward those better with adult men who outnumbered Continued from page 9 most in need. Along the same lines, the psy- female patients in most years by at least 50 choanalysts (at least two of whom, Josef Fried- percent; to go by Hitschmann’s data, “impo- Like all free clinics historically, these had the role jung and Paul Federn, were City Council tence” ranked as the clinic’s most frequently of providing mental health care to poor people, members) formulated the “one-fifth” formula recorded diagnosis, reiterating how psycho- the socially disenfranchised, and those who whereby, of every five patients, one would be analysis would give men—who already had sought help through untraditional channels. treated gratis. Psychoanalytic society mem- more social freedom than women—license to Of course, as Anna Freud said in 1968, the psy- bers who decided not to treat patients free address sexual dysfunction and, coincidentally, choanalysts too were viewed as untraditional, of charge according to the “one-fifth” rule, con- produce families and rebuild a vigorous state. as “pioneers, not only because they broke new tributed instead to the salaries of a growing Not that women were ignored. It was one of ground, but also in the sense that their endeav- number of paid assistants and interns at the the accomplishments of psychoanalysis to ors ran counter to and ignored the conven- clinics: In 1924, all Society members in Berlin assert that women did have sexuality, but tional restrictions of their time.”6 Most of the and Vienna allocated an additional 4 percent of saying that women of the “lower” classes had analysts never even considered weighing the their membership fees to support the clinics.7 sexual autonomy was even more daring. effectiveness of treatment against the finan- cial burden imposed on the patient. What’s more, they assumed a specific obligation to The free clinics changed the way analysts reached all donate a portion of their time to people who social classes without changing the therapeutic process. could not otherwise afford treatment.

FUNDING STRATEGIES This revenue, along with occasional cash infu- In Berlin, itself a great center of urban daring The free clinics changed the way analysts sions from Max Eitingon in Berlin, and later in the 1920s, Max Eitingon ran the Poliklinik reached all social classes without changing the Pryns Hopkins in London and Marie Bonaparte with clinical judgments that could seem idio- therapeutic process. Their funding strategies in Paris (in addition to some Americans) pretty syncratic today, and he tended to challenge the were interesting. For one, the systematic dis- much sustained the clinics. analysts on their views of treatment and social tribution of Erlagscheine, or vouchers, to cur- The rise of free clinics, then, allowed psycho- class. Psychoanalysts like Otto Fenichel and rent or prospective patients (who would later analysts to be consistent with the prevailing Ernst Simmel, who were gratified by his whole- use the voucher as a form of currency to pay Social Democratic model and, at the same time, sale trust in patients’ honesty (that they “pay as another doctor) made for an especially versa- to increase the visibility of their new profession much or as little as they can or think they tile type of personal check. Within a medical in almost all major cities in Europe. “In the long can”),10 also applauded his fondness for col- community like a hospital, an authorized signer run the success of a clinic would mean a gen- lecting data (“statistics…[are] the test of our could use the voucher to personally reimburse eral encouragement of psychoanalysis,” Freud’s courage”). They liked to try out his variations a colleague who had donated time to treat a translator and friend, James Strachey, wrote from on treatment (“to systematically and in every patient. In private practice, a physician could London to his wife Alix, then living in Berlin, case reduce the length of the analytic sitting endorse an Erlagschein to a clinic like the “and would eventually benefit us personally.”8 The from one hour to half-an-hour,” for example) Ambulatorium, as a monthly financial contri- Vienna Ambulatorium provided a perfect case and experimented with time limits, crisis bution, substituting the donation for treatment in point. The free clinic did not seek out a main- intervention, ”fractionary” or “interrupted” hours they would ordinarily provide in person. stream patient base and was sustained relatively schedules, and active therapies presumably Freud, arguably the original private practitioner cheaply. Inside the cramped medical offices that influenced by Ferenczi. Eitingon seized on of psychoanalysis, regularly wrote out monthly the Ambulatorium shared with a hospital’s car- and supported Freud’s call for free clinics early, Erlagscheine of 200 to 400 schillings (roughly diology unit, the analytic couch was a metal exam- precisely because he found that, “in private $50 to $100) for the clinic. Of course, some ination table with a thin springless mattress. practice [these experiments] could never be patients did pay according to a sliding scale of Dozens of people a day streamed through undertaken.” Freud’s own promotion of Eitin- fees. But relying on patient fees was both risky the doors at 18 Pelikangasse without distinction gon and the Poliklinik’s mission was only the and ideologically counterproductive, and it of illness or social class, heart patients in the beginning and he worried that the analysts’ made little sense in a post-war economy of high morning mingling with analytic patients in the enthusiasm might diminish. In a 1935 epilogue unemployment and inflation. afternoon and evening. The clinic did so well to his brief bittersweet autobiography, Freud The governing Social Democrats kept wages that Eduard Hitschmann, the director, com- added, “Out of their own funds, local soci- deliberately low, and instead used local taxes to plained in 1932 of its overuse by schools and eties support…outpatient clinics in which build up a large scale public health, welfare, san- clubs, teachers, school doctors, and personal experienced analysts as well as students give itation, and housing infrastructure. Unlike indi- pediatricians who referred children “from all free treatment to patients of limited means.”11 vidual wages, these centrally planned projects strata of the necessitous classes.”9 It did even Continued on page 28

10 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary with his mother or some other specific aspect Freud on Religion: Looking Back of his early childhood experiences (Zilboorg 1958). At the Future of an Illusion Once the historical claims have been re- Naomi Janowitz thought, much work remains. Many early analytic studies of Freud followed in his Freud’s ideas about sexuality were disturb- attempt to preserve that legacy. This is surely mythic search for the origins of religion so are ing in his day, but are well-worn and familiar the weakest of Freud’s writings since the nar- of only historical interest to us now. On top today. His ideas about religion experienced rative it recounts is not true. Yet,Robert Paul of this, as Jonathan Lear has forcefully argued the reverse fate: Widely accepted by his early masterfully cuts through this knot, solving the in his recent introduction to Freud, Freud’s followers, they now seem inadequate, and, for dilemma by pointing to the Torah story (1996). position on religion is lacking a firm philo- those analysts who embrace religion or spiri- Alfred Kroeber reviewed Moses and Monothe- sophical grounding (2005). This problem is tuality, they remain disturbing. ism as, to use Freud’s term, a Just So story not unique to Freud’s work on religion, since, For Freud, religion arose in the first place (1952:306). Paul replies: Yes,it is a myth and we as Lear himself notes, central philosophical to defend against childhood experiences of can tell you exactly where it comes from. questions such as whether the unconscious has helplessness. All religions are propositional philosophical “mass delusions” (SE 21:18), content are actively being based on wishful thinking. debated. But it is another Religious beliefs are always sign of the inadequacy of expressions of the infantile Freud’s schema. in mental life. Freud most Some early followers of famously compared religious Freud rejected his critical atti- ritual with obsessive neurotic tude towards religion but it behavior. After discussing is primarily in the past few Moses and Monotheism, I will decades that major revisions review some of the recent have gained currency. Many attempts to rethink these analysts have been drawn to concepts, pointing to what I Winnicott’s notion of a tran- think remains valuable. While, sitional object to “undercut for example, his analysis of Freud’s rigid dualism between ritual was much too narrow, the objective and subjective” many of his basic insights (Jones 1991:38). God or, remain compelling. some type of spirituality, func- Photo: Freud Museum, London Photo: Freud It is easy to dismiss Freud 1938 (July) reading Moses manuscript at 39 Elsworthy Road, London; tions as a transitional object. on religion because his writ- photographer: Willi Hoffer This object fuses illusion and ings on this topic are quite reality, to some extent brack- puzzling, especially the “historical novel,” Moses That is, the mythic story Freud describes eting questions about a god/spirit’s existence. and Monotheism. Freud posited, even insisted comes from the Torah story itself, which in- The attractiveness of this position depends on, the historical accuracy of his reconstruction fluenced Freud in ways he did not appear to on an analyst’s willingness to equate a god/spirit of ancient history long after he had aban- be fully conscious of. Thus Paul saves Freud with other more concrete transitional objects. doned, for example, the idea that reports of from himself, placing the story of Moses and So, too, object relations theory is used to childhood seduction were accurate. The killing the horde in the category of myth, where it posit a god/spirit as a necessary object, without of the primal father by the horde had actually belongs. We are free then to analyze the which a person would have no integrated self taken place, and was then subsequently reen- unconscious power that myth has in shaping or morals. acted in the killing of Moses, an Egyptian society, including the persuasive example of Both of these approaches depend on an bureaucrat who introduced Jews to the failed the unconscious power of myth even on outdated notion of “homo religiosus,” the monotheistic ideas of Pharaoh Akhenaton in an Freud himself. necessarily religious person. The picture of This unraveling of the relationship between religion presupposed is a very domesticated Naomi Janowitz, Ph.D., is a professor and Freud’s life story as a Jew and his theories is version, created primarily by the individual him/ director of religious studies at the University of much more convincing than numerous other herself and devoid of connection to major California-Davis and an advanced candidate attempts to explain his stance on religion based religious institutions and structures (Blass 2004). at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. on, for example, a problematic relationship Continued on page 12

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 11 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Freud on Religion such great value. His caution anticipates by a Bettelheim observed that Margaret Mead, Continued from page 11 century the emerging scholarly consensus among many anthropologists, saw initiation about exactly what religious experiences are rites as male attempts to take over female This mode of analysis, while it does succeed in evidence of. functions. Males are ambivalent towards their locating some overlap between religious and Much more convincing are critics of Freud mothers and envy both the female sexual non-religious use of objects, tells us very little, who point to the diverse roles that religious organs and their function. This “vagina envy” on the one hand, about the social basis for rituals fill. This point was raised by early critics has attracted much less attention then penis beliefs in gods, spirits, or supernatural beings, of Freud and not given its due. The simple envy, but may be central to rites constructed by so central to definitions of religion, or, on the comparison between religious ritual and obses- men. Thus we find rites that induce male other, about transitional objects. sional neurosis greatly oversimplifies rituals’ “menstruation” and many other rites that may range and power. Rituals do much of the work less explicitly express envy over female ability RELIGIOUS TRUTH of culture such as marrying people, conferring to give birth and nurse. Some analysts argue that religion should status, and instantiating cosmologies. Religious One example of this type of rite is sacrifice. not be expected to be true in the sense that rituals in particular are often the cultural set- In her powerful studies of sacrifice traditions, science is, for example, and if religious institu- tings in which cultural beliefs are presented, Nancy Jay (1992) has explicated exactly how tions sometimes embrace poor science, these clarified, challenged, and acted out. unconscious envy of females is acted out via mistakes are only social problems that can both myths and rites of animal sacrifice. easily be discarded. Once these social facts are Women are forbidden to participate in these discarded, then religion remains as a personal rites, which function socially and psychically sense of awe, wonder, or spiritual longing. to remake their sons into children of their These definitions of religion are in part apolo- fathers and male gods, displacing the human getic since religion is inextricable from a set mothers. At the same time sacrificial rituals can of shared cultural practices. This point is so result in powerful, sacred food produced by central to the argumentation of Freud’s critics men, again a denial of the primordial depend- today it bears further investigation. ence on the mother (Janowitz, forthcoming). Much as miracles were once thought to legitimize religious truth claims, today the FANTASY SHAPING REALITY equivalent is the truth-value that individual Freud’s comparison between obsessive- religious experiences are argued to repre- compulsive behavior and ritual does not begin sent (often labeled as “spirituality” or “mysti- to plumb these depths, even while it may be cism”). It is no surprise that Sudhir Kakar, compelling in some instances. Bettelheim also whose studies make the strongest case for argued that rituals can have more useful roles, this type of position, asks why Freud would such as permitting people to explore identifi- find creativity in the artist but not in the mys- cations, relaxing social demands, and aiding in tic. The emerging scholarly analysis of mysti- ego integration. Imagine if Freud had drawn cism recognizes the extent to which a mystical on rituals of disenchantment, found primarily experience is completely determined by the Michelangelo’s Moses sculpture in oral religious traditions. Hopi boys, for exam- social/cultural expectations of the person who ple, are told as part of their initiation that the has it (Kakar 1991).1 Freud’s stance on circumcision, for example, kachinas dancing at the rituals are not gods Scholars of religion would today be hesitant reflects a very narrow notion of the purpose but in fact their fathers and uncles dressed up. to use the term “mysticism” to the extent that and function of initiation ceremonies, insisting However, they are instructed not to tell the it includes, just as the term “miracle” does, an that they were connected to castration anx- secret to the women and children. evaluation that the experience is based on a iety and the Oedipal complex. He wrote, Loewald astutely commented “’repetitions’ factual encounter, and thus is both privileged “Circumcision is the symbolic substitute for have been stressed more in psychoanalytic over other types of religious events and not castration, a punishment which the primeval writings than repetition as a normal phenom- subject to analysis (Proudfoot 1985). The father dealt his sons long ago out of the full- enon” (1980:97). He explains that “the passive content of the mystical encounter is deter- ness of his power” (SE 23:122). reproduction of experience does present the mined by the social norms that produce it, not The failings of this theory were vigorously opportunity for arriving at re-creative repeti- by any reality “out there” that the person pointed out by Bruno Bettelheim in Symbolic tion, depending on a variety of internal and engages with. Ironically it is exactly on this Wounds (1954), though his analysis had little external conditions…. Transference repeti- topic, the role of internal fantasy in shaping impact in psychoanalytic circles, which have tions in analysis as a vehicle of the therapeutic experiences, where Freud’s insights are of clung to the castration theory of initiation. Continued on page 29

12 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Bringing the Soul into Neuroscience: An Interview with Mark Solms Mark D. Smaller

