The One and the Many : Relational Psychoanalysis and Group Analysis 9781782411086, 9781780491660

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CHAPTER TITLE

THE ONE AND THE MANY

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NEW INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF GROUP ANALYSIS Series Editor: Earl Hopper

Other titles in the Series Contributions of Self Psychology to Group Psychotherapy by Walter N. Stone Difficult Topics in Group Psychotherapy: My Journey from Shame to Courage by Jerome S. Gans Resistance, Rebellion and Refusal in Groups: The 3 Rs by Richard M. Billow The Social Nature of Persons: One Person is No Person by A. P. Tom Ormay The Social Unconscious in Persons, Groups, and Societies. Volume 1: Mainly Theory edited by Earl Hopper and Haim Weinberg Trauma and Organizations edited by Earl Hopper Small, Large, and Median Groups: The Work of Patrick de Maré edited by Rachel Lenn and Karen Stefano The Dialogues In and Of the Group: Lacanian Perspectives on the Psychoanalytic Group Macario Giraldo From Psychoanalysis to Group Analysis: The Pioneering Work of Trigant Burrow edited by Edi Gatti Pertegato and Giorgio Orghe Pertegato Nationalism and the Body Politic: Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia edited by Lene Auestad Listening with the Fourth Ear: Unconscious Dynamics in Analytic Group Therapy by Leonard Horwitz Forensic Group Psychotherapy: The Portman Clinic Approach edited by John Woods and Andrew Williams (joint publication with Portman)

THE ONE AND THE MANY Relational Psychoanalysis and Group Analysis

Juan Tubert-Oklander

First published in 2014 by Karnac Books Ltd 118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT

Copyright © 2014 to Juan Tubert-Oklander.

The right of Juan Tubert-Oklander to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78049-166-0 Edited, designed and produced by The Studio Publishing Services Ltd www.publishingservicesuk.co.uk e-mail: [email protected]

Printed in Great Britain

www.karnacbooks.com

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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NEW INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY OF GROUP ANALYSIS FOREWORD by Earl Hopper

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PROLOGUE

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CHAPTER ONE Beyond the individual and the collective: the new widening scope of the field of psychoanalysis

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CHAPTER TWO The syncretic paradigm: the metapsychology of individuals and groups

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CHAPTER THREE Lost in translation: a contribution to intercultural understanding

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER FOUR The icon and the idol: the place of Freud and other founding fathers and mothers in psychoanalytic identity and education

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CHAPTER FIVE A Hermes in London: the subtlety of interpretation in Donald Winnicott’s clinic

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CHAPTER SIX The clinical diary of 1932 and the new psychoanalytic clinic

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CHAPTER SEVEN Lazarus’ resurrection: the inclusion of political and religious discussion in the analytic dialogue

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CHAPTER EIGHT The matrix of despair

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REFERENCES

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INDEX

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my thanks to the following editors and publishers for their kind permission to include in this book material previously published by them. The details are a follows: To Charles Levin, Editor, and the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society for “Lost in translation: a contribution to intercultural understanding”, Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis—Revue canadienne de psychanalyse, 19: 144–168 (Chapter 3). To Julia Casamadrid, Editor, and the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association for “El ícono y el ídolo: el lugar de Freud en la identidad y la formación psicoanalíticas” [The icon and the idol: the place of Freud in psychoanalytic identity and education], Cuadernos de Psicoanálisis, 42(1–2): 7–47 (Chapter 4). To Franco Borgogno, Editor, and Bollati Boringhieri Editore for “Il ‘Diario clinico’ del 1932 e la sua influenza sulla prassi psicoanalitica” [The “Clinical Diary” of 1932 and the new psychoanalytic clinic], published as a chapter of Borgogno, F. (Ed.), Ferenczi oggi [Ferenczi today] (47–63). Milan: Bollati Boringhieri, 2004 (Chapter 6). To Tom Ormay, Editor, and The Group-Analytic Society for “The matrix of despair: from despair to desire through dialogue”, GroupAnalysis, 43: 127–140 (Chapter 8). vii

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Juan Tubert-Oklander, MD, PhD, was born, studied medicine, and trained as a group therapist in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since 1976, he has lived and worked in private practice in Mexico City, where he trained as a psychoanalyst, being now a Mexican citizen. He is the author of numerous papers and book chapters, published in Spanish, English, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Czech. He is co-author, with Reyna Hernández-Tubert, of Operative Groups: The Latin-American Approach to Group Analysis (Jessica Kingsley, 2004), and author of The Theory of Psychoanalytical Practice: a Relational Process Approach (Karnac, 2013). He is a full member of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association, the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, and the Group-Analytic Society International. He is a training and supervising analyst at the Institute of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association.

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For Reyna, my love, my friend, and my best colleague

New International Library of Group Analysis Foreword

The meta-theory of classical psychoanalysis revolves around, and is stretched between, the polarities of the answers to at least three central questions: is the ego original or emergent; is the first psychic action one of introjection or projection; and is malign envy innate or defensive? These questions are often more implicit than explicit in a variety of theoretical discussions, but the answers to them define the parameters and the boundaries of the main schools of thought within our disciplines (Hopper, 2003a). However, our current relational and group analytical understanding of the internal worlds of our patients and the dynamics of their groupings very much depends on the assumption that the mind is in essence inter-personal, inter-subjective, and collective. We realise that the unconscious mind is always a socially unconscious mind, rooted in the foundation matrices of our societies as much as “it” is rooted in the brain, which is in any case socially attuned. Thus, we privilege the study of the social unconscious with respect to sociality, relationality, and the matrices of group life, and we emphasise the study of traumatogenic processes and the transgenerational co-construction of social facts (Hopper & Weinberg, 2011b).

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In this context, I am very pleased to include in the New International Library of Group Analysis The One and the Many: Relational Psychoanalysis and Group Analysis by Juan Tubert-Oklander. These papers, which are really very much the chapters of a monograph, both deepen and expand the basic approach of group analytical psychoanalysis both in theory and practice. Conceived in Germany, but born in England, group analysis is now absorbing important intellectual and clinical traditions from Latin America and the US, some of which have been imported first from France. Dr Tubert-Oklander recognises that together group analysis, psychoanalytical group psychotherapy, and group analytical psychoanalysis form a very broad church, but that this is a source of creative tension. Sociality and relationality are at the core of human nature, which is why we refer to “persons” and not merely to “individuals”. The “many” in the title of this new book does not mean only more than one or two or even three, but also implies that the “one” originates within the “many”. The primal scene is not merely a matter of observing or witnessing the interactions between two individuals. The one is always and forever won from the void and the infinite. Identity is always under threat, to be negotiated and renegotiated in the context of relations with others. The group becomes involved in these processes, and is both affected by its experience and in turn affects the experience of its members. The basic idea that each of us is “many” before we are “one” is profoundly complex. This is an important development of the basic axioms of the Independent psychoanalysts of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and goes beyond the discussions of number advanced by, for example, Rickman (King, 2003) and Home (1983). Juan Tubert-Oklander, who I regard as a romantic relational psychoanalyst and group analyst, strongly believes that personal information about an author is relevant to the readersí better understanding of his work. This is consistent with the basic hermeneutical principle that a full and complete interpretation must include the person of the interpreter, with all his interests, beliefs, assumptions, values, peculiarities, and tastes. This is the only way that we might understand, criticise, or compensate for the unavoidable prejudices that mark all interpretative activities, especially in the beginning of them. Accordingly, I am pleased to report that Juan is devoted to literature in several languages, including poetry, novels, science fiction and detective stories, as well as classical and popular music. His

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multi-faceted creative character is enhanced by his love of dark chocolate and single malt whisky, and his weakness for chilli peppers. More formally, Juan was born in Argentina, where he studied medicine, group psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis. In 1976, at thirty years of age, he immigrated to Mexico, where he trained as a psychoanalyst with the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association, in which he is a training and supervising analyst. Although now a Mexican citizen and refers to himself as a “Mexican psychoanalyst and group analyst”, Juan has not lost contact with his roots in Argentina, where he is a member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association. As an active member of the International Psychoanalytical Association and the Group Analytic Society International, he avails himself of the ideas of scholars and colleagues throughout the world, working in several languages and literary and philosophical traditions. He has an interest in ethics, hermeneutics, philosophical anthropology, and epistemology, rejecting the scientistic assumption that valid knowledge is based only on the methodology of the natural sciences. He considers himself to be a Christian, in an ecumenical sense, but has a deep respect for the more spiritual and humanistic versions of Judaism and Islam, taking exception to the bureaucracies and power systems of all religious institutions. Politically, he is a left-wing liberal who abhors dogmatism and authoritarianism. It is hardly surprising that as an analyst, thinker, and writer, Juan Tubert-Oklander identifies strongly with the young and irreverent Freud, as well as Ferenczi and Winnicott, admiring their relentless pursuit of knowledge and truth, creativity, and fierce independence of mind. His life-long relation with psychoanalysis began at the age of ten, when he entered treatment in Buenos Aires with Betty Garma, one of the pioneers of child psychoanalysis in Argentina. He considers that he was imprinted by this experience, giving him an ideal of what psychoanalysis should be, and influencing the development of his subsequent career. Juan is married to Reyna Hernandez-Tubert with whom he has shared life, work, ideas, and writing for over twenty years. I first met Reyna in 1992 in Mexico City. She conveyed how deeply important it was to develop a professional and clinical identity which brought together her interests in sociology, psychoanalysis, and group analysis, and she celebrated her passionate involvement in the political life of her nation and its peoples. Together, they (Tubert-Oklander &

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Hernandez de Tubert, 2004) have written Operative Groups: The LatinAmerican Approach to Group Analysis, which is the sole source of information in English about group analysis in Latin America. As a couple this formidable team are very close indeed, having six children—three each—from previous marriages, and several grandchildren. Although their active participation in professional activities might suggest otherwise, they are really “home-bodies” who enjoy their garden, the company of their dogs, and leisurely walks in their neighbourhood. We are fortunate to count Juan and Reyna as members of our expanding network of group analytical psychoanalysts who appreciate the relational perspective and the language of subject relations. My association with them has proved to be an education in itself, and a source of enormous stimulation and pleasure. I am confident that my Anglo-Saxon colleagues will enjoy this book and learn from it as much as I have. Earl Hopper, PhD Series Editor

Prologue

It is a known fact that some native languages, which we deem to be “primitive”, lack an elaborate number system and have a scanty vocabulary with which to refer to the various amounts of objects. The minimum linguistic number system that has been found includes only three terms: “one”, “two”, and “many”. Whether this language limitation actually precludes its speakers from attaining any conception of number concepts, as suggested by the Whorfian (Whorf, 1956) hypothesis of linguistic relativity (Gordon, 2004) or whether there is also “a distinction between a nonverbal system of number approximation and a language-based counting system for exact number and arithmetic” (Pica, Lemer, Izard, & Dehaene, 2004, p. 499) is still a moot question. What is clear to me is that the concepts of “one” and “two”, and almost certainly “three”, and that of “many” have a general psychological significance that accounts for their presence in all known languages. In orthodox psychoanalytic theory, there is a progression from “one” (narcissism) to “two” (dyadic object relations), and then “three” (the Oedipal situation). “Many” is considered to be a much later and secondary construction, built from the articulation of separate individuals and their dyadic and triangular relationships; this in spite of the fact that Freud had introduced, in some of his social writings xv

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(Freud, 1912–1913, 1939a), the concept of a “collective mind” that evolves on its own, apart, over, beyond, and through the individuals’ mental processes. But everything hinges on the meaning we assign to the psychological concept of “one”. It may mean, as it did for Freud, an originally isolated individual, who then discovers the existence of others, as a result of being forced to relate with them by sheer necessity and instinctual pressure, and later enters into more complex forms of relation, generated by the human need to associate with others in order to survive. But it can also mean that the original and basic form of experience is that of unity with all others and everything that is—Freud’s (1930a) “oceanic feeling”—and that from this form of collective existence and over it there develops the differentiation of Self and Other, which marks the beginning of interpersonal relationships. Much depends, from the theoretical, clinical, social, political, ideological, and philosophic points of view, on whether one takes one or the other version of existence. There is also the possibility that these two may just be two alternative perspectives for viewing one and the same reality. In our own field, this takes the form of the psychoanalytic and the group-analytic points of view. Being myself both a psychoanalyst and group analyst, I have been interested in these issues from the very beginning of my career as a therapist and analyst, in the early 1970s. I have thought, discussed, and written about them, over and over again. The fact that I became a group analyst before being a psychoanalyst determined that I always had an understanding of psychoanalytic theory and practice as based on relationships that take place in a group and social context. This made me identify with the British Independent tradition of Object Relations Theory, Self Psychology, and, more recently, with Intersubjective and Relational Psychoanalysis, which I felt to be more compatible with the group-analytic view and experience than either the Freudian or the Kleinian theories. Nonetheless, I still felt that there was a missing link between the psychoanalytic and the group analytic traditions and experiences. The present book presents a selection of papers on the subjects of Relational Analysis and Group Analysis, written in the ten-year period that goes from 2002 to 2012. Although I believe that they represent a unitary evolution of my thought and practice, they addressed different problems and were intended for diverse audiences, so that

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some of them are more psychoanalytic and others more groupanalytic. Notwithstanding, I have reframed and expanded them, so as to explicitly show their mutual relations and the fact that, in spite of their different themes and references, they belong to one and the same evolving frame of thought, which is my own. One thing that the reader should take into account, when reading this book, is that it is an attempt to convey a living process of thinking and experience. This means that, at any given point, I am aware of things that she has not yet met in reading, but which are bound to come in the following chapters, and yet are part of an organic whole. I have tried to convey this by means of frequent forward and backward references to other chapters of the book. This may turn out to be a bit confusing, unless the reader keeps in mind that this is neither a collection of almost unrelated articles, nor a systematic presentation of an established point of view, but rather a work in progress that implies an invitation to her to participate in the construction and reconstruction of a shared thinking process. After all, this is what interpretative reading is about. Another important point to consider is the way in which I have selected my bibliographic references. These are frequently a token of my appreciation and gratitude towards those writers and works that have had an impact and an influence on me at some time or another. I by no means claim to be representing their thought, unless I explicitly say so, and one disconcerting result is that some authors are placed side by side with others who have very little in common with them, and are even mutually antagonistic. This is also often a result of a specific argumentative strategy that consists in grouping the various authors according to their position vis-à-vis a particular point I am discussing at the moment, without implying any other kinship between them. If this were not borne in mind, the reader might think that I am equating grapes with prickly pears, when I am just saying that both of them are fruits. Among the many people who have influenced my thinking and development on the subject, I must thank, first and foremost, the contribution of my wife, colleague, co-therapist, co-author of so many writings, and companion in the journey of life, Reyna HernándezTubert. This book would never have existed without her constant presence and support, and the ongoing conversation on theoretical, technical, clinical, philosophical, and political issues that we have had

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during the past two decades. Just as I conceive the therapeutic process as a result of an amorous relationship between two or more human beings, I also strongly believe writing to be the product of love, both in the writer’s love for others—his readers and Humankind—and for whoever he has chosen to be a companion in life. So, Reyna’s presence is to be found in each and every one of its pages. Then, I must refer to my two great friends and colleagues, Malcolm Pines and Earl Hopper, each of whom have enlightened me with their thinking, writings, and friendship. Malcolm has had a great influence on me, ever since we met, in 1983 (Tubert-Oklander, 2010c), first by reading and listening to him, and then, since 2000, by a fruitful conversation, which alternates between our usual e-mail and our unfortunately not very frequent personal meetings. Earl Hopper is presently the major theoretician in the study of the Social Unconscious, and the leader of an international group of colleagues who are working on the uses and implications of this concept. We have been working together for some years now, and I am proud to call him my friend. He is also the Editor of the New International Library of Group Analysis, the editorial project that houses this book, which was his idea, to begin with. In 2011, when we met in New York and collaborated in a course on the Social Unconscious which he had conceived and designed, he suggested that I concoct a volume of my Selected Papers for NILGA, and this book is the result. But his participation in the book goes much further than that, since we have had a thorough discussion of my first version of this text which led to quite a few revisions that have improved its final version. Earl is what every editor should be, but seldom is. Another major influence in my present thinking is my Mexican philosopher friend, Mauricio Beuchot, with whom I have had many a discussion on the relation between psychoanalysis and hermeneutics, which led us to the conjoint writing of a book on the subject (TubertOklander & Beuchot Puente, 2008). His conception of Analogical Hermeneutics is to be found throughout this book, particularly in Chapters Three, Four, Five, Seven, and Eight, since it offered me a perspective and a language that helped me to formulate in more precise terms a number of ideas that I had been working on for more than three decades. Finally, I want to thank my six children-no-longer, who gave my life a meaning it would never had had without them. They are, in

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strict order of appearance, Eduardo, Mara, Ivan, Rodrigo, Sandra, and Hector. Those of them who are still living with me have had to be patient with my absorption in the writing of this book, and so has Reyna. It is now high time for me to return to a more normal way of living—that is, until the next book! I can only hope that the reader may find it worth his or her while.

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CHAPTER TITLE

CHAPTER ONE

Beyond the individual and the collective: the new widening scope of the field of psychoanalysis

Introduction to Chapter One his introductory chapter deals with the main subject of the book, a theme that has occupied me since the beginning of my analytic studies in the early 1970s: that of the relation between the individual and the group, which is perhaps more accurately stated in terms of individual and collective mental processes. Although I began, as was usual at the time in Buenos Aires, by studying Freud, I soon entered a training course in group psychotherapy, at the Argentine Group Psychology and Psychotherapy Association. There I became familiar with socio-psychological theories and the theory of communication as a necessary complement to the psychoanalytic approach. One consequence of this was that, as I went on studying psychoanalysis and later had my formal psychoanalytic education in Mexico, I unwittingly found myself learning something quite different from what my teachers were trying to convey, since I automatically translated psychoanalytic theories into another epistemology, which was unlike that of traditional psychoanalysis. Hence, I always felt identified with those psychoanalytic theories that included a consideration of actual relationships with other real people, such as Object Relations Theory (in the British Independent tradition) and Self Psychology, and I wondered why authors such as Sullivan, Fromm, or Horney were thought to be non-psychoanalytic or even anti-psychoanalytic. As years and decades went by, I approached, over and over again, the theoretical and clinical problem of how to articulate individual

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and collective mental processes, and wrote quite a few papers and a couple of books on the subject. For the past twenty years, I have shared this enquiry with Reyna Hernández-Tubert, and together we wrote extensively about this, as even a cursory look at this book’s reference list will surely show. After having thought through these ideas and discussed them with many colleagues and students, I wrote, in 2008, a paper intended for a psychoanalytic audience, in which I summarised my position on the matter and argued that including the social, institutional, and political perspective, far from representing a departure from psychoanalysis, is a must, if we are to continue developing the exploration of the unknown continent that Freud opened for us. The present version has been revised and enlarged in order to include more of the groupanalytic perspective, that was only barely introduced in the original text, which was addressed to a group of Freudian psychoanalysts, while in the present context I feel that I may well take for granted a previous knowledge of group analysis in my readers.

A new dimension for psychoanalysis In 1954, the New York Psychoanalytic Society convened a symposium in Arden House on “The widening scope of indications for psychoanalysis”. The lecturers were Leo Stone, Edith Jacobson, and Anna Freud (Stone, Jacobson, & Freud, A., 1954). At the time, the widening scope referred to the possibility of treating severely disturbed patients, who had not been previously considered adequate for a psychoanalytic treatment. Nowadays, we have witnessed a new widening of the scope of psychoanalysis, which can be seen in the themes proposed by most recent psychoanalytic conferences, which have striven to include a discussion of social and cultural phenomena, albeit most frequently from the perspective of an individual psychology. Such revived interest in things social refers, not only to the dire necessity of responding to the impact that the new circumstances and life conditions have on our daily practice, but also to a serious attempt to use our instrument in order to attain a better understanding of, and even intervene with the aim to somehow change, the process that generates such circumstances and conditions. This is, of course, what Group Analysis1 has been doing all along, ever since its inception by Foulkes (1948, 1964a, 1975a, 1990), in Britain,

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and Pichon-Rivière (1971a,b,c, 1979; Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004), in Argentina, but it represents a truly revolutionary development for psychoanalysis, which had been traditionally defined as “the study of the intrapsychic”. This implied leaving aside the whole interpersonal, group, institutional, cultural, political, and social dimensions, which were summarily discarded as something “external” and “merely conscious”. Indeed, most schisms in the psychoanalytic movement were derived from divergences about the influences on and the role played by environmental and social factors in psychic life (Hernández de Tubert, 2006; Tubert-Oklander, 2006b). The unyielding position taken by orthodox psychoanalysts on the matter may be ascribed to their confusion about the meaning of “intrapsychic”, as suggested by Foulkes and Anthony (1965), when they wrote: “To us intra-psychic does not convey . . . ‘intradermic’, and we look upon the dynamic processes in the group not from the outside, but from inside, as intra-psychic dynamics in their interaction” (p. 21).2 If this is the case, perhaps we are witnessing a reunion of two estranged members of a same family—something like the attempted rapprochement between the Anglican and the Methodist churches—but it may also be thought of as a much-needed evolution. This is the point of view that emerged in a conversation I had with Malcolm Pines, during an interview Reyna Hernández-Tubert and I had with him in 2005 (Tubert-Oklander & Hernández-Tubert, 2011), as can be seen in the following fragment: Juan: I have a feeling that group analysis is what psychoanalysis should have been, but never was . . . Malcolm: (assenting) I always said that psychoanalysis is slowly moving to where it should be, which is group analysis, and, through relational psychology and self psychology, it’s moving in that direction. (p. 10)

This opinion is, of course, open to criticism, since it may well be interpreted as an expression of bias by two group analysts considering psychoanalysis—even though both of us are also psychoanalysts. But, when we take into account the passionate rejection that the psychoanalytic community has shown, throughout its history, towards the attempts to enquire the relevance for psychoanalysis of the study of environmental and social factors, we cannot avoid

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considering the hypothesis that some unconscious dynamic factor may be in operation in this matter. One interesting example of this is the episode Donald Winnicott recounted to John Padel (1991), from his analysis with Joan Riviere, one of Melanie Klein’s earliest and staunchest followers: I said to my analyst, “I’m almost ready to write a book on the environment.” She said to me, “You write a book on the environment and I’ll turn you into a frog!” Of course she didn’t use those words, you understand, but that’s how what she did say came across to me. (p. 336)

A possible explanation of this intense and continuing conflict may be found in the origins of psychoanalysis. Freud’s (1896c) first theory of neurosis was an environmental one, since it sought the cause of mental disturbances in the mistreatment and abuse of children by the adults who were in charge of them. Hence, it could well serve as a basis for a stern social criticism, since it called into question the alleged benevolence of parents and adults towards the dependent human beings who were their charges, this being the imaginary foundation of all social and institutional authority. It therefore generated a widespread and intense hostility and an absolute rejection, towards both the theory and its author. Freud, on his part, started feeling uncomfortable with a point of view that could not but call into question his own life and family relationships, both with his father and with his daughters, as it soon emerged during the hard process of his self-analysis (Jones, 1953).3 Finally, in 1897, he decided to abandon this theory. This was partly due to his impression that some of the dramatic episodes of childhood sexual abuse recounted by his patients could not have actually happened, at least as they had been told. One may wonder why the very person who had created the concept of screen memories (Freud, 1899a) did not consider the possibility that an overtly dramatic pseudo-memory might be a symbolic synthesis that both concealed and expressed the hidden memories and aftermath of some subtler form of abuse that had been repressed (indifference, abandonment, rejection, incestuous strivings, death wishes, or lack of love on part of the parents or other adults in charge of the child). But Freud rather chose to take this as an evidence of the fact that his patients had been

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“lying” all along. In this there must have been some influence of the violent attacks he had received and of his own ambivalence towards the whole matter.4 Be that as it may, he found a revolutionary solution for this theoretical dilemma, when he introduced the concept of the psychic reality of wishful fantasies, which would then acquire an aetiological effect. This opened the way for the whole research project of enquiry of the individual’s inner world, that would occupy psychoanalysis for the next hundred years. But we may also infer that both the episode of the so-called “seduction theory”—a veritable euphemism, since it was really a theory of the pathogenic effects of childhood sexual abuse— and the circumstances that led to its abandonment remained as a repressed traumatic experience in the nascent psychoanalytic community, an essential part of its social unconscious (Hopper, 2003a,b). Consequently this social group has ever since shown a clear tendency to repudiate any attempt to revive the traumatic theory of neurosis— as happened with Ferenczi (Balint, 1968; Borgogno, 1999, 2004)—and to mistrust any reference to society or the environment in the study of mental processes. Malcolm Pines (1989, 1996) suggests yet another hypothesis. Freud, who had had youthful dreams of studying law and following a political career, later abandoned them and turned to science, in order to reach that high position that his family had envisioned for him, when he was born at a moment in which, for the first time, a young Jew could aspire to posts that had been unthinkable before. The new wave of anti-Semitism in Austria later became an obstacle for his aspiration to become a university professor, as he openly shows in the self-analysis of his dreams (Freud, 1900a). He now aspired to become a great man on account of his unique contributions to universal knowledge. But it was essential for him that psychoanalytic knowledge be nothing but universal. Any suggestion that the social, cultural, and political context might have a bearing on his discoveries would open the way for a criticism in such terms as “this happens only to Jews”. His worst nightmare was that psychoanalysis should be seen as “the Jewish psychiatry”. Being a member of a generation that had staked for assimilation as a way to transcend the limitations imposed on Jews on account of their being a different other, he rejected the very idea that cultural differences might have something to do with psychic reality.

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He also made a wholesale rejection of politics. The historian Carl E. Schorske (1980), who had an important influence on Pines, made a study of Freud’s “Revolutionary Dream”—also known as the “Count Thun Dream”—showing how, in his analysis, he turned the political conflict generated in him by his chance meeting with the Prime Minister of Austria, in a situation that he felt to be humiliating for him, into a personal conflict with his father. This is how Schorske (1974) put it, in his own words: In [his analysis of this dream] Freud adumbrated his mature political theory, the central principle of which is that all politics is reducible to the primal conflict between father and son (Freud, 1912–1913). The Revolutionary Dream, miraculously, contained this conclusion in its very scenario: from political encounter, through flight into academia, to the conquest of the father who has replaced Count Thun. Patricide replaces regicide; psychoanalysis overcomes history. Politics is neutralized by a counterpolitical psychology. (p. 54, my italics)

Pines (1987) expands on Schorske’s idea and formulates the limitations of Freud’s stance on the matter, in the following terms: The story of what happens between people is replaced by the story of what happens within the isolated child. And indeed how isolated is that child without the nurturance and guidance of caretaking adults whose biology and culture shape their capacities to receive and to respond to their infant’s needs. (p. 124)

However, it cannot be denied that Freud actually had a great interest in the psychoanalytic study of society, and bequeathed to us a whole set of theoretical elements that were to become essential for our present enquiries. The series of texts that are known as his “social writings” (Freud, 1908d, 1912–1913, 1915b, 1921c, 1927c, 1930a, 1933a (Lecture 35—”The question of a Weltanschauung”), 1933b, 1939a) show, from my point of view, two main characteristics that relate to the subject of this chapter. The first is an oscillation between two contrasting points of view. On the one hand, there is the conception that only individuals are “real” and that social phenomena stem from the interaction between them, especially from their identifications. This perspective, which he develops in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921c) excludes, by principle, any concept of a “collective mind”, with its own processes and intentionality.

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On the other, he embarks, instead, in an enquiry of collective mental processes. Thus, in Totem and Taboo (1912–1913), he postulates “the existence of a collective mind, in which mental processes occur just as they do in the mind of an individual” (p. 157). Although he recognises the problems generated by this hypothesis, he deems it to be indispensable, since “without the assumption of a collective mind, which makes it possible to neglect the interruptions of mental acts caused by the extinction of the individual, social psychology in general cannot exist” (p. 158). Many years later, in Moses and Monotheism (1939a), he continues the study of cultural evolution, which he understands to be a collective mental process that shows such striking analogies with the psychological evolution of the individual, that it might be thought that they are nothing but two aspects of one and the same reality (Hernández de Tubert, 2008). When we consider the existence of this second line of research of social phenomena, it is indeed striking to see that mainstream psychoanalytical theory has completely ignored this conception of collective mental processes and restricted its field of study to the enquiry of intrapersonal processes, while declaring anything “external” to be out of bounds (Tubert-Oklander, 2006a, see Chapter Two current volume). However, it should be noted that, as Earl Hopper (2012) points out, Freud seems not to have been cognisant of the emergence of scientific sociology, especially in the work of his contemporary Émile Durkheim (1895). Hence, he could not conceive social facts as “real”; for him, the social part of the personality was never primary, but always secondary to psychological processes, conceived as something that happened “inside” the individual organism.5 From his materialistic approach to psychology, Freud could not conceive the very idea of a social fact, as a non-material reality that stems from the organisation of society and imposes constraints, both positive (injunctions) and negative (restraints), on the individuals’ behaviour, experience, and thought. This would have required a sociological approach that was at odds with Freud’s medical background.6 The second characteristic is a noticeable absence of social criticism. Freud, who was politically conservative, eschewed in his writings any questioning of the contemporary society in which he lived (Pines, 1998). Consequently, he focused in his social essays on examples taken from ancient times or anthropological studies of “primitive” peoples.

