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Psychoanalysis in Modern Mental Health Practice

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Psychoanalysis in Modern Mental Health Practice Review Psychoanalysis in modern mental health practice Jessica Yakeley Like any discipline, psychoanalysis has evolved considerably since its inception by Freud over a century ago, and a Lancet Psychiatry 2018 multitude of different psychoanalytic traditions and schools of theory and practice now exist. However, some of Published Online Freud’s original ideas, such as the dynamic unconscious, a developmental approach, defence mechanisms, and March 21, 2018 transference and countertransference remain essential tenets of psychoanalytic thinking to this day. This Review http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S2215-0366(18)30052-X outlines several areas within modern mental health practice in which contemporary adaptations and applications of Portman Clinic, The Tavistock these psychoanalytic concepts might offer helpful insights and improvements in patient care and management, and and Portman NHS Foundation concludes with an overview of evidence-based psychoanalytically informed treatments and the links between Trust, London, UK psychoanalysis, attachment research, and neuroscience. (J Yakeley FRCPysch) Correspondence to: Introduction treatment and that knowledge or truth does not belong to Dr Jessica Yakeley, Portman Clinic, The Tavistock and Freud’s vision for psychoanalysis was ambitious. the therapist, but is co-constructed during the interaction Portman NHS Foundation Trust, Psychoanalysis was not merely a mode of treatment, but between patient and therapist. London NW3 5NA, UK a metapsychology—a new scientific discipline in its What relevance does this array of psychoanalytic [email protected] own right—based on its “procedure for the investigation of movements and their theories pose to modern mental mental processes that are almost inaccessible in any other health practice? Although in the past 25 years many way”.1 Although Freud did not discover the unconscious,2 substantial advances have been made in mental health one of his greatest achievements was to make it the main research and practice—notably in the development of object of investigation. This unconscious is dynamic, safer and more effective psychotropic drugs and of comprised of shifting feelings, fantasies, conflicts, evidence-based psychological therapies—such achieve- memories, and desires that motivate our conscious ments can seem overshadowed by the numerous thoughts and manifest behaviour, and which can be challenges faced by publicly funded mental health glimpsed through the window of dreams, but are kept out services today. These challenges include the following: a of consciousness by the force of repression because of shortage of financial investment compared with services their unacceptability to the social, moral, and ethical values for physical health; target cultures encouraging in- of civilised thought. Although its nature has been much appropriate incentives; service reconfigurations resulting debated, the existence of a dynamic unconscious continues in fragmentation, poor continuity of care, and disruption to constitute one of the fundamental underpinnings of of therapeutic relationships; the margin alisation of psychoanalytic theory and practice to this day. psychosocial approaches; and high frequency of staff However, Freud’s own theories were not always unified, sickness and burnout due to the stresses of working with and psychoanalytic theory and practice subsequently patients with mental disorders, who might participate in evolved into many different psychoanalytic schools and risky behaviour, in inadequately resourced services. traditions. In the USA, these schools of thought have Psychoanalysis does not, of course, offer easy included the ego psychology school of Heinz Hartmann, explanations or solutions for these long-standing and influenced by Anna Freud, the self-psychology school of complex problems. However, psychoanalytic concep- Heinz Kohut, and the object relations theory of tualisations of human psychological processes and Otto Kernberg. In the UK, the works of Melanie Klein behaviour, psycho analytically informed developmental and Donald Winnicott have been prominent, with theories, and specific applications of psycho analytic Melanie Klein emphasising the role of innate envy, thinking and practice within mental health services destructiveness, and primitive unconscious fantasies in could be helpful in complementing other approaches early development, and Donald Winnicott the role of the within the field of mental health, in under standing the mother and the environment. Their work formed the nature of these difficulties, and in initiating therapeutic basis of object relations theory, which expanded Freud’s change within complex systems of care. This Review focus on intrapsychic factors and individual autonomy by explores how key Freudian psychoanalytic concepts, such proposing that development takes place within a as unconscious mental processes, a developmental relational context, ideas that were further developed by approach to psycho pathology, defence mechanisms, John Bowlby and his seminal work on attachment. transference and countert ransference dynamics, and the Meanwhile, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan elaboration of these concepts by subsequent psycho- developed Freud’s earlier theories into his distinctive analytic theorists, could implicitly inform a clinician’s writings, which have been particularly influential in day-to-day work within the mental health field, and offer France and South America. In the 1980s, a number of insights and improvements in patient care. The Review postmodern schools of thought emerged, such as the concludes with a summary of advances in the relational, intersubjectivist, and constructivist schools, development of evidence-based psychoanalytic psycho- which emphasise the two person nature of psychoanalytic therapies, and in the interdisciplinary dialogues between www.thelancet.com/psychiatry Published online March 21, 2018 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(18)30052-X 1 Downloaded for Anonymous User (n/a) at Universite de Sherbrooke - Canada Consortium from ClinicalKey.com by Elsevier on March 30, 2018. For personal use only. No other uses without permission. Copyright ©2018. Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review psychoanalysis, attachment studies, develop mental subjective experience, influenced by unconscious forces, research, and neuroscience. acts as a lens through which the determinants of their mental illness shape the nature of their symptoms and Reclaiming subjectivity in diagnosis and behaviours. Phenomeno logical attention to the structure assessment and form of a symptom is integral to the psychoanalytic The development of psychiatry has been strongly conceptualisation of symptomatology in giving clues influenced by a tradition of positivism and empiricism, about its underlying anxieties, conflicts, and defences; an approach advanced most notably in the natural however, psychoanalysis goes further in attributing sciences. Positivism promotes a stance of objectivity in unconscious meaning to the patient’s manifest symp- which phenomena are accurately defined, externally toms and behaviours, and proposes that understanding validated, and reliably applied; by contrast, subjectivity— this meaning might help both clinicians and patients that of perceptions, interpretation, and individual within the therapeutic context. narratives of past experience—is avoided, because it is unreliable and obscures or distorts how things really are. Is there meaning in madness? Challenges to the dominance of the positivistic paradigm The delusional world of patients with psychosis might have not only come from psychoanalysts, but were also seem impenetrable to understanding, an attitude that one of the underpinnings of the antipsychiatry movement is enshrined in Jaspers’4 concept of the so-called in the 1960s;3 however, despite the growing acceptance un-understandable delusions of schizophrenia, and of the importance of service user involvement—the therefore attempts to decipher their meaning can seem so-called lived experience and patient voice—the futile. Moreover, these patients’ concrete commun- centrality of meaning, elucidation, sensibility, and ications, lack of affectivity, and poor capacity for symbolic subjective experience within the therapeutic encounter and abstract thinking can inhibit meaningful dialogue, arguably remain somewhat neglected in modern and weaken the responses of mental health professionals psychiatric practice. tasked with looking after them, whose responses can The psychoanalytic approach is focused on subjective become as concrete (eg, form filling or administering experience, exploring the vagaries and vicissitudes of the medication) as those of their patients.5 human mind, elucidating the patient’s internal world— Freud proposed that in neurosis, repression is partly their fantasies, dreams, hopes, feelings, wishes, successful, and disturbing thoughts and wishes emerge motivations, anxieties, and defences—both conscious into consciousness under the guise of symptoms and unconscious. The paradox of the psychoanalytic that cause distress, but do not completely destabilise method is that its therapeutic instrument, unlike the ego functioning.6 Freud saw psychosis, however, surgeon’s scalpel, is identical to the object of its as a failure of repression, which leads to the mind treatment: the interaction of two minds, the emotional being overwhelmed with disturbing thoughts and distress of the patient contained by the emotional feelings arising from the
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