Freud, in his 1895 ‘”Project for a The formative engagement of a distinguished Scientific Psychology,” attempted to scientist with Freud and the brain as the field join the emerging discipline of psy- of neuro-psychoanalysis grew exponentially is choanalysis with the neuroscience the subject of this interview with Solms. of his time…[The] neuron had only just been described, and Freud was Smaller: Who came up with the term “neuro- forced—through lack of pertinent psychoanalysis” and when? knowledge—to abandon his proj- Solms: I think around 1998, the same ect. We have had to wait many time we decided to start the Journal (Neuro- decades before the sort of data Psychoanalysis). Ed Nersessian and I were at which Freud needed finally became Arnold Pfeffer’s home. I guess the term was my available. “brilliant” idea. Photo: Freud Museum, London Photo: Freud Arnold Z. Pfeffer, M.D. 1891 Neuro-psychoanalysis Web site: Smaller: How long had you and Pfeffer been www.neuro-psa.org meeting? I kept wondering how did it happen that my Solms: I began commuting to New York brother was no longer the same person? I dis- Through the guiding support of the late around 1990. Those meetings began with a covered later in my own analysis that this trauma Arnold Pfeffer, Mark Solms and his colleagues small group of analysts. We would invite leading was probably also one of the main origins of my have gone beyond what even they would neuroscientists to give presentations followed death anxiety—which has remained with me. have imagined 20 years ago. Their contributions by discussions, much as we now have at the That is also a neuro-psychoanalytic problem. through neuro-psychoanalytic research are a monthly meetings at the Pfeffer Center. It was a testament to Freud’s original ideas. real meeting of minds. Our first speakers were Smaller: How so? The pioneering work of Mark Solms in selected by James Schwartz, who was working Solms: I was preoccupied with this anxiety. dream research has redirected modern neu- with Eric Kandel, the Nobel Prize Laureate. How does it happen that your self is so bound roscientific approaches to sleep and dreaming. up with your brain? If the self is the brain, then Solms is the founding chair of the Interna- Smaller: And your first International Congress? when your brain dies, there is no more self. So tional Neuro-Psychoanalysis Society, director of Solms: It was held in London in 2000. Our what happens to the immortality of the soul? the International Neuro-Psychoanalysis Centre seventh will be in L.A. this summer. in London, and director of the Arnold Pfeffer Smaller: You studied neuroscience at university? Center for Neuro-Psychoanalysis in New York, Smaller: What were the origins of your inter- Solms: Yes, but I was still interested in the where he also serves on the board of the est in neuroscience and psychoanalysis? self and the brain—and their connection. How Neuro-Psychoanalysis Foundation. His main Solms: The origins of my interests proba- are you your brain? current academic affiliation is chair of neu- bly began with a trauma. When I was about By the time I arrived at the University of ropsychology at the University of Cape Town. three years old, my older brother had a very Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, neuroscience He has published over 300 journal articles serious head injury. He would have been was the obvious choice. That’s when I met this and book chapters, and his books include The about six. I was very close to him. We lived in very impressive professor, Michael Saling. He Neuropsychology of Dreaming, The Brain and a remote region of Southern Africa, an isolated was a neuroscientist, but he also knew some- the Inner World, and Clinical Studies in Neuro- village. We were isolated even as a family. thing about the mind. I learned that maybe Psychoanalysis. His Revised Standard Edition of We spoke English and everyone else in that things were not so random. I became more the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund village spoke German. My father was sort of interested in neuropsychology. But this was Freud will be published later this year. the boss of town, which made us even more still neuroscience. You were still not allowed to isolated. My brother was my only real friend. ask things like,“How does the brain produce Mark D. Smaller, Ph.D., is the director His accident had a devastating effect on me feelings?” The other stuff was so boring! To his of the Neuro-Psychoanalysis Foundation in and the family. He was never the same after great credit, Saling didn’t squash my curiosity in New York and London, and is on the board the accident. He had fallen from a roof deck, such questions. of the American Psychoanalytic Foundation. maybe five or six meters. He lost his personality. Continued on page 14

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 13 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Mark Solms Interview morning, noon, and night. Then they opened a experience. In South Africa moreover, if a man Continued from page 13 rehab unit with both brain and spine injury came with this kind of brain injury, it not only patients. That was an important place for me affected him but also the 14 members of his Smaller: Had he read Freud? because patients lived there for months, some- family who were depending on him. Solms: Yes,but my interest in Freud began times years, and I talked with them—really when I attended a seminar taught by a phi- got to know them and learned about the Smaller: The academic neuroscientist became losophy professor, Jean Pierre Delport. That’s impact of their injuries and their trauma on one concerned with the soul and the brain, and when I first read Freud’s “Project for a Scien- their lives. the humanity in his work—a good foundation to tific Psychology.” It was mind-boggling—all the become a psychoanalyst. things that I was not learning in neuroscience Smaller: Your first clinical experience. Solms: Well, I was having problems in South were discussed there. How does the mind of Solms: I talked with them and learned about Africa. Each year the army would call me up for a real person work? People have traumatic their past relationships. This was also a form of conscription. Each year the head of the neu- memories that affect the development of their research. Certain brain lesions created cer- rosurgery department wrote letters about minds, their behavior, their consciousness, and tain changes in moods, thoughts, and behavior. how I was needed, that I was the only neu- all of this must be reflected in the workings of These lesions changed the real fabric of their ropsychologist at the hospital. Three million their brains. It was incredible. Freud also wrote mental and personal lives. These were mostly people were depending on us—the whole about dreams in the “Project.” I was like a kid patients with strokes or brain injuries. The township. And they would defer my conscrip- in a toy shop. spinal injury patients served as a sort of control tion. But finally they said enough was enough. group. They had equivalent physical trauma, They gave me a year to train a replacement. Smaller: You began reading Freud? but not brain lesions. That was a big difference That’s when I began training Oliver Turnbull Solms: I read “On Aphasia,” and then Saling between the two groups. Their personalities [co-author of The Brain and the Inner World]. and I wrote a paper that was published in the did not change in the same ways as the brain International Journal of Psychoanalysis [1986] patients, even with the same traumatic loss. Smaller: You went to London? titled “On Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience.” Solms: I went to New York and London for That paper was the turning point of my sci- Smaller: And with stroke patients? interviews at Columbia and the British Institute. entific life. Psychoanalysis became my whole Solms: Different changes in certain areas My wife Karen [Kaplan-Solms, co-author of way of thinking, especially after I read The of the brain meant different changes in their Clinical Studies in Neuro-Psychoanalysis] and I Interpretation of Dreams. personalities. That was an incredible thing to then moved to London. witness. You could look at a brain scan of a Smaller: What was the link? patient and almost predict what kind of per- Smaller: How did you decide on London Solms: Psychoanalysis could provide what sonality changes they would have. And this rather than New York? neuroscience was lacking—a science of the per- was not with just a few patients but with Solms: I remember that in London I felt son, a natural science of subjectivity. I think that thousands. more personally understood than in New was consistent with Freud’s ideas. But I had to York. Also, they were still discriminating against keep both sides going. By 1984 I began getting Smaller: This was still apartheid South Africa. non-medical applicants and London had noth- articles accepted in neuroscience journals. Solms: In a first world country, a person ing like this. There is a great irony about this. gets a slight twitch in their eye and they run to Smaller: Things were moving. the doctor. With these patients in Soweto, Smaller: With the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Solms: Until 1985. Then Saling, much to my they were already blind by the time they came Neuro-Psychoanalysis now being housed at the dismay, was offered a position in Melbourne and for care. It would have to be that extreme. New York Institute? emigrated. I was in a lurch—lost scientifically. These were very poor people who would Solms: Also because the greatest interest in I am a bit of a lone ranger, a loner, but one rarely see a doctor. my work began here in the U.S. There was no always needs mentors to learn from. I was deeply interested in them. I wanted to interest at all in London. They thought,“Why know their stories. I learned quickly what to would an analyst be interested in the brain?” Smaller: That isolated village again. pay attention to, what was idiosyncratic to Solms: It was a frightening time. I was young the individual patient, and what was charac- Smaller: What about your clinical work? and suddenly left in charge of the neuropsy- teristic of their lesion site. I was learning about Solms: I needed to do some psychotherapy chology services in two hospital neurosurgery the structure of the mind. at the local mental hospital, a real old Victorian wards, one in Johannesburg and the other in asylum. And I went for my own analysis every Soweto. Jo’burg General’s neurosurgery ward Smaller: Subjective experience? day. And seminars at night. had 40 beds, and Baragwanath Hospital in Solms: It was what had been so completely After that I saw my two control patients. Soweto had about 80. I was seeing patients lacking in my academic training—the human Continued on page 30

14 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary There has been interest in the relationship Education and Training between education and evaluation, and par- ticularly professional certification—its reliabil- in Psychoanalysis ity, validity, impact on the profession, and impact Robert Michels on the public. Reasonable people have widely discrepant views: that certification is impossi- Psychoanalytic education and training have ble, that it is essential to maintain professional engendered a number of lively and interesting standards, that it is essential to protect the dialogues in recent years. Probably the most public, that it is irrelevant to the essence of well known has arisen repeatedly since the what psychoanalysis is, and that it is desirable earliest years of organized training programs. if done appropriately, but that it is not yet fea- It concerns who should be accepted as can- sible to do it appropriately. didates for psychoanalytic training, and what requirements are appropriate. This has been UNASKED QUESTIONS mistermed the “question of lay analysis.” Ini- These are all important and interesting topics. tially it divided the profession and challenged For the most part they can be traced back to the Freud’s leadership; later it threatened the 1920s and the development of the first sys- very existence of the American Psychoanalytic tematic program of professional training at the Association. Is psychoanalysis a branch of psy- Berlin Institute, followed by tensions between chiatry, a subspecialty of the mental health the Berlin and Vienna institutes, tensions that professions, or a new perspective on the were then exported to the New World, along human mind far too precious to be relegated with the Berlin and Viennese analysts, and where to the control of medicine and the health they have continued to the present. I believe Photo: Freud Museum, London Photo: Freud professions, thereby excluding the rich and 1920 IPA Congress in the Hague, Netherlands that there are important underlying questions imaginative contributions of scholars from that are not often articulated (in contrast to the humanities and social sciences along with what is the difference, and perhaps most spe- the derivative questions outlined above, which, those of other empathic and creative individ- cific and most contentious, what if an appro- to my taste, are too often discussed!). uals who come from a number of pathways? priate applicant for training is in analysis with One fundamental underlying question is the The question has been, and is, answered in a an analyst who is not a training analyst? basic goal of the process. Is it to train practi- number of different ways by different groups There have also been discussions about tioners so that they can conduct psychoanalytic in different settings, most often not by address- curriculum. Should theory be taught historically treatment in the community or is it to educate ing the underlying issues, which I shall address or conceptually? Should theoretical pluralism professionals to assure the continued growth momentarily, but rather as part of a solution be emphasized or marginalized? Should tech- and progress of psychoanalytic knowledge? to immediate problems of the supply of can- nique be taught as derived from theory, or If it is training, a primary concern is to assure didates, of the attitudes of the professions theory as a tool employed in technique? the public of the quality of the graduates. and society, and most of all of guild concerns Should analytic curricula include discussion of They should be ethical, safe, and effective. It is of the profession. psychopathology, psychotherapy, or alternative very important not to graduate anyone who Other dialogues concerning training and treatments? What is the relevance of devel- fails to meet these standards, even at the risk education have considered re-evaluation of opmental psychology, neurosciences, language of burdening or even excluding some who may the training analyst system, 80 years after its and narratology, research, methodology of meet them but about whom, for one reason or birth. Should training analyses be considered an treatment evaluation, or applied psychoanaly- another, it is difficult to be certain. More atten- educational issue; should there be designated sis to the psychoanalytic curriculum? tion will be devoted to ensuring that the worst training analysts, and if so designated by whom Supervision is generally viewed as more practitioner is not too bad, even at the cost and based on what criteria; should the training important than the didactic curriculum and of limiting the potential excellence of the best. analysis be replaced by a personal analysis, easier to discuss than the training analysis. There Professional socialization is as important as have been discussions of the appropriate focus professional training—practitioners must accept Robert Michels, M.D., is Walsh McDermott of supervision—the patient, the supervisee, the the importance of peer standards and peer University Professor of Medicine and therapeutic process or the supervisory process, review, and recognize that revolutionary pro- Psychiatry at Cornell University. He is training the relation between teaching and evaluation, cedures or ideas are to be reviewed and and supervising analyst at the Columbia the boundary between treatment and super- approved by colleagues before the public is University Center for Psychoanalytic Training vision, and, related, the question of the report- exposed to them. and Research. ing vs. non-reporting supervisors. Continued on page 32

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 15 Freud’s 150th Anniversary epistemological positions, pursue the patient’s Interpreting Transference Action experience of the analyst’s participation in the Henry F. Smith transference. Schwaber, in fact, traces the line- age of her approach directly to this comment It is a curious feature of the history of psy- tells us what he wishes he had said to her, and of Freud’s. choanalytic ideas that both sides of most con- it foreshadows all contemporary emphases troversies can be derived from Freud’s writings. on the patient’s experience of the analyst in the COMMITTED EXPERIENCE Whether or not a particular author chooses here and now. A decade later in his papers on technique, to trace his lineage to Freud is consequently “’Now,’” Freud writes,“I ought to have said Freud’s analytic focus was shifting from the more often a matter of politics than scholar- to her,‘it is from Herr K. that you have made recovery of memory toward viewing analysis ship. And this is no less true for controversies a transference on to me. Have you noticed as a “passionately committed experience,” in contemporary technique. In this light, I anything that leads you to suspect me of evil as Friedman (1991, p. 564) has put it. Ironi- would like to take up the now nearly world- intentions similar…to Herr K.’s? Or have you cally, however, it was Freud’s very interest in wide focus on the analysis of the transference been struck by anything about me or got to the recovery of memory that led him at this in the here and now and, in particular, the know anything about me which has caught time to his most articulate description of analysis of action of the transference. your fancy, as happened previously with Herr the role of action in the here and now when In doing so, I do not mean to exclude the K.?’ Her attention would then have been he noted that patients put into action what other side of this debate, which, of course, turned to some detail in our relations, or in they do not want to remember (Freud 1914). can also be derived from Freud, namely the analysis of what is sometimes called the extratransference. In fact, to speak of these as opposing points of view is misleading, as both are necessary to the analysis of the whole person, and even the most ardent advocates of the here and now, from the relational to the contemporary Kleinian, make room for the there and then in one form or another. North American psychoanalysis was slow to join the trend toward the analysis of action in the here and now, because it was viewed as having a Kleinian taint. Such taints, like the one interpersonalism once held for ego psychology (and ego psychology still holds for the French), have been instrumental in solidifying schools and sects.