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Actually, he only treats three contemporary social problems: war (Freud, 1915b, 1933b), which he explains in terms of instinctual conflicts, “ ’civilised’ sexual morality” and its noxious effects (Freud, 1908d), and religion, which he considers, in a renewal of the previous criticisms by the Enlightenment authors, a primitive phase of Humankind, which should be finally overcome (Freud, 1927c, 1930a). Hence, our present attempt to use psychoanalytical concepts in a critical analysis of contemporary society represents a novel development in the Freudian field.7

The individual and the group in the logic of the unconscious One of the most frequent criticisms aimed at those authors who study the social and political dimensions of human experience is that they forsake the enquiry of the unconscious, while focusing instead on the study of “merely conscious” interactions. I believe that such opinion is based on a conceptual error, derived from taking the whole of Freud’s writings as an organised system of interdependent ideas, which may only be accepted or rejected in its entirety. Mitchell and Aron (1999) have pointed out that “ideas tend to come in clusters, and great ideas often burst forth in complex packages” (p. 77). In the decade between 1895 and 1905, Freud created an extremely rich set of concepts that have provided the basis for the later development of psychoanalytic thought. It was only natural for those who came afterwards to take them wholesale, as if they were intrinsically related. Nonetheless, the connection between them may turn out to be merely external, derived from the fact that they emerged at the same time in the course of Freud’s enquiries, instead of being an essential element in their definition. For instance, Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and its characteristic features, such as the primary process, occurred simultaneously with and as consequence of his research on sexual conflicts and the Oedipus complex. This does not necessarily mean that the unconscious should be defined in terms of such contents, or that other aspects of human experience are not a part of its unconscious dimension. Let us see, for instance, the terse and clear definition of psychoanalysis put forward by Freud (1923a) in his “Two encyclopaedia articles”:

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Psycho-Analysis is the name (1) of a procedure for the investigation of mental processes which are almost inaccessible in any other way, (2) of a method (based upon that investigation) for the treatment of neurotic disorders and (3) of a collection of psychological information obtained along those lines, which is gradually being accumulated into a new scientific discipline. (p. 235)

In this, I would point out the sequence of the definition, which places method in first place, therapy in second, and theory at the end. Besides, here the unconscious is defined as a field of enquiry—those “mental processes which are almost inaccessible in any other way”— and not in terms of its contents. This agrees with another definition of psychoanalysis, to be found in “On the history of the psycho-analytic movement” (Freud, 1914d), in which he says, It may thus be said that the theory of psycho-analysis is an attempt to account for two striking and unexpected facts of observation which emerge whenever an attempt is made to trace the symptoms of a neurotic back to their sources in his past life: the facts of transference and of resistance. Any line of investigation which recognizes these two facts and takes them as the starting-point of its work has a right to call itself psychoanalysis, even though it arrives at results other than my own. (p. 16, my italics)

The perspective that emerges from these quotations is clear: psychoanalysis is to be defined by its method and its field of enquiry, and not by its results. This makes it different from a philosophical, ideological, or religious doctrine, and demands that we reject any form of psychoanalytic credo (Home, 1966). And which is the field of enquiry of psychoanalysis? The answer is deceptively simple: the unconscious. But what do we really mean when using this term? “Unconscious” is a terse and quite effective way of referring to Freud’s great discovery: that all human behaviour and experience are intentional and carry a meaning, but that such intentions and meanings are largely unknown and inaccessible to the subject who has these experiences and carries out these acts (Tubert-Oklander, 2004a). The intention and the meaning are inaccessible because the subject makes a permanent effort—which also goes unnoticed to her—to prevent their manifestation. This is what we call “repression”.

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Consequently, whenever we want to enquire about the unconscious, we shall have to apply a method and carry out a work, in order to neutralise the effort of repression and allow the emergence of those intentions and meanings that the subject actively ignores (Freud, 1915e). This work is the task of psychoanalysis. From this perspective, the unconscious appears as a particular dimension of human existence, defined by the fact that it is unknown by the individuals who experience it, and by presenting a resistance to any attempt to unveil it, which has to be overcome by a specific work, made of the confluence of a method and an effort. But nothing in this definition demands that we restrict the field of the unconscious to the boundaries of the individual. On the contrary, there is an unconscious dimension in every human occurrence, independently from the amount of people involved. This is what allowed Freud to initiate the psychoanalytic enquiry of collective phenomena, in the abovementioned writings (Hernández de Tubert & Tubert-Oklander, 2005). On the other hand, the traditional bipersonal psychoanalytic treatment is also a collective phenomenon—what Ferenczi and Rank (1924) call “a mass of two”—so that its unconscious dimension necessarily comprises both members of this elementary group.8 This is the basis for our current attempt to analyse the transference–countertransference field (Baranger M. & Baranger W., 2008, 2009; Little, 1981; Racker, 1960). This complex unconscious interchange between the two parties of the analytic situation is what makes the whole process unpredictable and uncontrollable, since it obeys the laws that rule unconscious mental processes, that is, the primary process (Freud, 1900a, 1915e). But the very same thing may be said of the whole relational and collective existence of human beings: that it always has an unconscious dimension, which unknown to us, out of our control, and only partially apprehensible.9 Hence, unconscious mental processes are not only defined by having been actively repressed, but also by being organised by a peculiar logic, which differs from that of their conscious counterpart. Its main features are: the absence of contradiction and the usual categories of time, space, and causality; condensation, displacement, and the substitution of psychic reality for external reality. They also use a different type of signs: the primary process—unlike the secondary process, which relies on verbal signs—uses iconic signs—that is, images

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derived from the sensory perception of objects—in order to develop what Bion (1962) and Meltzer (1984) called “dream thoughts”. We owe to Ignacio Matte-Blanco (1975, 1988) the widest and deepest available study of the logic of mind. This author pointed out that the primary process is ruled by a symmetrical logic, that allows all relations to be reversible. In the traditional Aristotelian logic of the secondary process, most relations are not reversible: if John is Peter’s father, then Peter is not John’s father. This is asymmetrical logic. In unconscious mentation, on the other hand, all statements are reversible: John and Peter have a father–son relationship, in which they may occupy either pole. This is why it is easy to turn from being a sadist to being a masochist, and vice versa. This reversibility of relations determines the absence of all other characteristics of the secondary process, which only make sense if they are irreversible. This is, for instance, the case with causal relations, but also with the concept of time, which requires an irreversible sequence of successive moments, and that of space, since, if any given place may be substituted by any other, spatial relations become meaningless. Therefore, in dream-thinking a house may emerge from ashes and fire or a mouth be turned into a nipple (Tubert-Oklander, 2006a). But the most unusual characteristic of unconscious thinking is the reversibility of the relationship between a class and any of its members. Hence, an individual is part of a group, but this very group is also a part of him or her, so that each may represent the other, and their mutual relation represents the paradoxical human condition of being always, at one and the same time, individual and collective. This is the basis of the complex phenomenon of symbolism, as well as those curious thinking processes that go under the names of “condensation” and “displacement” (Rycroft, 1956a). Taking into account these characteristics of the primary process, we cannot avoid the conclusion that, at the unconscious level, there is no discrimination between subject and object, individual and group, and that both may be easily identified and interchanged. Consequently, the behaviour and expressions of the individual always have the double function of being a spokesperson for himself, and for the groups he belongs to (Pichon-Rivière, 1971a). But there is more in human beings than the unconscious and the primary process, which represent only a part of human mental function. Consciousness and the secondary process also exist, so that

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human thinking always travels along two different but complementary tracks.10 The result is that human life operates in terms of what Matte-Blanco (1988) calls “bi-logic”. This is the name given to the confluence, alternation, and complementarity of both forms of logic: symmetrical logic and asymmetrical logic. This way of thinking is based, not only on the Freudian discovery, but also on the Kleinian conception of the unconscious phantasy (Isaacs, 1948). This concept corresponds to an unconscious living experience that underlies and is quite different from our everyday conscious experience.11 There is, for instance, a conscious level in which the analyst is the analyst, the patient is the patient, and both are doing together something called “analysis”. But this exists simultaneously with another level of mentation in which things are very different; so, there are moments in which analyst and patient are one, thus forming a continuous and indivisible unit, while there are also others in which they may lose all contact between them and be separated by an infinite space. Similarly, in groups there is a level in which all the members are conscious and aware that this is a group of individuals, who have met in order to do such and such a thing, and who are cooperating in order to carry out this task—Bion’s (1961) “Work Group”—but this coexists with another phantasmal level, in which experience is framed in the strangest terms. This dream-group, which resembles Lewis Carroll’s (1871) other-side-of-the-mirror world, includes, but is not restricted to, what Bion described as the “BasicAssumption Group”. It is also usually, but not necessarily, unconscious. If this is the case, the function of fantasy and dream, ruled by the primary process, cannot be limited to the symbolisation of affective states and instinctual motions, but it would also represent the whole of our experience of reality, both internal and external, albeit it does it in terms of a semiotics that is radically different from that of our usual waking state, ruled by the secondary process. Consciousness and the unconscious, primary and secondary processes, determine two widely different, contrasting, and complementary versions of the world we live in. In this, Matte-Blanco’s contribution goes beyond that of Klein. For him, it is not only the case that we live in two worlds (Meltzer, 1981)— that of consciousness, determined by reality, and that of unconscious phantasy, which expresses instinctual motions—but that our relation

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with reality—all of reality, thus including both the happenings in the external world and those of emotional life—is dealt with through various thinking processes: symmetrical logic, asymmetrical logic, and bilogic. In his own words: Bi-logical structures are most abundant. They are seen in the various ways of conceiving and living all aspects of human life, religion, art, politics, and even science, in the differences between psychoanalysts, and in every other aspect of life. Once one gets used to seeing them, one cannot avoid the surprising conclusion that we live the world as though it were a unique indivisible unit, with no distinction between persons and/or things. On the other hand, we usually think of it in terms of bi-logic and, some few times, in terms of classical logic. (Matte-Blanco, 1988, p. 46, original italics)

This is the source of our complex experience of the world, in which there is a confluence of elements of diverse origins, thus allowing a coexistence of the everyday social construction of the world with the multifarious characters of Wonderland. The result is a much more complex and nuanced view of ourselves, others, our relations with them, and the world we all dwell in, than that which would be obtained if we restricted our cognition to only one of the two thinking processes described by Freud. As Gregory Bateson (1979) points out, a binocular vision always has a depth that monocular vision lacks. Hence, from a bi-logical vantage point, the psychoanalytic bipersonal research of the individual is also bound to clarify the nature of the group and the wider community to which they belong, while the enquiry of groups, institutions, and communities will bring us to a deeper understanding of the individuals who take part in them. Thus psychoanalysis and group analysis are like the two arms of a forceps, which allows a crafty practitioner to aid in the birth of a new, deeper, and wider conception of human existence. We are thus going beyond the individual and the group, to a study of persons and their life together (Hopper & Weinberg, 2011b).

The common matrix of the individual and the group Freud’s clinical work was done always with individual patients. Hence, his extensive enquiries into collective life had to be based on

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published materials and on his deep and painstaking reflections on the experiences of everyday life. However, soon there were some psychoanalysts who tried to apply the analytic method to the treatment of patients in groups, and this generated a wealth of new observations and experiences.12 From the beginning, there were three technical approaches to the group treatments inspired in psychoanalysis. Two of them appeared to be diametrically opposite, although they were quite similar in their attempt to view the group in terms of the individual. The first one applied the theories and techniques of individual psychoanalysis to the treatment of patients, taken as individuals, in a group setting (Slavson, 1964; Wolf & Schwatz, 1962). The second viewed and treated the whole group, taken as if it were an individual, and interpreted the unconscious group phantasy that seemed to be active at the moment (Ezriel, 1950, 1952; Grinberg, Langer, & Rodrigué, 1957). It is quite obvious that psychoanalysts felt at a loss when having to face and deal with a group; they were used to dealing with individual patients, so they looked for them in the group. The North American way was to ignore the group and the group processes and focus on the individual members; the Tavistock way, strongly influenced by Kleinian thought, relied on a rather simplistic concept of the group-as-a-whole, and took the group as a “collective individual” of sorts, that could be analysed just as individual patients were, without any change in theory. To be fair about it, Ezriel (1950, 1952) was aware that the group unconscious phantasy had to be constructed at the beginning of the session, through an unconscious negotiation between the various members of the group, and he always strived to interpret, not only the transference phantasy of the group–individual towards the therapist, but also how did each of the members participate in and relate to this common group phantasy. Nonetheless, his interpretations always had the very same content as those he would have made to an individual patient and were based on the same theory (the baby’s relation with the breast and with the mother’s body, and Oedipal phantasies of the early variety, that usually turned out to be an expression of the group’s jealousy and envy towards his relationship with his secretary, as a mother surrogate). The small group of Argentinian Kleinians (Grinberg, Langer, & Rodrigué, 1957) who developed their own model as a derivative of the one used at the Tavistock, had a much more simplistic scheme, since they completely omitted the

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individual–group relationship, assumed the group phantasy to be automatically present, even before the beginning of the session, and interpreted it in terms such as “Through Mr B. (the individual member who had said something), the group is telling me that . . .” These approaches to analytic group therapy proved to be unsatisfactory, in terms of accounting for the highly complex events that occurred in therapeutic groups, since they oversimplified their interpretation, in order to assimilate it to the well-known dyadic situation. But there were also major limitations in their therapeutic effect. Malan, Balfour, Hood, and Shooter (1976) made a follow-up study of patients who had been in psychoanalytic group psychotherapy with the Tavistock model, and found very little evidence of long-term psychodynamic changes (the patients were evaluated two to fourteen years after the end of their treatment). The majority of patients were highly dissatisfied with their group experiences, and the few who reported improvement tended to be those who had had previous individual psychotherapy. The third approach, which emerged simultaneously with the others, was one that took into account the particular features and processes of the group situation. This implied that, while the therapist maintained a basically analytic attitude towards whatever happened in the sessions, she would also strive to formulate new hypotheses and theories, derived from the experience of being and acting in the group, which were meant to account for them. This is what we call “group analysis”. The term group analysis was first used by Trigant Burrow (1927), albeit for an approach that was more investigative than clinical.13 Our present-day clinical approach to group analysis was born simultaneously in two distant corners of the world: Britain and Argentina; its pioneers were Siegmund Heinrich Foulkes and Enrique PichonRivière. Although, in the English-speaking world, Foulkes is considered to be the only creator of group analysis, this is due to the lack of English translations of the work of Pichon-Rivière.14 Pichon-Rivière started his experiences with therapy and learning groups, which would later lead him to his conception of operative groups, in 1936 (Pichon-Rivière, 1971a; Zito Lema, 1976), whereas Foulkes started his first therapeutic group in Exeter in 1940 (Foulkes & Lewis, 1944). It could, therefore, be argued that Pichon-Rivière was the true pioneer of group analysis, but competence for priority becomes meaningless when we consider that both pioneers

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developed, simultaneously and independently, their experiences, techniques, and theoretical concepts, that were quite similar and complementary. Both Foulkes’s group analysis and Pichon-Rivière’s operative groups covered the whole field of the dynamic approach to groups, both therapeutic and non-therapeutic, and underscored the similarities between the two kinds of groups. For Pichon-Rivière (1971a), all groups meet in order to do something, which he calls their task. The object of group analysis is to help the members to be more efficient in carrying out their common task; hence, the name “operative groups”. For him, a therapeutic group is an operative group whose explicit task is the healing of its members. Foulkes (1948, 1964a), on his part, would rather emphasise that therapeutic groups have no task at all, save that of communicating in terms of a free-floating discussion or conversation, which he considered to be the equivalent of free association: The basic rule of Group Analysis, in so far as the patients’ verbal communications are concerned, is the group counterpart of free association: talk about anything which comes to your mind without selection. It works out in a different way in the Group situation from the individual situation—just as it works out differently in the analytic situation from the procedure of self analysis. Free association is in no way independent of the total situation. (1948, p. 71)

Nonetheless, he also always stressed that one of the main therapeutic processes in group is what he called ego training in action, which he described as follows (Foulkes, 1964a): In group analysis one has to do with an ego in action. Group-analytic therapy could be described essentially as an ego training in action. “Action” here does not mean doing or, literally, acting or role playing; nor is it the equivalent of “acting out” in psycho-analysis. The group provides a stage for actions, reactions and interaction within the therapeutic situation, which are denied to the psycho-analytic patient on the couch. However, the ego to which we refer is the ego in the psychoanalytic sense, the inner ego as a metapsychological concept which is activated and reformed. (p. 82, my italics)

Therefore, both authors underscored the fact that the process of therapy and learning is not limited to the cognitive and emotional areas, but that it should also include the conative dimension, that is, action.

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This novel approach to clinical practice led our authors to formulate new concepts, which might account for the group-analytic experience and, particularly, for the individual–group relationship. Pichon-Rivière (1971a), who had a Kleinian frame of reference, albeit in terms of his most personal interpretation of it, used the concept of the unconscious group phantasy, which he conceived as a dramatic situation or scene, in which some of the group members become momentarily the spokespersons for their shared concerns.15 The relation between the spokesperson and the group would then be equivalent to that which occurs between the hero and the choir in Greek tragedy (Pichon-Rivière, Quiroga, Gandolfo, & Lazzarini, 1969). Consequently, the individual members of the group are always, at one and the same time, spokespersons for themselves—that is, for their life, their history, their conflicts, and their “internal group”—and for the actual group and the social context in which they are placed. This determines that any interpretation should always follow a double course: vertical or diachronic, in terms of the evolution of the individual’s personal life, and horizontal or synchronic, as an expression of the dynamics, organisation, and conflicts that transpire in the group at that specific moment. Foulkes (1957) used the same theatrical metaphor in his paper “Psychodynamic processes in the light of psychoanalysis and group analysis”, in which he wrote that, The group is like a model of the mental apparatus in which its dynamics are personified and dramatized. A process analogous to this may be seen in the theatre where the characters not only represent themselves but also stand proxy for the audience both in their individual and community reactions. (p. 112)

But the main theoretical contribution of this author to the problem of the relationship between individual and collective processes is to be found perhaps in his concepts of the network and the matrix, both of them strongly influenced by Gestalt theory, which developed the implications of the principle that “the whole is different from, more than, and previous to the sum of its parts”.16 In other words, every human situation is a hypercomplex whole, which can only be understood in terms of its own organisation and functioning, and the alleged simpler “parts” which compose it are really an artefact generated by our mind’s (and our operations’) analytic activity.

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Both Pichon-Rivière and Foulkes based their thinking and practice, not only on psychoanalysis, but also on the perspective and concepts of this theory. Pichon-Rivière took it from the work of Kurt Lewin (1951), with his “field theory”. Foulkes, on his part, denied having any Lewinian influence, and remarked that he had been introduced to holistic thinking by his neurologist teacher Kurt Goldstein. In the second edition of Group Psychotherapy: The Psychoanalytic Approach (Foulkes & Anthony, 1965), he even re-wrote the first chapter, in which Anthony had introduced, in the first edition, Lewin’s concept of the field as a major influence on the group-analytic point of view. Then he stated that, even though “at Northfield we found that our own group-analytic views married well with concepts used in ‘field theory’, and that the latter helped us in our orientation” (p. 20), this was due to their “common background as regards Gestalt psychology”, which, in his case, had been received from Kurt Goldstein (1940).17 Goldstein considered that the nervous system was better understood as a complex entity that reacts always as a whole, and not as the sum of a large number of individual neurons. From this point of view, the net of interconnections is the nervous system and the individual neurons are its nodal points, that is, the points in which various pathways intercross. Its disturbances or diseases are then conceived as the expression of a derangement of the network, that also includes the patient’s whole personality and her relations with the physical, psychological, and social environment. Foulkes took this idea from Goldstein and applied it to groups. For him, a group is conceived as a network of multifarious relations and communications, in which the individuals represent its nodal points (Foulkes, 1975a). This most subtle and complex tissue of communications, in which all human beings are embedded, is what he called the matrix. The term “matrix” has multiple connotations, which turn it into a most adequate metaphor for human life in relationship. The word comes from mater, which is “mother” in Latin, hence its many meanings in terms of “uterus”, “origin”, “container”, the intercellular substance that surrounds and holds the cells, a mould used for shaping or imprinting, and a patterned disposition of symbols according to rules that determine the contents of its empty spaces—like a spreadsheet or Mendeléyev’s Table of the Elements. All these connotations

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help us to clarify the concept. The group matrix is defined as “the hypothetical web of communication and relationship in a given group. It is the common shared ground which ultimately determines the meaning and significance of all events and upon which all communications and interpretations, verbal and non verbal, rest” (Foulkes, 1964b, p. 292). But the individual personality is also a matrix, in which all its parts are mutually related and determined by its rules of organisation, and the whole is also determined by the wider matrixes—family, institutional, communitarian, social, national, international. This is what makes therapy possible, because changes in certain areas of the matrix—dyad, group, family, institution—are simultaneous and concordant with changes in the individual personalities. From this perspective, the individual personality is determined, contained, and traversed by a myriad threads or pathways of the relational web—communications, relationships, traditions, values, language, assumptions—that become a part of it, at the deepest layer of the unconscious (Tubert-Oklander, 1995; Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004). If we accept this point of view, we may conceive psychoanalysis as the instrument for the enquiry and exploration of the unconscious dimension of the matrix of human life, whether we focus on the organisation and functioning of the individual matrix of one person, as it manifests itself in the bipersonal matrix of the treatment (this would be psycho-analysis), of the group matrix and those of the individuals that participate in it (group-analysis), or the social and institutional matrixes and those of the groups and individuals that are embedded in them (socio-analysis). But the common factor in all these approaches is analysis, understood as the conjunction of the analytic attitude, the psychoanalytic theory of conscious and unconscious, individual and collective mental processes, and an interpretative practice, which constitutes a psychoanalytic hermeneutics (Tubert-Oklander & Beuchot Puente, 2008). Obviously, the fact that our field of enquiry comprises two people, a group—small, median, or large—or the intergroup space of institutions and society, determines more than a few specifics, but our attitude, our listening, our thinking, and our way of intervening is so similar in all of these instances, as to make us think that we are really talking about one and the same practice, as adapted to the peculiarities and demands of the various fields.

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From psychoanalysis to socio-analysis through group-analysis The widening of the field of psychoanalysis towards the enquiry of the social dimension of human existence is not limited to theory, but it also implies an expansion of our ability to conduct therapeutic interventions in diverse human situations. In this, I am using an expanded concept of analytic therapy, which refers to any intervention by an analyst that tends to decrease inhibitions, compulsive repetitions, and unnecessary emotional suffering, for a certain individual or group. I shall describe four types of such interventions: a) the enquiry and interpretation of the social dimension in the clinical situation, with both individuals and groups; b) technical interventions in natural groups; c) spontaneous analytic interventions in natural groups, and d) conveying the analytic view of social issues to individuals, groups, institutions, and the wider community.

Clinical enquiry and interpretation From the beginning of psychoanalysis, we have seen that any development in technique and practice generates new theoretical concepts, and that any development in theory induces a renewal of technique and new clinical experiences. It was therefore inevitable that the emergence of group analysis should determine an amplification of our theory, in order to include the interpersonal and transpersonal dimensions. But it was also to be expected that these novel theoretical developments would expand our clinical understanding and action towards areas that had previously remained unexplored. Having included the social, cultural, and political dimensions in the field of the analytic enquiry of the unconscious, we analysts can no longer ignore them whenever we pretend to understand and interpret our patients’ manifold expressions. So, for instance, when analysing the transference–countertransference phenomena that emerge during the treatment of a male patient with a female analyst, she should not only do it in terms of the history of relational experiences he had in his original family, the projection of the diverse rejected aspects of his personality, or the dynamics of the therapist’s personality, but she should also ask herself to what extent the relational pattern that is being actualised in the analytic situation may stem from the conventional social definitions of gender roles and relations in the culture to which they both

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belong. In other words, is the patient’s behaviour perhaps an expression of the internalised social norm that rules how a man should relate with a woman? And could it be that the analyst’s countertransference reactions are being unconsciously determined by this internalised pattern, which is unavoidably also a part of herself? It could be argued that the analyst should have made such unconscious determinants conscious, during her training analysis, so that they would no longer disturb her neutral stance, but it is a fact that such social and cultural factors are not usually interpreted or discussed in classical analyses (Hernández-Tubert, 2006). Nonetheless I am suggesting that they should and that their clarification through the analytic dialogue represents a continuation of the analyst’s own analysis. This sort of analytic work is much more accessible in group analysis, in which we may see clearly the manifestation of relational social patterns, from the interaction between group members, while in classical psychoanalysis these may only be expressed through the bipersonal relationship that develops between the analyst and the analysand. Since our interpretative tradition demands that we strive to understand the transference phenomenon in terms of the patient’s intrapsychic processes, without including in the analysis the contribution of the analyst’s personality and behaviour, nor making explicit reference to the social context, the orthodox psychoanalytic device is quite inadequate for the study of inter- and trans-personal phenomena (but see Chapters Six and Seven for a different clinical approach that includes them in my bipersonal practice). Nevertheless, when the analyst includes in her theoretical and technical armamentarium the systematic consideration of such matters as one of the possible contexts for interpretation, it is feasible to reveal them under the penetrating light of the analytic look, and share this knowledge with the patient. On the other hand, when either psychoanalysts or group analysts narrow their vision as a result of strictly adhering to a theory derived from the study of intrapersonal processes, they may also blind themselves even to the impact of massive social phenomena, which they do not explore or interpret in their analyses, so that patients tend to omit any explicit reference to them. Earl Hopper (1996) offers us a compelling example of how, from seven or eight therapeutic groups that met at the same time in the same premises, in only one of them there was an analysis of the commotion suffered by the patients as a

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consequence of a traumatic event they had witnessed on their way to their session. There had been a terrorist bombing in Regent’s Park, where one of the Queen’s military bands (the Royal Green Jackets) was playing, less than a thousand yards from the clinic where the groups met; some of the patients had heard the explosion, others had seen human limbs on the grass, dead bodies, fire engines, and police cars, and yet, in every group save one, the discussion centred on the anxieties about the impending holidays. The group whose members could openly express, in response to the analyst’s exploration of a tense and uneasy silence, their anxiety reactions towards and fantasies about this “external” event, was that led by Hopper, who has had a lifelong interest in the social and political dimensions of the unconscious. One of his colleagues even expressed his satisfaction in that the members of his group “were able to ‘stay with their despairing feelings’ about the summer break, and that they had not needed to escape into a discussion of ‘distant’ events” (p. 149)! In this matter, as in so many others, it was Freud who made the first few steps for its exploration, when he pointed out the importance of identifications in the transmission of cultural values. This he found out when he tackled the problem of why the child’s superego frequently turns out to be much more rigid and cruel that his real father. His answer was that “a child’s super-ego is in fact constructed not on the model of its parents but of its parents’ super-ego; the contents which fill it are the same and it becomes the vehicle of tradition and of all the time-resisting judgements of value which have propagated themselves in this manner from generation to generation” (Freud, 1933a, Lecture 31—The dissection of the psychical personality, p. 67). In other words, parents, teachers, and other figures of authority behave in quite a different way when they are responding to the social mandate to act as agents for the reproduction of the dominant ideology, than when they are acting for themselves. Thus, identification becomes the efficient path for the transmission of ideology, as pointed out by the Mexican psychoanalytic pioneer José Remus Araico (1988), who remarked that identifications fulfil a similar function in cultural inheritance as genes do in biology. It is by means of identifications that the individual internalises the values and beliefs of the previous generations, which he does in a non-critical way, accompanied by a feeling of unquestionable certainty. Such investment by social roles is, of course, a much more general phenomenon, which is very difficult

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to observe in bipersonal psychoanalysis, while the group-analytic situation throws it into a sharp relief, with all its nuances. This phenomenon of “possession by a social role” has been described in psychoanalysis in terms of identification with an internal object, but it may perhaps be more useful to interpret it as the activation of an internalised relational pattern by a specific context. We may thus attain a better understanding of the striking differences to be found in the patients’ feelings and behaviours when being in diverse social contexts. In sum, the widening of the focus of our analytic observation allows us to gain access to a richer and more nuanced interpretation of the well-known transference–countertransference phenomena that occur in our clinical practice.

Technical interventions in natural groups This is the first form of practice we think of when we consider the use of psychoanalysis as a conceptual and technical framework for intervening in collective situations, since it appears to be a natural extension of our daily clinical practice. As mental health professionals, we are used to having someone come to us, requiring our help and intervention in order to change some undesirable situation that has become a problem for her. In this case, the request does not come from an individual, even though it may be conveyed by one, but from a group, a family, an institution, or a community. We then talk about “natural groups” because, when dealing with them and unlike what happens with therapeutic groups and some learning groups, the analyst cannot select the members and determine the composition of the group, since he is dealing with a pre-existing group, in which the relations between its members are already established and continue existing and evolving in the interval between sessions and after the analytic intervention has been done. This approach was first tried with family groups, but it was soon extended to include learning groups, work teams, institutions, and communities. This is the field of Pichon-Rivière’s (1971a) operative groups, Foulkes’s (1975a) non-therapeutic group analysis, and José Bleger’s (1971a) operative psychoanalysis. The latter points out that this kind of work “has the advantage, over applied psychoanalysis [which only interprets, from the psychoanalytic perspective, various

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pre-established texts], that it is possible to use this understanding by observing its effects” (p. 123, translated for this edition, original italics). In other words, what he called “operative psychoanalysis” is not merely a psychoanalytically oriented corrective intervention, but a true psychoanalytic enquiry of human experience and behaviour in groups, institutions, and communities. There is, however, a caveat here. Natural groups are not the same as the kind of groups that we assemble in order to do group analysis—whether small, median, or large. In the latter, there is a very simple structure and rules, which constitute the analytic frame, and any other organisation that emerges we can see in statu nascendi. In natural groups, there is a whole set of previous relationships, norms, and interests—that is, a group culture—which is previous to, simultaneous with, and subsistent after our technical intervention. Besides, the group members have a vested interest in either the maintenance of the status quo or in fostering a particular evolution in the group’s affairs, which is not necessarily unconscious. This means that there is a political side to the group’s events, conflicts, and dynamics. The result is that natural groups, such as families and organisations, are not really groups, in terms of our regular group-analytic conception of them (Hopper & Weinberg, 2011a; Hopper & Weyman, 1975), since their functioning is not determined only by unconscious dynamic processes, but also by conscious calculation and structural social factors. This requires that the group conductor be cognisant, not only of psychoanalytic and group-analytic insights and theories, but also of sociological and socio-political facts and theories. If these are taken into account and used in our interventions, the analytical purview has a lot to offer, which cannot be acquired from any other source.

Spontaneous analytic interventions in natural groups This is a kind of intervention that has not been described in psychoanalytic and group-analytic literature, since it is a non-professional use of the analyst’s knowledge and abilities. Our discipline is much more than a profession that might be exercised during working hours and left aside in other moments of one’s life. On the contrary, it runs deep into the analyst’s personality, determining a way of perceiving, feeling, experiencing, thinking, understanding, and acting in human affairs. Hence, an analyst is always precisely that, even when acting

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as a member of the many natural groups she belongs to in everyday life. This allows her to use and communicate an understanding of what happens there, even when not invested with a special role of conductor, analyst, or therapist. The technique of this way of using psychoanalysis and group analysis is obviously different from that of formal professional interventions. We should bear in mind that here the analyst is participating as an ordinary member of the group, and may only communicate her interpretations of the group’s dynamics in terms of personal experiences and reflections. Besides, such comments can only be very sparse, lest she be perceived by the other group members as someone who usurps a leading role that has not been conferred by the group. In order to illustrate this kind of intervention, I shall give a brief example of how social patterns—in this case, power relationships— are expressed in a group, and how it is possible to intervene and change the situation by means of an analytic activity, even without the benefit of a traditional group-analytic frame. Some time ago, two experienced psychoanalysts and group analysts participated in an interdisciplinary one-day work meeting on the subject of ethics. Each participant was to read a paper about this and then there would be an allotted time for discussing it. The highlight of the meeting would be the participation of a renowned writer, one of the country’s leading intellectuals, who was a widely respected public figure. However, this man did not attend the morning activities and announced at the last moment that there would be a change in the time of his arrival, which forced the organisers to modify the schedule and postpone the lunch break, so that he might be able to be with them during the meal. The unavoidable delay that is usual in this kind of activity—at least in Mexico—did not allow a proper discussion of the morning’s two last papers, so it was decided that the afternoon meeting would begin with this pending discussion. The meal was uneventful, but the distinguished guest did not make his appearance, generating an expectant mood in the group, until he arrived, just in time for coffee. When the afternoon session began, the chairperson rushed to present the well-known guest, and he immediately began to read his contribution. Although this was very interesting, the group was ill at ease, since this procedure implied a lack of consideration, both for the colleagues whose papers had not been discussed and for the whole

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group. But it is not at all usual, in our social environment, to question such behaviour by people with power and prestige. As this went on, one of the above-mentioned analysts was evaluating the situation. On the one hand, she felt angry at this instance of abuse of authority by both the guest and the chairperson, which resembled so many of the cases that had been discussed during the morning. On the other, she realised that the group members were feeling awed and inhibited by this famous and admired character. Finally, she decided to open the matter and, when the discussion of the lecture began, she spoke of the distress she was feeling at what appeared as an abuse, and how this reproduced the authoritarian social patterns that the speaker had just denounced. The lecturer was embarrassed. Used, as he was, to identify himself with the most progressive sectors of society, it seemed preposterous and unfair to him to be compared with those he himself condemned. Then the second group analyst intervened, pointing out that what had just happened was an expression of a social pattern of relationship with authority, which was a part of all of them. Hence, they had all contributed to its present recreation: he, with the unquestioned assumption that the group members should necessarily feel honoured by his presence and postpone every other interest in order to listen to him, and the rest by unconsciously behaving as plebeians in the presence of a king. At this time, there was a new evolution in the group. Other group members, starting with a woman whose paper had not been discussed, conveyed their view of what had been happening. The tone was respectful but firm, and this allowed a shared reflection on how everyone was part of those social phenomena that were being criticised—such as authoritarianism, abuse, and corruption. The visitor, after his initial disconcertion, listened silently, and then made some comments. He had obviously understood well what had been put forward and discussed. From that moment on, it was possible to recover the mood and the level of group work that had been attained during the morning, and his contribution was enthusiastically discussed. This is a case in which a spontaneous group-analytic intervention allowed the group to ventilate and work-through a latent conflict situation, and thus recover its productive activity. But this required, not only making explicit an implicit conflict, but also analysing the way in

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which it reflected a relational pattern that was prevalent in the social matrix in which all the participants and the group itself were embedded. This kind of intervention seems quite simple and is not usually perceived by the group members as a professional manoeuvre, but it requires knowledge, abilities, and experience. The above-mentioned group included psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, a sociologist, a lawyer, a pedagogist, a political scientist, and the two group analysts who intervened.18 It is clear that the ability to identify and change the situation required both psychoanalytic and group-analytic knowledge and skills. Even though group analysis may be seen as a natural expansion of the analytic enquiry that takes human groups as its subject, it requires the addition of the anthropological, sociological, and socio-political perspectives, in order to comprehend the full scope of collective phenomena.

The transmission of the psychoanalytic and group-analytic perspectives and knowledge Another way in which analysts may intervene in social affairs is by presenting and sharing with the wider community the analytic point of view about them. This includes lectures, newspaper articles, diffusion activities, wireless and television appearances, consultancies to public officers and social leaders, and even our daily conversations with people who know nothing about psychoanalysis or group analysis. This does not mean that we act as the sole owners of a privileged knowledge that is to give the final answers to the problems of society—that is, that we identify ourselves and our discipline with Lacan’s (1973) sujet supposé savoir (the supposed subject of knowledge). Hubris is never a good idea. What we have to do is to present the perspectives and the findings of a professional community—our community—which may turn out to be a valuable addition and a complement to others that are better known and accepted in our contemporary world. Indeed, the analytic perspective allows us to restore the value of human life and emotional needs, which have been largely minimised, overlooked, and denied by the present culture, mainly focused on rationality, science, and pragmatism. For instance, the otherwise wellfounded criticisms of neo-liberal globalisation are usually based on economic, political, juridical, and philosophical criteria, but they

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rarely take into account the noxious impact this social tendency has on the mental and emotional life of human beings. In this we should point out that an adult has to face the unthinkable vastness of the social system, on which he depends for functioning and survival, but cannot in any way control or fully comprehend, in terms that resemble the baby’s dependence on its mother (Bion, 1952). And just as her lack of empathic understanding and suitable care for her baby generates in the latter the emergence of hopelessness and depression (Ferenczi, 1929; Kohut, 1984), we adult men and women react in the same way when the authorities and the rest of the community turn a blind eye to our vital needs and sufferings, or even generate them. Reyna Hernández de Tubert (2006; Hernández-Tubert, 2011a) has framed this hypothesis in the following terms: Whenever society and its institutions fail to act as a container for individuals and groups, this generates a trauma, which can be compared with the baby’s experience of a failure in mothering. Such failures can be classified in several categories: 1) when the social system fails to contain, nurture, care for, and protect the individuals, as in the case of the lack of assistance and compassion towards the victims of poverty, disease, natural catastrophe, social turmoil, economic crisis, violence, or war; 2) when there is a blatant attack, on the part of the authorities or privileged social groups, on minorities, or even on the bulk of the population, as in the case of social repression, war—both internal and external—racism, genocide, or persecution; and 3) when there is a perversion of the social system, which feigns to uphold current social values and laws, while actually breaking them, as in the case of corruption, chicanery, and mendacity by the authorities. (HernándezTubert, 2011a, p. 31)

The present general situation of meaninglessness, despair, violence, impulsiveness, greed, and crude sensuality that can be found in a majority of the population, particularly among the young, may be interpreted as a response to the fact that, in the logic of the present social system, institutions are forsaking their responsibility for their welfare and the economy is being handled in such a way that a large and increasing part of the population has become something to be dispensed with (Hernández-Tubert, 2007, 2011a; Tubert-Oklander, 2010a). Here we analysts have much to say about the emotional

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consequences of this kind of social relationship. And the fact that we commit ourselves to do so, over and over again, may make a difference, however small, in the dire situation that we are all facing nowadays (more on this in Chapter Eight). There may be, however, an emerging change in the dismal picture I have just portrayed. Since the beginning of 2012 the young, all over the world, have been showing a reborn feeling of hope and social responsibility that has sent them to the streets, in many demonstrations, marches, and occupations of public spaces, in rebellion against the many instances of social and political unfairness and abuse. Such spontaneous change is akin to what might be expected from group-analytic interventions at all levels. Pat de Maré (de Maré, Piper, & Thompson, 1991) and Earl Hopper (2000) have discussed such evolution, in group analysis and especially in large groups, in terms of what they call “citizenship”. According to Hopper, a citizen, in this sense, is the equivalent of what Erich Fromm (1958) called the “revolutionary character”, defined as a mature, reflective, critical, and responsible member of the group. But this is not only a question of individual dynamics, but also of the political organisation and functioning of the group. As Hopper (2000) puts it: [The] “revolutionary character”, as Fromm uses the term, and “maturity”, include the development of the willingness and ability to take the roles associated with the status of “citizen”. Inevitably, this will also be a group phenomenon in that people cannot take such roles if they have not ensured that citizenship is available, which is a political process. The willingness and ability to take the roles of citizen and to ensure that such roles exist within a democratic society can be facilitated through what Foulkes (1964[a]) termed “ego training in action”. (p. 32)

Such facilitation is fostered, in a group, by the conductor’s contribution and the members’ active response to it. In society at large, the psychoanalytic and group-analytic communities may, if they are ready and willing to do so, contribute to such development by sharing with the community what our perspective, experience, and professional knowledge might offer for the clarification, thinking-through, and solving of its problems.

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Conclusions The widening of the theoretical and clinical scope of psychoanalysis, towards the inclusion of the social, cultural, and political dimensions of human existence, implies an enrichment of our understanding of human phenomena and an increase in our possibility to intervene in order to modify them. In the past, this has been conceived as a separate discipline—that of group analysis—but now we may well consider the latter as a natural extension of psychoanalysis (TubertOklander, 2000a), or perhaps even, as Malcolm Pines suggested, as the natural evolution of psychoanalysis, as it strives to fulfil its destiny (Tubert-Oklander & Hernández-Tubert, 2011). In any case, with the development of several schools of psychoanalytic theory and practice that focus on the relational nature of the human being—such as the Independent tradition of Object Relations Theory, Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, Self Psychology, and Relational and Intersubjective Psychoanalysis—the distance and the differentiation between psychoanalysis and group analysis has become much more diffuse. Even though these two disciplines require different training schemes and there has not yet been an attempt to integrate them, they are clearly complementary, and we may fairly say, not only that a group analyst who is also a psychoanalyst is in a better position to practice in the group setting than one who is not, but also that a psychoanalyst who is also a group analyst has many more resources for his or her practice in the bipersonal situation than would otherwise be the case. Such evolution brings about an increase in our possibilities to interpret in the traditional clinical situation—both individual and collective—and to develop other types of intervention with families, work groups, institutions, and communities. On top of this, there is still the social impact that the diffusion of psychoanalytic and groupanalytic knowledge may have on the many problems that are being faced by the larger community. Nonetheless, there are difficulties for the task of integrating these two disciplines, which stem from their different theoretical strategies. Freud introduced the term “metapsychology” (devised on the model of the word “metaphysics”) to refer to a theoretical construction aimed at describing and explaining what lies behind or under all psychology (see Chapter Two). Psychology would be a set of merely apparent phenomena, while metapsychology would expose their

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underlying material cause, which Freud sought in biology. That this was his intention from the very beginning is clearly expressed in his letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess of March 10, 1898, in which he writes (Masson, 1985d): It seems to me that the theory of wish fulfillment has brought only the psychological solution and not the biological—or, rather, metapsychical—one. (I am going to ask you seriously, by the way, whether I may use the name metapsychology for my psychology that leads behind consciousness.) Biologically, dream life seems to me to derive entirely from the residues of the prehistoric period of life (between the ages of one and three)—the same period which is the source of the unconscious and alone contains the etiology of all the psychoneuroses, the period normally characterized by an amnesia analogous to hysterical amnesia. (pp. 301–302)

Two things are quite clear in this fragment: first, that metapsychology does not only go beyond the psychology of consciousness, but that it is a biological psychology, or even something undistinguishable from biology. Then, that unlike psychology, which deals with intentions, as he had learnt from his philosophy teacher Franz Brentano, it aims to determine aetiology, the material causes of the observed phenomena (Tubert-Oklander, 2008a). This was linked to his ardent wish that psychoanalysis become a positivistic natural science, the only kind of knowledge he admitted as valid, which led him to predict that “all our provisional ideas in psychology will presumably some day be based on an organic substructure” (Freud, 1914c, p. 78). From such perspective, mind was inescapably linked to the functioning of the human organism, and hence to the inner workings of the individual, the product of a “mental apparatus” that resembled the biological machine conceived by physiologists. Consequently, group, social, and institutional phenomena could never be “real”, but only an epiphenomenon of the activity of many individuals. Nonetheless, this view, which he developed in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (Freud, 1921c), was in sharp contrast, as we have already seen, with his conception of a “collective mind”, put forward in Totem and Taboo (1912–1913) and further developed in Moses and Monotheism (1939a). Such inconsistency left us with quite a few difficulties, since the orthodox view of psychoanalytic theory stuck to the individualist understanding of human existence, disregarding and

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decrying as “un-analytic” or “anti-analytic” any attempt to take into account the existence of social facts and their impact on individual psychology. Foulkes, on the other hand came from another background (Pines, 1996), one that included Gestalt Psychology, which he received from Kurt Goldstein (1940) and the thinking of the Frankfurt sociologists (Rothe, 1989; Winship, 2003). Although he also used biology as a point of reference, his was Goldstein’s dynamic biology and not the physicalist biology that Freud inherited from his teachers (Foulkes, 1934). This gave group-analytic theory a completely different flavour from Freud’s metapsychology and the orthodox interpretation of psychoanalytic theory. However, Foulkes was a staunch Freudian, who would not part from his transference allegiance to the founder of psychoanalysis. So, he adhered to the traditional Freudian theory of the individual mind, at the same time as he was developing a new frame for the study of interpersonal and transpersonal processes, without allowing these two theories to enter into a conflictive contact. This is, of course, splitting, which is by no means unusual among those innovators in psychoanalytic theory that need to remain within a tradition that their own discoveries and creations are in fact destroying, or at least transforming radically (see Chapter Four). This also happened to Freud, who always strove to stick to a positivistic epistemology that his own discoveries were demolishing (Tubert-Oklander, 2000b). However, such defensive manoeuvres are never innocuous. In Foulkes’ case, this most probably caused, as Juan Campos Avillar (1981) suggests, his first coronary episode when he finished writing his first book, Introduction to Group Analytic Psychotherapy (Foulkes, 1948). He himself attributed it to “the intense personal involvement on [his] part with which it was written” (Foulkes, 1969, p. 204)—he wrote it in three weeks, working day and night, and smoking incessantly. But one may also speculate that the deep conflict between his allegiance to Freudian psychoanalysis and his peer group in the British Psychoanalytic Society, on the one hand, and the creation of this text, which he described in the above-quoted paper as “an experience that changes one’s outlook”, generated both his compulsive behaviour during his writing and the illness that ensued. Campos Avillar also thinks that this very conflict was the reason why he could never realise his project of writing a book on the theory of group analysis.

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Earl Hopper (2012) has suggested that the fact that Foulkes was unable to mourn the loss of his mother tongue, his position in Frankfurt, and his original involvement in Freudian psychoanalysis, prevented his grasping the full importance and implications of the object relations theory that was being developed in Britain, and which was much more compatible with group analysis than Freudian metapsychology. Be that as it may, Foulkes decided to let sleeping dogs lie and focus on the study of dynamic group processes in small groups, leaving to every group-analytic psychotherapist the freedom to apply her or his previously acquired psychodynamic and psychopathological knowledge and skills to the understanding of the individual members, their suffering, and their healing. This had a positive side, as it allowed psychotherapists coming from diverse traditions—Freudian, Kleinian, Jungian, Independent, Existential—to learn and train in group analysis, without having to relinquish their previous trainings. But it also left us without a unitary theory to account for the confluence of individual, group, and social processes in our groups. What we clearly need now is a new metapsychology, to be shared by psychoanalysis and group analysis. This should especially take into account that contemporary trend of thought and practice that is known as “Relational Psychoanalysis”, which blends the contributions of Object Relations Theory, Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, Self Psychology, Intersubjective Psychoanalysis, and some ideas and perspectives of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Jungian analytical psychology (Aron, 1996). This particular approach to psychoanalytic theory and practice is consistent with that of group analysis, but unfortunately most relational analysts are unfamiliar with group analysis and, conversely, most group analysts are not cognisant of the development of relational analysis. This is so, in spite of the fact that the bipersonal “relational matrix” that relational analysts talk about may be seen as a special case of Foulkes’s matrix, and that the effect of relations on the individual structure and dynamics, as studied by relational analysis, may be very relevant to the theory and practice of group analysis. The next chapter is an attempt to contribute to the development of such metapsychology.

Notes 1.

Throughout this book, I have capitalised the names of the various schools I refer to—such as Psychoanalysis, Object Relations Theory, Group

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3.

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Analysis, or Self Psychology—whenever I take them as the proper name of a school, rather than as the common name of a practice or trend. In this quotation “intrapsychic” really means “mental”, thus suggesting that mental processes are not restricted to the physical limits of the organism. Personally, I prefer to speak of intra-, inter-, and trans-personal mental processes as the various dimensions of mind. In any case, this implies disengaging the concept of mind from that of the brain or the organism, thus suggesting something akin to Gregory Bateson’s (1972) “ecology of ideas”. Freud’s original traumatic theory of neurosis as a consequence of “seduction” (which was really a theory of the pathogenic effect of the sexual abuse of children by their adult care-takers) was a linear causal deterministic theory: the experience of “seduction” was a necessary and sufficient cause of neurosis. So, he reasoned, if he himself and his siblings displayed neurotic symptoms, this was an unquestionable evidence of the existence of such an abuse in their family. In his letter to Fliess of February 8, 1897, written three and a half months after his father’s death (October 23, 1896), he wrote, “Unfortunately, my own father was one of these perverts and is responsible for the hysteria of my brother (all of whose symptoms are identifications) and those of several younger sisters. The frequency of this circumstance often makes me wonder” (Masson, 1985a, pp. 230–231). In his letter of September 21, 1897, he confessed to his friend “the great secret that has been slowly dawning on me in the last few months. I no longer believe in my neurotica [theory of the neuroses]” (Masson, 1985b, p. 264). He had several reasons for such a radical theoretical turn, but the most interesting one for our present purposes was that, the surprise that in all cases, the father, not excluding my own, had to be accused of being perverse—the realization of the unexpected frequency of hysteria, with precisely the same conditions prevailing in each, whereas surely such widespread perversions against children are not very probable. The [incidence] of perversion would have to be immeasurably more frequent than the [resulting] hysteria because the illness, after all, occurs only where there has been an accumulation of events and there is a contributory factor that weakens the defense. (p. 264) This is not a very good argument, as nowadays we know well that such perverse acts are much more frequent than he and his contemporaries were willing to acknowledge, and it is clearly related to an attempt to solve an inner conflict with his deceased father. But for him it was

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enough, and the traumatic theory was replaced by the theory of instinctual drives. Twelve days later, on October 3, he wrote, “I can only indicate that the old man plays no active part in my case, but that no doubt I drew an inference by analogy from myself onto him” (p. 268). So, the deed was done and all those ugly thoughts had been readily disposed of. Alea jacta est! 5. This is true inasmuch as it refers to Durkheim’s methodological work, since Freud had read, and quoted in Totem and Taboo (Freud, 1912–1913), the latter’s writings on totemism, religion, the incest prohibition, and marriage organisation in Australian societies. 6. Even though relational psychoanalysis has transcended Freud’s organismic approach to the study of the personality and seriously considered this kind of facts at the bipersonal and interpersonal level, they still leave out the analytic study of transpersonal processes. Even though some relational writers have paid a special attention to social factors, they still view them in terms of their impact on individual personalities and personal relations, and not as a reality in themselves. 7. Although there were some previous attempts to tackle this task, as Wilhelm Reich’s (1933) The Mass Psychology of Fascism, they were mainly aimed at applying psychoanalytic theory to society, rather than making an analytic inquiry of it, whose results might induce changes in theory. Besides, they remained isolated and largely ignored by the psychoanalytic community. 8. John Rickman (1951) described the import of the extension of a social scientist’s field of observation, in terms of the number of people involved. Thus he spoke of one-person, two-person, three-person, and multiperson psychologies, which necessarily generate different observations, conclusions, and theories. 9. This means that there has been a conceptual development since Freud first made the distinction between primary and secondary processes. These concepts were originally conceived as intra-personal—meaning “intra-organismic”—but I am taking them one step further in this argument, in order to refer to inter-personal and trans-personal processes, thus removing the study of mind from the limitations imposed by relating them to brain function. 10. It was James Grotstein (1981) who coined the term “double track” to refer to this duality of human experience and thinking, which allows the coexistence of primeval fusion and subject-object differentiation. 11. In Kleinian theory, the unconscious phantasy is the primal content of all mental functioning, and it is an expression of instinctual drives. That is why they insist in using the non-standard spelling with a “ph”, in order

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to differentiate it from ordinary fantasies, either conscious or secondarily repressed. Nonetheless, I must make it clear that my own use of the concept differs significantly from Klein’s, since it is not related to instinctual motions within a one-body psychology, but to the whole of the unconscious experience of self, others, and the “external world” (interpersonal and collective relations, and all the social, economic, and ecological environment). Consequently, I shall use the ordinary spelling “fantasy”, when using it in either a more general psychological sense or to other psychoanalytic uses of the term, unless I am specifically referring to the Kleinian concept or quoting a Kleinian author. 12. It is interesting to point out that Durkheim’s (1895) construction of the bases of a scientific sociology was as far removed from direct observation in concrete social settings as Freud’s speculations on society. He was trying to turn sociology into a positivistic science, and this meant extracting the more general traits and patterns of social life from the anecdotal features of case studies, which should then be cancelled out through the use of statistics. But psychoanalysis, and more specifically group analysis, have opened a window that allows us to observe, experience, and think-through the manifestations of social facts through individuals, relations, and groups, by participating and enquiring together with them our common experiences. 13. Burrow was also the first to use the term “social unconscious”, long before Erich Fromm and Norbert Elias (Hopper, 2013). However, he used it to refer to the universal characteristics of our species and not to the internalisation the cultural, social, and political order. Hence, his concept was nearer to Jung’s “collective unconscious” than to what we nowadays mean by “social unconscious” (Hopper & Weinberg, 2011a). He believed that there was a primary groupishness derived from the general biological characteristics of our species (hence the name “phyllo-analysis” that he later used for his approach), which entered into conflict with the “pseudo-groups” circumstantially created by social conditions, and that this accounted for the neurotic traits present in every one of us, and not only in patients. He asserted that trying to study the individual in isolation from his group was akin to tearing away the petals from a flower in order to study them, thus losing any possible understanding of the whole. (A new book on Burrow, edited by Edi Gatti Pertegato and Giorgio Orghe Pertegato (2013) appeared too late for me to revise it for this book. This collection of writings by Burrow, with an extensive introductory essay by the editors, will surely contribute to the revival of this unfairly long-forgotten pioneer.)

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14. This has been partly compensated by the publication of our book Operative Groups: The Latin-American Approach to Group Analysis (TubertOklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004), which introduces this author’s ideas on groups and their use in clinical practice. On the other hand, in the French-speaking world Pichon-Rivière’s (2004a,b) writings are finally available, thanks to the efforts of René Kaës. 15. It is clear that Pichon-Rivière’s use of the term “phantasy” is quite different from that of Klein and her followers, but I have kept their spelling with a “ph” because he was part of a Kleinian subculture and believed that he was using Klein’s concept, when this was actually a (mis)translation of it, when placed in the context of his own, quite different, conception of the human being. 16. Durkheim (1895) had already elaborated upon this idea, arguing that the difference between a society and its members, a complex organism and cells, or living and inorganic matter, depends on the kind of association of the simpler elements, and not on their intrinsic properties. 17. Nonetheless, Foulkes had a characterological trait that made him reticent in acknowledging the contributions of other thinkers. Such was the case, not only of Lewin, but also of Trigant Burrow and Norbert Elias, who had an important influence on him (Hopper, 2013). 18. These were Reyna Hernández-Tubert and myself. This previously unpublished episode has been already presented in a congress paper (Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 1995).

CHAPTER TWO

The syncretic paradigm: the metapsychology of individuals and groups

Introduction to Chapter Two lthough several parts of this chapter have been either read or published in previous papers, the present version is widely enlarged and includes completely new material. It is, therefore, a new presentation, especially written for this book, which summarises an important development in my own theoretical thought that has been growing by successive stages throughout my career. I have been interested in the concept of a primordial undifferentiated phase of experience and relating, ever since I first read Bleger’s contributions, in the early seventies. It made sense for me, and it seemed to account both for the deep connection that developed in groups and for some of the strange experiences we have in the analytic room, whether as analysts or as analysands. It also helped in the understanding of altered states of consciousness and mystical experiences. I came back to this problem repeatedly over the years, and approached it in several theoretical and clinical papers that attempted various solutions that did not fully satisfy me. I was relying at the time on concepts derived from Balint, Mahler, and Winnicott. Finally, in the late nineties, I focused on Ferenczi’s work, which I had originally read in my first years of studying psychoanalysis, but which now took another meaning for me.

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With the turn of the century, I discovered the relational psychoanalysis movement, which was now saying quite a few things that I had been thinking and exploring over the years, from the perspective of the British Independent tradition and my study and practice of group analysis. The interchange of ideas with my friend Blanca Montevechio, who had further developed Bleger’s ideas, gave me a piece that I was missing, in the figure of Dionysus and the use of myths for the construction of theory. The new perspective that emerged for me from this cauldron was realised in a series of papers that I wrote from 2002 onwards and turned into what I nowadays call the “syncretic paradigm”. This came from developments in the study of regressive states in the bipersonal treatment, but it also provided me with elements for making a new sense out of the group-analytic experience. I finally arrived at the conclusion that relational psychoanalysis and group analysis needed each other, since both of them had quite a few things to offer that the other lacked. This is, of course, the aim of this whole book. On the other hand, I have been for many years one of those analysts who have been increasingly dissatisfied with the traditional Freudian metapsychology. It was quite clear to me that Freud’s attempt to create an explanatory system in terms derived from the language of physics was misguided, but I also took exception to those who proposed to discard metapsychology altogether. It seemed something like throwing away the baby with the dirty bathwater. I felt that indeed we needed something like a metapsychology—that is, a general theory of Mind, compatible with our clinical experiences, theories, and practices. But what could that be? Well, this is an attempt to tackle this problem.

What is relational analysis? In the past few decades—since the early 1980s, to be more precise, there developed a trend in psychoanalysis that, coming from various sources, coalesced under the name of “relational psychoanalysis” (Mitchell, 1988; Mitchell & Aron, 1999). Even though there are grounds to assert that psychoanalysis has always been relational and there have been very important contributions to relational thinking in the work of Freud, Ferenczi, and the British Independent School of Object Relations, mainstream psychoanalysis has always emphasised the paradigm of the isolated individual, moved by inner drives,

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processed by a “psychic apparatus”, which forces him to secondarily engage in relations with other human beings (Mitchell, 2000). The more recent movement of relational psychoanalysis has developed mainly in the US, originally under the leadership of Stephen Mitchell, until his untimely death in 2001 at the age of fifty-four. It brought together a variegated group of analysts from various origins—Freudian, interpersonal, Kleinian, object-relational, self psychologists, intersubjective, developmentalists, Lacanian, and Jungian—who shared a common interest in human relationships, both interpersonal and transpersonal, and their import for the constitution and functioning of individual personalities, their way of living, and the therapeutic processes. Lewis Aron (1996) relates the story of how the term “relational” emerged in the early 1980s when a group was trying to choose a name for the new training track they were trying to introduce in the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, in which he himself had trained, albeit he acknowledges that this was not the only site in which this birth was taking place: “A good case could be made for example to tracing its development at the William Alanson White Institute in New York” (p. 4, n. 2). It seems that this is one of these cases in which a community is ready for a new idea to emerge in various places at the same time. This movement gave birth to a new psychoanalytic journal, called Psychoanalytic Dialogues, in 1991, and nine years later, in 2000, became institutionalised as the International Association for Relational Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. As Aron points out, “relational psychoanalysis may be regarded as a distinctly contemporary American school of psychoanalysis” (p. 3), and it is usually seen as such by analysts from other traditions. But there is much more to it. Mitchell (2000) adds that there has been a growing sensibility about the impact of relations among psychoanalysts from different schools, including many who would overtly reject the relational trend as “that new American fad”, or even those who have never even heard the term “relational”. Such widespread tendency is “what might be considered a ‘relational turn’, in which mind has been understood most fundamentally and directly in terms of selfother configurations, intrapsychically and interpersonally, present and past, in actuality and in fantasy” (p. xiii). This he takes as a sign of a paradigm change that has been brewing for many decades now.

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(Indeed, I believe that it has always been there, since the beginning of psychoanalysis, as an alternative paradigm to the generally accepted individual one, and has been only recently expanded throughout the analytic world.) Mitchell (1988) chose the term “relational matrix” “in an effort to transcend the unfortunate tendency to dichotomise concepts like interpersonal relations and ‘object’ relations, or the interpersonal and the intrapsychic, as if a focus on either side implies a denial or deemphasis of the other” (p. 9). He was obviously trying to solve the paradox implicit in the fact that psychoanalysis needs both what Balint (1968) called a “one-person psychology” and a “two-person psychology”. If mind could be conceived as operating “within a relational matrix that encompasses both intrapsychic and interpersonal realms” (Mitchell, 1988, p. 9)—that is, dealing both with self-regulation and the regulation of relationships—then we would profit from a binocular view that, as we have already seen in Chapter One, always adds a new depth to our perception of reality. Apparently, he took the term “matrix” from Hans Loewald (1980) and Winnicott (1958b). The latter suggested that the capacity to be alone in the presence of another human being, which develops as a result of a good baby–mother or patient–analyst relationship, is based on a non-instinctual bonding, which he calls “ego-relatedness”, and added “I attach a great importance to this relationship, as I consider that it is the stuff out of which friendship is made. It may turn out to be the matrix of transference” (p. 418). Although Loewald had elaborated his concept of an undifferentiated phase of development and functional level of the mind, as we shall see in the next section, since 1951, it was only in 1960 that he started to use the term “matrix” to refer to the mother–infant original fusional unit, as well as to the similar undifferentiated relation in the transference (1960, 1970, 1972, 1978, 1984, 1988). This suggests that he had taken the term from Winnicott’s 1958 paper, as he even uses the term “relatedness” for “the psychic matrix out of which intrapsychic instincts and ego, and extrapsychic object, differentiate” (Loewald, 1978, p. 503), meaning, of course, the “infant–mother matrix” (p. 502). However, Winnicott himself may have conceived this term, “matrix of transference”—which he used only once—after hearing the use Foulkes (1955, 1957) made of the term “matrix”, in his group-analytic approach, to refer to the invisible web of communication and relationship that

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occurs in groups (Foulkes, 1964b), as well as in that most peculiar twoperson group that is the psychoanalytic relation (Pines, 2005). Hence, there is an intimate similarity between relational analysis and group analysis that has largely gone unnoticed, since most relational analysts lack the group-analytic experience and are not conversant with group-analytic literature, while group analysts have only recently began to enquire into the relational analytic concepts, techniques and practice, searching for a complementarity or confluence (Billow, 2003, 2010; Hopper, 2006; Yogev, 2008, 2012). The intersubjective and relational approach to the psychoanalytic technique and practice goes far beyond proposing a bipersonal psychology, suggesting a complete fusion and a mutual determination, at the unconscious level, between the analyst’s and the analysand’s mental processes, which ought to become the object of the analytic enquiry. However, this point of view is fully consistent with that of the theory and practice of group analysis, as derived from the work of S. H. Foulkes (1948, 1964a, 1975a, 1990; Foulkes & Anthony, 1965) and Enrique Pichon-Rivière (1971a; Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004). Nonetheless, there has been no serious attempt to spell out the metapsychological implications of such a view. This is probably due to the fact that Freudian metapsychology is an attempt to develop a psychoanalytic theory exclusively in intra-personal terms, and this is clearly inimical with what both the relational and the group-analytic approaches are trying to do. Group analysts have avoided the dilemma posed by this contradiction by leaving aside metapsychological discussions and dealing instead with their theory and practice almost exclusively in terms of group psychodynamic processes. Relational analysts, on the other hand, have openly faced this conflict and solved it by means of a tendency to reject metapsychology. However, both solutions preclude precisely the development of a general theory of mind and minding that may act as a basis for the integration of these two quite similar approaches to the enquiry and understanding of the human being and experience. We obviously need a new metapsychology, one that might account for the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal phenomena that we contemplate, enquire, and try to understand in our clinic. This chapter is an attempt to develop one possible model for such integration.