There were two critical moments in Freud’s Museum, London Photo: Freud career that laid the groundwork for the focus 1933 Hohe Warte, Vienna, Austria I have in mind, moments of clinical frustra- tion. Frustration, if not outright failure, was my person or circumstances, behind which I believe this is one of his most important always the impetus for Freud’s modifications of there lay concealed something analogous but observations, but we have never known quite theory and technique. I am thinking, first, of immeasurably more important concerning what to do with it. Much of contemporary his initial articulation of the transference in Herr K.” (p. 118). work can be seen as a dialogue on its theo- his postscript to the Dora case. Here, several Freud was clearly groping here for a way to retical and technical implications. The fact years after Dora had left him, Freud (1905) convert his new discovery into an interven- that we no longer see action and thought as tion that might have made sense to his young mutually exclusive the way Freud did only Henry F. Smith, M.D., is editor of The patient—and it may sound clumsy to our makes the problem more complex. For if Psychoanalytic Quarterly. He is training ears—but his emphasis on the actual person of patients are always putting into action what and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic the analyst has a peculiarly contemporary ring. they do not want to remember, and we can- Institute of New England, East (PINE), and a We can hear its echo, for example, in the con- not simply stop the action to recover the member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society temporary work of Gill (1982) and Schwaber idea, then what are we to do? and Institute. (1983), as they both, from somewhat different Continued on page 31

16 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Freud was deeply perplexed that his case Freud: Found in Translation reports resembled novels and short stories, Emmett Wilson, Jr. but he was struggling with philosophical prob- lems about the explanation of human behav- Some years ago a brouhaha started about The theme of Freud’s narcissism was ex- ior. It is a field that has come to be known as the Strachey translation of Freud’s works, plored in a novel by Israel Rosenfield, Freud’s philosophical psychology, with psychoanalysis as known as the Standard Edition. Some date the Megalomania.5 Daniel Mendelsohn, in his a prime example of a discipline that strad- beginning of this chorus of criticism with Bruno review of that novel, cites Freud’s grumpy dles both science and the humanities. Freud Bettelheim’s New Yorker article in 1982 that comments in Chronik, his private diary, for became painfully aware of some of these appeared later in book form as Freud and November 1930, witnessing his disappoint- philosophical problems, and was puzzled by Man’s Soul (1983).1 But the concerns had ment over failing to obtain a Nobel prize: them, as have been philosophers who have been brewing for years, even before Stra- “Definitively passed over for Nobel Prize.” turned to this issue since. chey’s monumental work was finished.2 The controversy was INCHOATE TEXT about whether Freud was Has Strachey’s model really translated properly. Some harmed our understanding of claimed he wrote in natural, Freud? It is hardly comparable emotive language, and his ele- to Benjamin Jowett’s stilted and gant, moving German style often prudish translation of showed his concern with how Plato, which presented Plato life was for each individual per- as a stuffy English gentleman, son and spoke to all of us. Stra- and did a grave injustice even chey, so the critics claimed, though it helped to popularize always opted for a scientific the Dialogues. Yet,since we have tone. And so the controversy always had the text of Plato raged, with international meet- and many other translations to ings devoted to the question, as rely on, there was no lasting a considerable literature devel- harm done except perhaps to oped around the problem of create a false image of Plato translating Freud.3 In addition, for the general, Greekless the anticipated expiration of reader. Perhaps the same con- the copyrights led to talk of a trol could have been exercised

new translation to replace the Museum, London Photo: Freud for the Strachey translation. We Standard Edition. 1938 (summer) at his desk in Elsworthy Road, London have always had a German text Strachey was specific: “The with which to compare it. imaginary model which I have always kept As Mendelsohn notes, Freud had been Or have we? Only after a fashion. Strachey’s before me is of the writings of some English- awarded Germany’s most prestigious literary work was pioneering as a major step toward man of science of wide education born in honor, the Goethe Prize, just some three establishing an eventual standard German edi- the middle of the 19th century.”4 And he months earlier. So much for his desire to be a tion. The critics never intended to minimize emphasized the Englishness of his model. I feel popular author, he wanted to be known for his the enormous contribution Strachey made in that Strachey was not far off the mark in his science. Much of the criticism of the translation pulling together, organizing, cataloguing, sorting portrayal of Freud in the guise of an English has had to do with the “scientistic” format out, and providing the historical framework for gentleman and Victorian man of science. Freud that Strachey was said to have imposed on the the whole corpus of Freud’s psychological writ- would have been, I think, quite pleased to texts. But Freud was ambitious and some- ings and the development of his theory. Even have been taken for such a personage. Stra- what arriviste, and being a scientist was his the limited and tentative attempt at producing chey’s model amounts to an extrapolation way of achieving the success, rewards, and an adequate German text of Freud, the Studi- of Freud’s view of himself. recognition that he coveted. The Project and enausgabe, resorted to translating Strachey’s the early pre-psychoanalytic writings are quite notes and editorial apparatus and incorporating unambiguously “scientific.” Often, his suppos- them into the German text of that edition. Emmett Wilson, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., edly homey, ordinary, emotive prose addressed The unfinished and inchoate state of the Ger- is a child psychiatrist. He is on the editorial to the common man is as hard and precise and man editions is now common knowledge. board of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. clear as a scientist can be. Continued on page 18

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 17 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Found in Translation As Grubrich-Simitis comments: “[T]he Ger- other writer, is endlessly redescribable and Continued from page 17 man-speaking reader, not being in this ques- endlessly re-translatable. Some see this as part tioning, alien, and eccentric position with and parcel of the move away from the “science” Meanwhile, the French, whose editions of respect to the original words, as a rule remains of psychoanalysis, as an attempt to revamp Freud were even more chaotic than pre- unaware of these dimensions.”7 psychoanalysis as hermeneutic, as humanistic, Strachey English versions, have brought out a Criticism of Strachey has become more placing Freud in a cultural context. new translation. The French rejected a “Stra- muted, and a more reasoned approach has chey français” and opted instead for a transla- developed. There seems to be little danger NEW TRANSLATIONS tion so faithful to the original in all its subtleties now that anyone would attempt to bring out The Penguin Project is happily unencum- and complexities, that the French itself may a new, definitive English translation to replace bered by the need to standardize that char- be distorted or transformed by a highly regu- Strachey, before a definitive German text is acterizes both the French edition and the lated program of terms and principles. In the established. Under the auspices of the British Standard Edition. The guiding principle enunci- process, their approach has led to extensive Institute of Psycho-Analysis, Mark Solms is ated in this new translation of Freud is that discussions of the problems of translation. An preparing a revised version of Strachey’s Stan- each translator should respond to Freud’s important volume about translating Freud has dard Edition, as well as the neuroanatomical writing in his or her own way, and that there appeared.6 The outcome of all the discussion writings. Some specific changes will be incor- should be no “party line” on the translation of has been new, fundamental reflections on porated, such as the substitution of “drive” technical terms. The translators come from lit- Freud’s thought as well as his language. for “instinct,” but still the format and tone of erary rather than psychoanalytic backgrounds, and are experienced in translating German and other languages. In the translators’ prefaces we find comments such as: “[I had] an anti- As the call for new translations of Freud is made, it is agenda—I was on my own with the text, not important to realize that we still have much to learn part of any regulated translation project, not subject to standardization or group politics.”10 about Freud’s thought, theory, and his language. The new translations are indeed much more readable, much livelier, much less stilted, than Translation may be the royal road to this deeper Strachey’s, and most use a more colloquial, understanding. Translation requires thinking about relaxed tone. This is helped not only by having a different translator, but also a different intro- every word, and discussing and thinking out possible ducer, adding a certain sprightliness to each volume. The introductions range from the different translations for the German original. superficial to the pedantic. The presentation is It leads to a detailed examination of the text itself. attractive, in paperback with fanciful cover art, e.g., paintings by Magritte or Max Ernst. From an analytic standpoint the lack of acquain- tance of the translators with the field in which The verdict has not yet been reached on the original Strachey translation, with many they are translating is regrettable, sometimes their work. But the French are, as usual, on to of its controversial aspects, will be preserved. amusing, as for example, avoiding the term something in focusing on the nature of trans- Strachey would probably approve, for he refers ‘”infantile” because the children referred to “are lation and the differences in their language to the Standard Edition as a “pioneering work, not infants.” But this dissonance to an analytic and Freud’s. As the call for new translations with all the inevitable errors and blunders ear is a small price to pay for the relative lack of Freud is made, it is important to realize that that involves.”8 On some points of trans- of psychobabble and jargon. The trade-off is that we still have much to learn about Freud’s lation we have come to different conclusions, a freshness and generally a liveliness that is thought, theory, and his language. Transla- though Strachey was often aware of the prob- lacking in Strachey. tion may be the royal road to this deeper lems. And some of his choices may come to be There are problems. The new translations understanding. Translation requires thinking accepted over time.9 are not necessarily a smoother read. There are about every word, and discussing and think- Partly in response to the criticism of the many infelicities, along with the freshness. At ing out possible different translations for the Standard Edition, along with the opportunism times the translation leads to forced and dis- German original. It leads to a detailed exam- involved with the expiration of the copyrights, torted English. As one translator states,“The ination of the text itself. This is something the Penguin Freud Project was put forward. word choices I have made don’t…always make that does not happen to the same extent Edited by Adam Phillips, a British analyst, it things easier for the reader or easier for the when reading a text in one’s own language. aims to present a literary Freud, who, like every Continued on page 33

18 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary thinkers who framed the theoretical course of Freud’s Influence on Anthropology modern anthropology took Freud seriously Robert A. Paul enough to wrestle with him in original and intellectually exciting ways. Clifford Geertz, Influence, as the literary critic, Harold Bloom, and of being an outsider even in one’s own cul- too, arguably the most influential American argued in his book, The Anxiety of Influence,is ture characterized many who were captivated cultural anthropologist of the last several usually no simple matter of the wholesale by both psychoanalysis and anthropology and decades, was certainly deeply engaged with incorporation of the thought of a precursor by linked them in a common but uneasily yoked and influenced by Freud, even though it may a follower. On the contrary, as a Freudian per- enterprise. not be explicitly obvious: He did not name his spective would indeed require, the influence A list of those eminent anthropologists most important book The Interpretation of of a strong precursor of the stature and power throughout the 20th century who were explic- Cultures for no reason. of Freud would necessarily involve creative itly influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis misreadings on the part of the followers, who reads like a roll call of the titans of the field. SOCIAL THEORISTS would display the marks of the influence of the There were, of course, those figures who, by One can also turn in the present connection strong precursor even as they wrestled with, virtue of being trained in, or at least practicing, to those social theorists who, while not anthro- reinterpreted, or attempted to reject that very both disciplines established a subfield of “psy- pologists, contributed concepts that entered influence. choanalytic anthropology,” (while at the same into the intellectual discourse of anthro- Taking that as a given, it is probably not an time ensuring for themselves a somewhat pology at various stages of its development. exaggeration to say Sigmund Freud’s influence has been greater in the field of anthropology than in any other academic discipline—per- haps even including psychology (except insofar as the whole of that latter discipline can be seen as a concerted attempt to deny that Freud ever existed). Freud’s deconstruction of the sover- eign subject of the Enlightenment, his thor- oughgoing critique of the objective observer, of “the Transcendental Ego,” of the conscious self supposedly transparent to itself, had a parallel in the decentering of the Eurocentric perspective effected by the radical cultural relativism that was the central intellectual and ethical premise of founders of 20th cen- tury anthropology. For figures such as Franz Boas and Emile Durkheim, who set modern

anthropology on its course as a discipline, the Museum, London Photo: Freud recognition of the validity of great varieties of Freud’s house in Freiberg coherent lived worlds beyond the borders of the West served as the opening of a horizon in marginal place in both disciplines). I have in The Frankfurt School in Germany included space just as the Freudian revolution revealed mind such figures as Geza Roheim, Georges figures as disparate as Theodor Adorno, Jurgen a vast unexplored psychic domain beyond Devereux, Abram Kardiner, L. Bryce Boyer, Habermas, and Herbert Marcuse, all of whom the boundaries of consciousness and “rea- and others, as well as Erik Erikson and Erich incorporated psychoanalytic ideas into their son.” At the same time, the spirit of bohemian Fromm, who, as psychoanalysts, deeply im- work to a great or lesser extent, and all of rebellion, of the critique of bourgeois society, mersed themselves in the study of culture. whom have, at one point or another, been But even within the mainstream of 20th cen- important in shaping anthropological theory. In Robert A. Paul, Ph.D., whose doctoral tury anthropology, one has only to think of France, Freud has always been taken seriously degree is in cultural anthropology, is currently Rivers, Malinowski, Meyer Fortes, and Victor as one of the great thinkers in the Western dean of Emory College. He also holds an Turner in Britain,Alfred Kroeber, Edward Sapir, canon. Not only did Sartre wrestle famously appointment as associate professor in the Clyde Kluckhohn, A. I. Hallowell, Weston with him, but more importantly for anthro- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral LaBarre, and many others in America, and pology, the structuralists and post-structuralists, Science at Emory and maintains a private Claude Levi-Strauss in France to be convinced including not only Levi-Strauss but also Derrida, clinical practice in Atlanta. that, whether they agreed with him or not, the Continued on page 20

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 19 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Anthropology critics whose positions are deeply inflected So far I have been talking about cultural Continued from page 19 by the aftereffects of Freud’s paradigm-shifting anthropology as if it were the whole of our ideas and who themselves shape the thinking field, but, of course, it is not. The idea of “Cul- Foucault, and, of course, Lacan, who played of today’s cultural theorists in anthropology and ture” was anthropology’s great contribution to such a crucial role in the construction of con- outside it. the intellectual life of the 20th century, just as temporary cultural theorizing in many arenas, The “postmodern” turn in contemporary the “Unconscious” was that of psychoanalysis. including anthropology, always regarded Freud anthropological thought, which involves a Cultural theory helped form and then domi- as a major figure to be reckoned with. In distrust of the authority of the “objective” nate the rather extreme environmentalism America, some of the most important social ethnographic observer, exposes the power and emphasis on learning, social experience, theorists of the middle part of the century, asymmetry inherent in the ethnographic situ- and external influences in the formation of including Robert Merton and especially Talcott ation. This places a great emphasis on the human life, personality, and society that pre- Parsons, under whose tutelage so many of uncertainties inherent in writing itself, and vailed in various forms, including behaviorism the leading anthropologists of the subsequent seeks to further challenge the privilege of the and social psychology, through much of the generation were trained, were very explicit in Western observer in favor of dialogue with the century. This trend helped fuel the transfor- their debt to Freud and psychoanalysis. Other that transforms (at the same time as it mations of psychoanalytic theory that began with the work of the so-called culturalists The idea of “Culture” was anthropology’s great who, directly responding to the influence of cultural theory in anthropology, stressed the contribution to the intellectual life of the 20th century, importance of social relationships and encul- just as the “Unconscious” was that of psychoanalysis. turation at the expense of the emphasis on the drives and on the biological grounding associ- Cultural theory helped form and then dominate the rather ated with Freud’s metapsychology. extreme environmentalism and emphasis on learning, THEORY OF EVOLUTION social experience, and external influences in the formation But if culture was the key anthropological of human life, personality, and society that prevailed in concept for much of its history as a discipline, that position was challenged more and more various forms, including behaviorism and social aggressively through the latter half of the century psychology, through much of the century. by the revitalization of the theory of evolu- tion. Long cast into the shadows by its associa- tion with such unpopular ideas as eugenics, Moreover, despite the apparent waning influ- reflects the presence of) the ethnographer. social Darwinism, and racism, biological expla- ence of psychoanalytic thought one must bear There is a parallel in the recent shift in em- nations for human behavior came into their in mind that the most recent wave of feminist phasis in American psychoanalysis to a more own again, beginning with the important revi- theory, which had a profoundly transformative inter-subjective stance; the self-certainty of sions of William Hamilton in the ’60s that led to effect on contemporary anthropology, was the analyst’s perspective is placed on the same the development of the fields of sociobiology deeply engaged with and influenced by psy- shifting footing as that of the analysand, and and then of evolutionary psychology, both of choanalytic thinking. Among its most important the counter-transference ranks as high in which rested squarely on neo-Darwinian evo- voices have been those of analysts, such as importance as does the transference. Thus, lutionary concepts. Hamilton’s ideas about kin Juliet Mitchell, Nancy Chodorow, Jessica Ben- while the current importance of many of the selection and inclusive fitness made it possible jamin, Julia Kristeva, and many others who figures to whom I have alluded has already to rethink social and group phenomena, as either were analysts or were immersed in a waned in the contemporary intellectual milieu, well as psychological concepts, from a point of struggle with analytic thought. The same goes anthropology and psychoanalysis, in continuing view that assumed: first, that innate behavioral for post-colonial theorists, from Frantz Fanon to develop in ways that reflect each other, programs had been written into the human to Homi Bhaba, whose works rely heavily on rely on further extensions of implications, genome by natural selection during the long psychoanalysis and whose influence contin- hints, challenges, and critiques already to some period during which we, Homo sapiens sapiens ues to ramify throughout contemporary cul- degree inherent in Freud’s thought, though and our immediate ancestors lived as hunting tural anthropology and the newer field of not fully developed by him. Nor would the cur- and foraging bands; and, second, that these cultural studies, from which cultural anthro- rent thinkers have been able to achieve their behaviors reflected the same pressures to sur- pology daily becomes less distinguishable. original vision if these great forbears who have vive, compete, and reproduce exhibited by the One may add the unclassifiable Slavoj Zizek to carried forward the spirit embedded in Freud’s behavior of any other species, social or not. round out the list of social thinkers and cultural writings had not prepared the way for them. Continued on page 34