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Who needs metapsychology? As anyone who has read the previous section might surmise, my answer to this question is “We do!” But the matter may not be so easily solved. Psychoanalysis and group analysis certainly need a theory that articulates in some way individual and group dynamics, and this requires a high level of abstraction, which is what metapsychology purports to provide. Why, then, do we not stay with the wellestablished Freudian theory of the “mental apparatus”? Because it is, by definition, restricted to the inner workings of an allegedly individual mind, so that it can ill serve as an instrument for the integration we are seeking. We have already seen, in Chapter One, that Freud’s project when he introduced his metapsychology was to uncover the material causes on which psychological processes were based. Hence, all psychological knowledge was merely provisional for him, and should one day “be based on an organic substructure” (Freud, 1914c, p. 78)—in other words, on what we would call today the “neurosciences”. This, of course, is easier said than done, as epistemologist Abraham Kaplan (1964) observed in his informal and humorous style: There are behavioral scientists whose claim that “ultimately” what they are asserting is derivable from the laws of physics or of biology is rather like the profligate’s assurance to his creditors that eventually he will come into a large inheritance. What he says may be true; but the creditors are scarcely to be blamed for insisting on “a little something on account”. Freud was convinced that his findings would sooner or later be formulable on a strictly biological basis; it was not, however, his materialistic metaphysics that gave his work importance, but the significance of his findings in their own terms. It may well be that the psychologist can derive the whole of his discipline from neurology, biochemistry, and the rest; it is not destructive scepticism but productive pragmatism to say, “I’d like to see him do it!” (pp. 124–125, my italics)

But why was this so important to Freud? It was, of course, an expression of his Weltanschauung, which was realistic, materialistic, positivistic, and empiricist—all of this in contradiction of his real discoveries and creations. But there seems to be something else. In his

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case story of Elizabeth von R., in Studies on Hysteria (Breuer & Freud, 1895), he gives us a hint of his motivation: I have not always been a psychotherapist. Like other neuropathologists, I was trained to employ local diagnoses and electro-prognosis, and it still strikes me myself as strange that the case histories I write should read like short stories and that, as one might say, they lack the serious stamp of science. I must console myself with the reflection that the nature of the subject is evidently responsible for this, rather than any preference of my own. (p. 160, my italics)

So this is it: what he feared most was to lose “the serious stamp of science”. But why on earth would he feel the need to excuse himself for doing what he did best—namely, clinical research? I believe that this was because he was afraid that his discoveries and ideas would not be accepted by the scientific and academic Establishment he so passionately yearned to be a part of. Hence, the metapsychology that he constructed from his 1895 “Project for a scientific psychology” (Freud, 1950a) onwards looks like an extended apology for having created a discipline that would necessarily call into question the very bases of the science that he felt he should abide by and contribute to. Freud dreaded that his work might be labelled as “mystic” or “metaphysical”, so he held fast to science as he had been taught to understand it by his physicalist teachers, who believed that all scientific knowledge would and should ultimately be reduced to the terms of the master science: physics. Hence, both his “Project” and the metapsychology that followed were framed in a technical language that reeked of an admixture of engineering, neuroanatomy, and physiology. The central concept was that of a “psychical apparatus”, which would represent the material basis of mind. In the “Project”, strongly influenced by the Newtonian conception of the universe, mind was conceived as a space that contained structural but inherently inert elements (the equivalent of matter in the Newtonian model), called “neurons”, and a dynamic non-structural element (similar to energy in Newton’s dynamics) he called “Q” or “quantity”, which set the neurons in motion. By the turn of the century, in The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900a), the neurons had become representations and Q became an energy that acted locally through forces. This allowed him to compare symptom formation through transactions with the

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resultant of a parallelogram of forces, and the person’s defensive strategies and tactics became “mechanisms” within the apparatus. But Freud was certainly aware that such descriptions were really analogies or models—what he called “fictions”, as we can clearly see in this paragraph of his book: I propose simply to follow the suggestion that we should picture the instrument which carries out our mental functions as resembling a compound microscope or a photographic apparatus, or something of the kind. . . . I see no necessity to apologize for the imperfections of this or of any similar imagery. Analogies of this kind are only intended to assist us in our attempt to make the complications of mental functioning intelligible by dissecting the function and assigning its different constituents to different component parts of the apparatus. . . . Accordingly, we will picture the mental apparatus as a compound instrument, to the components of which we will give the name of “agencies”, or (for the sake of greater clarity) “systems” [which] may perhaps stand in a regular spatial relation to one another, in the same kind of way in which the various systems of lenses in a telescope are arranged behind one another. Strictly speaking, there is no need for the hypothesis that the psychical systems are actually arranged in a spatial order. It would be sufficient if a fixed order were established by the fact that in a given psychical process the excitation passes through the systems in a particular temporal sequence. (pp. 536–537)

So, the psychic apparatus was a metaphor, based on an analogy that allowed him to account for the fact that mental processes were not random, but rather had an organisation, a direction, a course, and an evolution. This is a perfectly valid strategy for theory building. But is it a happy metaphor? It was truly commonplace, for a scientist born and reared in the second part of the nineteenth century, on top of the Industrial Revolution, to compare living beings to a machine—that was the essence of physiology. So, why not use the same metaphor for the enquiry of the mind? But then, people tend to forget that machines were invented following the model of the living body—and nowadays, in our computerised era, on that of the living mind—and not the other way round. So, it is to be expected that the original beings and processes that served as their model should be much more complex and qualitatively different from these man-made ersatz products, useful as they may be for practical and economic matters.

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Consequently, there came a wave of criticism of the more mechanical and static aspects of Freudian metapsychology, which were still enthusiastically adhered to by Ego Psychology and many orthodox Freudians. Nonetheless, it also became increasingly felt as a liability for psychoanalysis by those analysts who emphasised the semantic, symbolic, hermeneutic, experiential, relational, and emotional aspects of the psychoanalytic treatment.1

To revise or to discard? The greatest objections were aimed at the theory of instinctual drives. It was felt that it pretended to substitute impersonal causal explanations for the true understanding of the human personal and relational experience revealed and enquired by the psychoanalytic treatment. But there was also a feeling that the whole language of Freudian metapsychology was, in its attempt to be impersonal, “objective”, and “scientific”, quite inadequate for a discipline intended to study and understand human beings in their experience, motivation, thought, relations, and behaviour. There were two basic strategies used by the various authors in order to tackle what they perceived as a contradiction between the theory and the practice of psychoanalysis. One was to formally retain the language of Freudian theory, while at the same time redefining its terms, either explicitly or implicitly, in such a way that gave them quite different meanings and implications. The other was to vent an explicit criticism of metapsychology and suggest the need of either some major revamping, or even its wholesale rejection as a useless encumbrance. Why did so many analysts take the first option? I believe that they had an emotional and intellectual need to remain part of a tradition, as a platform from which to start developing their own thoughts. The philosopher of hermeneutics Hans-Georg Gadamer (1960) posed the idea that all interpretations and innovations should be based on a tradition. Donald Winnicott (1967a) stated a similar view in almost the same terms, without any reference to Gadamer, whom he most probably had not read, when he wrote, In any cultural field it is not possible to be original except on a basis of tradition. Conversely, no-one in the line of cultural contributors repeats

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except as a deliberate quotation, and the unforgivable sin in the cultural field is plagiarism. The interplay between originality and the acceptance of tradition as the basis for inventiveness seems to me to be just one more example, and a very exciting one, of the interplay between separateness and union. (p. 370, original italics)

There is yet another psychological reason, which we will discuss in Chapter Four, and this is the deep need to preserve and nourish a constitutive identification with the Father of Psychoanalysis, which is felt to be the very basis of the analytic identity. And how does this solution function in practice? Sándor Ferenczi (1929), for instance, used Freud’s (1920g) concept of the “death instinct” in his paper “The unwelcome child and his death-instinct”, in a strictly clinical manner, to describe some patients’ self-destructive syndrome, consisting of severe depression, suicidal tendencies, lifethreatening psychosomatic disturbances, and “moral and philosophic pessimism, scepticism and mistrust [as] conspicuous character-traits in these patients” (Ferenczi, 1929, p. 126). This he believed to be a consequence of the fact that they had been ill-received when born and treated as unwelcome guests in their own families. The treatment he suggested for them was that the patient should be permitted, “properly speaking for the first time, to enjoy the irresponsibility of childhood, which is equivalent to the introduction of positive life-impulses and motives for his subsequent existence” (p. 129, my italics). It should be quite obvious that Ferenczi’s use of the terms “death instinct” and “life impulses” is far removed from what Freud intended to mean by them, since Ferenczi was clearly conceiving them as secondary phenomena, derived from traumatic or beneficial experiences, while the Freud always emphasised the primary nature of instinctual drives and their biological origin. However, Ferenczi ends his seminal paper with an open defence of Freud’s libidinal theory of neurosis! He was by no means unaware of the possible conflict between his views and classical theory, and tried to solve this by giving an ingenious twist to the theory of libido: On an occasion when I spoke of the importance of supplying “positive life-impulses”, i.e. of tenderness in relation to children, a very intelligent woman who had been, however, one-sidedly influenced by “egopsychology”, immediately retorted: how was this to be reconciled with the significance of sexuality in the etiology of the neuroses, as

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affirmed by psycho-analysis? The answer gave me no difficulty, since in my Genital Theory [Ferenczi, 1924] I had had to advocate the view that the manifestations of life of very young children are almost exclusively libidinal (erotic), but that that erotism was inconspicuous just because of its ubiquity. Only after the development of a special organ for erotism does sexuality become unmistakable and undeniable. This would also be my reply to all those who might attack Freud’s libidinal theory of the neuroses on the ground of the present communication. For the remainder, I have already pointed out that often it is only the struggles of the Oedipus conflict and the demands of genitality which reveal the consequences of an aversion to life acquired at an early stage. (p. 129, original italics)

But obviously this “inconspicuous erotism” expressed by tenderness is a far cry from Freud’s (1915c) conception of drives as biological tensions in search of a discharge, and more akin to Fairbairn’s (1952) concept of an object-seeking libido—”Libido is primarily objectseeking (rather than pleasure-seeking, as in the classic theory), and . . . it is to disturbances in the object-relationships of the developing ego that we must look for the ultimate origin of all psychopathological conditions” (Fairbairn, 1944, p. 70). Yet, Fairbairn was keenly aware of the fact that he was criticising some essential concepts of Freudian theory and giving them a new meaning: My findings and conclusions also involve a recasting and re-orientation of the libido theory together with a modification of various classical psycho-analytical concepts [p. 250] . . . [since] the libido theory contains an inherent weakness which renders it desirable that this theory should be recast in a mould which will render it more in conformity with the pattern of ego-development [and object relationships]. (1941, pp. 251–252)

Nonetheless, he retained Freud’s term “libido”, as a signpost of his continuity with the Freudian tradition. It is worth noting that, in “The repression and the return of bad objects (with special reference to the ‘war neuroses’)” (Fairbairn, 1943), he redefined Freud’s “death instinct” in clinical terms very similar to those used by Ferenczi (1929) and explained it as an expression of love towards the internalised bad objects. Donald Winnicott, on the other hand, chose to maintain an ambiguity in his writings, which allowed him to postulate new and

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revolutionary concepts, while avoiding any conflict with classical theory, with which they were truly incompatible. For instance, in “Ego distortion in terms of true and false self” (1960a), he differentiates two motivational systems, which he calls “id needs”—which correspond to Freud’s instinctual wishes—and “ego needs”—which are relational needs akin to Fairbairn’s object-seeking libido. However, he kept them apart, side by side, without noticing any contradiction between them. He also introduced the experiential concept of the self, which has no place in Freud’s causal deterministic theory, and added that it may be either “true” or “false”, although authenticity and falsehood are also inimical to the very spirit of metapsychology. And yet his conclusion is that “this modern concept of the False Self hiding the True Self along with the theory of its aetiology is able to have an important effect on psycho-analytic work. As far as I can see it involves no important change in basic theory” (Winnicott, 1960a, p. 152, my italics). This inconsistency was sustained by the fact that he was not a systematic thinker, reasoned in terms of a fuzzy logic—that is, a logic that allows partial and probabilistic truths, instead of the all-true and all-false terms of formal logic—and preferred a fluid and associative type of argument. Nevertheless, the defensive function of this keeping apart of classical theory from his innovative contributions is quite clear. On the other side of the Atlantic, Hans Loewald (1980) made a thorough revision and re-definition of classical theory, quite in line with the object-relational view that started with Ferenczi and bloomed in the development of the British Independent tradition of Object Relations Theory, while at the same time keeping the language and terms of classical metapsychology, albeit endowed with new meanings. Stephen Mitchell (2000) suggests that this particular approach in Loewald’s thought and writings is what makes him frequently misunderstood, both by the orthodox, who fail to realise the true import of his innovative recasting of well-known concepts and terms, and by contemporary relationists, who are misled by his metapsychological language, without noticing that he was working precisely with the theoretical and technical issues that they are now tackling. Mitchell believes that Loewald’s deep motivation for such a seemingly paradoxical style was based on the need to preserve the continuity with our origins: “Rather than finding new words to convey new insights, Loewald nestles his innovations carefully within the old words,

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giving birth to new meanings while attempting to preserve [emotional] resonances with a deep past” (p. 14). In other words Loewald’s use of the language of metapsychology, according to Mitchell, was based on his taking it as a form of poetic language, in which the meaning of the words depends more on their connotations than on a precise denotation, as in scientific language. Mexican philosopher Mauricio Beuchot (1985) has made a similar observation about Freud’s (1895a) “Project”, which can be read in two different but complementary ways. The first one, which represents the author’s conscious intent, is to see it as a quasi-neurophysiological theory of mind; this would be the more superficial level. The second one, on a deeper level, which was most probably unconscious for the author, contains a hidden hermeneutic, humanistic, and poetic vision of the mind that incarnates the very spirit of psychoanalysis (TubertOklander, 2008a). To sum up, those who follow this first strategy feel that there is something valuable in Freud’s metapsychological language, even if it needs to be revamped in order that its terms come to mean something quite different from what Freud and his contemporaries were trying to say—albeit perhaps not from what they actually said, without realising it. Now, what about the second strategy, which makes a frontal attack on metapsychology demanding that it should be radically changed or even entirely discarded? Their criticism is based on the idea that natural science, which strives to be strictly impersonal and formulate only causal explanations, is totally inadequate to account for individuality, subjective experience, and personal relationships— in other words, for the unique existence of the person, which is the very object of enquiry of psychoanalysis. Some of them emphasise their incompatibility, while others consider these two approaches to the study of the human being to be complementary and work towards an integration of them. Sándor Ferenczi was quite aware of the difference between these two kinds of science, although he never openly criticised Freud’s metapsychology. In the book he wrote with Otto Rank, called The Development of Psychoanalysis (Ferenczi & Rank, 1924), they stressed the unique importance of emotional experience as the only basis for conviction about the findings of an analysis. For them, subjective experience, and not behaviour, was the subject matter of psychoanalysis.

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The analytic experience, which is clearly shared between the two parties, is not only a welcome confirmation of our theories, but their very source, and the only thing that can make any sense out of our theoretical constructs. Neither Freud, nor the other members of the original psychoanalytic group liked the book, since they felt that it meant abandoning the dominion of science and opening the way for mysticism and “occultism” (Roazen, 1975; Tubert-Oklander, 1999a). However, Ferenczi never denied the need for a natural science approach to the study of the human being; he just said, in no uncertain terms, that this had to be counterbalanced by a psychological—that is, personal and experiential—approach.2 In his book Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality, he had suggested that there is a need for natural science to recur to psychological analogies to clarify its concepts, and for psychology to do the same with physical analogies (Ferenczi, 1924). Obviously, for him, the whole language of metapsychology was a vast metaphor that should not be taken literally. Some of the main exponents of this position were members of the British Independent Group of Object Relations Theory. We have already seen that Fairbairn (1952) minced no words in criticising what he felt to be wrong in Freud’s theory—and this brought him many stern responses, even from other colleagues whose thought was quite akin to his own, such as Winnicott and Khan (1953). His main disagreements with classic metapsychology were two: the fact that it conceives mind as a closed individual system, thus minimising or ignoring the true importance of relationships, and that it dissociates structure from energy, much in the way of nineteenth century physics, while living organisms, such as the mind, are better thought as dynamic structures. Hence he set out to develop a new metapsychology, in terms of the self as a dynamic structure, which is split into conflicting elements by the traumatic impact of unsatisfactory object relationships with other human beings, mainly, the primary caregivers. He thus described an inner world peopled by partial selves, always in relation with internalised objects. The aim of psychoanalytic treatment would be to attain a new integration of the personality, through the personal relationship that the patient establishes with his or her analyst (Fairbairn, 1958). However, although Fairbairn set the bases for an understanding of how actual relationships shape the mind of the individual and contribute to his or her falling ill and

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healing, he still viewed and explored these phenomena from the individual’s perspective, which was what could best be enquired in bipersonal psychoanalysis—at least with the classical technique, to which he adhered, in spite of being a revolutionary in the ground of theory (Guntrip, 1975). Consequently, he fell short of constructing a metapsychology that might integrate intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal mental processes, in order to provide us with a full theory of the person. Marjorie Brierley (1944, 1945, 1951) made a critical study of the traditional understanding of Freudian metapsychology, showing that it could better be thought in terms of mental processes, rather than mental entities. She also emphasised that this kind of theory followed the impersonal approach of natural sciences, and that this should be clearly distinguished from what she called “personology”, defined as the study of persons as such—that is, as whole entities with motives, feelings, and thoughts, who relate with other persons.3 Nonetheless, Brierley thought these two approaches to be both necessary and complementary, and so did Charles Rycroft (1968), who redefined the concepts of the primary and the secondary processes (1956a), as well as those of the pleasure and the reality principles (1962b), in order to sustain the view that the analytic situation is based on the relationship and communication between the patient and the analyst (1956b, 1958). He believed that imagination was the mental function that builds the bridge between the inner and the outer world, as Masud Khan and John Sutherland (1968) wrote in their “Introduction” to Rycroft’s book: From the very beginning of psycho-analytic researches the tendency has been towards a split between those who emphasized the sovereignty of the internal process and those that rather over-simplified and exaggerated the role of current social factors, the latter being exemplified by the work of Karen Horney and Eric[h] Fromm, etc. In the researches of the group of analysts who have been working in the climate of the British Society, one sees an attempt to find the bridge between these two extreme simplifications of the human situation. If the human individual on the one hand is instinct-ridden and his whole character is formed by this exigency, he is on the other hand object-anchored. Thus his inner world draws directly upon the cultural climate with all the richness and prejudices that his adult environment brings to his nurture through their care of him as a child. The human faculty which

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enables this dialogic process to take place between the inner and the outer, the instinctive and the social, the private and the public Self, is the imaginative faculty. (p. viii, my italics)

This terse statement is a prime example of the compromising stance taken by most writers of the Independent Group. Nonetheless, Rycroft, in his later writings (1979, 1985), made a much more explicit criticism of Freud’s basic assumptions. However, not all of them followed this line. One of the thinkers who took a non-compromising position was Harry Guntrip (1961), who was not a member of the British Society but had a major role in identifying the basic ideology that underlay the contributions of the various members of what later became to be known as the Independent Group. He believed that the impersonal scientific approach was utterly inadequate for the study and understanding of the human being, and that only a wholly personal theory could account for the experiences, thoughts, and actions of persons. This he found in the work of Fairbairn and Winnicott, which he developed further, according to his own interpretation of their writings. He consequently dismissed metapsychology as a pseudo-biological encumbrance for the development of the truly personal psychology that psychoanalysis was trying to become, which would transcend its physiological and neurological background, and account for the existence of the unique individual. Such extreme allegation generated, of course, much opposition among analysts. One of the writers who sternly criticised Guntrip’s rejection of the biological bases of psychoanalysis was Charles Rycroft (1962a), although much of his own theorising had a lot in common with Guntrip’s. For instance, in his article on “Causes and meaning”, Rycroft (1966) cogently argued that psychoanalysis is not a naturalistic causal science but a humanistic semantic one, which deals with meanings and interpretations, rather than with causes and explanations: It can indeed be argued that much of Freud’s work was really semantic and that he made a revolutionary discovery in semantics, viz. that neurotic symptoms are meaningful, disguised communications, but that, owing to his scientific training and allegiance, he formulated his findings in the conceptual framework of the physical sciences. (p. 13)

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So, it is quite obvious that these two authors were not so far apart. Perhaps their differences were only a reflection of the fact that Rycroft was a medical doctor, while Guntrip was a psychologist who originally came from pastoral studies, so that one would tend to stress the biological side of the human being, while the other would rather favour the spiritual dimension. But this kind of dissent violently emerged within the British Psycho-Analytical Society, when James Home read, in 1964, his paper “The concept of mind” (1966), in which he denounced the incoherence and incompatibility between the practice and findings of clinical psychoanalysis and the perspective and terms of the theory that purports to account for them: The stimulus to write this paper has come from attending the scientific meetings of psycho-analysts for many years. From the first I was overwhelmingly struck by the essential incomprehensibility of the clinical papers couched in what is often called “technical language” and by what seemed to me the philosophical naiveté of the theoretical papers. Although part of my difficulty sprang from lack of experience in the clinical situation, ten years of clinical work has only served to strengthen my initial impression that, although all the authors I heard undoubtedly meant something by what they said, and although I have learned from experience to interpret what they say to some extent, yet a great part of what was said did not in fact, in a strict sense, mean anything. (p. 42, my italics) It was noticeable also because unexpected in a society calling itself scientific, that in the event of disagreement in discussion the appeal was almost invariably to the “the literature” and not to the fact. Indeed the place of “the literature” in psycho-analysis has no parallel, so far as I know, in any other science. . . . Similar recourse to “the literature” seems to occur only in religious writing and in our own day in Communist theory. . . . At times psycho-analytic theory appears all too like a house which a bereaved spouse, in piety, preserves just as it was on the day of the great loss. (p. 43)

Given the defiant tone of the paper, it is no wonder that it generated a general uproar in most of the audience. Indeed, it almost got him expelled from the Society (Pines, 2005). What was considered most offensive in his presentation was his outright dismissal of psychic determinism and of the theory of instinctual drives, and his

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firm conviction that psychoanalysis was not a natural science at all, but a part of the humanities. Home did not leave the British Society, although he developed the rest of his career in the Group-Analytic Society, but Rycroft did. He was appalled by the lack of scholarship and the dogmatic authoritarianism of the Society, which reminded him of his brief experience at Cambridge as a member of a student Communist group (Rycroft, 1985). He therefore decided never again to attend its scientific meetings. This he did and he ultimately resigned from the Society.4 Obviously, this is a very sensitive subject that generates passionate controversy. The very same thing happened in the 1930s on the other side of the Atlantic, where a group of analysts that included Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Clara Thompson, and Harry Stack Sullivan developed an approach that emphasised interpersonal relations and social, cultural, and political factors, while dismissing the Freudian theory of instinctual drives and relativising the role of the Oedipal conflict, which they conceived as a product of the social structure. Such dissidence resulted, after much strife, in a schism in the New York Psychoanalytic Society. The dissidents left and organised their own training scheme, but then there were further splits between them and this generated new organisations, such as the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and the American Institute of Psychoanalysis, on the one hand, and the William Alanson White Institute, on the other (Frosch, 1991). From that time on, these organisations operated apart from the Freudian analysts of the American Psychoanalytic Association and were viewed by the latter as teaching and practising something different from psychoanalysis. Their focus was on the analysis of interpersonal processes, hence the name “Interpersonal Psychoanalysis” that identified their practice. Within the Freudian group, Abraham Kardiner and Sándor Rado created the Columbia Psychoanalytic Institute, which was finally accepted as an alternative Institute by the American Psychoanalytic Association. This had more space for social issues than the more orthodox New York Institute, but their interest centred more on culture than on social and political structures and processes. Another thinker who explored the relation between psychoanalysis and the social field, without forsaking the Freudian theories of drives and libido, was Erik Erikson (1950). Nevertheless, he had to modify and expand the theory of libido, in order to include the

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development of the ego and relationships, as well as the impact of the socio-cultural context. He also amplified the theory of mental development to include the whole life cycle and organised his conception of mental structure around the concept of ego-identity. The result, which was altogether compatible with Winnicott’s (1971a) later approach to the relationship between the individual and culture, had the advantage of not relinquishing metapsychology altogether, but rather developing a new version of it that could allow the inclusion of the social, cultural, political, and relational aspects of human existence. Although he never left the Freudian field, he was nonetheless viewed with suspicion by the more orthodox psychoanalysts, as someone who was more an anthropologist than a psychoanalyst, and had a much greater influence on university students, anthropologists, sociologists, and social workers, than on mainstream psychoanalysis. In the 1960s, George S. Klein (1976) developed a major critique of metapsychology, which was interrupted by his untimely death, in 1971, at the age of fifty-four. This had much in common with Guntrip’s, Home’s, and Rycroft’s criticism, although he only quoted the second. Klein asserted that there were two theories of psychoanalysis, one of them highly personal, the clinical theory, which explained clinical experiences in terms of feelings, motivations, intentions, and conflicts, and whose main method of observation was empathy, as it had been previously stated by Kohut (1959). The other one was intentionally impersonal, in order to comply with the demands of positive science, metapsychology, which was based on the empirical observation of behaviour and explained its results in terms of causal explanations. Klein considered that not only was it not possible to derive clinical theory from the more abstract assertions of metapsychology, but also that there was an inherent incompatibility between these two theories; metapsychology was not a psychology at all, but a mimicry of natural science (Hill & Holzman, 1976). The issue of instinct theory vs. relational theory was once again posed in the US since the early 1970s, with the introduction of Heinz Kohut’s (1971, 1977, 1979, 1982, 1984) Self Psychology, which presented a conception of the human being as someone in need of empathic object responses during her or his whole lifetime. From this perspective, Freud’s instinctual libidinal and aggressive drives are seen as a psychopathological consequence of the traumatic experiences derived from the lack of such responses during infancy and early

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childhood, which generates a fragmentation of the self, so that the parts of it that contain the libidinal and aggressive wishes become split off and impersonal, and act as if they were independent entities. This point of view, which had been already posed by Fairbairn (1952) is clearly stated in Kohut’s (1982) posthumous paper on “Introspection, empathy, and the semi-circle of mental health”: Under normal circumstances we do not encounter drives via introspection and empathy. We always experience the not-furtherreducible psychological unit of a loving self, a lusting self, an assertive self, a hostile-destructive self. When drives achieve experiential primacy, we are dealing with disintegration products: in the realm of Eros, the fragmenting self watching helplessly as it is being replaced by a feverishly intensified pleasure experience, by the ascendancy of a pleasuregiving erogenic zone, and thus of the drive over the self; or, in the realm of Thanatos, the fragmenting self watching helplessly as it is being replaced by a feverishly intensified rage experience, by the ascendancy of a destructive and/or self-destructive orgy, and thus, again, of the drive over the self. (p. 401, my italics)

So, Kohut discards the primary nature of instinctual drives and replaces Freud’s (1915c, 1920g) theory by a relational conception of the human being. He also formulates, like Fairbairn, a metapsychological schema of the inner organisation of the self, which purports to account for this relational view, but leaves aside inter- and transpersonal processes. Among the various post-Kohutian schools of Self Psychology, the Intersubjective Psychoanalysis group, which includes George Atwood, Bernard Brandchaft, Donna Orange, and Robert Stolorow (Atwood & Stolorow, 1984; Orange, 2011; Orange, Atwood, & Stolorow, 1997; Stolorow & Atwood, 1992; Stolorow, Atwood, & Brandchaft, 1997), have developed a fully relational comprehension of mental processes in the analytic dyad, but they have not included wider social processes, nor have they tackled the problem of formulating a new metapsychology that might account for and articulate internal, relational, and social processes. The same can be said of the Relational Psychoanalysis movement introduced by Stephen Mitchell and his colleagues. In general, it can be said that those relational approaches to psychoanalysis that stemmed from the practice of bipersonal treatments have included the

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study of the impact of social reality on the individual, but have not approached the study of groups, institutions, and society as mental processes to be analytically enquired. Neither have they paid much attention to the need to develop a new metapsychology for theorising these concerns. This can probably be a result of their rejection of Freud’s causal-naturalistic and quasi-mechanical metapsychology, and especially of the theory of instinctual drives. But perhaps this is a case of throwing away the baby with the dirty bathwater, since, even if we may no longer have a use for classical metapsychology, we do need some kind of general theory of mind that makes an explicit formulation of our implicit and often unconscious assumptions that underlie our clinical thinking. As to the contribution of Foulkes, Pichon-Rivière, and the groupanalytic schools they founded, they have largely neglected the problem of metapsychology and focused instead on describing group psycho-dynamics in its own terms and the consequences for individuals. Pichon-Rivière was not a systematic thinker and he would rather let inconsistencies persist, just as Winnicott did, and go on with his creative work, maintaining the ambiguities. Besides, he did reject drive theory, which he considered inadequate for the understanding of social affairs and their impact on the individual, and this led him to omit any consideration of metapsychology. He was, like Kohut, what we would call today an experience-near thinker, who had no place for high-abstraction theory (Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004). Nonetheless, some of the elements that may contribute to the development of what I believe could be the new metapsychology that we now so sorely need come, as we shall presently see, from the work of some of his pupils and followers. Foulkes, on his part, remained a committed Freudian all his life, in his work as a classical psychoanalyst, and did not let this valued identity be affected by his own creation of group analysis and his experiences and discoveries in this new field, as we have seen in Chapter One. So, he firmly adhered, out of sheer loyalty to Freud, to a metapsychology that was of no use for group analysis, and was emotionally incapable and unwilling to comprehend the new developments in Object Relations Theory, which might have given him the elements to start developing a new metapsychology that articulated intra-, inter-, and transpersonal processes. Earl Hopper (2012) attributes this to “his inability to mourn the loss of his mother tongue, his actual situation

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in Germany, his involvement in Freudian psychoanalysis, etc.” (ultimately, the loss of his idealised relation with Freud, of the kind I discuss in Chapter Four). Hence, says Hopper, “group analysis was really an early version of psychoanalysis that respected the relational perspective”, albeit, I would add, it was an unwitting contribution of Foulkes. Small wonder he never got to write his announced book on group-analytic theory! The result is that Foulkes left the problem of metapsychology out of his group-analytic writings, with one notable exception. In 1957 he published a paper called “Group-analytic dynamics with special reference to psychoanalytic concepts” (a few years later, when he included it in his 1964a book Therapeutic Group Analysis, he changed the title to “Psychodynamic processes in the light of psychoanalysis and group analysis”). There he applied, analogically, the Freudian concepts of “conscious”, “preconscious”, “unconscious”, “id”, “ego”, “superego”, and “mental mechanisms”. The result of this effort is somewhat disappointing, since the analogy is rather strained, and in the end it seems to be nothing more than an affirmation of the possibility of being a group analyst, while still remaining a true Freudian! There is, however, in the very same text a most valuable contribution to groupanalytic theory, when he describes four different levels and spheres of mental functioning in the group-analytic group, which represents a major step in the construction of a new metapsychology of group processes (this schema will be discussed later in this chapter). I personally believe that this is the path he might have followed, if he had dared to write his book on theory. The next generations of group analysts followed his lead and for many years there was not much writing about the metapsychology of group analysis, with the exception of the work of Pat de Maré (de Maré & Schöllberger, 2004, 2006, 2008; de Maré, Piper, & Thompson, 1991), Malcolm Pines (1998), and Earl Hopper (2003a,b; Hopper & Weinberg, 2011b). But we surely need a general theory of mind, one that should account for intra-, inter-, and transpersonal mental processes, thus offering us a better understanding of the impact of relations, groups, institutions, and communities on individual mental processes, as well as the way in which the latter influence and partially determine collective mental processes. And the best name we have now for such a theory is “metapsychology”.

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The following section is an attempt to contribute to the development of a metapsychology that articulates individual and collective mental processes, which might allow an integration of the psychoanalytic and group-analytic approaches, theories, and therapeutic and research practices.

The syncretic paradigm My own approach to building such a metapsychology is based on what I call the “syncretic paradigm”. Even if it is hardly a new idea, it has the most significant consequences for the integration of psychoanalysis and group analysis. To put it in a nutshell, its basic hypothesis is as follows: There is a significant part—or level—of mental functioning, whether intra-, inter- or transpersonal, in which there is no differentiation whatsoever—subject–object, material–mental, male–female, cause–effect, past–present–future, inside–outside, here–there, light–dark, empty–full, sight–sound–smell–taste–touch, among many other classificatory principles—but only a primeval state of fusion and indiscrimination. This is not an early state to be transcended, nor is it a delusion to be contrasted with reality, but an actuality in both experience and concrete human functioning, which coexists with other ways of constructing experienced reality, such as flights of imagination and ordinary everyday pragmatic reality, during the whole life cycle. The full human experience emerges from the confluence and dialectic interaction of these various dimensions. This undifferentiated (syncretic) dimension is what allows individuals to engage in relations and participate in groups, institutions, communities, and society.

Having made this statement, I shall now summarise the sources of such far-flung allegations. In this matter, as in so many others in our profession, the story starts with Freud. His concepts of primary narcissism (1914c) and primary identification (1923b) sometimes include the idea of undifferentiation, but more often than not he starts his arguments from the consideration of a primary isolated organism that has yet to discover the “external world” (1915c): Let us imagine ourselves in the situation of an almost entirely helpless living organism, as yet unorientated in the world, which is receiving

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stimuli in its nervous substance. This organism will very soon be in a position to make a first distinction and a first orientation. On the one hand, it will be aware of stimuli which can be avoided by muscular action (flight); these it ascribes to an external world. On the other hand, it will also be aware of stimuli against which such action is of no avail and whose character of constant pressure persists in spite of it; these stimuli are the signs of an internal world, the evidence of instinctual needs. The perceptual substance of the living organism will thus have found in the efficacy of its muscular activity a basis for distinguishing between an “outside” and an “inside”. (p. 119) . . . The antithesis ego-non-ego (external), i.e. subject-object, is, as we have already said . . ., thrust upon the individual organism at an early stage, by the experience that it can silence external stimuli by means of muscular action but is defenceless against instinctual stimuli. This antithesis remains, above all, sovereign in our intellectual activity and creates for research the basic situation which no efforts can alter. (p. 134, my italics)

In other words, in the beginning was the individual in a state of isolation, an individual who infers the existence of an inner and an outer reality by means of a sort of scientific reasoning. It was only until 1930, in Civilization and its Discontents (1930a), that he tackled the problem of a primary undifferentiation, as we shall see. In the meantime, Sándor Ferenczi had approached it in Thalassa (1924), in which he postulated that life had originated in the waters and that living organisms had emerged from it and retained a longing to return, so that, when having to face traumatic situations, they tend to make a “Thalassal regression” (“going back to the sea”). Quite apart from such phylogenetic speculations, this whole myth of origins served as a major metaphor for his later works on psychoanalytic technique of the 1928–1932 period (Ferenczi, 1955, 1985), in which he postulated the essential unity of transference and countertransference and the therapeutic effects of deep regression. At the beginning of his book, Freud (1930a) discusses his friend Romain Rolland’s contention that religion is based on the experience of “a feeling which he would like to call a sensation of ‘eternity’, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded—as it were, ‘oceanic’. This . . . is a purely subjective fact, not an article of faith” (p. 64). Freud’s main reason to dismiss the universality of this experience is that he “cannot find this ‘oceanic’ feeling in [himself]” (p. 65), but he is

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willing to concede that this may be the case for others, although he is by no means convinced of the primary nature of such feeling. In any case, he sets out to enquire and account for this phenomenon, and he does it in genetic terms, by attributing it to the persistence and emergence of a primitive organisation of the personality in which there is still no ego-feeling comparable to that of the adult: Further reflection tells us that the adult’s ego-feeling cannot have been the same from the beginning. It must have gone through a process of development, which cannot, of course, be demonstrated but which admits of being constructed with a fair degree of probability. An infant at the breast does not as yet distinguish his ego from the external world as the source of the sensations flowing in upon him. . . . A tendency arises to separate from the ego everything that can become a source of such unpleasure, to throw it outside and to create a pure pleasure-ego which is confronted by a strange and threatening “outside”. (p. 66–67) In this way, then, the ego detaches itself from the external world. Or, to put it more correctly, originally the ego includes everything, later it separates off an external world from itself. Our present ego-feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive—indeed, an allembracing—feeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it. If we may assume that there are many people in whose mental life this primary ego-feeling has persisted to a greater or less degree, it would exist in them side by side with the narrower and more sharply demarcated ego-feeling of maturity, like a kind of counterpart to it. In that case, the ideational contents appropriate to it would be precisely those of limitlessness and of a bond with the universe—the same ideas with which my friend elucidated the “oceanic” feeling. (p. 68, my italics)

So, Freud believed that, at the beginning of an individual’s life, there is a unitary experience of complete fusion of the ego and the world, which implied “a more intimate bond” between them, but that this is soon to be superseded by an adult ego-feeling, in the course of normal development, although he concedes that it may well survive “side by side with this primary ego-feeling of maturity”. Yet he seems to dislike the idea, does not believe that the desire to attain such “restoration of limitless narcissism” (p. 72) could be a primary motivational force or the source of religious feelings, and most emphatically takes exception

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at any attempt to attain such states, as through meditation or yoga, which he considers to be worthless. Besides, his starting point seems to be, once again, the existence of an isolated individual, an ego that comprises the whole of experience and creates the external world by projection of its unpleasant experiences. Hence, the original relation with the “external world” is necessarily a paranoid one, an idea that was later further developed by Melanie Klein (1958), and other people and society are always basically menacing and dangerous. Hans Loewald (1951), on the other hand, starts from this pioneer study by Freud, which he obviously values, but then gives it a new turn, by emphasising that the coexistence of individuation and fusion is the rule, rather than the exception, that this is not an archaic and worthless remnant of an embryonic organisation of the mind, but a most necessary complementarity, and that the “normal adult ego-feeling” might be, whenever it excludes and represses the fusional level of experience and mental functioning, some kind of psychopathology, a mutilated state: Freud has raised the problem of the psychological survival of earlier ego-stages side by side with later stages of ego-development; a problem which he says has as yet hardly been investigated. If we look closely at people we can see that it is not merely a question of survival of former stages of ego-reality integration, but that people shift considerably, from day to day, at different periods in their lives, in different moods and situations, from one such level to other levels. In fact, it would seem that people are more alive (though not necessarily more “stable”), the broader their range of ego-reality levels is. Perhaps the so-called fully developed, the mature ego is not one that has become fixated at the presumably highest or latest stage of development, having left the others behind it, but is an ego that integrates its reality in such a way that the earlier and deeper levels of ego-reality integration remain alive as dynamic sources of higher integration. (p. 18, my italics)5

Loewald developed this point of view further in a series of seminal papers, later collected in his book Papers on Psychoanalysis (1980). Another author who explored these problematics was Margaret S. Mahler (1952, 1958). From her clinical studies of autism and childhood psychoses, she enquired the undifferentiated phase—a concept barely suggested by Freud (1940a) and later developed by Hartmann, Kris, and Loewenstein (1946)6—and divided primary narcissism into two

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phases: autism and symbiosis (Mahler, 1958, 1968). Her work was a major influence on Bleger’s, as we shall soon see. In Britain, the same trend followed a different path, one which emphasised the development of object relations, rather than that of psychic structure. Highly influenced by the works of Ferenczi, whom they nonetheless rarely quoted (Tubert-Oklander, 1999a, 2004d, 2004e (see Chapter Six current volume)), the members of what used to be called the “Middle Group” and are now known as “The Independents”, conceived the earliest stages of development in terms of a state of primary undifferentiation, from which subject and object were to emerge. Both Fairbairn (1952) and Winnicott (1963a) conceived this process as an evolution from early dependence, which was absolute, towards a stage of independence or, perhaps, partial dependence. These ideas were further developed by two of Winnicott’s analysands, Margaret Little (1981) and Marion Milner (1987a). However, there were some significant differences between them. Little (1960) developed, from the deep study of transference–countertransference phenomena and unconscious communication between analyst and patient, the concept of a “basic unity”, which she also called “primary total undifferentiatedness”, which she deemed to be the true foundation of every relationship: I am postulating that a universal idea exists, as normal and essential as is the Oedipus complex, which cannot develop without it, an idea of absolute identity with the mother upon which survival depends. The presence of this idea is the foundation of mental health, development of a whole person, and the capacity for holistic thinking. It is to be found not only in the delusions of the mentally sick, where it takes the form of transference psychosis, but also in the sane and healthy. (p. 383, my italics)

So, Little’s idea was quite similar to Loewald’s, but she was too much of a psychiatrist and too rationalistic to state it in plain terms of health. So, she had to postulate a normal state of “delusion” that underlay our whole experience of reality. For instance, she referred to the experience of art in the following terms: Contact or communication between the artist and his public depends upon the presence of, and regression to, this unconscious delusion in both; for to the artist his creation is his work, is his feeling, is himself; and to the hearer or the viewer what is heard or seen is his feeling, is his

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response, is himself. So each psychically is the work of art, and is the other. (pp. 383–384, original italics apart from “in both” which is my emphasis)

Her description of the communion between the artist, his work, and the public is flawless, but why on earth should she call it a “delusion”? I know that she was thinking from the perspective of a reality principle conceived in terms of nothing but material reality. Nonetheless, from an experiential point of view, the fusion implied in the artistic and religious experiences is as “real” as—if not more than—our everyday pragmatic conception and perception of things. In any case, she was clearly ambivalent about the subject. Milner, on the other hand, came from the fields of education and art, and had a lifelong penchant for mysticism (Sayers, 2002), so she had no trouble with the idea of a primary fusion of the self with everything that is, an experience to be sought and recovered in psychoanalysis and in life, in order attain a fullness of being that had been lost in the course of individual development (Milner, 1987b). This implied the central role played by illusion (not “delusion”!) in human life and experience, a position she shared with Rycroft and Winnicott (Turner, 2002). Nonetheless, Milner and Little were not so far apart as it seems. Margaret Little herself acknowledged it, in a dialogue with Robert Langs (Little & Langs, 1981), when she said, Marion Milner, for instance. It took quite a long while for me to find for myself that we were really on the same wave length; we write so very differently. I find some of her writing difficult to understand, but at one point I had to say: “Look, I’ve been saying this too”, and she agreed (p. 290).

Perhaps the greatest difference between them is that Little focused on the invisible connection between analyst and patient, while Milner emphasised the need to go back to the very centre of our being, which implied a vivid awareness of our body and a silencing of our usual mental chattering, as a prerequisite for a full perception of the world. But they both pointed out the importance of the non-verbal bodily experience and communication. Now we shall move southwards, to Argentina and Latin America. Enrique Pichon-Rivière (1971a, 1979) always maintained the essential

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unity of the individual and society, as well as his or her total environment, but he did not tackle the metapsychological problem of the way in which this unity comes about. It was his disciple, José Bleger (1967, 1971b) who tried to give a theoretical answer to this question. Highly influenced by Mahler (1968), he made a thorough study of autism and symbiosis in the transference–countertransference. This led him to postulate the existence of a deep, primitive, syncretic level of experience in which there are no differentiations, but a coexistence of all opposites, which stand together in a state of fusion—not “confusion”, since things may only get confused after they have been discriminated. He called this particular form of relation “ambiguity”, and this implied a complete original non-discrimination between subject and object, inner and outer, love and hate, masculine and feminine, mind and body, self and environment. On this basis he suggested a third position that complements Melanie Klein’s (1952) paranoid–schizoid and depressive positions, which he called the glischro–karyc position—from the Greek Glischros (meaning “viscous”) and Karyon (nucleus, like the nucleus of a cell)—hence, an “agglutinated nucleus”.7 It should be noted that this position, similarly to those described by Klein, is not conceived only as an early phase of development, which should be surpassed, but also as a permanent organisation of mind that coexists and alternates with the other two (TubertOklander, 2004b, 2004c, 2005, 2008c). From this perspective, which is very similar to those of Loewald (1980), Little (1981), and Milner (1987a), there is always an undifferentiated and ambiguous experience of everything that happens to us, which coexists with the differentiated experience of everyday life. This is, for Bleger (1967, 1971b), the very basis of collective existence—group, institutional, and social—since, although human groups are apparently made up of individuals, in the syncretic relations level they live as if they were interconnected, as communicating vessels. This he called the “syncytial structure”, taking as a metaphor the biological concept of the syncytium, meaning “a multinucleate mass of protoplasm that is not differentiated in cells”. Just as in the case of the syncytium we have a common protoplasm containing multiple nuclei, but keeping a continuity in the cytoplasm, the human group would be a single and continuous mass, in which are contained the nuclei of individual identifications and experiences that correspond to the various subjects.

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(This is quite compatible with Matte-Blanco’s (1988) ideas, which we have already discussed in Chapter One.) Unfortunately, Bleger had an untimely death, at the age of fortynine, so that he never had a chance to fully develop his ideas. This left an unfinished task for several of his students to tackle. Among them, I find Blanca Montevechio’s (1999, 2002) contribution to be particularly significant. Leaving aside Bleger’s basically psychopathological approach, derived from the Freudian and Kleinian traditions, she approached the problem in terms of a general view of human nature that emphasised the healthy aspects of the personality’s structure and function. In this, she was more akin to the Independent’s conception than to the Freudian or Kleinian view. She thus reformulated Bleger’s ideas of syncretism and ambiguity in terms of a primitive, undifferentiated, and vital organisation of the mind, in which there is a confluence of opposing passions. This is the most primitive and vital stratum of mental functioning, from which all social life derives, since in it there is a primal continuity and fusion between individuals and everything that surrounds them. In this she finds the basis for all social feelings and relations, such as empathy, solidarity, cooperation, and compassion. This is a non-representational form of experience and relationship, one that is based on the emotional and bodily experiences that, unlike the subjectivity of thought and fantasy, is immediately shared. In order to be able to speak about such experience and relation, she relinquishes the use of both the pseudo-scientific language of Freudian metapsychology and the psychopathological one of Klein and Bleger, and turns back to the language of myth. Freud introduced the use of myths as models of highly complex mental and relational events; he thus resorted to the myths of Oedipus (1900a) and Narcissus (1914c). Nonetheless, instead of considering and interpreting the minute details of these myths, he rewrote and simplified them in order that they might better illustrate his theories; he even went as far as creating his own myth of the primal horde and the original parricide, in order to reaffirm his theory of the Oedipus complex (1912–1913). Obviously, he did not believe that there is any truth to be found in myths, but rather took them as symptoms to be analysed. But Montevechio used myths as true sources of clarification of the many riddles of human existence. After all, as Bion (1963) remarked, when considering the Oedipus myth,

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The myth by virtue of its narrative form binds the various components in the story in a manner analogous to the fixation of the elements of a scientific deductive system by their inclusion in the system: it is similar to the fixation of the elements in the corresponding algebraic calculus where that exists. No element, such as the sexual element, can be comprehended save in its relationship with other elements. (p. 45)

Hence, a myth is theory framed in a narrative form, but unlike the linear and rationally structured cogitations of the secondary process, which oversimplify and schematise complexity, myths retain an isomorphism with the matrix of mind—what Freud (1900a) would have called the “meshwork” of mental processes, thus becoming suitable analogues for their subject matter. Bion (1963, 1965) used the myths of Oedipus, Babel, and the Garden of Eden, all in relation to the basic human need for knowledge. Montevechio (1999) retained the Freudian myths of Narcissus and Oedipus, albeit with a different emphasis, and added a third one, that of Dionysus, which she took from Nietzsche (1872), who, in The Birth of Tragedy From the Spirit of Music, used this god to incarnate primal unity, the immersion of the individual in the whole, the liberating dissolution of Being, frenzy, ecstasy, and creativity. This he contrasted with the figure of Apollo, the god of clarity, measure, and balance. Where Dionysus represented darkness, bodily existence, and formlessness, Apollo stood for light, spirit, and pristine form. In Montevechio’s writings, however, Apollo was substituted, in accordance with the psychoanalytic tradition, by Oedipus, the riddle-solver, the seeker-after-knowledge, who shall finally have to face the fateful truth about himself. But why Dionysus? Dionysus, the god of grapes and wine, was quite different from other gods in the Greek pantheon: he was the only one to have been born of a mortal woman, he did not reside in Olympus but on Earth, and he was a god who suffered, unlike the imperviousness of the other gods; he also conciliated, like wine, vitality and violence. So, his main characteristic was that he was a god of contradictions: he came from fire and rain, and his cult represented liveliness and creativity, on the one hand, and ruthless destructiveness, on the other (Hamilton, 1942). This is precisely the way in which the most primitive stratum of the mind works: it contains the liveliest part of the human being, both in its loving and caring aspect, and in its more sombre one, which brings about violence and destruction. It

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is also responsible for his or her social nature, as a member of the community, which contrasts and complements the experience of the self as an autonomous entity (Tubert-Oklander, 2004b, 2004c, 2005, 2008c). In this level of existence, there is a true continuity of the individual with others, and also with the whole non-human environment (Searles, 1960). Such stratum is referred to by Bion (1963) as “the primitive mind and the primitive social capacity of the individual as a political or group animal” (p. 16). In his previous work on groups (1948–1951) he had called this “the proto-mental system”, and referred to it in the following terms: The proto-mental system I visualise as one in which physical and psychological or mental are undifferentiated. It is a matrix from which spring the phenomena which at first appear—on a psychological level and in the light of psychological investigation—to be discrete feelings only loosely associated with one another. (p. 102)

Although Montevechio (1999) describes a developmental sequence, starting from the Dionysus phase8—which corresponds to the Freudian concept of “primary narcissism” in its non-discrimination, but which is not at all objectless, since it represents the most intimate and intense connection with the object—then going to the Narcissus and the Oedipus ones, she is very explicit in stating that all these three forms of experience coexist and complement each other in adult life, so that they are much more than developmental phases: The Dionysian becomes an apt metaphor for referring both to the very first moments of human development and to later manifestations in adult life that actualise this dimension of a return to primary unity. Ineffable experiences of an intense emotional content, fascinating and sublime, tell us about their origin in these archaic levels, in the felt experience of a pleasurable unity with the whole, such as the oceanic feeling, religious ecstasy, mystical experiences, artistic inspiration, mass phenomena, some forms of falling in love, some parapsychological phenomena, and those that occur under the effect of some drugs such a mescaline or lysergic acid . . . [as well as] the ingestion of alcohol and other cortex-inhibiting drugs. . . . It is in the structures that correspond to this evolutional level that the “Dionysian spirit” is expressed with its tendency to fusion and return to primordial unity.

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In the case of those felt experiences that belong to the uncanny, which is the other face of ecstasy, the Dionysian shows a grotesque and cruel face, inordinate and violent. (p. 25, translated for this edition)

“Narcissus” here does not imply withdrawal or isolation, but mirroring. In the Narcissus myth, the arrogant young and beautiful man was condemned to fall in love with his own reflection in the waters, which he took to be another youth, while the nymph Echo was commanded to repeat each of his words, so that Narcissus actually believed that his love was answering to his loving words. So, Narcissus lived in a world of reflections and echoes, a world of images that fascinated him, but left his heart unfulfilled and led him to an early death (Pines, 1982). This is a suitable metaphor for the imaginary realm of unconscious phantasy, which was well explored by Melanie Klein (Klein, Heimann, Isaacs, & Rivière, 1952). Oedipus, on the other hand, stands for separation, as he runs away from Corinth in order to protect those he believed to be his parents from his fate, rationality, in his role of riddle-solver, and enquiry, when he turns into a detective who searches for the killer of Laius, until he discovers that he himself is the guilty one. In the psychoanalytic theories of development, the Oedipal phase comes about through the intervention of the father, who breaks apart the mutual specular fascination of mother and child, and the acquisition of language, both of them events that restructure the child’s conception of the world into a space inhabited by separate persons, thus introducing the possibility of inclusion and exclusion, presence and absence. Montevechio believed that these three organisations comprised the whole of human experience and relationship. It is easy to see in this the influence of Lacan’s (1966) conception of the three registers of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic, but unlike him she does not attribute an intrinsic superiority to the Symbolic, but rather thinks the three of them as complementary and mutually enriching. In my own work on this subject (Tubert-Oklander, 2004b, 2004c, 2005, 2008c, 2011b, in preparation), I emphasised that these three organisations may be thought either as a developmental sequence or as simultaneous phases in dialectic equilibrium, and that I believe the latter to be more fruitful for our clinical and theoretical thinking. This is in consonance with Ogden’s (1989) own conception of a third

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position—which he called the “autistic–contiguous position”—in dynamic equilibrium with the schizoid–paranoid and the depressive ones—an idea that resonates with Bleger’s concept of the grishro– karic position.9 So, the three above-mentioned dimensions of human existence are simultaneous, complementary, and mutually enriching, and they stand in a dynamic tension that is the very heart of human life: The Dionysian dimension is that of primeval fusion, syncretism, ambiguity, and bodily existence. It is the source of passion and creativity; of collective life, compassion, and ruthlessness. The Narcissistic one is a world of images and dreams, reflections and echoes, reversible relationships, idealisation, and appearance; it is the world of primitive phantasy that Melanie Klein explored. The Oedipal is the world of difference and contrast; of language, enquiry and individual existence; of interpersonal relationships, conflicts, and negotiations; of Law and Order, Sin and Virtue. (Tubert-Oklander, in preparation)

But there is still more to it. I suggested (Tubert-Oklander, 2004c, 2005) a fourth, higher level, of organisation that emerges from the dialectical interchange between the three previous ones. This allows the rational and frequently dogmatic and unilateral view of the world that characterises the Oedipus organisation, to recover and include the richness of the Narcissus fantasy and imagination, and the impetus, liveliness, depth of feeling, creativity, and participatory identification of the Dionysus way of existence, which had been previously repressed. This concept, of course, also required a myth. But which one? I thought that, whereas the Oedipus phase implies knowledge, it is still an incomplete and arrogant knowledge, akin to that of contemporary science and technology, which therefore lacks wisdom. Then, it was quite natural to think this in terms of the old Oedipus, of Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus—which is itself the fruit of the playwright’s old age. This blind old man, ripened and mellowed by time and suffering, who has learnt to be cared and guided by his daughters, has transcended the mere haughty cleverness he showed in Oedipus Tyrannus and has finally attained wisdom. As a young man he tried to escape his fate, as announced by the Delphic Oracle; now he accepts Death, when the thunder of Zeus bids him to go. But his death is not like any other’s: he leaves behind neither corpse nor grave, but disappears and

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turns into a higher spirit that shall protect Athens, the city that mercifully gave him sanctuary. Oedipus has not really died: he has turned into a god. If this evolution is seen as a temporal developmental sequence, such emerging organisation could be called “post-Oedipal” or “lateOedipal”. But, if what we want to depict is a tripartite system that is kept in a dynamic equilibrium, which unifies these three agencies, while retaining their individuality, there is no Greek myth that might represent it. I looked for such a myth for some time, and finally found it in the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity, the Triune God, who is always Three and One at the same time, thus becoming a most suitable metaphor to describe three mental organisations that interact to become one single encompassing self, without losing their specificity. Hence, we may call this phase the “Trinitarian”. This is the present state of the evolution of the syncretic paradigm, which attempts to give its due to each of the aspects of the multifarious organisation of human existence. But, more specifically, it introduces the Dionysus dimension, the basic indiscriminate and ambiguous level of Mind, which is the psychological basis of sociability, relationality, compassion, solidarity, and social responsibility, as well as its dynamic relations with two other kinds of relating: the Narcissus specular relationship and the Oedipus one discriminate interpersonal relationship. All this obviously has major consequences for our understanding and management of groups, as I shall briefly introduce in the following section and develop further in other chapters of this book.

The Group Dimension It is quite obvious that the syncretic paradigm has much to say about the inner workings of individuals as members of groups and other collective entities, such as families, institutions, communities, societies, states, and Humankind, but is it really a social paradigm? Is it not based on the rather outdated model of an isolated individual organism, and then tries to construct from it the dynamics of relationships and groups, much as Freud (1921c) did? The answer to these questions depends on the meaning we assign to the word “mind”. Are we talking about “the minds of individuals”, conceived as a epiphenomenon derived from the functioning of the brain matter that dwells

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in individual skulls, or about “Mind”, understood as a general term for all mental processes, whether intra-, inter-, or transpersonal? My own thinking corresponds to the latter option. This means that for me “Mind” is not related to the idea of a brain or an individual organism. The integration of a football team, for instance—an example that was very dear to Pichon-Rivière (PichonRivière & Quiroga, 1985), who was ever a sportsman—is a group mental process that is not placed within anyone’s body. On his part, S. H. Foulkes created, in 1967, an instrument for communication among group analysts from many countries, called Group Analysis— International Panel and Correspondence (GAIPAC). Its aim was “to bring together, by correspondence, group psychotherapists in all parts of the world. It is essentially an expanded circular letter, an international workshop or study group” (Foulkes, 1967b, p. 1). He also wrote, “To me it does not seem difficult to accept that communication, verbal or otherwise, can take place, from one mind to the other with complete disregard of whether the brain substance is located in one or other skull of the participants” (Foulkes, 1967a, p. 18). In other words, GAIPAC was a collective mental process, an international group matrix with no particular physical venue, which was to contain, hold, and foster the development of the protagonists of the evolution of group analysis. Later, GAIPAC turned into Group Analysis: The International Journal of Group-Analytic Psychotherapy, and the GroupAnalytic Society developed other such instruments: its Newsletter, called Contexts, the GAS Internet Forum, and the Large Groups in its Symposia (Tubert-Oklander, 2010b). Nowadays, in the Internet era, we are also having to deal with virtual groups in the cyberspace, some of which are strikingly large, as studied by Haim Weinberg (in press). So, although the theory I have just sketched comes from the field of bipersonal psychoanalysis, its concepts can be readily applied to the organisation of the group matrix, as described by Foulkes (1957). This author presented us, in his article “Psychodynamic processes in the light of psychoanalysis and group analysis”, a schema of four levels or spheres of mental functioning in the group-analytic group, which represent his attempt to formulate a metapsychology of group processes. These four levels are as follows: 1.

The current level. . . . Here the group is experienced as representing the community, public opinion, etc., and the conductor as a leader or authority.

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3.

4.