20 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Nonverbal Art and Psychoanalysis Form Holds Key to Aesthetic Experience1

Gilbert J. Rose

The traditional approach of psychoanalysis function: growth-enhancing and expanding to aesthetics has been the same as to dreams: cultural and historical perspectives. Discover the unconscious meaning behind the manifest content and translate this hidden CO-EXISTENCE OF TENSION meaning into words. Not surprisingly, the same AND RELEASE unconscious motivations were found embed- How does art promote life? It aids the mind ded in psychological symptoms, dreams, mythol- in constantly re-sorting intermingled currents ogy, literature, and art. of subjective imagination and objective knowl- What is artistic about art, however, is pre- edge, feeling and cognition. In psychoanalytic cisely what gets lost in translation into cog- terms, primary and secondary processes are in nitive verbal content. What is artistic about constant interplay and, in the process, gener- art is what it does and how it does it. In the ating the tension and release of affect. This is briefest of statements, it restores fullness to in contrast to received truth that (1) growth the bleached-out experience of everyday requires secondary process to replace pri- life, invigorating ordinary thought and per- mary process (where Id was, Ego shall be) ception with the coloration of fresh feeling and (2) that the function of art is to smuggle

and bringing a renewed wholeness to one’s in forbidden fantasy guilt-free. Museum, London Photo: Freud sense of self. Aestheticians point out certain characteris- 1886 wedding portrait How, then, can justice be done to what is tics of the feelings associated with the aesthetic uniquely creative about art? The answer, I sug- experience. They note the co-existence of hostility or friendliness in order to know gest, is by focusing on form rather than content, hyperacuity and tranquility, force and calm, whether to advance, withdraw, or wait and perception rather than motivation. vitality and ease, energy and repose. In my see. Such affective perception is the first and The “meaning” of a picture is like meaning in view, this reflects a common dynamic in the most basic response to the dynamic aspects metrical poetry. It lies less in the content of the structure of both art and affect: tension and of the external world, that is, its perceived ideas that can be extracted and served up than release. qualities of tension and release, and how to in the form in which physical sounds and irreg- From the side of art, a visual artist, like a interpret them in the light of knowledge and ular accents of words play across the regular composer, knows how to enhance the expres- imagination. beat of the meter. Nonverbal art deals with sive qualities of tension and release inherent in Susan Langer points out that art offers an the transmutation of external arrangements of ordinary perception and how to express them objective image of the subjective experience color, line, tone, and rhythm into internal emo- more energetically and clearly to highlight the of human feelings. “The establishment and tional meanings. dramatics of everyday experience. For exam- organization of tensions is the basic technique Accordingly, my approach to psychoanalytic ple, in art oblique lines or rectangular or oval in projecting the image of feeling, the artist’s aesthetics (Rose 1980, 1987, 1996, 2004-a, shapes are more tension producing; horizon- idea, in any medium…. [It leads to] an iso- 2004-b, unpublished) shifts the focus from tal or vertical lines or square or spherical morphy of actual organic tensions and…virtual content to form, and from motivation to real- shapes are more stable and tension releasing. created tensions.” (Langer 1967, p. 164). ity and perception. It holds to an open model In music, delaying resolution raises tension. The near perfect fit between the attune- of the organism; it views art as evolving within Some ways of doing this are through orna- ment of art to one’s own feelings and one’s a fluid reality, supporting an adaptive, biological mentation, the minor mode, key modulations, responsive resonance to aesthetic forms leads and dissonance. to an evolving interplay between art and Gilbert J. Rose, M.D., is a Distinguished From the side of the viewer of art, sensitivity recipient. This may proceed in ways that the Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric to patterns of tension and release is the most author never intended so that the receiver Association, a Life Member of the American elementary attribute of perception. It accounts becomes, in a sense, a co-creator. (T.S. Eliot Psychoanalytic Association, a member of the for having an immediate emotional reaction to considered that some of the meanings attrib- Muriel Gardiner Program in Psychoanalysis stimuli and is rooted in a biological neces- uted to his poetry were superior to anything and the Humanities at Yale, and in private sity: An organism must make an on-the-spot he had in mind.) practice in Norwalk (Rowayton), Connecticut. appraisal of the outside world’s perceived Continued on page 22

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 21 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Nonverbal Art The role of aesthetic ambiguity in nonverbal sublimation, namely, the replacement of thing- Continued from page 21 art as contrasted to literature deserves a presentations and primary process by word-pre- closer look (Rose 2004-b). Psychoanalysis has sentations and secondary process. Nonverbal LINKING FORM AND FEELING held that literature mobilizes affects primarily art, however, offers a further perspective, namely, In this regard, several considerations are through stimulating unconscious fantasy and on the nonverbal sublimation of affect. notable. by being closely related to the primary process First, the correspondence between objec- through metaphor. AFFECT CODES tive aesthetic forms and internal feelings is In contrast to literature, however, I hold that How might this work? I speculate as follows: so close that, I believe, it allows the viewer of nonverbal art stimulates affects directly by Nonverbal sublimation of affect may begin art to create a preconscious illusion that art exposing and playing with perceptual aesthetic with the artist projecting unique, personally provides a responsive, witnessing presence. As ambiguity—fantasy and language entering only expressive body-image affect codes of somatic in any intimate encounter (love or treatment, later. Perceptual ambiguity arises from a built-in tension and release. They constitute actual for example), the viewer is licensed to feel neural propensity (based on the constant mobil- implicit motion. With talent and know-how more consciously what was always latent but ity of neural mappings and on central visual pro- the artist transmutes and intensifies them in unformed and inexpressible. cessing) as well as being a byproduct of the the artwork. The perpetual implicit motion of Second, such implicit “permission” ampli- interplay of primary and secondary processes. the artist’s expressive body images (neural fies emotional responses. They range from the present back to the remote past. Among the most significant of the latter is the expe- Nonverbal art thus suggests a working definition for the rience of affective signaling that takes place nonverbal sublimation of affect—one that testifies to the in the holding environment between parent fundamental role of motion in both emotional expression and infant. Ideally, this was geared toward the buildup and resolution of tension in a finely and emotional response. It builds on the neuroscience tuned dance of the mother’s attunement and concept that second-order neural maps exist initially in the infant’s responsiveness. This promoted a graded differentiation of feelings rooted in the nonverbal form that can be simulated by imagination but very beginnings of a sense of self. are also capable of conversion into language. Art, too, provides a framework of reliably balanced tension and release, allowing affects to build up with intensity and offering the What do I mean by this “interplay”? Pri- mappings of his/her virtual body as a whole) opportunity for their further differentiation. mary process forms (such as condensation, makes the picture come “alive” with affec- This is an illustration of how art is biologically displacement, coexistence of opposites) are tive tension and release. “Embodied” in the rooted: It continues the affect-regulating subjected to the delayed discharge imposed art, they constitute virtual implicit motion. function of early mothering; it helps elaborate by secondary process. This raises the normally The concordance between the actual implicit transformations of affect, on higher, abstract lev- subliminal pre-stages of perception into full motion in the tension and release of the artist’s els, of the same resonating emotional respon- awareness; reflection becomes possible. Con- affect and the virtual implicit motion embed- siveness that existed in the beginning. sider Picasso’s depiction of multiple spatial ded in the tension and release of aesthetic Third, other aspects of its biological rooted- perspectives simultaneously. form is a key to the artist’s sublimation of ness have to do with its contribution to orien- In music, experts have pointed to the coex- nonverbal affect: It transmits the artist’s feelings. tation and sense of wholeness. For instance, it istence of opposites during moments of stasis It also generates the viewer’s own affective can be shown that, insofar as aesthetic form and movement in late Beethoven music. They response. The latter may or may not be in stimulates and magnifies the normal interplay of seem outside time and space. How is this accordance with the artist’s affect. It may range primary process imagination and feeling with brought about? In the Adagio movement of the from empathic to antipathetic or be a complex secondary process logic and knowledge of real- “Sonata in C-Minor, Opus 111,” for example, combination depending on the viewer’s own ity, it constructively exploits ambiguity. Specifically, a combination of accelerated motion, rhythmic psychodynamics. In short, the viewer becomes it melts and reforms dimensions of time (con- diminution, and minimal harmonic action leads “co-creator.” stancy and change in music), space (holistic and to blurring of any distinction between rapid Nonverbal art thus suggests a working def- delineated perception in visual art), and person movement and stasis. They condense into a inition for the nonverbal sublimation of affect— (cognitive sense and sensuous sound in poetry). “shimmering, sonic barrier” (Solomon 2003, pp. one that testifies to the fundamental role of This refreshes one’s coordinates of orientation 207-209). motion in both emotional expression and emo- in a contemporary reality and helps fashion a Language, of course, has always been the tional response. It builds on the neuroscience new balance and sense of wholeness. privileged centerpiece in the analytic theory of Continued on page 34

22 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary which Freud’s views on female psychology Gender—Complex, Variable, Debatable were criticized. Paradigmatically, Simone de Elisabeth Young-Bruehl Beauvoir had insisted in Le deuxieme sexe (1949) that “woman is not born, but made,” Most of the key concepts in Freudian psy- femininity” and an inborn maturational program which meant that anatomy is not destiny as choanalysis were either adapted from fin de headed for heterosexuality, which implied a Freud seemed, most of the time, to argue siecle psychiatry or invented by Freud himself. paradigm shift away from Freud’s general focus and which the “primary femininity” position When Laplanche and Pontalis surveyed these on masculinity and his idea that femininity is, actually perpetuated. terms in their remarkable lexicon, first pub- basically, a retreat from masculinity governed by Even though Freud was the chief target of lished in French in 1967, “gender” was not envy of the masculine phallus. both psychoanalytic and feminist critique and on their list. It is not indigenous to psychiatry Although feminists of the “second wave” even while his bias was being quite definitively or psychoanalysis, but came from 1960s fem- embraced this paradigm shift, to which they repudiated, he was also, paradoxically, a great inists who, in the era of structuralist theorizing, had also contributed so much, they did not inspiration for his own overthrow. At the end knew that for linguists sex is not in any simple usually accept the new analytic biological of his 1920 case study of the 18-year-old way referenced in the gender of nouns. There emphasis, but, rather, adopted the “cultural female homosexual, Freud had clearly distin- are Indo-European languages with three gen- Freudianism” of Horney and others (including guished physical sexual characteristics from ders—feminine, masculine, and neuter—and cultural anthropologists like Margaret Mead) mental sexual characteristics of the sort languages with only two; languages in which la lune is feminine and le soleil masculine, while in others the genders are reversed for no obvious reason; languages in which a girl and a woman are both neuter, for example, das Maedchen and das Weib. Gender, feminists understood, is categorization, culturally shaped and culturally shaping. But by the late 1960s, there was also a grow- ing recognition of what feminists called “gen- der” among psychoanalysts, particularly those engaged in empirical research. Robert J. Stoller published his enormously influential Sex and Gender in 1968, but John Money and his sex- ologist colleagues at Johns Hopkins had begun the investigations that culminated in Man and Woman, Boy and Girl (1972) in the 1950s. These writers were, in turn, indebted to a cri- tique of Freud’s views on female (not male) development that began in the 1930s with essays by Karen Horney, Ernst Jones, and Sylvia Photo: Freud Museum, London Photo: Freud Payne, and continued in the 1940s with con- 1909, Clark University anniversary celebration, Worcester, Massachusetts: left to right, back row, tributions by Gregory Zilboorg and Phyllis A. A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sandor Ferenczi; front row, Freud, Stanley Hall, C.G. Jung Greenacre, all of whom argued against the idea that femaleness begins at puberty when who had explored the influence of culture on known as Weiblichkeit and Männlichkeit, and he a girl abandons focus on clitoral sensation for (particularly) female development. “Gender” had gone on to note—very radically—that vaginal. Horney and Jones argued for “primary was the word that had emerged by the 1970s there is no fixed relation (including causal to refer to the components of femininity and relation) between these two ingredients of Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Ph.D., has masculinity that growing up in a language and sexuality and the third, type of object choice. a private practice in Manhattan and is a culture adds to one’s biological or innate He was also clearly aware that femininity and on the faculty of the Columbia Center for femaleness and maleness. So, despite the con- masculinity have not just biological, but soci- Psychoanalytic Training and Research. tributions of analyst critics of Freud, the slow ological, and psychosocial dimensions and She is the author of many books and essay importation of “gender” into psychoanalysis is that, as technical terms, they were seldom collections, including a biography of Anna a case of identification with the aggressor, for clearly used. Freud was also, throughout his Freud and The Anatomy of Prejudices. gender was the leading feminist weapon with Continued on page 24