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The transference level. . . . Corresponds to mature object relations. . . . It is the level most often envisaged by group psychotherapists of analytic orientation, for whom the group represents the family, the conductor father or mother, and the other members’ siblings. The level of bodily and mental images (projective level). . . . Corresponds to primitive, narcissistic “inner” object relations. . . . Not only may individuals [the members of the group] embody a part of the self, but the group as a whole may do so. The group often represents the mother image. The body image is reflected and represented in the group and its members. . . . The primordial level. This fourth level is the one in which primordial images occur according to the concepts of Freud and those particularly formulated by Jung concerning the existence of a collective unconscious. (pp. 114–115)

If we now articulate this description of the various levels of group functioning with the theoretical schema provided by the syncretic paradigm, it seems clear that they are two ways of referring to the same thing. Thus, the group’s current and transference levels, which refer to the structural and dynamic functioning of social systems and to mature object relations, in interpersonal terms, between group members, would correspond to the Oedipus level; the projective level of bodily and mental images, which is that of fantasy, play, and dream, to the Narcissus level; and finally, the primordial level, which Jungians would call “archetypal”, would represent the Dionysus level (TubertOklander, 2011b). But perhaps we have already exhausted the utility of the concept of “levels”, which is related to a hierarchical conception of mind, much as in Freud’s original concept of the primary and secondary processes, and we should replace it by some other term, such as “organisation”, “sphere”, or “phase” (like the phases of the Moon, which are forever alternating). The result would be something like a system of resonances between these various focuses of experience, action, and minding. In a forthcoming chapter called “The organisation of the matrix” (Tubert-Oklander, in preparation), written for the second volume in the series on the Social Unconscious, edited by Hopper and Weinberg (in preparation), I have formulated an expanded schema of Foulkes’s “levels”, which may solve some of the problems posed by this extremely simplified version. But now, I should respond to an unavoidable question that may well have emerged in the reader’s

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mind: “You have shown that personal and interpersonal processes can be described in terms of such levels or organisations, but is this schema really social? Or is it just another attempt to reduce the complexity of transpersonal phenomena to the well-known theories derived from the experience of bipersonal treatments?” I fully agree that, even though the metapsychological theory of mind I have introduced here certainly has a bearing on our understanding of all kinds of collective processes, it still leaves out the kind of facts that have been elucidated by the social sciences, such as sociology, cultural anthropology, history, and political science. These include such facts as laws, traditions, migration waves, the evolution of economy, technological innovation, the organisation of society, institutions, ideology, and political conflict. Even if those phenomena have been studied “from outside”, so to speak, in contrast with our usual analytical perspective “from inside”, it would be naïve to pretend that they have no impact on mental processes. Indeed, they are themselves mental processes, albeit of a transpersonal kind; they also have a conscious and an unconscious side, with a predominance of the latter, and it may well be the case that their insertion in individual mental processes will turn out to be the deepest layer of the unconscious (Tubert-Oklander, 1995; Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004). We shall later see one instance of this, when discussing the inclusion of the political and religious dimensions in the analytic dialogue, in Chapter Seven. So this approach to the metapsychology of individuals, groups, and other collective entities is based on a particular understanding of the functioning of Mind, and it is therefore constructed from the conjunction of subjective experience and mental processes, that is “from inside out”. This has to be checked and integrated with a metasociology that goes “from outside in”, that is, from the observation, enquiry, and theorising about culture, tradition, politics, organisational structure, ideology, and law, to their inclusion, dynamic and structural effects, recreation, and experience in individuals and groups. Thus, the analytic and the social science approaches may serve as a pincers or tongs for getting hold of the varieties of human experience. In any case, I believe that something like a metapsychology and metasociology—a theory of individual, relational, group, institutional, and social Mind—should be the meeting ground or field for these various players to hold a game of knowledge and understanding.

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Notes 1.

In the end, the whole discussion is about what language should be used by psychoanalysis. Bruno Bettelheim (1983) pointed out that Strachey’s translation of Freud for the Standard Edition falsified the text, turning the discourse of an Austrian Jew, with an ample classical education, into a quasi-medical objectified text. Malcolm Pines (1991) quotes Ornston, who writes, “In Freud’s portrayals, the analyst is a person working with another ‘person’ to bring the past alive in order to try to understand” (Ornston, 1988, quoted by Pines, p. 328). Then he adds, What is it that Strachey does? Strachey reads Freud as an objective scientist who is studying a subject. He is the observer who is in many ways outside the situation that he is observing. He is objective and the patient is subjective. Strachey, by using a different terminology for the psychology of the analyst from the psychology of the patient, does not present them in a person-to-person context and relationship. Freud is the scientist studying the patient as a person. This is not a reciprocal or complementary relationship. According to Ornston, Freud in German uses the same words to describe the psychological processes of both analyst and patient. (Pines, 1991, pp. 328–329)

2.

Even if this were true, we must also remember that there also was an intrinsic contradiction in Freud’s thought, between the classical and Romantic traditions, on the one hand, and the positivistic and physicalist perspective that he received from his scientist teachers, and to which he heartily adhered (Tubert-Oklander, 2008a). In his paper “The problem of acceptance of unpleasant ideas: advances in knowledge of the sense of reality” (Ferenczi, 1926), he wrote that the critical study of “the manner in which our present-day science is working, . . . compelled [him] to assume that, if science is really to remain objective, it must work alternately as pure psychology and pure natural science, and must verify both our inner and outer experience by analogies taken from both points of view” (p. 318). This he called “the ‘utraquism’ of all true scientific work”, as a reference to the Utraquists (from the Latin sub utraque specie, meaning “in both kinds”), a fifteenth century Christian sect that maintained that both the bread and the wine should be administered to the faithful during the Holy Communion. This metaphor—which was also used by Ogden and Richards (1923) to refer to the use of a term that refers either to a physical or a mental referent, generating an ambiguity which is left open to the interpretation

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of the reader or listener—had already appeared in Thalassa (Ferenczi, 1924). Brierley borrowed the term “personology” from General Smuts (1929), whose argument was as follows: The procedure of psychology is largely and necessarily analytical and cannot therefore do justice to Personality in its unique wholeness. For this a new discipline is required, which we have called Personology, and whose task it would be to study Personality as a whole and to trace the laws and phases of its development in the individual life. . . . Personology would study the Personality not as an abstraction or bundle of psychological abstractions, but rather as a vital organism, as the organic psychic whole which par excellence it is; and such a study should lead to the formulation of the laws of the growth of this unique whole, which would not only be of profound theoretical importance, but also of the greatest practical value. (Smuts, 1929, p. 293, quoted by Brierley, 1945, p. 89, my italics)

4.

5.

6.

7.

Rycroft’s (1995) remembrance of this episode is as follows: “It was not Home’s paper, but his audience’s reactions to it that appalled me. Speaker after speaker got up to assert his belief in psychic determinism, in the natural-scientific base of psychoanalysis, each eagerly making a Declaration of Faith and Loyalty and dissociating himself from the heresy being propounded by Home. The only two speakers to support Home were Peter Lomas and myself” (p. 245). This idea had already been adumbrated by Erik Erikson (1950), whose concept of identity referred to an inner experience of selfhood, continuity, and vitality, based on the integration of the bodily, psychological, and social experiences of a person. His conception of epigenesis showed how the life cycle of the person synthesised the evolution of instinctual drives and wishes, with those of personal relationships, participation in groups and institutions, and social roles. This undifferentiated phase refers to the hypothesis that, at the beginning of life, there is no ego or id, but a primary ego–id. At the same time, there would not be any subject–object or libido–aggression discrimination. Just like the other two classic Kleinian positions, the glischro–karyc position is defined by a particular form of anxiety (confusional anxiety, which perhaps should have been called “fusional anxiety”), by a specific object (the agglutinated nucleus, a fusional structure which includes subject, object, and environment in an undifferentiated form), a type of object relation (ambiguity), and certain specific defences (separation, immobilisation,

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9.

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and fragmentation). “Separation” is used here to translate Bleger’s original Spanish term “clivaje”. This is a neologism he introduced in order to refer to a specific primitive form of defence, which is quite different from splitting—a necessary clarification, since “clivage” is the French rendition of “splitting”. Splitting works on the imaginary level, by forcibly separating diverse aspects of object- and self-representations, while Bleger’s clivaje is a horizontal barrier that keeps apart the phantasmal mental process—which already imply a certain differentiation—from a deeper undifferentiated syncretic level of existence. I have chosen the unusual terms “Dionysus”, “Narcissus”, and “Oedipus” phases, instead of the more common “Dionysian”, “narcissistic”, and “Oedipal”, in order to avoid any confusion with the stadard psychoanalytical meanings and connotations of these adjectives. A discussion of the similarities and differences between his schema, Bleger’s, and the one I have been presenting transcends the scope of this presentation.

CHAPTER THREE

Lost in translation: a contribution to intercultural understanding

Introduction to Chapter Three his chapter is the outcome of an inner controversy I had in early 2009, as I explain in the first section, with two Canadian Frenchspeaking colleagues. When I read their papers, in both English and French, I was impressed by the difficulties and misunderstandings that arise when trying to interpret and convey in one’s own language a set of psychoanalytic ideas that were originally formulated in another language and within a different tradition. I sat down immediately to write these reflections, without knowing that the task would be far from easy and that it would take much longer than I had expected. I was aware that the title I had chosen—”Lost in translation”—was also the name of a film I had not seen at the time. It was only later that I was told that this was also the title of a most interesting book of memoires by Eva Hoffman (1989), which narrates her immigration, in 1959, from Poland to Canada, and then to the US, as well as the transmutation and the misunderstandings derived from her immersion in a new language and culture. The article was finally published in a slightly shortened version in the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis—Revue Canadienne de Psychanalyse (Tubert-Oklander, 2011a). The published text included several insightful revisions by the Editor, Charles Levin, which I have kept in this chapter, and omitted most of its final section—called “Back to translation through hermeneutics”, on account of space limitations.

T

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The present version has restored the omitted text and also includes a few revisions and new material.

Translation and the Weltanschauung When I received the spring 2009 issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis—Revue Canadienne de Psychanalyse, I was immediately attracted by Charles Levin’s paper “Le complexe fraternel: réflexion sur la «traduction» du français vers l’anglais” (The sibling complex: reflections on the “translation” from French to English) (Levin, 2009). The title looked promising, and the fact that it was included under the heading “Controversial issues/Questions polémiques” added a further interest. As soon as I started reading it, I realised that it had already been published in English (Levin, 2008), but, since the whole point of the paper seemed to focus on the distortions that resulted from the attempt to translate French psychoanalytical thought into English, I decided to read it in French first. I was surprised, and a little disappointed, when I found out that the paper had very little to say about translation, since its main aim was to present to English-speaking readers René Kaës’s (2008) theory of the sibling complex—a job it fulfils quite nicely. But in the process of explaining the differences between the French and the American understanding of certain key concepts in Kaës’s work—notably intersubjectivity—it also seemed to present an unfavourably biased attitude against the American point of view. Then I turned to the “Word from the President”, by Martin Gauthier (2009a,b), which promised to address the same issue of translation and, quite fittingly, was also published in both English and French. Once again, I started with the French text, which I later compared with its English version. This time I was not disappointed, since the author not only dealt deeply and subtly with the subjects of bilingualism, multiculturalism, and translation, but also gave the context of the whole matter, which was much-needed for me, since I am not a member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, live in another country (Mexico), belong to another linguistic community (Spanish), and have been formed as a psychoanalyst within another tradition, that of Latin-American psychoanalysis, in general, and Argentine and Mexican psychoanalysis, in particular. I am therefore

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quadruply foreign, but this also gives me the opportunity to contribute to an inter-linguistic and intercultural debate. I also have the advantage of having access to the writings of several psychoanalytic linguistic communities: Spanish, English, French, Italian, and Portuguese. As Gauthier aptly points out, the problem of translation does not only involve two languages, but two cultures, two traditions, two world views. So it is not only a question of projecting the same set of thoughts into another set of words, but of recreating them, in order to build a bridge between two diverse experiences, sensibilities, and ways of thinking. The concept of the Conception of the World— Weltanschauung in German—has been mainly disregarded by psychoanalysts, ever since Freud (1933a) declared, in “The question of a Weltanschauung” (pp. 158–182) that psychoanalysis “as a specialist science, a branch of psychology—a depth psychology or psychology of the unconscious—. . . is quite unfit to construct a Weltanschauung of its own: it must accept the scientific one” (p. 158). But Freud only considered one of the two possible meanings of the Weltanschauung: that of an intellectual system that proposes a formal reconstruction of how things are, and how we should think about them. But there is still another meaning of the term, and a very important one; this refers to a rather indefinite and loose set of assumptions, beliefs, intuitions, values, habits, ideals, and aspirations, shared by a community and largely unconscious to the individuals who have internalised them during socialisation (Ferrater Mora, 1994, Vol. 3, p. 2481). While the first definition refers to a conscious, rational, and systematic intellectual construction, the second corresponds to an empirical entity, a psychological highly complex dynamic structure, which includes the whole “set of our assumptions in dealing with reality— prejudices, we might say, inasmuch they are judgements made before the fact, pre-conceptions that are usually unexamined by the subject” (Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004, p. 77), as well as values, emotions, and habits. The main part of this Weltanschauung is unconscious, and this turns it into a subject matter for psychoanalytic enquiry (Hernández de Tubert, 2004, 2009; Hernández Hernández, 2010). This spontaneous Weltanschauung is an actual psychological and social structure, not a logical systematic reconstruction, like the formal Weltanschauungen contrived by philosophers like Hegel.1 Being largely unconscious, it is multifarious, highly complex, and frequently

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contradictory. It includes all the assumptions, beliefs, values, and habits from which we build our image of the world, ourselves, and others. It therefore includes the natural, implicit, non-reflective equivalents of an ontology, an epistemology, an axiology, a logic, a semiotics, a hermeneutics, and a procedural code for action. It is on this foundation and within this framework that all our perceptions, judgements, thoughts, valuations, decisions, relations, and actions take place. This means that perception and experience are always a form of interpretation, constructed from a specific point of view—what Enrique Pichon-Rivière (1971a) used to call the CROS, an acronym for “Conceptual, Referential, Operative Schema” (Tubert-Oklander and Hernández de Tubert, 2004).2 Thus, given the essential coincidence of interpretation and translation, the latter turns out to be a much wider and more complex process than the mere act of rendering the meaning of a text into another language. This Weltanschauung is partly a personal construction, based on idiosyncratic experiences; on this, psychoanalysis has a lot to say, since we are used to identifying and interpreting the patients’ unconscious personal ontologies—something like private religions. But the main part of this conception of the world stems from the experience of participating in social life; its assumptions are acquired with the earliest introjections of primary relations, this being the reason for their persistence and invisibility, as the subject does not even perceive them as assumptions, but only as “the way things are”. The internalisation of the social conception of the world, shared by the community and conveyed by the family, determines that culture become an essential part of that inner organisation we use to call the “mental apparatus”. And the axis on which all culture revolves is, of course, language (Hernández de Tubert, 2004, 2009).

On language and tradition Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956) held that the peculiar structure and vocabulary of a language not only determine the way in which its speakers communicate their experiences among themselves, but also participate in their very genesis. In other words, the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis asserts that language does not only influence the way we

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speak about things, but also how we perceive, conceive, and think about them. Therefore, when a child learns his mother tongue—this being inseparable from the experience of the early relationship with mother—he is also learning all the assumptions, beliefs, and values of the community about reality; in other words, incorporating a paradigm of life, a conception of the world. If this is the case, it is small wonder that psychoanalysts from different linguistic areas have trouble in understanding each other. And nowhere is this as visible as in the various versions of Freud’s works: there is a German Freud, an English Freud, a French Freud, and a Spanish Freud, among others, and even though they say more or less the same things, they frequently imply others that are quite different and even incompatible. As we have already seen, James Strachey’s Standard Edition has been criticised for saying what Freud might have said if he had been English (Bettelheim, 1983; Pines, 1991). However, this is not only a question of language, but of tradition— both the national traditions and those of the various psychoanalytic communities. Tradition is the nurturing soil from which all interpretations and all understanding spring; therefore, it is only possible to search for new meanings in the context of a tradition (Gadamer, 1960). It is tradition that sets up the purview for experience, interpretation, thought, and knowledge; it also determines the set of prejudices—in its original meaning of “prejudgment”, a judgement made before the facts—that act as assumptions for all mental activity. Prejudices in this sense are inevitable, albeit modern thought has banished them as undesirable and avoidable. This has been pointed out by Gadamer, who argues that there is no way in which an interpreter may be free of prejudice, since no one may be transparent to himself, nor sovereign in his thinking and acting. The determinants that made us who we are are unknown to us, but they “both open and delimit our horizon. But it is the very fact that we have a horizon that allows us to encounter something that may expand it” (Gadamer in Dutt, 1993, p. 34, translated for this edition). If prejudices are inevitable, then the only way to knowledge that is open for us is to take our prejudices into account and include them in our reading and interpretative activity. This way of looking at things turns interpretation into a dialogue, and dialogue is, according to Gadamer (1960), the very soul of interpretation and knowledge.

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Dialogue always implies a meeting of two subjectivities, two worlds, two discourses; it is a mutual influence, from which both parties—or all parties—come out transformed and, hopefully, enriched. This is clearly the case of an actual dialogue between living persons, but it also happens with established written texts, which will never be the same after a deep and sensitive reader has cast a new light upon them, by means of interpretation. Dialogue is always a form of translation, and translation is nothing but interpretation. (Although some of the theorists of translation would take exception at this last statement, as we shall later see.) Of course, the members of a community of speakers—or readers and writers—who share a language, a history, a culture, and a Weltanschauung, have less trouble in understanding each other than the members of two or more different communities. But this is so because they have an ongoing conventional agreement on the meaning and content of the various experiences and expressions that are permitted and conceivable within the social symbolic framework of their existence (Whorf, 1956). Thomas S. Kuhn (1962) and Paul Feyerabend (1975) have shown that this is the case in scientific communities, in which their new members have to incorporate the general agreements about the existence of the objects of their enquiries, the correct ways to make and register observations, the sort of questions that may be posed and those that should never be voiced, the acceptable methods for answering them, and the criteria to sort out the correct answers from the mass of incorrect ones, in order to be accepted in their ranks. This set of agreements is what they call a scientific paradigm. But this is also the case with every human group or society, starting with the family; each newborn baby has to learn, from the very beginning, the paradigm of existence that makes sense of experience within the community in which she was born. And, whenever one of them fails to comply with this requirement, she is rapidly labelled as a misfit, a criminal, or a crazy person—that is, unless she manages to impose her view of the world upon the whole community, which then becomes a new orthodoxy.

The vantage point Now, coming back to our original problem of the French-English translation of psychoanalytic concepts, as posed by Levin (2008, 2009),

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it is obvious that psychoanalysis feels, develops, and means quite differently from an Anglo-American perspective than it does from a French one. This is not only a result of the different languages, but also of their diverse cultural and psychoanalytic traditions. I shall approach this problem from my particular vantage point, which is that of Latin-American psychoanalysis. I am not claiming, of course, that there is a univocal conception of psychoanalysis in our socio-linguistic area; many Latin-American analysts identify with a British, French, or Anglo-American perspective. But there is also a native tradition of Latin-American psychoanalysis, which emerged spontaneously in the various countries in which our discipline developed from the confluence of the fertile soil provided by the local cultures and the intellectual seeds imported from Germany, Austria, France, Britain, and the US. But the local cultures were also a result of the encounter, violent conflict, and interbreeding of indigenous cultures and those of the European foreign invaders. So, LatinAmerican culture is unavoidably hybrid; we are all half-breeds, as a result of either racial or cultural interbreeding. This is what we call in Spanish “mestizaje”—a term that may be roughly, albeit quite inadequately, translated as “miscegenation” or “interbreeding”, since, pretty much like the concept of negritude, it implies a cultural and political intention, related to identity and pride. Perhaps a better translation would be “mestization” (Hernández-Tubert, in preparation). Latin-American psychoanalysis is therefore doubly hybrid: as an expression of a mestizo identity and as a result of having been nurtured by psychoanalysts who immigrated from the various psychoanalytic traditions. The main thinker, author, and teacher in the conception of the Latin-American tradition was Enrique Pichon-Rivière, one of the founding members of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association. Having been born in Geneva and raised after the age of three in a jungle area of North-Eastern Argentina, Pichon-Rivière’s early experiences were clearly hybrid: the first language he spoke was French, then he acquired that of the Guaraní Indians, which he received from his father’s foreman, and he only learnt Spanish when entering elementary school (Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004). Thus he was, from his fourth year onwards “a witness and a participant in the insertion of a European minority group in a primitive life style” (Pichon-Rivière, 1971a, p. 7, translated for this edition). This

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had important consequences for the later development of his thought and professional practice: He was, from that time on, forever split between two conceptions of the world. One of them stemmed from his European roots: it was strictly rationalistic and found its way in scientific research. The other was derived from his contact with the Guaraní culture, which was magical and mythical, and it was expressed in his love for poetry, and his passion for surrealism and the uncanny poems of Lautréamont. It was only when he found psychoanalysis that he was able to reconcile these two worlds. (Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004, pp. 26–27)

I thus intend to tackle the problem of translation from a three-fold perspective, a sort of juggling act with three props, which I hope will help all of us to attain a new perspective of the problem. Sometimes the inclusion of a third perspective helps us to escape the horns of a dilemma. Besides, the introduction of the Latin-American perspective may well be germane to the subject we are discussing, since this is based on René Kaës’s conception of the group dimension in psychoanalysis, and this author clearly respects and frequently quotes Pichon-Rivière and other Argentine analysts who were his disciples, so the introduction of this additional point of view might complete the circle of mutual references.

Two views of intersubjectivity When discussing translation between the two diverging psychoanalytic communities that he is considering, Levin (2008) focuses on one paradigmatic concept in order to portray these divergences: that of intersubjectivity, which means two quite different things for Englishand French-speaking analysts. This divergence stems, from the author’s point of view, from the fact that American analysts do not make the necessary distinction between an interpersonal interaction and an intrapsychic relation: American analysts seem increasingly to understand intersubjectivity either as a concerned awareness of the other’s subjectivity (e.g. Jessica Benjamin, 1988), or as a kind of unconscious telepathy that takes place

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during social (or analytic) “interaction” (Natterson & Friedman, 1995, p. 264)3

The French use of the term is completely different; it is derived from Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, from where it originated. In his exposition, Levin relies heavily on David Benhaïm’s (2008a,b) introduction to René Kaës’s (2008) new book Le Complexe Fraternel, which I shall quote later. The field of intersubjectivity is, according to Kaës, built from the bonds between subjects, but it is not a consequence of interaction, since—in Levin’s understanding—each subject is governed in a different way by an unconscious process.4 Therefore, this concept of intersubjectivity does not refer to a collective unconscious or to a form of direct communication between the unconsciouses of individuals, but to an internalised position within a shared psychic space, in which the social dimension emerges within each subject. Now, according to Levin (2008, 2009), Anglo-American analysts of a so-called “intersubjective” or relational persuasion tend instead to rely on a “romantic” conception of unconscious “telepathic” communication between individuals—such as the patient and the analyst— and sometimes of a collective unconscious “mind”. This is in sharp contrast with the French understanding of intersubjectivity: In short, intersubjectivity as understood in France is not really “intersubjective”. It is more like a psychic exchange through the impersonal medium of a common currency—not a true romantic “meeting of minds”, to use Lewis Aron’s (1996) relational phrase. By keeping the concept of intersubjectivity independent of the “here and now” of communication, and the behavioural dynamics of attunement [the French version says «. . . de la communication et de la dynamique comportementales de l’ajustement»], the French model prevents the concept from becoming saturated, keeping it open for thinking the negative, absence, and alienation as fundamental unconscious relationships. (Levin, 2008, p. 266)

In this quotation, the translation problem was the opposite—that is, from English to French. “Attunement” is the correct term for the relational concept, since “to attune” means “to bring into harmony or accord, especially musical harmony: make melodious” (MerriamWebster, 2002), thus conveying the idea of an emotional resonance between two or more people. On the other hand, «ajustement» means

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«adaptation, mise en rapport» (adaptation, establishing a relation) derived from «ajuster», meaning «mettre en état d’être joint à (par adaptation, par ajustage)—mettre (plusieurs choses) en accord, en harmonie pour un but déterminé» (to put things in a condition for joining them (by adaptation or adjustment)—to make several things agree, be in harmony for a given goal) (Nouveau Petit Robert, 1996–1997). Thus, the connotations for the English term are musical and emotional, while those of the French translation are mechanical and socio-political, suggesting a Procrustean adjustment of the individual to the social. In his references to the Anglo-American concept of intersubjectivity, Levin adopts a rather acid style, which suggests implicitly a certain absurdity of such point of view. But this is only so if one reasons from the assumptions that underlie French psychoanalytic thinking and not necessarily if one takes into account those of the other party. The habits of thought and discussion of one culture should be considered when attempting to translate its expressions into another language and context, since, if we are striving for an intercultural understanding, we should take into account the others’ customs and expectations, in order to sort through our mutual misunderstandings.

The roots of misunderstanding It is not easy to see the origin of this whole discussion on intersubjectivity. It is obvious that English- and French-speaking analysts mean something quite different when they use the term, and that both parties have major difficulties in understanding the other, but why should this be so? Perhaps we should start, in order to shed light on this question, with the French concept, as held by Kaës (1999, 2008) and clarified by Benhaïm (2008a,b). (This does by no means imply that there is a common point of view on the subject among French psychoanalytic writers, and I shall not attempt to present a comprehensive review of the various French thinkers.) Kaës approaches the question from a group perspective, since the group provides a methodological paradigm that allows us to analyse “intersubjective groups and the emergence of specific unconscious psychic formations and processes that would otherwise be inaccessible. [Nonetheless,] this perspective remains strictly Freudian” (Benhaïm, 2008b, p. 254). Let us see how Kaës puts these ideas, in his own words:

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The concept of intersubjectivity is fundamental for understanding the group approach. A group is an intersubjective structure; it is the form taken by an organization of intersubjective bonds “among several subjects of the Unconscious such that their relationships produce specific formations and psychic processes” (Kaës, 1999, p. 12, Benhaïm’s translation). (Benhaïm, 2008b, p. 255)

So, intersubjectivity is built from the bonds between several “subjects of the Unconscious”. This would seem to emphasise the primary nature of the individual psyche and reject such collective constructs as “group mind” or “group unconscious”. But let us further enquire Kaës’s thought: I call intersubjectivity the dynamic structure of the psychic space between two or more subjects. This space includes specific processes, formations, and experiences whose effects influence the subjects’ access to the unconscious and the development of the “I” [Je] within a “we” [Nous]. [The original French text says «. . . l’avènement des sujets de l’inconscient et leur devenir Je au sein d’un Nous» which would be better translated as “. . . the advent of the subjects of the unconscious and their becoming I within a We”.] In this definition, we are very far from a perspective that would reduce intersubjectivity to phenomena of interaction. (Kaës, 2007, p. 8, quoted and translated by Benhaïm, 2008b, p. 255, my italics)

Therefore, there are subjects and there is a space in which quite a few things happen that have a bearing on their formation and functioning as “subjects of the unconscious”, but which cannot be reduced to “phenomena of interaction”: Intersubjectivity is what is shared by these subjects formed and bonded to each other by their reciprocal subjections [assujettissements]—structuring or alienating—to the constitutive mechanisms of the unconscious: their common repressions and denials, their shared fantasies and signifiers, their unconscious desires, and the fundamental prohibitions that organize them. (Kaës, 2007, pp. 6–7, quoted and translated by Benhaïm, 2008b, p. 255).

Up to this point, Benhaïm’s rendition of Kaës to English is quite effective. There is, however, a nuance in meaning in the first quotation that is lost in translation. The French words “Je” and “Nous” have,

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on being capitalised and without quotation marks, a stronger ontological connotation than the English equivalent terms, whose quotation marks suggest “the so-called I” and “the so-called we”. Besides, Kaës’s original expression suggests an ascent or arrival of the individuals to the status of being “subjects of the unconscious”, while Benhaïm’s rendering turns it into the subjects attaining an access to the unconscious, which has a quite different connotation. The second quotation poses a greater problem, since in this case the difficulty in conveying French ideas to an English audience is more philosophical than linguistic. Although the term “assujettissement” is properly translated as “subjection”, the concept does not come through. In French psychoanalytic thought, a “subject” is both an “I” (Je) and an entity that is being subjected to a law. There should be no trouble in putting this idea into English, from the point of view of language, since “subject” means both “one that is placed under the authority, dominion, control, or influence of someone or something” and “something that sustains or is embodied in thought or consciousness: the thinking agent: the mind, ego, or reality of whatever sort that supports or assumes the form of mental operations” (MerriamWebster, 2002). But here language does not do the trick: ever since David Hume’s utter rejection of metaphysics, English thought has been reluctant—or even constitutionally incapable—of assigning an ontological status to the subject. The term is even not frequently used in English language psychoanalysis (with a major exception represented by Thomas Ogden’s (1994b) Subjects of Analysis), which conceives it either as a pragmatic functional “ego” or as a locus of experience, this being a far cry from the French conception of the subject. Besides, much depends on the assumed anthropological theory; whether one starts from Hobbes’s (1660) conception, in his Leviathan, that men in their natural state are “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” (p. 89), and therefore require a strong sovereign to impose order and avoid bloody war between them—that is, become subject to a law—or from that introduced by Aristotle and later developed by Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx, which considers the human being to be essentially social, as a result of a primary and unavoidable need to relate and belong to the community, in order to fully develop his nature (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983; Hernández de Tubert, 2008; Hernández-Tubert, 2011a).

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Wherein lies this difference? Levin (2008) tells us that the French have derived “intersubjectivity from phenomenology (where the term originated) and have developed it in a somewhat Lacanian framework” (p. 264). Now things begin to clarify: behind this whole argument lurks the momentous shadow of Descartes. It is true that, in French psychoanalytic thinking, Descartes’s pristine, self-sufficient, clear, and distinct subject is conceived as being decentred by Freud’s discovery of the unconscious, but there still remains a conviction as to the primary character of the individual, both in the knowing and the desiring subjects, vis-à-vis the world, which includes both inanimate objects and other subjects; hence, the priority of the intrapsychic over the “merely external”. This position was maintained by Husserl, who was a true Cartesian. Even though, for him, intersubjectivity meant that a person does not exist if not “among other persons, in a world of persons” (Robberechts, 1964, p. 68, translated for this edition), the basic unit is the subject as a monad. Intersubjectivity, as the first form of objectivity, is a “community of monads” (Vergemeinschaftung der Monaden), which may later evolve to the higher level of an “intermonadologic community” (intermonadologische Gemeinschaft) (Ferrater Mora, 1994, p. 1891).5 So, even though the subject is always immersed in and determined by the community of other subjects, the monad is prior, both ontologically and logically, to this Gemeinschaft. This is clearly expressed by Kaës, when he writes, “the question of intersubjectivity consists in the recognition of two partially heterogeneous psychic spaces, each of which has its own logic” (Kaës, 2007, p. 8, quoted and translated by Benhaïm, 2008b, p. 255). The emphasis lays here on logical analysis and not on a developmental process, so that the individual subject is necessarily the point of departure. But English-speaking relational thinking starts from another, wholly different, set of assumptions. Both the British Independent tradition of Object Relations Theory and the Anglo-American school of Intersubjective and Relational Psychoanalysis presuppose the theory of primary narcissism, understood not as primary isolation, but as primary undifferentiation. Donald Winnicott (1960b), whom we may safely take as a prime example of the Independents, postulates that, at the very beginning, the baby and its mother form an indissoluble unit— ”I once said: ‘There is no such thing as an infant’, meaning, of course, that whenever one finds an infant one finds maternal care, and without

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maternal care there would be no infant” (p. 587, n. 4). But this is not only a question of material dependence, but also of an undifferentiated experience, since the baby is in a state of absolute dependence, in which it does not yet recognise mother as a separate entity, and the latter is in a particular regressive mental state, which sensitises her to her child’s needs and feelings (what he calls “primary maternal preoccupation” (1960b, pp. 594–595; 1963a, pp. 84–87). It is only later that the infant emerges from “the matrix of the infant–mother relationship” (1962a, p. 57), and the mother recovers her previous individuation. It is interesting to note that Winnicott (1958) uses the term “matrix”, both for the infant–mother and for the patient–analyst relationships (p. 418). This term most probably comes from having heard S. H. Foulkes talking about the group matrix (Malcolm Pines, 2005, personal communication), a concept that we have already defined in Chapter One. So, we come back to the group perspective of the subject in psychoanalysis (TubertOklander, 2010a (see Chapter Eight, current volume)). In Anglo-American psychoanalysis, a similar idea is to be found, as we have seen in Chapter Two, in the work of Hans Loewald (1951, 1980), who contends not only that there is a primeval fusion of the subject, the object, and the whole environment, but also that this primordial relationship subsists side by side with the more differentiated view of the world that clearly distinguishes between the ego and outer reality. This he derives from Freud’s (1930a) assertion, in Civilization and its Discontents, that “originally the ego includes everything, later it separates an outer world from itself. Our present egofeeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a more inclusive —indeed, an all-embracing—feeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it” (p. 68). But he reformulates this hypothesis in the following terms: We know from considering the development of the ego, as a development away from primary narcissism, that to start with, reality is not outside, but is contained in the pre-ego of primary narcissism, and becomes, as Freud says, detached from the ego. So that reality, understood genetically, is not primarily outside and hostile, alien to the ego, but intimately connected with, originally not even distinguished from it. (Loewald, 1951, p. 12, my italics)

This concept of reality would include, of course, actual relations with other people and collective entities such as groups, institutions,

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and society. As to the persistence of this fusional level of experience, which had also been suggested, as a possibility, by Freud, this is how he formulates his hypothesis, as we have already seen in Chapter Two, in this quotation that is worth revisiting: Freud has raised the problem of the psychological survival of earlier ego-stages side by side with later stages of ego-development; a problem which he says has as yet hardly been investigated. If we look closely at people we can see that it is not merely a question of survival of former stages of ego-reality integration, but that people shift considerably, from day to day, at different periods in their lives, in different moods and situations, from one such level to other levels. In fact, it would seem that people are more alive (though not necessarily more “stable”), the broader their range of ego-reality levels is. Perhaps the so-called fully developed, the mature ego is not one that has become fixated at the presumably highest or latest stage of development, having left the others behind it, but is an ego that integrates its reality in such a way that the earlier and deeper levels of ego-reality integration remain alive as dynamic sources of higher integration. (p. 18, my italics)

Of course, even if we accept the existence of such ego-states, there are two ways in which we may understand them. We may either see them, as Freud did, as a regressive failure in reality testing—some sort of delusion—or as a real experience, an alternative state of mind that represents a significant aspect of human reality, this view being clearly favoured by Loewald. If this be so, the subsistence of such a fusional level of experience would account for the unexpected emergence of unconscious communication between the analyst and the analysand, as well as for unconscious group phenomena. Then, from this point of view, the human being always has a dual relation with other people and with the whole of reality, which originates a dialectics between two contrasting experiences, the true human subject being the emergent of such dialectics, as suggested by Ogden (1994b) in Subjects of Analysis. This may or may not be true, but it cannot be labelled as sentimental or romantic, since it is a point of view rationally derived from the assumptions that serve as its premises. It is true that no one is obliged to share such assumptions, but this is also the case with other points of view, as that posed by Kaës and other French analysts. Striving for mutual understanding implies accepting that there are differences between us and that these

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will most probably not turn into a full agreement, but that we can know and learn from each other’s point of view.

The Latin American connection The previous argument makes further sense when compared with some Latin American contributions. I have already mentioned that Kaës (1999) quotes Pichon-Rivière, as part of an ongoing dialogue with him. When trying to explicate what Kaës means by the term “bond” and contrast it with that of “object relation”, Benhaïm (2008b) puts forward the following argument: In Les théories psychanalytiques de groupe [Psychoanalytic theories of the group] (1999), Kaës recalls a fundamental distinction made by Enrique Pichon-Rivière between two psychological fields of the bond: “an internal field defining an object relationship with an internal object, and an external field defining a bond with an external object” (p. 86, Benhaïm’s translation). Pichon-Rivière defines the object relationship as “the particular form taken by the ego to bond with an image of an object located within it” (p. 86, Benhaïm’s translation). This is a dynamic structure set in movement by instinctual factors that function in a given way. The object relationship is the internal structure of the bond. The external bond is the psychosocial bond, which does not interest psychoanalysis. (p. 248, my italics)

Now, this is a misrepresentation of Pichon-Rivière’s (1979) position. It is true that he pointed out—in his book Teoría del Vínculo (Theory of the Bond)—that the concept of “bond” is different from that of “object relations”: “in psychoanalytic theory, we are used to utilise the notion of object relations, but the notion of the bond in much more concrete. The object relation is the inner structure of the bond” (p. 35, translated for this edition). But the difference, for him, is methodological, not ontological. There is only one bond, but it has two aspects: We thus have two psychological fields in the bond: an inner field and an outer field. We know that there are internal objects and external objects. It is possible to establish a bond, an object relation, with an internal object, and also with an external object. We might say that what interests us more, from the psychosocial point of view, is the outer bond,

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while, from the point of view of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, what interests us more is the inner bond, that is, the particular way in which the ego relates with an image of an object that has been placed within oneself. (pp. 35–36, my italics)

What should be noted is the difference between “what interests us more, from the psychosocial point of view, is the outer bond, while, from the point of view of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, what interests us more is the inner bond” and the assertion “the external bond is the psychosocial bond, which does not interest psychoanalysis”. Pichon-Rivière’s position is a question of perspective and emphasis, not of exclusion; psychoanalysis has a greater interest in the inner field, because that is what it can better enquire with its methodology, but it cannot, and should not, ignore the outer dimension. But “inner” means for the author “intrapsychic”, not “intrapersonal”, since he considers group phenomena to be mental strictu sensu: “The most important field in psychiatry is the intrapsychic field, what we call the inner field of an interpersonal and group nature, meaning that it is the psychological field made of a certain number of people who act in a particular dynamic relationship” (p. 36) and “The bond is always a social bond, even when it is with only one person” (p. 47). This reminds us of Foulkes and Anthony’s (1965) polemical comment, already quoted in Chapter One, that “To us intra-psychic does not convey . . . ‘intradermic’, and we look upon the dynamic processes in the group not from the outside, but from inside, as intra-psychic dynamics in their interaction” (p. 21). It is important to emphasise that, for Pichon-Rivière, the metaphor of the field did not refer only to Lewin’s (1951) “field theory”—which poses an analogy with physical theories such as that of magnetism— or to a field of ideas and inquiry—what we call a “problematics”—but also, and mainly, to a football field—that is, a space for groups to play. So, there are two psychological fields in the bond: there is an inner field, where the internal group plays, and an outer field for the external group, and the dialectics of both is what constitutes the human bond (Tubert-Oklander, 2011b). There is a perpetual dialectics of the inner and the outer, which is the very stuff of human experience: The bond, which is originally external, then becomes internal, and then external again, and afterwards it becomes internal again, and so on,

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thus permanently taking the shape of this dialectic spiral, this passage of what is inside to the outside, and what is outside to the inside, which contributes to establish the notion of the limits between the inside and the outside. (Pichon-Rivière, 1979, p. 55, translated for this edition, my italics)

So, there is no opposition between the individual and society, since they form an indissoluble unit, a dynamic field: “One cannot think in terms of a distinction between the individual and society. It is an abstraction, a reductionism that we cannot accept, because we carry society within us” (p. 57). And also: “The psychological field is the field of the interactions between the individual and the environment. This is why we may say that the very object of psychology is the interaction field. . . . This is precisely where we are working, in the place in which there used to be a dichotomy between the individual and society” (p. 61, my italics). Once again, this echoes Foulkes’s (1961) assertion that “Both aspects, the individual and the social one, are not only integrated in our approach, but their artificial isolation—never found in actual reality— does not arise” (p. 148). Also “Each individual—itself an artificial, though plausible, abstraction—is basically and centrally determined, inevitably, by the world in which he lives, by the community, the group, of which he forms a part” (1948, p. 10). Pichon-Rivière’s conception of the human being and the analytic situation differs from Kaës’s (1993), who clearly recognises this divergence, in the following terms: The concept [of the internal group] will differ in its theoretical use and its explanatory value according to the orientation of the various lines of research: the concept will occupy a rather central position, but with an inflection which is still derived from the psychosocial trend, in E. Pichon-Rivière, who still thinks in terms of roles and status. (p. 158, translated for this edition) The notion of the internal group in Pichon-Rivière [1971a] is different from the one I propound. Pichon-Rivière introduces this notion within a set of propositions taken from G. H. Mead’s social psychology . . ., from phenomenology . . ., and from psychoanalysis. . . . PichonRivière introduces the internal group in order to amend the limitations of the concept of the generalised Other: the internal group is not only the product of an internalisation of others; it also comprises the subject’s inner world. (p. 158, n. 2)

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Kaës obviously knows and understands Pichon-Rivière well, and recognises that, in spite of their common interest in the psychosocial field, their perspectives and points of departure differ greatly. Kaës is trying to develop a strictly Freudian approach to the problem—meaning an allegiance to the metapsychological model of the psychic apparatus that evolved from its origins in the Project (Freud, 1895a) —which is at odds with Pichon-Rivière’s interdisciplinary, psychosocial, and relational standpoint. In Kaës’s enquiry, the focus is on the particular inscription of the intersubjective dimension in the individual’s psychic apparatus and in the projection of his or her subjectivity on a middle ground where there is an articulation of the various individual subjectivities—hence, the concept of the inner group, which he draws from Pichon-Rivière, and that of the group psychic apparatus (Kaës, 1976). In Pichon-Rivière’s, the essential unity of individual, group, and society is a given, and the bond includes the subject, the internal objects, the whole person, the real and concrete others, their mutual relations—both inner and outer—and the whole context— physical, social, and ecological. We may then say that Pichon-Rivière is bent on the oneness of human experience, while Kaës concentrates on the articulation of two worlds—this being a particularly good example of the dialectic between identity and difference (Beuchot, 1997, 1998). The main difference between these authors lies in the fact that Pichon-Rivière’s thought has no space for the concept of the psychic apparatus and that he dismisses drive theory altogether, in spite of paying lip service to the motivating function of instinctual drives, every now and then. For him, the conception of an isolated individual with an inner psychic apparatus, driven by instinctual forces, is an autistic view of the human condition, which leaves out the whole social, political, and relational perspective that he favours. Pichon-Rivière’s point of view was clearly defined in a brief paper called “Freud: the starting point of social psychology”, written in 1965, in the following terms: Freud refers . . . to the individual’s relations with his parents, his siblings, the person who is his love object, and his physician, all of these relations that have been subject to the psychoanalytical enquiry, and which may be considered as social phenomena. These phenomena enter into an opposition with those that Freud calls “narcissistic”

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(or “autistic”, according to Bleuler). . . . It is the case of external social relationships that have been internalised, which we call the “internal bonds” and which reproduce within the ego group or ecological relations. These bonding structures, which include the subject, the object, and their mutual interrelations, are shaped from the earliest experiences; this is why we exclude from our system the concept of the instinctual drive, and replace it by that of experience. Similarly, all unconscious mental life, that is, the dominion of unconscious phantasy, should be considered as the interaction among internal objects (the internal group), in a constant dialectic interrelation with the objects in the external world. . . . This analysis . . . shows us that Freud sometimes reached an integral view of the problem of the interrelation between man and society, without parting from an anthropocentric conception, which prevents him from developing a dialectic approach. In spite of noticing the fallacy of the oppositional dilemma between individual psychology and group psychology, his adherence to the “mythology” of psychoanalysis, the theory of drives, the instinctual theory, and his ignorance of the ecological dimension, prevented him from articulating what he had envisioned, that is, that all psychology is, strictu sensu, social. (Pichon-Rivière, 1971d, pp. 41–43, translated for this edition, original italics).

Pichon-Rivière’s emphasis on the unitary and essentially social nature of the human being was further developed by his disciple José Bleger, whose ideas have been later elaborated by some Latin American authors, such as Blanca Montevechio and myself, who followed his lead, as we have already seen in Chapter Two when discussing the syncretic paradigm. Bleger (1967, 1971b) posed the existence of a deep, primitive, syncretic level of experience, characterised by ambiguity, understood as a particular form of object relation in which there is no differentiation between subject and object, but a coexistence of all opposites. This led him to postulate a third position that complements Melanie Klein’s schizoid–paranoid and depressive positions, which he called the glischro–karyc position—from the Greek Glischros (meaning “viscous”) and Karyon (nucleus, like the nucleus of a cell)—therefore, an “agglutinated nucleus”. This position, just like those described by Klein, is not conceived only as an early phase of development that should be transcended, but also as a permanent organisation of mind that coexists and alternates

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with the other two (Tubert-Oklander, 2004b,c, 2008c, see Chapter Two current volume). The undifferentiated and ambiguous experience of everything that happens is simultaneous with the differentiated experience of everyday life, much as in Loewald’s (1980) conception, which we have already seen. Hence, for Bleger (1967, 1971b), human groups are only apparently made up of individuals, since in the underlying syncretic level the latter are interconnected, as communicating vessels—what he called the “syncytial structure” (see Chapter Two). This type of passive relation, based on what used to be called “primary identification”, is not accurately described by terms such as “interaction” or “object relation”, and should perhaps be called a “communion”. Once again, Kaës (1993) is familiar with Bleger’s contribution, and well aware of its contrast with his own: In the present state of all these enquiries, it is difficult to propose a homogeneous theory of psychic groupness. Some ongoing investigations should make it possible to differentiate between the elementary forms of psychic groups, in which there is a predominance of compound formations and conglomerates, such as those described by J. Bleger’s agglutinated nuclei, and complex forms, in which there is already certain discrimination. What I . . . describe corresponds to the latter. (p. 158, translated for this edition)

Blanca Montevechio (1999, 2002) derived from Bleger’s ideas her own conception of syncretism and ambiguity, in terms of a primitive, undifferentiated, and ambiguous organisation, characterised by a confluence of opposing passions, which provides the basis for all relationships and social life. Such primal continuity and fusion between individuals and everything that surrounds them, she represented, metaphorically, with the Dionysus myth, which, in conjunction with those of Narcissus and Oedipus, would summarise the human condition. For her, the Dionysus, the Narcissus, and the Oedipus organisations of experience coexist and complement each other. (As we have seen in Chapter Two, this use of the image and story of Dionysus was taken from Nietzsche’s (1872) The Birth of Tragedy From the Spirit of Music.) In my own work (Tubert-Oklander, 2004b,c, 2008c, see Chapter Two current volume), I have elaborated Bleger’s and Montevechio’s ideas, by adding a fourth, post-Oedipal stage, consisting in the dialectic

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interaction of the three previous organisations, which gives birth to the mature human subject. The Dionysus organisation corresponds to a primitive, fusional, passional, almost organic bond; the Narcissus one is a mainly visual, specular, ever-reversible form of relationship; the Oedipus draws clear distinctions and oppositions, thus paving the way for our ordinary differentiated experience of ourselves, others, and the world, and, finally, the post-Oedipal organisation recovers the preOedipal over-inclusiveness and reversibility, without relinquishing the Oedipal distinctions and discriminations, thus turning mere knowledge into wisdom.6 When looking for a suitable myth for symbolising this new hypercomplex organisation, I found two (Tubert-Oklander, 2004c). The first one is that of the aging and blind Oedipus of Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus, who has been mellowed by suffering and old age, and acquired wisdom. Where the young Oedipus of Oedipus Rex is arrogant and merely clever, the old Oedipus is humble and wise, and ready to transcend the human condition and turn into a god. The second is that of the Holy Trinity, in which Triune God is three and one at the same time. This is a most compelling metaphor for three mental organisations that interact to become one single encompassing self, without losing their specificity. This conception of the organisation of human experience offers a rationale for the Anglo-American and Latin-American understanding of intersubjectivity and group processes, not as the articulation and mutual projection of several individual subjectivities, but as a primal fusion and mutual emotional flow, which enter into a dialectical relationship with the specular and reversible relations in the domain of iconic fantasy, and with the differentiated and logical everyday experience of ourselves, others, and the world. From this dialectic emerges the full human subject, which condenses all our capabilities in one dynamic and fluid sense of existence. We have by now finished our tour of three schools of psychoanalytic thought—French, British and Anglo-American, and LatinAmerican—noticing their similarities and differences on the way, using the subject of intersubjectivity as a major example of the difficulties posed by the attempt to translate their concepts into the language—both linguistic and psychoanalytic—of the others. I believe that achieving a mutual translation and understanding between them, without denying their specific differences, will help us all to develop

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a better picture of the problematics we are dealing with. This is by no means an easy task, albeit it is not impossible, as we shall see in the next and final section.

Back to translation through hermeneutics7 It should by now be obvious that the problem of translating a psychoanalytical text implies much more than merely rendering it into another language; it is an interpretative task, which purports to help the reader to attain a better understanding of a thought which is foreign to him or her. This sends us back to the problem of the relation between translation and interpretation. Roman Jakobson (quoted by Eco, 2003, pp. 225–226) suggests that there are three types of translation: interlinguistic, intralinguistic, and intersemiotic. Interlinguistic translation is what we usually mean by “translation”, that is, the rendering of a text into another language or, in Jakobson’s own words “an interpretation of verbal signs by means of those of another language” (all these definitions have been translated for this edition from Eco’s Italian text); this is translation strictu sensu. Intralinguistic translation, also called “reformulation” or “rewording” is “an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs from the same language”; this may be an explanation or an adaptation, but also, when dealing with non-linguistic semiotic systems, a transposition, such as transposing the tonality of a piece of music or colourising a black-and-white film. An intersemiotic translation is that in which there is “an interpretation of verbal signs by means of a non-verbal sign system” (or vice versa), such as in the case of turning a novel into a film, or a fable into a ballet, but also a descriptive piece of writing that depicts a painting. It may be argued that psychoanalytic interpretations correspond to either the second or the third of Jakobson’s definitions. On the other hand, Freud’s (1900a) concept of a secondary revision of dreams (turning the remembrance of the vivid dream imagery into a verbal narrative) is precisely a major example of an intersemiotic translation. Now, going back to interlinguistic translation, which is the ordinary meaning of the term, Erik Erikson (1954) has pointed out that the English translation of Freud’s (1900a) famous “Irma dream” contains “a number of conspicuous simplifications in translation, or, rather,

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translations so literal that an important double meaning gets lost” (p. 24). And then he adds, This, in a mental product to be analyzed, can be seriously misleading, while it is questionable that any translation could avoid such mistakes; in the meantime we may profit from insight into the importance of colloquial and linguistic configurations. Actually, what is happening in this translation from one language into another offers analogies with “translations” from any dreamer’s childhood idiom to that of his adult years, or from the idiom of the dreamer’s milieu to that of the analyst’s. It seems especially significant that any such transfer to another verbal system of representation is not only accidentally to mistranslate single items, but to become the vehicle for a systematic misrepresentation of the whole mental product. (p. 24)

This would point at an essential coincidence between interpretation and translation. Such assertion would not be endorsed by all scholars in the field—Umberto Eco (2003), for instance, asserts that this is not a true identity, since every translator is an interpreter, but not all interpreters are translators—but, for the purpose of this discussion, it seems safe to admit that drawing an analogy between these two activities may help us to attain a better understanding of their implications for us. And, if translating implies an act of interpretation, we should turn to hermeneutics for help. I shall therefore present a brief exposition of my own conception of hermeneutics, which is based on Mexican philosopher Mauricio Beuchot’s development of analogical hermeneutics (Beuchot, 1997, 1998, 2003; Tubert-Oklander, 2009a; Tubert-Oklander & Beuchot Puente, 2008). Hermeneutics is the discipline that studies the theory and practice of the interpretation of texts. But the concept of “text”, in its hermeneutical technical sense, is far from obvious, since it is not restricted to written documents, but has instead been extended to include discourse, dialogue (with Gadamer, 1960), intentional action (with Paul Ricoeur, 1965), and every other form of expression, such as music, dancing, ritual, manners, customs, the plastic arts, and culture in general. Thus we arrive at the contemporary definition of hermeneutics as “the theory of the rules that preside over an exegesis—that is, over the interpretation of a particular text, or of a group of signs that may be viewed as a text” (Ricoeur, 1965, p. 8).

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There have been traditionally three forms of hermeneutics: univocality, equivocality, and analogy. Univocality—from “univocal”, which means “only one voice”—asserts that, for any given text, there is one, and only one, correct interpretation, which is considered to be “true”, while all others are “false”; this gives us clarity and certainty, while paying the price of rigidity and dogmatism. Equivocality—from “equivocal”, meaning “equal voices”—holds that, for any given text, there are multiple, perhaps infinite, interpretations, and that all of them are equivalent, so that personal taste and practical convenience are the only possible criteria for choosing one among them; this position is particularly sensitive to the effects of history, context, and perspective on any interpretative activity, thus allowing a more varied and nuanced understanding of the text, but it also breeds ambiguity, relativity, and uncertainty, as well as an abandonment of any concept of truth. The third form of interpretation is analogy or analogism, which means an acceptance that there are more than one, albeit not infinite, possible interpretations for a text, but that they are not necessarily equivalent; some of them are better, others not so good, others still are poor, and some are outright bad. The criterion for choosing among them is to take into account, not only the meaning, derived from the inner logic of the symbolic systems used by the author and the interpreter, but also the reference of the text and its interpretations—that is, the non-textual reality that they are talking about. The result is flexibility and recognition of the difference in points of view, but without relinquishing the search for truth, a relative, partial, and humble truth, it is true, but good enough to go on thinking and acting. Paraphrasing Winnicott, we might say that, in the case of both hermeneutics and psychoanalysis, it is not a question of interpretations having to be “true”, but only “good enough”. (See Chapter Five for a discussion of Winnicott’s view of interpretation.) Analogical hermeneutics, as proposed by Mexican philosopher Mauricio Beuchot, is a hermeneutical theory based on analogy; this makes it particularly useful for clarifying the nature, aims, and methods of psychoanalytical interpretation. In understanding, interpreting, and translating psychoanalytic texts, it gives us the opportunity of considering the various theoretical and clinical perspectives, without either claiming that only one of them is right—which would be a univocal interpretation that disqualifies all other points of view that differ from one’s own—or that all of them are equivalent—an

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equivocal interpretation, for which all points of view are equally valid, which makes any rational discussion meaningless. There are indeed several possible interpretations for any given text, but there is also, however, the possibility of evaluating them in terms of their comparative ability to identify, clarify, and account for the problems and experiences that they are trying to understand and solve. How does this apply to the case of translation? There is no way to reproduce all the meanings and nuances of any text in another language, so that any given translation must needs be partial and leave something out; but this is also the case with interpretation, which always highlights some aspect of the text at the expense of others. So that making a translation always implies a compromise about what to keep in and what to leave out. Umberto Eco (2003) clearly states this idea, in the title of his book on translation: Dire Quasi la Stessa Cosa (Saying Almost the Same Thing). But what are we to consider “the same thing”? Eco favours the preservation of meaning; a translation should then preserve the meaning of the original text, which is usually understood as the author’s intentions, although it also includes at least some shades of meaning that the latter never noticed, but which are immanent in the text. And what about that part of the impact a text has on the reader that depends mainly on language and form? Even in intralinguistic translation, paraphrasing frequently implies a loss. Strunk and White (1959) show this, in The Elements of Style, by rewording Thomas Paine’s well-known phrase “These are the times that try men’s souls”. The proposed alternatives—”Times like these try men’s souls”, “How trying is to live in these times!”, “These are trying times for men’s souls”, “Soulwise, these are trying times”—clearly lack the punch of the original version. In the same vein, puns are usually untranslatable. The Italian phrase Traduttore, traditore may be translated as “Every translator is a traitor”, but this lacks the terseness of the original wording, and the implied inevitability derived from the almost homophony of the two terms. And how are we to translate the highly condensed meaning of Shakespeare’s (1975) initial verse in Richard III (Act I, scene 1), “Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York”, with its play upon the words “sun” and “son”, as well as with the literal and metaphoric meanings of the seasons? In psychoanalytic writings, the name of Lacan’s Séminaire XXI (1973–1974): Les

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non-dupes errent (ou Les noms du père) can only be translated as “The non-fools err (or the names of the father)” if one accepts a complete loss of the author’s characteristic play upon words. Such nuances are usually either omitted, or call for a heavy toll of footnotes. But this solution also has its problems, since it turns what may have been a light and easy reading into a rather boring and pedantic dissertation. This has been the case with some of Freud’s writings that rely largely on this kind of language effects, such as The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901b) or Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905c). When this happens, the effort to be faithful to the original text brings about a major falsification, which distorts the very character of the writer and his work, but the academic tradition does not favour the literary solution of refurbishing the text completely, in order to recreate it with the resources provided by a new language. And there is still the question of references. Any creative writer worth her or his salt is permanently using implied references, either consciously or unconsciously, which have an effect, even if they go unnoticed, on readers who come from a similar social, linguistic, and historical context, but which become a nightmare for translators, as well as for readers who do not share the writer’s lore. For instance, no one can read James Joyce’s Ulysses without the support of a myriad footnotes. But, as Martin Gardner (1979) noted, in his “Introduction” to his edition of The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll, “no joke is funny unless you see the point of it, and sometimes a point has to be explained. . . . [In a book] written for British readers of another century, . . . we need to know a great many things that are not part of the text if we wish to capture its full wit and flavour” (p. 7). There is, perhaps, no way in which we might recapture the freshness of the original readings of Alice, but, with a little bit of help and much effort, we may get a glimpse of it, enough to understand and even enjoy it. On the whole, we usually have to settle for meaning, both in the interlinguistic translation to some other language, or in the intralinguistic aggiornamento of texts coming from another era, even though such adherence to concepts may spoil their whole mood. Reading Aretino, Cervantes, or Rabelais used to be hilariously funny, but nowadays they have become academic and solemn. Of course, it might be argued that there is an essential difference between scientific texts, on the one hand, and literary texts, on the other. Gadamer (1984; Dutt, 1993), for example, asserts that scientific texts are

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mere vectors for meaning, which may be left behind once that the meaning has been grasped; such a text may therefore be paraphrased, translated, explained, or summarised, without any loss of meaning, because what counts in it are ideas, not form. Literary texts, on the other hand, have a complex structure that invites the reader to co-construct multiple meanings for them through repeated readings. The problem with psychoanalytic literature is that it claims to be scientific, and therefore univocal and meaning-oriented, while it shares many of the features of literary texts, which are polysemic and form-oriented (TubertOklander, 2004d,e (see Chapter Six current volume), 2007). Hence, the translation of psychoanalytic texts cannot dispense with the problems of form and connotation, just as in the case of poetic language, without a significant loss of meaning of their original expression. In the present effort, I have made a brief review of three different schools of psychoanalytic thought that deal with a common problem—that of the articulation of individual mental processes and social phenomena. Each of them has tackled it from its own vantage point, with its own instruments—both theoretical and technical—and within its own tradition. Each of them is liable to be misunderstood by the others, which do not share its assumptions and working habits. It is most improbable that any of us might ever be able to truly see things through the eyes and the perspective of one of the schools she does not belong to, but it is still possible to arrive at a workable idea of what they actually think, experience, and do, and this should be enough for a mutual understanding—not a perfect one, to be sure, but sufficient to be able to live and work together, and negotiate practical agreements. After all, this is the stuff marriages are made of, and they are not all necessarily bad. I believe that achieving a mutual translation and understanding between them, without denying their specific differences, will help us all to develop a better picture of the problematics we are dealing with. This is by no means an easy task, as it should by now be obvious that the problem of translating a psychoanalytical text implies much more than merely rendering it into another language; it is an interpretative task, which purports to help the reader to attain a better understanding of a thought which is foreign to him. I would like to conclude by saying that I think the Canadian experience may prove to be immensely valuable to all psychoanalysts from every national, cultural, and linguistic area. In no other place may we

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find two psychoanalytic societies sharing the same premises and representing two distinct cultures, languages, and psychoanalytic traditions. Apparently, they both kept, for a lengthy period, a splendid isolation in which they hardly had any interaction apart from their Annual General Meeting and Congress at the national level of the organisation. In November 2006, the two Montreal branches of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Association—the Quebec English Branch (QE) and the Société Psychanalytique de Montréal (SPM)—held a joint meeting, in which Gabriela Legorreta (2007) read her paper “Cultural differences in our practice of psychoanalysis”, which opened an ongoing debate. It was the outcome of a qualitative research, in which she interviewed twenty colleagues—ten from QE and ten from SPM— enquiring about their personal analytic experiences with analysts from both branches, and about their perception of the similarities and differences between the two groups. Even though there were significant coincidences, since the members of both societies are unquestionably psychoanalysts and Canadian, there also were many differences of emphasis and perspective in theory, technique, clinical practice, and philosophy. The discussion resulted in the publication of a special issue of the Bulletin of the Société Psychanalytique de Montréal (2007), in which, besides publishing a revised version of Legorreta’s original paper—which was quite fittingly written, read, and published half in English and half in French—there were numerous contributions, in either language, from members of the two societies. After that came a completely new attempt to develop a personal interaction between representatives of the two traditions, through the creation of a study group in which analysts from the two societies meet in order to identify and explore their similarities and differences, from the open discussion of clinical materials (Legorreta, 2009). Let us hope that this experience may soon be published, so that all of us from other cultural, theoretical, clinical, and linguistic traditions may also benefit from its findings and results. Trying to know and understand the thinking and practice of another psychoanalytic tradition is certainly a difficult task, but not an impossible one; certainly, it is not as hard as getting a good enough understanding of Ulysses without being an early twentieth century Dubliner. It is an interpretative task, and to interpret means to place a text within a significant context. That is the real trick: the context has to be significant, in order to avoid misunderstanding, and this can only

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be done by exercising the Aristotelian virtue of prudence (phrónesis), which is the quintessential hermeneutic virtue (Aristotle, 2011; Beuchot, 1997, 1998; Tubert-Oklander, 2009a). I only hope that this contribution may be of help in order that we all attain a better understanding of each other.