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 23 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Gender children’s early identifications with one parent either Freud or Freud’s critics like Horney. Continued from page 23 or the other and the impact of differences in Their critique was, so to speak, psycholinguis- child-rearing and parental attitudes toward tic and emphasized that gender is part of the oeuvre, an exponent of universal primary female and male children, and they explored unconscious that is shaped like a language. bisexuality—despite the fact that this con- societal divisions of labor, particularly the sex- While psychoanalysis was being challenged cept should have made him question his priv- ism reflected in those divisions. Their critique of by feminists without and within on the sex vs. ileging of masculinity (his “phallocentrism,” as psychoanalysis often focused on Freud’s notion gender axis, the Gay Liberation Movement Ernest Jones called it). But in his three late of penis envy in women, which, as noted, had focused on the third ingredient of sexuality essays dealing with female sexuality, Freud served Freud as the main explanation for why Freud had articulated, choice of object. With had tilted more and more toward considera- girls, for whom the mother is the first love astonishing swiftness, this challenge highlighted tion of the “psychical consequences of the object, as she is for boys, usually turn to a male a newly named prejudice,“homophobia,” and anatomical distinction between the sexes,” accomplished a category shift: Homosexuality and seemed to retreat from his more radical was depathologized, and dropped from the positions. Karen Horney, Clara Thompson, American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and other analysts who influenced de Beauvoir and Statistical Manual in 1973. But, ironically, had both protested this tilt and repudiated the newly important concept of gender came Freud’s contempt for arguments supporting to the fore in a new pathology a decade later, the equality of women. But the early critics did gender identity disorder. Debate still surrounds not invent a term to compass mental sexual this GID, with its emphasis on whether a child’s characteristics (both femininity and masculin- or an adult’s gender identity is dysphoric or ity) or to link these to sociocultural influences not, and the debate has been engaged and as later feminists did with gender (embracing extended by transsexuals and transvestites both femininity and masculinity). questioning the way in which they have been interpreted, as homosexuals and bisexuals had PENDULUM SWINGS in the early1970s. Like the nature vs. nurture binary, to which it is related, the sex vs. gender binary, has for its GENDER-BENDING whole career been wrapped in controversy This clinical development and debate had and subject to pendulum swings. Until the some impact on feminist theorists who, from 1970s, the determinative role of “sex” (bio- the 1980s forward, were, however, chiefly influ- logical femaleness and maleness, not any enced by object relations theory, by French intersex condition) was the chief site of ques- feminism, and by both European and American

tioning the binary. Among analysts, the pri- Museum, London Photo: Freud versions of postmodernism. “Gender” began mary femininity argument was as important 1872 with his mother Amalie Freud to take on new meanings, with an emphasis on in that questioning as were any emphasis on how gender is scripted (or narrativized) and/or gender identity (the term for conscious and object. To the claim that girls seek in their performed. In a social era of widespread gen- unconscious awareness of being one sex or male objects the penis they do not have, and der-bending (both unconscious and conscious) the other) or any emphasis on gender role that this same lack and desire move them to and changing social roles (like parenting for (the term for behavior, particularly in relation desire a male child, feminists countered that girls non-heterosexuals of all sorts), the word began to other people and social norms that evaluate envy and desire the penis because it is valued to designate a goal or something like an ego gender, promoting or demoting behaviors). and privileged generally by phallocentric cul- ideal, an identity either socially constructed Robert Stoller, for example, accepted the ture—that is, by the culture of male narcis- or individually constructed (a matter of choice primary femininity argument, but proposed sism, known sociologically as “patriarchy.” of gender). But at the same time, the very that both females and males develop pre- In the 1970s and 1980s, when gender was idea of normal gender development, or, to oedipally a core gender identity, that is, a sense being explored by feminists and imported use the more prescriptive term, normativity, of “I am female” or “I am male,” which usually, into psychoanalysis, the theoreticians most came under attack as vehemently as had, in but not always, accords with their physical important to psychoanalysis were feminists earlier times, specific gender norms. Gender, sexual characteristics. who actually trained as psychoanalysts, chiefly which had once functioned as a liberationist But among feminists, the determinative Juliet Mitchell in England and Nancy Chodorow tool to free people from “anatomy is destiny,” influence of sex was usually downplayed or in America. In France, too, feminists like Julia began to be seen by some postmodernist rejected, and gender identity became virtually Kristeva sought training, but they were much theorists as needing a revolution or at least a synonymous with sexual identity. They stressed more influenced by Jacques Lacan than by Continued on page 35

24 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary As in so much else, including our clinical work, Freud as a Cultural Historian psychoanalysts exist in a space of tension and Peter J. Loewenberg ambiguity between our subjectivity and what we choose to define as outside “reality.” Zum sehen geboren, become a hermeneutic science, a quest for Zum schauen bestellt. meanings in the thoughts, fantasies, and aspi- HUMAN PROGRESS DUBIOUS I was born to see, rations of individuals and cultures. Freud was a skeptic about both the poten- To look is my calling. Psychoanalysis is a discipline of a new kind, a tial of humankind and of our culture. His con- Goethe, Faust,II 21st century discipline, combining both self- servative pessimism regarding changing the reflection and science, but basing itself on a single individual and the therapeutic efficacy of Psychoanalysis is now inseparable from unique and different process of inquiry than analysis was a constant from Studies in Hyste- Western culture. Today a psychoanalytic sen- either the natural or the cultural sciences.“The ria in 1895, when he modestly postulated the sibility has a central place in the humanities, psycho-analytic mode of thought,” said Freud, aim of settling for “common unhappiness” theater, film, literature, art, and the media. A “acts like a new instrument of research.”2 In psy- (gemeines Unglück),4 to late in his life, when in typical 19th century two-volume Life and choanalysis two people together create a secure “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” in Times…biography, as John Morley wrote of emotional field for the exploration of the latent 1937, he cautioned “in the end the difference William E. Gladstone (1903), that never men- and least understood meanings of fantasies, between a person who has not been ana- tions he was a flagellant, or Dumas Malone’s dreams, interactions (including their dialogic lyzed and the behaviour of a person after he Thomas Jefferson (6 vols., 1948-1981), with no encounter), the body, behaviors, and life itself. has been analyzed is not so thourough-going reference to the body, sexuality, dreams, or Freud patterned the interpretation of dreams as we aim at making it and as we expect and articulated private fantasies, is unacceptable after the hermeneutic model: “‘Interpreting’ a maintain it to be.”5 and virtually unthinkable today. The reading dream implies assigning a ‘meaning’ to it.”3 Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) and his Basel colleague, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), were, with Freud, isolated dissenters from the Psychoanalysis is a discipline of a new kind, a 21st 19th century ideology of progress—the idea century discipline, combining both self-reflection and implicit in linear time as progression, that the human condition and our civilization are get- science, but basing itself on a unique and different process ting ever better. Burckhardt. was one of Freud’s of inquiry than either the natural or the cultural sciences. favorite authors. He had six of Burckhardt’s books in his personal library, and he often refers to the pleasure they gave him. Signifi- public justifiably expects what the 21st century Psychoanalysis is history, and the professional cantly, during the most lonely and depressed has to offer in grappling with the conflicts and cultural goals of the historian and the psy- period of his self-analysis, when his sole trans- and multi-determination of motivation, and choanalyst are the same: to liberate us from the ference object and mirroring comfort was the this includes the richness and complexity burden of the conscious and unconscious past Berlin ear, nose, and throat specialist Wilhelm developed by psychoanalysis. The existence of by helping us to understand that past and its Fliess, Freud was reading Burckhardt: “For relax- unconscious thought and fantasies, the role in the present. Cultural historians, as do ation I am reading Burckhardt’s History of Greek “Freudian” slip, the unrecognized, conflicted, psychoanalysts, unfold Gestalten of the art, Civilization which is providing me with unex- ambivalent, and unacknowledged motive, the literature, theater, films, architecture, and other pected parallels. My predilection for the pre- psychosexual phases of development, are a artifacts with which they reconstitute a past. historic in all its human forms has remained the part of the everyday discourse of the media They are particularly interested in temporal same.”6 A week later he writes Fliess, “I am and of ordinary people. This is the triumph and transformations, or what analysts call adaptations deep in Burckhardt’s History of Greek Civilization.”7 generalization of psychoanalysis in our cul- and adjustments to the traumata of war, defeat, The cultural pessimism expressed in Burck- ture. Freud is indeed, as W.H. Auden said, “a revolution, famine, disease, exile, and death, as hardt’s letters, lectures, and essays is one of whole climate of opinion.”1 Psychoanalysis has well as long-term political, social, and cultural the reasons for the resonance Freud found in patterns of development (la longue durée).His- Burckhardt as an historian of culture. A patri- Peter J. Loewenberg, Ph.D., is co-dean of the torians use their subjective empathic functions cian citizen of Basel, a small Swiss republican New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles. to understand the past. Our way of reading doc- cantonal democracy at the juncture of France A professor of history and political psychology uments necessarily derives primarily from who and Germany, Burckhardt was a skeptic at UCLA, he will assume the Sir Peter Ustinov we are, our psychodynamic past, our present regarding the “progressive” virtues of nation- Visiting Chair for the Study of Prejudice in countertransferences to the material, and our alism, the state, and modern industrialism. Vienna this June. current emotional and theoretical surround. Continued on page 26

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 25 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Cultural Historian I believe my esteemed friend Jonathan Lear RELIVING THE PAST Continued from page 25 has Freud’s view of history wrong when he There is a striking congruence between Freud attributes to Freud the idea that “history is and the methods of the cultural historian. Wil- Burckhardt expressed his pessimism about presumed to be progressive…a triumphal helm Dilthey (1833-1911) espoused the idea the Enlightenment fantasy of a perfectible story of human progress….”12 Freud was an that the historian is himself the primary in- human nature: “The great harm was begun in extreme skeptic about human moral progress. strument of research, that he uses himself as the last century, mainly through Rousseau, the perceptor and interpreter of data. Dilthey with his doctrine of the goodness of human understood that the historian relives the past nature.”8 in his own mind. What makes Dilthey so strik- For a time, the “present” was literally syn- ingly modern to us is the stress he laid on his- onymous with progress, and the result was torical knowledge as an inner experience of the most ridiculous vanity, as if the world were the historian. Dilthey argued that the historian’s marching toward a perfection of mind or even understanding [Verständnis] is based on his morality…. as to “moral progress”…there is inner relationship [innere Verhältnis] to his sub- none to be found…it is relevant to the life of ject of research, and this relationship is possible the individual and not to whole epochs. If, through re-creation [Nacherzeugen] and iden- even in bygone times, men gave their lives for tification [Nacherleben]. Historians face the each other, we have not progressed since.9 practical task “of the inner reliving of the devel- In Burckhardt’s correspondence with his opment of individuation” [innerlich…diesen Auf- Prussian friend von Preen, he displayed an gang zur Individuation zu durchleben]. He called uncanny foresight into the terrorist dictators on historians to place themselves mentally in and their drab totalitarian police states of the the historical situation [Sichhineinversetzen]. 20th century. He envisioned: “On the basis of this placing of oneself in the situation, this transposition, the highest form in high purposefulness of the military which the totality of mental life can be effective machine worked out to the last in understanding, arises—imitation or identifi- details…. The latter is bound to cation.” Dilthey was the earliest conceptualizer Photo: Freud Museum, London Photo: Freud become the model of existence. It 1939 portrait made in England by photographer of the use of sympathy [Mitfühlens] and empa- will be most interesting for you, Marcel Sternberger thy [Einfühlung] as tools of cognition in his- my dear Sir, to observe how the torical research.14 machinery of State and administra- In fact, he did not think we were better than R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943) was Dil- tion is transformed and militarized; the Greeks. He did not subscribe to ideas of they’s prophet in the Anglo-Saxon world. His for me—how schools and educa- human moral progress or development, nei- work and method is particularly congenial tion are put through the cure…. I ther in individuals nor in epochs. He always to the psychoanalytic mode of experience have a suspicion that, for the time admired antiquity, indeed he considered the because it highlights the tools of emotional being, sounds completely mad, and ancient Greeks as our cultural betters. Freud empathy and identification which lead to intel- yet I cannot rid myself of it: that the made an explicit comparison of our society to lectual insight of “how it really was” (Ranke). military state will have to turn “indus- ancient Hellas with reference to the toleration Collingwood wrote: trialist.” The accumulations of beings, and educational function of homosexuality: the mounds of men in the yards and “We surely ought not to forget that the All history is the re-enactment of factories, cannot be left for all eter- perversion which is most repellent to us, the past thought in the historian’s own nity in their need and thirst for riches; sensual love of a man for a man, was not mind…. It is not a passive sur- a planned and controlled degree of only tolerated by a people so far our superi- render…it is a labour of active poverty, with promotion and uni- ors in civilization as were the Greeks [einem and therefore critical thinking. The forms, starting and ending daily to uns so sehr kulturüberlegenen Volke wie den historian not only re-enacts past the roll of drums….10 The picture I Griechen], but was actually entrusted by them thought, he re-enacts it in the con- have formed of the terribles simplifi- with important social functions.”13 Can any of text of his own knowledge and cateurs who are going to descend us who have witnessed the wars and atroci- therefore, in re-enacting it criticizes upon poor old Europe is not an ties, Holocausts and genocides of the 20th it, forms his own judgment of its agreeable one; and here and there in century doubt that Burckhardt and Freud value, corrects whatever errors he imagination I can already see the were right about the lack of moral progress in can discern in it.15 fellows visibly before me.”11 ourselves and our civilization? Continued on page 27

26 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Collingwood was aware of Freud and saluted He placed himself in the mental and intel- If one succeeds in arranging the him as “the greatest psychologist of our age.”16 lectual position of the Roman generals and confused heap of fragments, each To theorize elegantly about history is one engineers who designed and built the wall. of which bears upon it an unintelli- thing. To apply a theory intelligently so that He immersed himself in their situation, seeking gible piece of drawing, so that the it yields solid results is quite another. With the “inward experience” of making the past picture acquires a meaning, so that Collingwood we may see, not only a philoso- alive in him. He maintained that the historian there is no gap anywhere in the pher of history conceptualize an historical makes discoveries by rethinking the thoughts design and so that the whole fits theory of epistemology, but we may observe of his subjects in his own mind: into the frame—if all these condi- a working historian doing his research and tions are fulfilled, then one knows making discoveries. It is instructive to see how The historian of politics or warfare, that one has solved the puzzle and Collingwood operationalized his empathic the- presented with an account of certain that there is no alternative solution.20 ory of historical research. He tried to reason actions done by Julius Caesar, tries to as the Roman strategists did, then reconstruct understand these actions, that is, to Historians use the present as an entry to the the past in his own mind and test his fantasy by discover what thoughts in Caesar’s past, as do psychoanalysts who begin with the empirical research. His research was on the mind determined him to do them. presenting complaint. This is consistent with the purpose and function of Hadrian’s Wall, a 73- This implies envisaging for himself historical method of the great medievalist, mile-long structure built across the narrowest the situation in which Caesar stood, Marc Bloch (1886-1944), who pursued a “pru- part of England on a line from the River Tyne and thinking for himself what Caesar dently retrogressive method of research,” by on the North Sea to the Solway Firth on the thought about the situation and the moving backward from the present to origins. Irish Sea, maintained by the Romans between possible ways of dealing with it. The He taught: “The knowledge of the present 122 and 383 A.D. Collingwood reversed the history of thought, and therefore all bears…immediately upon the understanding previous scholarship by first creating a prob- history, is the re-enactment of past of the past…. For the natural progression of all lem where there was previously only accepted thought in the historian’s own mind.18 research is from the best (or least badly) dictum—that this wall, as other Limes at the extremities of the Roman Empire, was a mili- tary fortification designed to keep out bar- To theorize elegantly about history is one thing. To apply a barian invaders. Collingwood asserted that theory intelligently so that it yields solid results is quite another. he could not imagine this. His subjective fan- tasies and feelings led him to his problem: PUZZLE SOLVING understood to the most obscure.”21 Bloch When disturbance ripened into In Collingwood’s research and interpretation critiqued the medievalist Fustel de Coulanges, war, when large forces from the on the problem of the Wall, extending over who said the open field system of England did north advanced upon the Wall and two decades, we see the historian’s proce- not exist in France, for not looking at the attempted (as no doubt they did, dure of reconstruction of the past by inferring present fields of France and noting “the char- not always unsuccessfully) to pene- the thoughts and feelings of particular men in acteristic pattern of the plowlands visible all trate it, we cannot imagine that the the past from historical evidence in the pres- over northern and eastern France which so Roman cohorts actually lined up on ent. It is a process of immersion in their prob- irresistibly call to mind the open fields of Eng- the rampart-walk to repel them, still lems and identification with their solutions, a land,” and for ignoring “the debates on graz- less that Hadrian’s engineers ever practice analogous to puzzle solving, which in ing on the arable which were engaging both contemplated such a proceeding [ital- turn gives rise to new questions. Collingwood Chambers at the very moment” Fustel ex- ics mine].17 sought confrmatory evidence from residues in pressed his judgement.22 Bloch’s injunction to the present, much as an analyst would. historians is that the key to the past is “to Collingwood tells us that he is employing his His archeological research established that understand the living,” engage with the here empathy in making a reconstruction. He explic- there was no trench in front of the Wall. and now, and “keep in constant touch with the itly says that his tool of cognition is his power Indeed, the Wall top was only 15 feet from the present day.”23 For Bloch “historical facts are, in of imagination, his ability to get into the mind ground.19 How do we know that Collingwood essence, psychological facts…. they find their of Hadrian’s engineers and, if a given pattern of was right? Of course, we do not know for a antecedents in other psychological facts.”24 thought is “unthinkable” for them in his mind, certainty. Indeed we may be certain that in due The purpose of both psychoanalysis and this fantasied implausibility is for him an impor- course his view will be revised. But our con- cultural history is the expansion of one’s self tant historical datum. Collingwood is using his viction is based on the fact that for now the narrative and that of our analysands, as in educated and disciplined fantasy as a primary pieces fit. Puzzle solving, incidentally, is a the narratives of our collective historical past. dimension of historical research. methodological simile used by Freud: Continued on page 35

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 27 Freud’s 150th Anniversary At What Cost? echoed the era’s own modernist ideology— 4 Manderscheid, R.W. and Sonnenschein, M.A., eds. (1992), Mental Health, United States 1992, Continued from page 10 women’s right to vote, the focus on child health and welfare, the vast re-housing proj- Center for Mental Health Services and National PROLIFERATING CLINICS ects—in postwar Austria and Germany. Just Institute of Mental Health, DHHS Pub. No. (SMA) London was a latecomer to the free clinics as significant, the psychoanalysts’ priorities, 92-1942,Washington D.C.: Superintendent of Doc- (1926), and it was relatively heterogeneous. their concern for the relationship between uments, U.S. Government Printing Office. 5 Eitingon, M. (1926). “Report on the Berlin Psy- But local psychoanalysts saw this as a benefit social infrastructure and personal psychol- cho-Analytical Institute,” May 1924-August 1925. in a heavily principled society like the British ogy, magnified their accomplishment. In the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 7:139-141. Psychoanalytic under Ernest Jones, and maybe 1920s, psychoanalysis was as progressive a 6 Freud,A. (1968). “Address to the New York Psy- this is why the London Clinic for Psycho- sociocultural movement as the art, music, choanalytic Association.” In Coles, R. Anna Freud:The analysis still survives today. Since the early and architecture of the era. Freud’s own Dream of Psychoanalysis,Addison-Wesley Publishing 1920s, the British analysts had visited foreign interest, his appreciative insistence on being Co, 1991. clinics and also invited Berliners like Melanie included in the free clinics, has to be under- 7 Lobner, H. (1978).“Discussions on Therapeutic Klein to join up. By 1926, the British Society’s stood within that historical context but also Technique in the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society goal was to build a clinic quickly, learning applied right now. (1923-1924).” Sigmund Freud House Bulletin, 2/2 30. from Berlin and Vienna while managing their own approach to cases and research. Analysts like Sylvia Payne and Edward Glover, and In the 1920s, psychoanalysis was as progressive especially Barbara Low, stayed close to their a sociocultural movement as the art, music, IPA partners, maintaining the clinics’ child and adult programs. All staff treated one and architecture of the era. Freud’s own interest, patient daily at the Gloucester Place facility or, as in the other societies, provided an alter- his appreciative insistence on being included in native but equivalent amount of service or the free clinics, has to be understood within that money to the institute.12 Freud was delighted. “Although absent from the opening of the historical context but also applied right now. Clinic tomorrow,” Freud wrote to Jones, referring to the clinic’s ribbon-cutting cere- mony,“I am all with you and feel the impor- Eighty-five years after the 1920 opening of 8 James to Alix Strachey. “Saturday afternoon. tance of the day.”13 the Berlin Poliklinik, contemporary psychoan- Jan. 24th “[192] in Meisel, P. and Kendrick, W., eds. Erik Erikson, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, alysts consistently confront the bewildering Bloomsbury/Freud, The Letters of James and Alix Strachey 1924-1925, New Yor k: W.W. Nor ton, Bruno Bettelheim, Alfred Adler, Otto Fenichel, cost of treatment and the divide between public and private services so often based on 1990, 187. Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Wilhelm Reich, 9 education and class. As we now know, this is Hitschmann, E. (1932). “A Ten Years’ Report of Helene Deutsch, Grete and Eduard Bibring, the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Clinic.” International not a new confrontation. Looking back to the Paul Schilder, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann— Journal of Psychoanalysis, 13:245-255. Berlin and Vienna models, we can begin to these were just some of the free clinic analysts 10 Eitingon, M. (1923).“Report of the Berlin Psycho- who later fanned out across the Western reclaim the psychoanalysts’ urban, clinical, and Analytical Policlinic,” March 1920-June 1922. Inter- world, some carrying the torch of progres- social justice legacy. “The replacement of the national Journal of Psycho-Analysis 4:254-269. sivism and others concealing it. Today they are power of the individual by the power of a 11 Freud, S. (1935). “An Autobiographical Study.” known for their theoretical revisionism and for community constitutes the decisive step of Standard Edition 20:71. the many ways in which they followed, trans- civilization,” Freud wrote in 1930, and I propose 12 “Report of the British Psychoanalytic Society,” 14 formed, or broke away from classical Freudian to take Freud at his word. Fourth quarter 1929. International Journal of Psy- theory. But in the 1920s and early 1930s, choanalysis 11 (1930): 119; also “Minutes of Octo- ber 2, 1929 of the Board of the British the same analysts saw themselves as bro- Notes 1 Psycho-Analytic Society,” Archives of the British kers of social change for whom psychoanalysis Freud, S. (1918). “Lines of advance in psycho- analytic psychotherapy.” Standard Edition 17:166. Psychoanalytical Society, by permission. was a social mission, a challenge to conven- 13 2 Federn, E. (1972). “Thirty-Five Years with Freud, S. “Letter to Ernest Jones 27 September.” tional political traditions. They were a spirited Freud—in Honour of the Hundredth Anniversary 491 (1929). In Paskauskas, R.A., The Complete Cor- group who found no antagonism between of Paul Federn, MD.” Journal of the History of the respondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones, the macropolicy and microclinical levels (a Behavioral Sciences, 8 (1972): 38. 1908-1939. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, conflict that characterizes and confuses prac- 3 Noveck, B (1995). “Hugo Bettauer and the 1995. tice all too often today). Not surprisingly, the Political Culture of the First Republic.” Contemporary 14 Freud, S. (1930). “Civilization and Its Discon- ideology and organization of their free clinics Austrian Studies, 3 (1995):143-145. tents.” Standard Edition 21:134.

28 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Freud on Religion Bibliography Katz, Steven.“Language, Epistemology and Mysticism” Bettelheim, Bruno. Symbolic Wounds. New York: in Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, edited by Continued from page 12 Collier Books, 1954. Steven Katz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. process are an example of this” (1980:91). In Blass, Rachel. “Beyond Illusion: Psychoanalysis and the Kroeber, Alfred. The Nature of Culture. Chicago: the “creative repetitions” the patient is able to question of religious truth.” International Journal of University of Chicago Press, 1952. Psychoanalysis 85:615-34, 2004. Lear, Jonathan. Freud. New York: Routledge, 2005. work through what is remembered, arriving at Janowitz, Naomi. “Envy of Maternal Functions in Loewald, Hans. Papers on Psychoanalysis. New a “moment of generating new organization” Sacrifice Traditions.” Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. (1980:94). Forthcoming. Parmentier, Richard. Signs in Society: Studies in Semi- The question then becomes: How is it that Jay, Nancy. Throughout Your Generations Forever: otic Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University cultural events which are highly structured Sacrifice, Religion and Paternity. Chicago: University Press, 1984. and performed repeatedly are able to have of Chicago Press, 1992. Paul, Robert. Moses and Civilization: The Meaning such social and personal efficacy? The answer Jones, James. Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Behind Freud’s Myth. New Haven: Yale University anthropologists have given, which offers rich Religion: Transference and Transcendence. New Press, 1996. ground for revising Freud’s thought on religion, Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Proudfoot, Wayne. Religious Experience. Berkeley: is the inherently dual-aspectedness of rituals: Kakar, Sudhir. The Analyst and the Mystic: University of California Press, 1985. Their transformational dimension is insepara- Psychoanalytic Reflections on Religion and Zilboorg, Gregory. Freud and Religion: A Restate- ble from their “hyper-structure” (Parmentier Mysticism. Chicago: University of Chicago ment of an Old Controversy. Westminster: New- Press, 1991. man Press, 1958. 1984). That is, in order to be socially effective, each ritual must be recognizable as an instance of a larger type of ritual based on a prior suc- Future of Psychoanalysis Furthermore, despite the problems we cessful model (a human marriage copying a Continued from page 8 face in this country and elsewhere, I am divine union or a legal ruling copying a prece- absolutely convinced that psychoanalytic ther- dent) in order to be recognizable and effective. traditional reluctance of psychoanalytic organ- apy will survive and continue to develop. It Psychic change can be viewed as an intriguing izations to proselytize, or even to seek favorable will never be a treatment form suitable for sub-category of this process, where the patient publicity for what we have to offer, but the and available to the majority of people with must own up to her role in creating external sense of crisis regarding training and practice, emotional problems. Surely we can agree reality through her own transformations (trans- of which many speak these days, has mobilized that in the past it was attempted in many ferences) instead of simply being a passive a new attitude towards those endeavors. cases where it proved ineffective because in person encountering “reality.” It is hard to predict what our efforts to reach those days nothing better was on the scene. At every step we can reject specific details out to academia, to influence mental health I do believe it will continue to flourish as a of Freud’s analysis of religion, but still leave his delivery systems, and to present our ideas and specialized approach appealing to a knowl- basic approach to the role of religion in cul- results in the forum of public opinion will be edgeable minority who can appreciate its ture intact. Some aspects of collective reli- able to achieve. It can only be helpful that more unique potential to help them with their lives gious ritual are illuminated by comparison and more thoughtful and articulate psychoan- and their troubles. Among them will be many with the fantasies and defenses of obses- alysts want to teach students at all levels and are mental health practitioners who realize that sional individuals. Myths can be studied as willing to speak and write about our knowledge personal analysis and training will enable collective dreams. and achievements to those who need to know them to render more effective treatment, At the same time, Freud’s conceit that he more about what psychoanalysis has to offer. whether it is psychoanalysis proper or psy- had anticipated and deflected all possible My own appraisal is a guarded one. I believe choanalytic psychotherapy. Others will be attempts to rework his analysis of religion is the high water mark psychoanalytic treatment those educated individuals who are willing absurd. Certainly the idea that psychoanalysis reached some years ago was an artifact of its and able to invest in the best available treat- will replace religion seems today like a plot for time. Effective alternative treatments did not ment for their emotional problems. In conse- a Woody Allen movie and not an idea that exist, and our competition in those days was quence, a cadre of dedicated practitioners needs to be taken seriously. Given the fact that mainly among ourselves. That is no longer the will continue to work, and to teach those in our generation a single person, acting on case and will never be again. However, I expect interested to learn our arcane specialty, in its religious fantasies, now has power to inflict psychoanalytic therapy, and its psychothera- various evolving forms. tremendous harm on humanity, it becomes all peutic offspring, will actually gain in popularity The door Sigmund Freud opened into our the more urgent for us to do better than in areas of the world where it is relatively understanding of our mental life and its vicis- Freud did in this area. new, a phenomenon I have observed at first situdes can never be closed again, and the hand through the activities of the Interna- helping profession that his discoveries created Notes tional Psychoanalytical Association, even as it will endure, in spite of its internal disputes 1 Katz 1984 is the classic statement of this position. may contract in other loci. and external obstacles.

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 29 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Mark Solms Interview That meeting was terrific. Pfeffer asked if I Smaller: And the others? Continued from page 14 would take over the monthly meetings he had Solms: I think some analysts became dis- begun at the New York Institute. I could enchanted with analysis and turned to neuro- Smaller: What group did you train with in engage with more analysts. Despite my junior science instead. To be absolutely honest, I London? status, I gave a whole year of lectures once a shudder to think about what some of them are Solms: The Freud group. I was immersed in month. Karen and I presented our work with doing in the name of neuro-psychoanalysis. Freud, but that was all I had read. I knew noth- individual patients and their transcripts. ing of other theorists. I was interviewed by two Smaller: Which is why solid neuro-psycho- analysts, one Kleinian and one Freudian, for my Smaller: Similar to what you are doing each analytic research is so important. training. The Freudian was Clifford Yorke, a month with Mount Sinai psychiatric residents? Solms: Neuroscientists are looking at us good bloke, and he became my analyst. Solms: Yes. We presented transcripts of with great expectations; we want to train real sessions with five patients with left and five psychoanalysts to do this work—not dabblers. Smaller: And the training? with right side hemisphere lesions, and then Solms: My analytic training was disorienting, discussed differences. Smaller: Can you summarize the goal, or bewildering. I felt like the green kid from the mission of neuro-psychoanalysis? countryside. I shut up in class, while everyone Smaller: The Arnold Pfeffer Center [through Solms: We want to bring the soul into else discussed Winnicott, Bion, Klein. Can you support of the Pfeffer Family Foundation] now neuroscience. It’s in line with what Freud imagine me just sitting there and shutting up? emerged from those meetings? wanted to do all along. Solms: Pfeffer set up a committee to run Smaller: Can’t imagine! the lectures and also to offer a course in Smaller: Clinicians wonder, what will be the Solms: But I did and I learned. Karen and I neuro-psychoanalysis for candidates at New benefit? also began seeing neurological and surgical pa- York Psychoanalytic. But it was time to inter- Solms: All patients will benefit if medicine tients at the Royal London Hospital. The records nationalize. realizes that the brain is a unique organ—it’s of those patients became our book—Clinical not like the liver. It has agency. It has feelings Studies in Neuro-Psychoanalysis. I was also able to Smaller: Why was this important? of its own. If we can introduce that to psy- conclude my dream research at that time. Solms: People in other parts of the world chopharmacologists, we will have done some- were starting to do the same thing we were thing great for humanity. The brain is NOT a Smaller: What was different about seeing doing in New York. A society and journal chemistry set! Psychoanalysis will finally get analytic patients? would help connect these groups. We also the recognition it deserves—no longer per- Solms: I think previously it was as if I had wanted to attract younger people interested ceived as some occult practice, or as a bunch found a violin in the jungle. I knew how to play in psychoanalysis and doing integrative of greedy doctors whose practices are not evi- but did not have the correct theory or tech- research. dence based. nique. The analytic training was like learning from a proper violin teacher. I learned how to Smaller: Psychoanalysts often react poorly Smaller: Is this a problem in psychoanaly- think about what I was doing and link it with to new ideas. What is the threat? sis—how we are perceived by scientists and the what others had done before me, and learn Solms: I have a different way of thinking public? from their experience. about it. I worry that the situation has dete- Solms: Psychoanalysis is fragmented into riorated since those early days because rather various schools. Neuro-psychoanalysis might Smaller: You began integrating the two than a small group of analysts working help us to integrate the various views. Some- disciplines. together for a long time, people began dab- where along the way the big picture got lost Solms: In 1990, Morton Ostow invited a bling. We’ve done serious work. Our collab- and analysis became too concerned about small group to meet me. Ostow had written oration with Jaak Panksepp, an internationally itself, rather than about the mind. Psycho- an inspiring paper back in the 1950s in the known neuroscientist who has studied, among analysis lost its object, and entered into a rela- Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis Quarterly about many things, affect in animals for over 30 tionship with itself—rather like a narcissistic neuroscience and psychoanalysis. After I had years, is a good example. I think the resistance patient. My worst nightmare is that neuro- read that, I contacted him. So Ostow invited has been directed more at work generated psychoanalysis will become just another school me over, a real act of kindness, to meet with outside our group. The group that Pfeffer and of psychoanalysis. Its mission is to bring back this small group, maybe 20 analysts. One of Ostow put together, were real analysts who the object. The mind is part of external real- them was Arnold Pfeffer. I was to present my love analysis and who respect the complexity ity—that is why we share it with other disci- work with brain injured patients. We met at of the mind. plines. Neuro-psychoanalysis can help us regain the New York Academy of Medicine. our link with that reality.

30 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Transference Action presented in a different form elsewhere (Smith is still on my mind, if not on hers; in other Continued from page 16 2001), will illustrate what I mean. words, that her sexual excitement is a reach- An analysand in her early forties, who ing out to someone she has just lost. And so I Many of us in this country would say that we wishes that I would encourage her sexual say,“Notice that you got aroused just after you interpret action in the transference just as we excitement rather than focusing on its angrier felt you had lost me.” “Perhaps,” she says, would any other communication—as a com- edge, senses that I have become momen- sounding unconvinced. I sense that I am off the promise formation, for example (Brenner tarily distracted. “What are you doing?” she mark, and that I have been led astray by my 1982)—and we cite Freud’s papers on tech- asks, before answering her own question. “You guilt and by my theory about her excitement. nique and, later, the structural theory. But the are simply adjusting your chair. I am so good. Suddenly, it occurs to me that it was not my French argue that the meaning of any such distractedness but my comment that was the action cannot be interpreted because it has immediate precipitant for her arousal, and so not yet been represented in words, and they I say,“Or perhaps your arousal started when I cite Freud’s earlier papers on the necessity said that looking at me would be too aggres- for action or thing presentations to be attached sive.” “Yes,” she says with rising passion,“The to word presentations in order to gain access sound of your voice got me excited,” and this to consciousness, according to the topographic discovery marks the beginning of a long jour- theory. I oversimplify here, but it is an impor- ney in which we explore her wish that I might tant theoretical bone of contention. invite her into forbidden pleasures. Anna Freud (1936) issued a related warn- But notice what has happened. The erotic ing. Partly in response to the growing Klein- excitement that my patient complains she ian emphasis on transference interpretation, needs me to facilitate is now being played she wrote that “a technique which concen- out right before our eyes. She has found a trated too much on the transference” would way to experience this excitement, stimulated overwhelm the ego, which would then itself by the sound of my voice, at the very moment become “swept into action” (p. 27), relin- when I am speaking about her aggression, quishing its analyzing function. It was from the thing she wishes I would not do. In fact, my Anna Freud’s more considered look at the effort to identify what excited her only excites ego that Gray (1994) based his contribution her further. to transference analysis in the here and now. So here we have a technical dilemma. If the I am thinking of his meticulous focus on the sound of my voice arouses the erotic experi- sequence of drive derivatives in the patient’s ence I am trying to analyze, then how can I Photo: Freud Museum, London Photo: Freud associations, especially aggressive drive deriv- 1913 Anna and Sigmund Freud, speak about it without arousing her? The very atives in the transference, and the moment in the Dolomites, Italy fantasies my patient and I are analyzing are patients shift away from the transference to being enacted through the words we use to something less risky. To some North Amer- I don’t turn around and look.” She is com- analyze them, and I cannot help but be a par- icans Gray’s focus on transference aggression menting—somewhat provocatively, I think— ticipant in my patient’s effort to actualize them. sounded suspiciously Kleinian. But to Kleini- on a defensive “goodness” in her behavior, ans Gray sounded quite unfamiliar with his which I then link to her fear of her own INEVITABLE ENACTMENT attention to the conscious capacities of the destructiveness, something she and I have Persistent efforts to actualize such fantasies ego and his disregard of the countertrans- indeed been discussing recently. “Looking are sometimes thought to be characteristic ference and the interactive components of would be too aggressive,” I say. You will notice of patients who have been severely trauma- the work. that I am focusing on her conflictual response tized, but it is my sense that to one degree or to aggression, as Gray might, but finding it in another, such enactments are an inevitable DILEMMAS OF PARTICIPATION her affect and activity, rather than in the con- and continuous accompaniment of all ana- In my view, while each of these approaches tent of her associations. lytic work, especially under conditions of has its value, what none of them, including My patient seems to agree. “It would startle intense transference experience. For if we that of the contemporary Kleinians, fully you,” she says, and then falls silent. After a look at the exchange between analyst and acknowledges is the analyst’s inevitable and minute, she tells me she has just become patient at the finest level of detail, every com- ongoing participation in the patient’s trans- “aroused.” I look for what in my own behavior ment on the part of the analyst will be heard ference fantasy or the dilemmas this phe- might have prompted this change in affect by the patient in terms of one transference nomenon poses, regardless of the analyst’s and infer that her arousal may be a response fantasy or another and experienced as an favored technique. A brief clinical vignette, to her experience of my distractedness, which Continued on page 32

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 31 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Education and Training views of members of related disciplines or debate concerning “lay analysis” was heated, Continued from page 15 other creative and intelligent individuals wel- acrimonious, and conducted with little trust comed and seen as having potential value. and respect. As a result the discipline paid a Education is a quite different goal. It demands While these two views of psychoanalytic heavy price. The current debates concerning the that we attract the brightest and the best, mak- training and education are not contradictory, they appointment of training analysts, the inclusion ing certain that no one is screened out because are in potential conflict. The optimal resolution of psychotherapy in the curriculum and certifi- he or she is too creative, maverick, innovative, or of such conflicts varies with the developmen- cation have some of the same quality. One challenging, with less concern that someone of tal stage of the discipline, the cultural setting, issue underlying each of them is the professional questionable merit might slip through as a result. and the individuals and institutions involved. concern to assure the community regarding the quality of practice in contrast to the aca- The culture of learning should encourage skepticism, demic concern to provide optimal conditions for the advance of knowledge. Perhaps, in our freedom of thought, and tolerance of diversity rather than second century, we can extricate ourselves conformity and adherence to group norms. from political entanglements and personal in- terests enough to discuss the appropriate bal- ance between these fundamental but at times The central quality concern is not that the It requires dialogue, and dialogue requires trust competing goals, and to achieve what Freud was worst not be too bad, but that the best have no and respect. However, the actual resolution of never really able to accomplish—a profession barrier to being as good as possible. The culture many such conflicts reflects political concerns, that recognized the importance of reliable of learning should encourage skepticism, free- self-interests of the participants, and the asso- practitioners, advancing knowledge, a system dom of thought, and tolerance of diversity ciation of specific positions with admired or of education and training that facilitated both, rather than conformity and adherence to group disliked psychoanalytic theories and theorists. and a community of analysts that recognized norms. The boundaries of discourse, and of Problems of this type go back to the early and accepted both goals along with the the community itself, are permeable, with the history of psychoanalytic education. The early inevitable tension between them.

Transference Action What then am I to do about my patient References Brenner, C. (1982). The Mind in Conflict. New York: Continued from page 31 who insists on finding erotic meaning in my every word? It is easier to say what I will not International Universities Press. actualization of it. And more often than not, do. I will not try to drain my voice of every Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of analysts can, with a little care, identify pre- note of recognizable affect, as analysts for a Defense. New York: International Universities Press, 1966. cisely how they are participating wittingly and time recommended as a wishful solution. Freud, S. (1905). Fragment of an analysis of a case of unwittingly in that very fantasy. What I will try to do is what we have always hysteria. S. E. 7. As patients enter into the odd task we done, analyze what is transpiring within the ______(1914). Remembering, repeating and work- ask of them, they begin to live double lives patient and between us—including what the ing-through (further recommendations on the (Smith in press), for despite their apparent patient is doing to and with my comments— technique of psycho-analysis. S. E., 12. pursuit of analytic understanding, they con- analyze the patient’s experience, that is, even Friedman, L. (1991). A reading of Freud’s Papers on tinue to use the words, setting, and activity of as I am participating in that experience; and Technique. Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 60:564-595. analysis to actualize the very wishes they are I will do that by using all of the devices avail- ______(2005). Flirting with virtual reality. Psycho- analyzing. As Friedman (2005) has pointed able to me, some of which I have detailed analytic Quarterly. 74:639-660. out, this is precisely what we encourage them above. Only when we do away with the Gill, M. M. (1982). Analysis of Transference, Vol. I. to do, as we tease their wishes into the open idea that the analyst can be outside this New York: International Universities Press. at the same time as we unceremoniously doing, can we begin to ask not when am I Gray, P. (1994). The Ego and Analysis of Defense. Northvale, NJ: Aronson. interpret them. Actualizing their wishes is to participating in an enactment, but how am I Schwaber, E. A. (1983). Psychoanalytic listening and be sure the more natural of the two lives we participating at any given moment. Only then psychic reality. International Review of Psycho- invite them to lead. Moreover, if the analyst is does the analyst’s participation become an analysis 10:379-392. not only analyzing but also inevitably partici- ongoing part of the data of observation, so Smith, H. F. (2001). Hearing voices: the fate of the pating in the gratification of the patient’s that we can analyze what is being actual- analyst’s identifications. Journal of the American wishes, then the ego, in Anna Freud’s terms, is ized in the real time of the hour. In this way, Psychoanalytic Association 49:781-812. inevitably caught up in the action, both the as Freud (1905) said of the transference, an ______(in press). Analyzing disavowed action: the patient’s ego and the analyst’s. There is no apparent obstacle to our work can be turned fundamental resistance of analysis. Journal of the absolute way out of the loop. to its advantage. American Psychoanalytic Association.

32 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Found in Translation available to a person who comes from a lit- scrutiny of the German text with the idea of Continued from page 18 erary background. We now no longer want finding in it deeper meanings than the deno- one person’s view of the whole corpus, but tative surface. And I do not mean a furthering ear” and, as an example, she cites Affekt, trans- rather we benefit from the input and views of the furor biographicus about the man, Freud, lated as “affect” rather than “feeling,” for “a of many on how to render Freud’s German that has so plagued Freud studies over the language of feeling...was too everyday and into English. And I, personally, would hope past few decades, but a deeper understanding undifferentiated.”11 Another admits that her for some new translations to appear in a of the psychic phenomena that Freud was translation is sometimes syntactically awkward. Budé type of bilingual presentation, so that the struggling to explain. This is the “return” to the Another acknowledges that her translation German text is always with us, as it should be. texts of Freud that all, each in his own way, have runs into “occasional obscurities in Freud’s What about a future Standard German Edi- called for, Strachey, Lacan, Foucault, Roustang, own language, and certainly some contortion tion? Ilse Grubrich-Simitis has given us the his- Ornstein, Weber, Laplanche et al, and now in my attempts to render it.”12 The translations tory of the factors that have frustrated the Grubrich-Simitis, with her call for a return to are not all that free of psychobabble. The production of a historical-critical edition in the manuscripts. The eventual, and inevita- shadow of the Standard Edition and the fact Germany. She has also provided many sug- ble, appearance of a standard and complete that psychoanalysis is an active field with its gestions and even a draft of the presumed German edition of Freud should not end this own language somewhat decreases the trans- requirements for bringing about the complete search for the deeper meanings of the text, lators’ freedom of expression. Sometimes ref- German Standard Edition.14 It will require not but actually intensify it. erences to the Standard Edition are given as a only German analysts, but also German lin- comparative and contextual aid. The advantage guistic specialists. And we may hope someday Notes 1 of freshness in terminology also unfortunately to be entirely free of the restrictions upon the Bettelheim, B. (1983) Freud and Man’s Soul. obscures the fact that Freud was consistent use of the Freud Archives and from the inter- New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2 Brandt, L. W. 1961, 1955. “Some Notes on throughout his work in his choice of terms. To ference of the Freud family that has been so English Freudian Terminology.” Journal of the Amer- help those who know psychoanalytic jargon often recalcitrant and unhelpful in putting ican Psychoanalytic Association, vol. 9, pp. 331-39. and want to know how particular key terms together a, or the, Standard German Edition of “Process or Structure.” Psychoanalytic Review, vol. 53, have been translated, the German is some- Freud. Strachey’s thanks for the use of photo- pp. 50-54. times found in square brackets. static copies should perhaps be considered as 3 Ornston, D., (ed.) 1992; Translating Freud.New Perhaps then one of the more interesting irony, given the nature of photostatic copies in Haven and London: Yale University Press. aspects of the Penguin Freud Project is the the 1950s, when the actual manuscripts were 4 St. Ed. Vol. I, General Preface, p.xix. translators’ notes, which, unfortunately, are all only a few miles away.15 5 Rosenfield, I. Freud’s Megalomania. New York: too brief and limited. The translators are feel- The main criticism of Strachey should be Norton, 2000. Mendelsohn’s review appeared in The ing their way toward translating Freud. We not the alleged scientism, but, as Samuel New York Review of Books,Vol. LXVII, No. 17. Nov. 2, have much to learn from the translators and Weber16 has argued, that Freud was rendered 2000, pp. 26-29. 6 from making our own comparative studies of less problematic than he actually is by the Bourgignon, A., Cotet, P., Laplanche, J., and Robert, F. Traduire Freud, Paris: Presses Universi- the translations. The new translations will open Standard Edition. The Standard Edition distorts taires de France, 1989. up new ways to hear Freud—to hear things because it presumes that the original text 7 Grubrich-Simitis, I., Back to Freud’s Texts. Slotkin, that are latent in the text and that might oth- knows what it is talking about, or at least P., tr. New York and London: Yale University Press, erwise be passed over. what it wants to say—a presumption that 1996, p. 3. Let us hope there will be many more trans- may be just plain wrong in dealing with a dis- 8 St. Ed. Volume I. General Preface, p. xviii. lations. As Grubrich-Simitis comments: “[I]t course about the unconscious that involved 9 Hoffer, P.T.,“Reflections on Cathexis.” Psychoan- would be desirable for more new transla- the Copernican revolution of displacing con- alytic Quarterly, Vol. LXXIV (2005), pp. 1127-35. tions to be made in the next few years, if sciousness from its central role. We must, 10 Nicola Luckhurst, in Translator’s Preface, Freud, only of individual works….”13 These new according to Weber, pay attention not only to S., and Breuer, J. Studies in Hysteria. New York: Pen- translations will result in important work on the manifest content, the words on Freud’s guin, 2004, p. xxxv. 11 the problems of translating Freud into English, page, but to the latent, as yet unpacked, mean- Nicola Luckhurst, op. cit. pp. xxvii-xxxix. 12 with reflections on the interrelations between ings, as Freud struggled to express what had Joyce Crick, in “Translator’s Preface,” Sigmund Freud, The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious. German and English, with the attendant deep- not been expressed and was not perhaps New York: Penguin, 2003, p. xxxvi. ening understanding of Freud’s thought. Even expressible. Unpacking means not only mak- 13 Op. cit., p. 3. though an analyst would have to struggle ing explicit the intellectual content, as when, 14 Op. cit., Part Three, pp. 239-271. perhaps harder against the Standard Edition,it for example, we find a whole theory sketched 15 Alan Tyson (1984). Personal communication. would be helpful if some new translations in the few lines of a footnote, a note we have 16 Samuel Weber. The Legend of Freud. Min- were done by analysts, for there are theoret- not understood fully for decades. There is neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. Pp. ical and clinical aspects that will not likely be also unpacking in Weber’s sense, of close xvi-xvii.

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 33 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Nonverbal Art One can hardly fault Freud for not having in view of the contemporary discussion of the Continued from page 22 made more discoveries. But he made a clinical and theoretical importance of non-men- choice, perhaps based on the then perceived talized processes of absence and emptiness, concept that second-order neural maps exist dichotomy of scientific truth versus artistic empathy and negative countertransference. initially in nonverbal form that can be simulated fantasy—and every choice involves a de-selec- Long before they became an object of psy- by imagination but are also capable of con- tion—for he ended the sentence with,“but I choanalytic interest one was afforded a glimpse version into language. It expands on the astute understand too little of aesthetics to try to of their power, positive and negative, in Samuel insight of Leonardo carried down to the pres- enlarge on this statement” (pp. 95-96). Beckett’s (1955) potent imagery, for example, ent that a work of art reflects the “move- For the better part of a century, psychoan- “in this world for you without arms” (p.12). ment of the mind.” Moreover, such “movement alysts have all but overlooked art’s potential What if Freud had been more musically of the mind” engaged in for its own sake is for enlarging psychoanalysis, itself. Only in the inclined? Might psychoanalysts have been more pleasurable in its own right as imaginative play. last few decades has interest turned to the attuned to the nonverbal arts in general dur- Which brings us back to Freud. nonverbal aspects of psychic life—also referred ing the past half-century? Might we have picked As early as 1905 Freud, borrowing an idea to as the implicit, presymbolic, out-of-aware- up on their testimony that they act as essen- from Fischer (1889), wrote: “…to derive pleas- ness, or unsymbolized. In my opinion, the tial containers for the unverbalizable play of ure from its [i.e., the mental apparatus] own arrested state of our wordbound concept of implicit virtual motion and affect—thus pre- activity I suspect…is in general the condition sublimation instantiates this. figuring nonverbal aspects of therapy only now that governs all aesthetic ideation.” I would add, Opening up a view of nonverbal sublimation coming to be more fully appreciated? and affect. of affect thus fills a notable gap. It is also timely Their resource potential remains to be fur- ther explored (Rose unpublished).

recently divided into two separate departments Notes Anthropology 1 over the cultural/biological divide—Freud stands Based in part on Rose, 2002, Aesthetics and Continued from page 20 Psychoanalysis, in The Freud Encyclopedia, ed. by E. as a model of a thinker who was able to move Erwin, pp. 9-10, New York & London: Routledge. Freud was, of course, a Darwinian himself, comfortably and productively over and between and his theories are very often grounded in both domains. To my mind, the most important References biological concepts. While he lived before task confronting the human sciences at this Beckett, S. (1955), Molloy, in Three Novels by Samuel neo-Darwinism took its contemporary form, moment is the integration of these two great Beckett. New York: Grove Press. he saw the importance of looking to the body overarching paradigms, and there is still much to Fischer, K. (1889), Uber den witz, 2nd ed. Heidelberg. and its evolved dispositions and drives in be learned from Freud in this regard. Freud, S. (1905), Jokes and Their Relation to the explaining the goals and motives people pur- There are so many dimensions to Freud’s Unconscious. S.E. 8. London: The Hogarth Press, sue. Indeed it was just this aspect of his thought protean creativity that it is not possible to nar- 1960. that the culturalists, along with many object rowly delimit his influence on the practice of Langer, S. (1967). Mind:An Essay on Human Feeling. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. relations theorists and others, tried to elimi- anthropologists throughout the 20th century. Rose, G. J. (1980). The Power of Form. A Psychoana- nate or replace in psychoanalytic theory. His From those who seek a biological, neurological, lytic Approach to Aesthetic Form. Rev. ed., New attempt, for example, to derive the propensity or evolutionary grounding for the particularities York: International Universities Press, 1992. for the Oedipus complex in humans from an and universals of human life and behavior, to ______(1987). Trauma and Mastery in Life and Art. evolutionary past, while certainly very much those who look for childhood determinants of New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Rev. dated in its details, is quite in the spirit of the adult cultural phenomena, to those who interest ed., Branford, Conn.: International Universities contemporary evolutionary perspective. themselves in the transference/countertrans- Press, 1996. While only a few contemporary evolutionary ference relationship in ethnography or engage in ______(1996). Necessary Illusion: Art as Witness. anthropological thinkers, such as Robin Fox (in dialogical mutual explorations of individual oth- Branford, Conn.: International Universities Press. his book, The Red Lamp of Incest), have been ers in the ethnographic context; from those ______(2004-a). Between Couch and Piano. Psycho- receptive to Freud’s ideas, or at least willing to who derive cultural formations such as myths analysis, Music, Art, Neuroscience. London and admit it, nonetheless Freud’s influence and still and rituals from psychodynamic factors to those New York: Brunner-Routledge. ______(2004-b). Aesthetic Ambiguity Revisited Via more his affinity for this strain of thinking is as who revel in the interpretations of symbolism in the Artist-Model Pair and Neuroscience. Psy- important to note as has been his impact on myth and folklore from a “Freudian” viewpoint— choanalytic Psychology 21:417-427. cultural anthropology. As evolutionary and bio- all, as different as each is, are following one par- ______(unpublished). On Nonverbal Sublimation of logical thinkers find less and less in common ticular line of thought and exploration laid down Affect. with cultural thinkers, in both anthropology and in the enduring legacy of one seminal thinker Solomon, M. (2003), Late Beethoven. Music,Thought, psychoanalysis—to the extent that several whose sesquicentennial year we have the honor Imagination. Los Angeles: University of California prominent anthropology departments have of recognizing. Press.

34 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 40, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2006 Freud’s 150th Anniversary Gender Cultural Historian 10 Burckhardt to von Preen,April 26,1872, in The Letters of Jacob Burckhardt, pp. 151-52. Continued from page 24 Continued from page 27 11 Burckhardt to von Preen, July 24,1889, in Letters reform of its own. Some argued for jettisoning We benefit from cultural history—from of Jacob Burckhardt, p. 220. 12 the concept, others proposed redefining it as empathic accounts of the creative struggles Jonathan Lear, Freud (New York: Routledge, a necessary fiction, needed for identity or pre- of persons and groups in our past. By rec- 2005), p. 211. 13 Freud,“Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of vention of lack of identity but not to be unself- ognizing ourselves in the cultural symbols Hysteria,” SE, VII, 50; Bruchstuck einer Hysterie consciously embraced. Others wanted to of struggles, triumphs, and defeats of the Analyse, Bruchstuck einer Hysterie Analyse, Studi- deconstruct the entire sex/gender binary. This past, as well as the history of creative efforts, enausgabe (S. Fischer Verlag, 1969), VI, 124. [Here- era of debates is well represented in the jour- we may derive, as did Freud, inspiration for after Stud.]. nal, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, the editors ourselves and our psychoanalytic institutions 14 Wilhelm Dilthey, “Das Verstehen anderer Per- of which are key contributors to the debates. in the present and future. Cultural history sonen und ihrer Lebensäusserungen,” in Gesammelte In this complex history of a word, so impos- and psychoanalysis are both quests for per- Schriften,(Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner,1958), vol. 7, pp. sible to summarize adequately in a few words, sonal and cultural identifications with the 213-15, passim. one feature has been a constant: Because experiences of the past, including the non- 15 R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New “gender” is a key site of prejudices, polemic in rational aspects of human life, as we pursue York: Oxford University Press: 1943), p. 215. 16 its use and over its usage produces counter- personal and group creativity. R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (London: polemic, lash produces backlash, to an extent Oxford University Press: 1938), p. 64. 17 Collingwood, “The Purpose of the Roman that gives support to the argument from Notes 1 “In Memory of Sigmund Freud” (1939), Collected Wall,” Vasculum, 8, (October, 1921), p. 9. philosophers of science that individual and 18 Poems (New York: Random House, 1976), pp. 215- Collingwood, Idea of History, p. 215. cultural perceptions of sexual difference under- 19 18. The quotation is on p. 217. Collingwood,“Purpose of the Roman Wall,” lie all conceptual binaries. The repressed (or 2 “The Claims of Psycho-Analysis to Scientific p. 5. temporarily defeated) always returns, and 20 Interest” (1913), Standard Edition [Hereafter SE], Freud,“Remarks on the Theory and Practice of there is always a struggle not to be trapped in XIII, 185. Dream Interpretation,” SE, XIX, 116. 21 the words that were used to avoid being 3 The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), SE, IV, 96. Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, trans. Peter trapped by words. Among some postmod- 4 SE, II, 305; Stud., Erganzungsband, 97. Putnam (New York: Knopf, 1953), pp. 45-46, passim. 22 ernist theorists who criticized the idea of gen- 5 SE, XXIII, 228. Bloch, French Rural History: An Essay on Its der normativity, there is currently much effort 6 Freud to Fliess, January 30, 1899 in The Complete Basic Characteristics, trans. Janet Sondheimer (Berke- to recover sex or the body (minus destiny), Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess. 1887-1904. ley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, and to learn from medical specialties from trans. and ed. J. M. Masson (Cambridge, Mass.: Har- 1966), p. xxvii. 23 Bloch, Historian’s Craft, pp. 43-44. endocrinology to neurology (minus their old vard University Press, 1985), p. 342. Sigmund Freud, 24 Bloch, Historian’s Craft, p. 194. patriarchal biases). From the psychoanalytic Briefe an Wilhelm Fliess, Hrg. J. M. Masson (Frankfurt side, there is much attention to how sex is am Main: S. Fischer, 1986), S. 374. influenced by gender—the binary being read 7 Freud to Fliess, Febru- in the opposite from usual direction. ary 6, 1899 in Freud-Fliess The great advance for psychoanalysis that Letters, p. 344; Freud, Briefe this complex history has brought about is an an Fliess, S. 377. Griechis- appreciation of the complexity and variability che Kulturgeschichte, hrsg. over the lifespan of each individual’s sexed-and- Jakob Oeri, 4 vols. (Berlin: gendered development as well as of cultural 1898-1902). The first two diversity and the complexity of cultural influ- volumes were published ence on individuals and groups. But the current in 1898. situation is also novel (and especially chaotic) 8 Burckhardt to von because almost all adult peoples who have felt Preen, July 2,1871, in Letters themselves pathologized are represented in of Jacob Burckhardt,Alexan- der Dru, ed.(New York: the current debates and the developmental Pantheon, 1955), p. 147. stages of the word “gender” itself—shaped 9 Jacob Burckhardt, “On by its use by feminists, then by queer theorists, Fortune and Misfortune then by transgender theorists, many writing in History” (1871) in Got- autobiographically—are known to all now, 150 tfried Dietze, ed., Reflections years after Freud’s birth as a male infant of yet on History (Indianapolis:

to be determined gender. Liberty, 1979), pp. 323-24. 1977 Photo: Joshua Hoffs,

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