Notes 1.

2. 3.

4.

The concept of a real transpersonal symbolic structure was posed by Durkheim (1895) in The Rules of Sociological Method; this included such phenomena as laws, customs, institutions, and culture. These are social facts, defined as “a category of facts with very distinctive characteristics: it consists of ways of acting, thinking, and feeling, external to the individual, and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they control him” (p. 3). Karl Richard Popper (1972) describes a “Third World” of symbolic products (by contrast with the First World of material reality, studied by science, and the Second World of subjective experience, studied by psychology), which has an objective existence and an organic evolution, independently from any particular subject. The human being weaves symbols, just as a spider weaves its net, and in both cases, the web transcends and outlasts the weaver. Jacques Lacan (1966) brought this concept to psychoanalysis, with his dictum that the unconscious is structured like a language and a reflection of the Other, conceived as the abstract structure of language and culture, which transcends and speaks through the individual subject. All these ideas are related to what I have here called the Unconscious Weltanschauung. In Pichon-Rivière’s original Spanish text, the acronym for the term “Esquema Conceptual, Referencial y Operativo” was ECRO. Here the use of the word “interaction” by those authors he is criticising is quite unfortunate, since two subjects have to be clearly differentiated in order to be able to interact, and the kind of passive fusion suggested by a theory of primary undifferentiation would be better described as a “communion”, as we shall later see. The French version reads, «Chaque sujet est gouverné de façon distincte par un processus inconscient» (Levin, 2009, p. 151). The author’s own English version is: “each subject is separately governed by an unconscious process” (Levin, 2008, p. 264). Of course, one might think that an author knows best what he is trying to say, when writing in two languages of which he has full command, but language has a gravity of

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its own, and “distinct(e)” in French has a meaning of “clearly perceived or conceived” and “different”. This is, of course, one of the meanings of “separate” in English, but the term more frequently refers to things being or perceived to be apart from one another. The very concept of a “community of monads” is an oxymoron, since any conception of the human being as a monad precludes the very thought of a community, which is based on a deep feeling of unity between the apparently distinct subjects. Paradoxically, this brings us back to a concept of interaction (“intermonadological”), which had been rejected in Levin’s (2008) criticism. In any case, my own position clearly contrasts with that of Husserl and Kaës, as it is based on a quite different set of assumptions. This corresponds to Jessica Benjamin’s (1998) conception of post-Oedipal complementarity, which “can hold paradoxical rather than oppositional formulations[,] . . . a . . . position that neither denies nor splits difference, but holds it in a paradoxical state of being antagonistic and reconcilable at once” (p. 34). I am quoting Benjamin here, even though she does not belong to the Latin-American tradition, because her conception of the post-Oedipal stage had an influence on my own thought, although it acquired new shades of meaning when placed in the context of this theoretical trend in Latin American psychoanalysis. This whole section, with the exception of the last three paragraphs, was omitted in the previously published version (Tubert-Oklander, 2011a), on account of space limitations. It is published here for the first time.

CHAPTER FOUR

The icon and the idol: the place of Freud and other founding fathers and mothers in psychoanalytic identity and education

Introduction to Chapter Four ver since I started to study psychoanalysis, I was struck by the peculiar place that Freud and his writings occupied in the psychoanalytic community and teaching. It seemed that being able to produce a Freud quotation in support of one’s assertions put an end to any discussion—that is, if no one else managed to bring some other quotation that appeared to be germane to the issue. These being the rules of the game, I learnt to play by them, but I was never convinced that this was a proper way to conduct a theoretical discussion. I sorely missed a more academic way of tackling a problem. (Much later, I found out that Charles Rycroft (1985, 1995), a writer whose theoretical papers I have always appreciated, had felt pretty much the same about scientific discussions in the British Psychoanalytic Society.) As years and decades went by, I became a teacher of psychoanalysis myself and met with a major resistance in my students, when I invited them to make a critical analysis and discussion of Freud’s and other prestigious authors’ writings. As I had also found a similar resistance, and even an outrage, in my colleagues, when presenting my papers in which I tackled the same task, I concluded that this ought to be an emotionally determined reaction and set out to study it. The story of how I finally wrote this paper, as a result of the work done with a group of students, is told in the final section of this chapter. A previous shorter version of this text has been published in

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Spanish in Cuadernos de Psicoanálisis, the Journal of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association (Tubert-Oklander, 2009d). This has been rewritten in English, revised, enlarged, and integrated with the other chapters of this book.

The problem The purpose of this chapter is to explore a subject that I deem to be of the utmost importance for psychoanalytic identity and education. This is the very special place occupied by the figure of Sigmund Freud in our way of experiencing, learning, teaching, and practising psychoanalysis. The very same thing may be said of other psychotherapeutic schools, including group analysis, in relation to their founders, but the case of psychoanalysis and Freud has been the most widely studied. Many academics and scientists from other disciplines are usually surprised, and even shocked, by this emphasis on the person of the founder, which they interpret as an expression of the dogmatism and the ideological and quasi-religious nature of psychoanalysis. This is indeed remarkable, since the iconography of philosophy and natural sciences is also full of idealised heroes and anecdotes. Nonetheless, we ought to recognise that the position occupied by Freud in our community is qualitatively different. This is partly due to the unquestionable fact that very seldom there has been, in the history of ideas, a thinker who has had such enormous influence on the creation and development of his discipline. Perhaps the most significant precedent may be the omnipresence of Aristotle’s thought in philosophy throughout so many centuries. But we also have to take into account the foundational impact of transference on the development of the psychoanalytic and other psychotherapeutic identities. This is due to the fact that the practice of psychoanalysis and other forms of analytical psychotherapy, including group analysis, requires much more than the mere acquisition of a set of theories and techniques. On the contrary, it demands that the student undergo a significant personality change that may allow her to respond to the patients with her whole being—including emotions and the body. In other words, psychoanalytic education is not a “training”, as it is usually called in English-speaking countries, but a thorough development and rebuilding of the personality of the student—what in German is called

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Bildung, understood as the tradition of self-cultivation through maturation and reflection, and that the Romance languages such as Spanish and French call a “formation”. Consequently, the main pillar of such an education is the experience of the student’s personal treatment. This determines that her becoming an analyst be shaped as a function of a highly complex set of identifications and relationships, which are mainly unconscious, with her analyst, teachers, supervisors, fellow students, patients, the teaching institution, studied and revered authors, Freud (or the founding father or mother of any other analytical school that the student is aiming to become a part of) and other foundational figures, and analysis-as-a-whole. In our conception of this forming process, we trust that the student’s personal treatment will allow her to attain a better and deeper comprehension of the experience of becoming an analyst, thus solving the less rational aspects of her relationship with psychoanalysis, group analysis, or analytical therapy, such as idealisation and denigration of the various colleagues, teachers, authors, schools, and theories. But this is, more often than not, a manifestation of the good intentions that pave the way to an analytic hell. Most training analysts (there is no way to avoid the adjective, which is regularly used in our institutions) are capable of and willing to analyse their patients’ idealisation of themselves, their teachers, and supervisors as actual people, but, to what extent do they manage to analyse the analysands’ idealisation of the teaching institution, the authors that are valued most by their community, Freud or any other founding father or mother, as a mythical ancestor, and analysis itself, as theory, practice, and ideal? This is a particularly difficult task, since the analysand’s ideal objects tend to be the same as those of the analyst, so that analysing his relation with them implies, as well, calling into question and revising some fundamental aspects of the analyst’s ego ideal. Claudio Laks Eizirik (2008), former President of the International Psychoanalytic Association, wrote about this peculiarity of psychoanalytic institutions, which makes them so different from other organisations. This, he believes, is due to the fact that psychoanalysts have to deal with all sorts of anxieties, fantasies, ideals, values, conflicts, traditions, and, above all, with a personal relationship with Freud and the pioneers of each society. This is equally true for the non-Freudian analysts in their relationship with their own founding fathers or mothers.

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The analytic identity—just like any other identity—is not only an intrapersonal phenomenon, but is also determined and sustained by a most complex set of past, present, and wished-for relations and group, institutional, social, cultural, ideological, and national memberships. The problem, in the case of training analyses, is that this is all part of a world that is being shared by the students and their analysts, and that—as Puget and Wender (1982) have shown—whenever the analytic dialogue turns into a reference to this shared world, the analytic process is paralysed and hence requires a special effort in order to salvage it. Therefore, the particular solution that any given analytic community, in general, and each of its members, in particular, have found to the problem of becoming and being an analyst, tends to remain out of the field of the analytic enquiry and be continuously reinforced by every interaction within that community. This makes it invisible, hardly thinkable, and almost impossible to change. Eizirik (2008) believes that the violence that so frequently impedes any rational negotiation in psychoanalytic institutions depends on the fact that each group feels its particular solution to the problems of theory, education, and practice, to represent a loving identification with their discipline and its development—that is, with an ideal object—and that those other members or groups which sustain different points of view represent a stance that will eventually destroy their revered institution and its underlying ideals. Thus, any change in the system is not felt to be a practical measure or a negotiated transaction, but an act of either faith or treachery. This makes it extremely difficult, or even impossible, for the representatives of the diverse psychoanalytic traditions to relate or talk to each other. In other words, it seems that the analyst’s mental and emotional equilibrium in the practice of his profession depends largely on the possibility of maintaining the aliveness and functioning of a node of identifications, relations, and memberships that warrant that he may remain coherent, in spite of the deep and intense impacts received in the experience of clinical practice. Kohut (1984) has stated, in a discussion on training analyses, that all of us become “addicted” to our peculiar form of mental health and that, by extension, we psychoanalysts tend to develop the same kind of dependence towards our particular way of being psychoanalysts— that is, our theories, techniques, habits, and professional memberships. There would be no difficulty in accepting this acid comment, if

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it only meant that human beings tend to persist in those solutions that have shown to be useful in the past, but the term “addiction” implies a persistent unconscious anxiety that has not been solved and which reappears under any circumstance that might call into question a solution believed to be the only possible one. The consequence is an overt repudiation of those who pose other possible solutions and an undue restriction of our possibilities for further understanding and development. Such complex solutions tend to be represented, in our subjectivity, by an image, usually that of a human being we idealise and with whom we maintain an imaginary relationship. This derives from the inevitable duality of human mental processes, as posed by Freud (1900a) in his concepts of the primary and the secondary processes, as we have seen in Chapter One, and by hermeneutics in those of metaphor and metonymy, analogy, and iconics (Beuchot, 1997; TubertOklander, 2009a, 2011a (see Chapter Three current volume), 2013a; Tubert-Oklander & Beuchot Puente, 2008), as we shall presently see.

Two forms of thinking Ever since the first Greek philosophers, it has been known that the human being has two different ways of representing experiences: words and images. Verbal language allows us to refer to all kinds of situations and objects, apart from their being present or not; this gives us a greater dominion on our thought, which is no longer determined only by present circumstances. So, a small child takes a great evolutive step when she manages to utter the word “milk”, in order to convey her wishes, instead of having to point at the vessel that contains it. From this derives one of the main characteristics of verbal signs, that of always being conventional. Coming back to our previous example, nothing in the word “milk” resembles the nourishing liquid it refers to. It might have been called “ink” or “phoo-phoo”, without any loss of meaning, since the only requirement for attaining communication is that the emitter and the receiver be in agreement about the term they are going to use to refer to it. And this agreement should be shared by the whole community (with the exception of those secret codes that are frequently the mark of long intimate relationships or

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the equally secret ones used in cryptography). Even though families usually make use of idiosyncratic terms in order to communicate with small children (terms that have frequently been created by the child), these are soon replaced by those belonging to the language spoken by the linguistic community they belong to. The use of images—called “iconic signs”—for expression and communication is quite different. Iconic representations are characterised by their attempt to preserve and recreate the perceptual image of their object. One such instance are onomatopoeias, by means of which cats meow, bees buzz, a kettle sizzles, or a twig snaps (of course, when a market cracks, we have concocted a metaphor out of an onomatopoeia). In any case, even these apparently natural words also bear the mark of conventional verbal language; this is the reason why Spanish roosters say “quiquiriquí”, French ones “cocoricó”, and the English utter “cock-a-doodle-doo”! Other types of iconic signs are photographs, portraits, maps, and diagrams, which use a visual image to depict a person, an object, a territory, a process, or a state of affairs. The case of caricatures or political cartoons represents more elaborate symbols, which depict the inner nature of a person, more than his outward appearance, while still being recognisable. This highlights a more general characteristic of icons: that they do not only depict, but always imply an interpretation. For Charles Sanders Peirce, there were three kinds of icons, according to their distance from sensuous experience: images, diagrams, and metaphors (Beuchot, 2007b). All of them are clearly ways of presenting relations, rather than things. But, as we have just seen in the case of onomatopoeias, icons are not natural phenomena, determined only by their likeness to their objects. Quite on the contrary, they are cultural products that share the conventionality of verbal languages. It is true that, through them, the subject is trying to reproduce a sensuous experience, but this he does in accordance with the codes of representation of his culture. Umberto Eco (1980) puts this as follows: Iconic signs do not “possess the properties of the object they represent”, but they reproduce some of the conditions of common perception, based of normal perceptual codes and selecting those stimuli that—having excluded other stimuli—may allow me to construct a perceptive structure possessing—on the basis of the codes of acquired

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experience—the same “meaning” of the real experience denoted by the iconic sign. (p. 112, translated for this edition)

There is still, however, the essential difference between verbal and iconic signs: while verbal signs introduce a distance from the felt experience, on the basis of the object’s absence, iconic signs draw it near, when creating the illusion of its presence. Consequently, verbal representations are most adequate for conceptual and abstract thinking, the representation of quantitative time and space, causality, and differences. This creates a closed mental system, split off from the body, emotional experience, and action, which operates according to its own rules, thus producing reliable results that may be readily reproduced. On the other hand, iconic representations determine a very different type of thinking, akin to dreams, fantasy, music, and dance, which is adequate for depicting hyper-complex experiences and relations, the experiential world, and similarities. This kind of thought allows the participation of the subject’s whole being and her circumstances, so that it can ill be governed by fixed rules, and its productions are always unique and non-reproducible. Modern thought, which is the heir of the Enlightenment, exclusively valued verbal, logical, rational, and scientific thought, and despised iconic thought, on account of its ambiguity and uncertainty, qualifying it as a primitive, or even pathological, phenomenon that should be overcome. (This was most certainly Freud’s position on the subject.) On the contrary, Romanticism, which has been lately recycled as Postmodernism, distrusted the rule of Cartesian Reason and radically called it into question, turning instead to magic, dreams, and madness, and submerged into the equivocality of a myriad alternative interpretations, among which it is only possible to choose any one of them on the basis of personal taste or practical convenience. In between the two opposite poles of univocality (only one voice— i.e., a unique true interpretation for any given situation or text) and equivocality (all voices are equal—i.e., a multiplicity of equivalent interpretations for any given state of affairs), emerges the middle ground of analogism (from “analogy”, understood as the acceptance of a set of possible interpretations for any given text or experience, which may be more or less adequate to depict, interpret, or account for its meaning, thus offering a partial and temporary knowledge, but

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sufficient to respond to human needs) (Beuchot, 1997, 1998; TubertOklander, 2009a). In the field of psychoanalytic theory, Freud (1900a, 1915e) introduced the concepts of the secondary and primary processes, in order to characterise the respective workings of the conscious and unconscious mental systems. The secondary process is the verbal, logical, rational, and conscious thought; it has the capacity to represent time, causality, and contradiction, and consequently is, at least for him, the only one that gives us an access to reliable knowledge. The primary process, on the other hand, is thinking with images, a thought that does not follow the laws of logic, but those of condensation, displacement, imagery, and symbolism; it is unconscious and incapable of representing time, causality, or contradiction, and therefore corresponds to a primitive, irrational, and magical way of thinking, which cannot provide any kind of knowledge. It is quite obvious that Freud interpreted his indisputable psychological discoveries in terms of the ethos of Modernity, with its unshakable belief in the primacy of Reason. Nowadays, we rather tend to conceive these two forms of thought as complementary, since each of them is more adequate than the other in order to portray some aspects of experience, so that the most complete and adequate representation of reality is that which emerges from the articulation and mutual projection of these two versions of it. This is, of course, an analogical solution for the dilemma that stems from the alleged incompatibility of these two ways of depicting, conceiving, and thinking existence. As we have already seen in Chapter One, Ignacio Matte-Blanco (1975, 1988) believed that Freud’s main discovery was that the logic of unconscious mental processes is quite different from that of conscious ones. The primary process follows a symmetrical logic, in which there is a reversibility of all relations (spatial, temporal, causal, or personal). On the other hand, in the traditional Aristotelian logic, which is that of the secondary process, most relations are not reversible. This is an asymmetric logic. These two kinds of logic clearly correspond to those of iconic and verbal thinking. But the most important concept in Matte-Blanco’s (1988) thought is that he conceives that both forms of logic are joined in what he calls “bi-logic”, that is, the confluence and alternation of these two logics, the symmetrical and the asymmetrical, which are then fully complementary.

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These three kinds of logic determine different ways of conceiving and experiencing the world, which seem to correspond to the various hermeneutics: the asymmetrical logic of the secondary process would be the basis of univocality, the symmetrical logic of the primary process would determine equivocality, and bi-logic would correspond to analogism. And obviously these various forms of constructing our reality also determine our relation with psychoanalysis and group analysis, their theories, and their revered founders, starting with Freud, as we shall see below.

Iconicity and symbolism One peculiarity of iconic representations is the profound effect they have on those who generate or receive them. The fact that the icon takes on the presence of the object gives it a particular hypnotic power. The icon attracts the subject’s attention and emotion, and channels them in a certain direction; this is the reason why icons are most adequate to serve as symbols. The term “symbol” comes from the Greek “symbolon”, formed by “syn” and “ballo”, which mean “with” and “throw”—hence “throw two things together”. But the two things are thrown or lie together because they are complementary, like the two sides of a coin. Symbols are therefore always two-faced, like Janus, and present two possible readings: on the one hand, in its literal or metonymic reading, a symbol only represents what it denotes, that is, that concrete object that it refers to; on the other, in its allegorical or metaphoric reading, it refers us to a more complex and elusive reality, which is not (cannot be) represented, but only connoted. In other words, the symbol shows us the way to the symbolised, as if it were an arrow-sign that points in the direction we are to follow. But not only that, the symbol has a dynamic effect that prompts us to advance in its direction, and the inductive impact it has on our being becomes an indisputable evidence of the very existence of that which is symbolised (Beuchot, 1999, 2007a,b; Tubert-Oklander, 2008b, 2009c). And this is due to the fact that the symbolised is not a material object or fact, even though it is presented by one, but a spiritual reality—in the sense of a complex mental entity in which there is a confluence of ideas, emotions, values, actions, and projects. Hence, the symbol does not represent the

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symbolised, but rather presents it, shows the way towards it, and bears witness to its existence. Obviously, not all icons are symbols. There are many conventional icons, intended for practical use, like those male or female signs used in public lavatories to indicate for whom they are intended, or the famous disputed trash can used in Windows and Macs to indicate the order to dispose of an archive. For instance, the photograph on my identity card does only denote me as a person, as an aid to identification. How very different is the effect of Alberto Korda’s famous portrait of Ché Guevara, with his black beret and his eyes gazing at the horizon! This photograph, called by its author the Heroic GuerrillaFighter, and even more the two-tint version edited by Jim Fitzpatrick, has become a symbol of this man’s complex personality and his quest. Such an image cannot be thought only as a formal reference to a man called Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1928, who later became a Cuban citizen and died in Higueras, Bolivia, in 1967. On the contrary, it has become a universal symbol of the revolutionary spirit (Wikipedia, 2012). In the very same way, the photograph of Sigmund Freud smoking a cigar, taken in 1920, when he was sixty-four years old, has become an icon, not only of the spirit of this stern and towering man, impeccably clothed, with his watch chain emerging from his waistcoat’s pocket, his white beard, and his penetrating eyes, but also of psychoanalysis, its theory, practice, and ideals. Small wonder that so many psychoanalysts have chosen to have this photo in their consulting rooms! Therefore, it seems that Freud is for us much more than the founder of our discipline, an ancestor we are rightly proud of and grateful to, a phantasmal teacher who revives and transforms us each time we go back to his texts, but has also become a symbol of the reasons why we have chosen to be analysts. And this gives him a very special place inside us, as we shall presently see.

Our inner Freud Up to now, I have only referred to external icons; now is the time for me to write about their place and function in our inner life. I shall begin with a brief anecdote told by an analyst who belongs to an

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analytic tradition that is different from ours: that of Jungian analytical psychology. Mario Jacoby (1988), a Jungian analyst from Zurich, tells us that, while he was a student in his Institute, he had such a fascination with Jung’s theories that, when he took his first patients in treatment, he discovered that his penchant for theory interfered with his capacity to empathise with them, impeding him to be near enough to his patients, right where they needed him to be. These experiences represented for him a disillusion, as he was losing what he calls “inflation, idealization and merging with a Guru-figure” (p. 90). This process was expressed in a series of dreams, which were finally interpreted by his personal analyst in a way characteristic of the Jungian tradition. That period of de-idealisation, which he calls “gradual deflation”, came with a series of persistent dreams, whose protagonist was Jung himself. He had dreamt of the master before, and some of those dreams had been crucial, but now the nightly presence of Jung was startling to him. Besides, the dream character now persistently did or said “something unusually strange, not understandable, and sometimes incoherent” (p. 91). This was very difficult for Jacoby to interpret, and he then thought that Jung was presenting him with a riddle, a kind of Zen Koan, and that it was up to him to find its hidden wisdom. Finally, his analyst—Dr H. K. Fierz, who was well known for his understanding of paradoxes—said: “It seems that your inner Jung has become quite senile.” Jacoby agreed, and felt that his Jung image needed refurbishing. Obviously, Jacoby’s ideal object is not our own, and the particular form in which his analyst phrased his interpretation also differs from our tradition. Jungian analysts, who are used to iconic thinking, tend to take dream figures as real entities in psychical reality—something akin to our concept of internal objects. A Freudian analyst, more used to explicit conceptual verbal interpretation, would probably have referred, in a similar clinical situation, to the patient’s feelings of disillusion with Freud, psychoanalysis, and the training analyst, who would be their representative at the moment, but would also have had to deal with the traumatic rupture of idealisation that the student was experiencing at the moment. Why, then, have I chosen this example in order to approach the enquiry of our relation with Freud? Precisely on account of the different approaches to our respective ways of analysing a dream, Jacoby’s

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example particularly highlights the iconic aspect of it, which is largely masked by our emphasis on verbal thinking processes. Beyond these undeniable differences, I feel that this experience is useful to clarify the subject of our relation with Freud. We also have an “inner Freud”, who is the representative and the mediator of our relationship with psychoanalysis. But how does this icon operate in our mental processes? In order to clarify this issue I have to take a theoretical detour and turn to considering certain aspects of the early development of thought, since, in our psychoanalytic tradition, the baby and its first experiences of relationship are ordinarily used as an analogical model for the understanding of everything that comes later in development. In some previous writings (Tubert-Oklander, 2008c; TubertOklander, Campillo, Zepeda, & Ellstein, 1982), I have posed the hypothesis that the first psychic sign is constructed from those good experiences that the baby has of maternal care. What Freud (1900a) called the “original experience of satisfaction” is a complex set of sensory, emotional, and bodily experiences that is presented to the baby over and over again, in a recurring and reliable way, whenever maternal care is satisfactory. But the baby lacks the capacity to identify them as a set, so that all experiences, whether good or bad, appear to be random and unconnected, in a sensory-emotional-organic chaos. Nonetheless, when the mother—or whoever plays the maternal role—is doing a good job, the baby’s experience begins to be put in order. The rhythmical repetition of gratifying experiences finally makes them predictable. The mother strives to protect her baby from external disruptive stimuli and is attentive to satisfy his inner needs. The result is that the baby’s life becomes a cycle of need-displeasure-motor and emotional discharge-specific action by the mother-satisfactionrealisation-new need. This recurring sequence makes existence predictable, just like a piece of music becomes predictable when it repeats a same phrase over and over. So, sooner or later the baby discovers the pattern that is being presented, by making use of his inborn cognitive capacity, increased by maturational processes and favoured by the fact that the level of excitement is kept within limits as a result of good-enough maternal care, and this fosters the integration of mental processes. Thus the baby manages to construct a gestalt from the constant conjunction of an intimate contact with another human being, a feeling of satiety, a

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particular taste and smell, the music of a well-known voice, some recurrent visual images—such as the mother’s visage—and a feeling of love. This constitutive act consists in that, in the midst of this conjunction, a particular sensory element stands out and becomes a signifier, whose signified is the whole set of this living experience. Thus is formed the first psychic sign. Obviously, we do not know exactly what this sensory image that becomes an icon of the good experience may be. Melanie Klein (Klein, Heimann, Isaacs, & Rivière , 1952) calls it, in her particular symbolic language, the “good breast”, but it might be more useful for us to imagine that it might be the visual image of the mother’s face, as described by Spitz (1965). From that moment on, this image becomes the “name” of this complex set of experiences and an element that may be evoked whenever the baby yearns for this “good” experience. This is a most important point, since, when the baby acquires the capacity to evoke a sensory image that represents and allows her to recreate the wished-for experiential complex, of which it is a part, she attains a certain control on her own experiences—what Freud (1900a) called the “hallucinatory wish-fulfilment”. Of course, if the real maternal care is delayed, the physical and emotional distress dispels the illusion that has been formed. But, if the mother is present, available, capable, and willing to provide such care, the result is that actual satisfaction arrives precisely at the moment in which the baby is invoking it, thus propping up the illusion that it is the baby who has created the object with his act, this being what Winnicott (1969) used to call the “subjective object”. Returning now from this brief excursion into the prehistory of infantile development, it should be said that this is also the way in which the adult mind works. We have all had the experience of how, at some moment or other, a melody, a smell, or a visual image propels us, unexpectedly, into a revival of past experience. We also know that we are able to actively provoke such an effect, as when we choose to listen to a record that puts us in emotional contact with some longedfor moment of our lives. Actors regularly use this technique in order to explore, develop, and recreate their emotional states. On the other hand, many human groups have developed, throughout history, some iconic techniques that allow their members to place themselves in the best possible internal conditions for carrying out some complex tasks. One such example are the dances that some

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native tribes perform before going hunting. Having danced together for some time a pattern in which they alternate in the roles of hunter and prey, the dancers acquire a disposition to identify with it and to anticipate each of its movements. Could it be possible that Freud’s image, as an icon of psychoanalysis, places us in the best conditions to identify with its values and procedures, as well as with the indispensable basic attitude for relating with and listening to our patients? Perhaps a part of the significance that reading Freud has for us could be to prop up this identification with an icon that represents the psychoanalytic ideal. It is not a question of mechanically repeating his words, but of identifying the spirit that inspired them. In Dr Fierz’s— Jacoby’s analyst—words, this would be equivalent to “putting our inner Freud in a better shape”. One of my first teachers of psychoanalysis told me once that a psychoanalyst should spend two hours a day reading Freud. At the time, the idea seemed absurd to me, an expression of the dogmatism and quasi-religious character of the psychoanalytic movement. Such is the arrogance of youth! Now, with the perspective of several decades, I can understand his prescription as a possible way—albeit one I do not indulge in—to place oneself in a better condition to carry out this impossible job. But, beyond the techniques we may use to act on our inner dispositions and attitudes, it should be pointed out that, in the course of our becoming analysts or therapists, we construct an inner Freud (or Jung, Sullivan, Foulkes, Pearls, Winnicott, Rogers, Lacan, Klein, or PichonRivière, among many others) which is an icon of everything we value in our discipline. But we should also be aware that it is inevitable for us to develop a conflictive inner relation with him or her, which always occurs between a master and a disciple, and that our whole relationship with psychoanalysis, group analysis, or whatever form of psychotherapy we adhere to, and our own way of being practitioners of such discipline, will depend on the evolution and outcome of this relationship.

Master and disciple The relationship between master and disciple has undoubtedly always been passionate and conflictive, going far beyond its merely

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cognitive aspect. George Steiner (2003), writer, critic, and theoretician of literature and culture suggested that there are in it three basic scenarios or relational structures. The first one corresponds to those masters who have destroyed their pupils psychologically, and even physically, by breaking their spirit, consuming their hopes, and thriving parasitically on their dependence and individuality. On the other hand, there have also been disciples who usurped or distorted their masters’ teachings, betrayed them, and destroyed them. But there is still a third option, based on mutual trust, gratitude, and love—an expression of Eros. The result is a form of symbiosis, in which the master rejoices in contemplating the disciple’s growth and development, and learns from her while teaching, and the disciple is open to learning and responds with gratitude and admiration, without becoming a copy of the master. Some disciples have been sexually and amorously involved with their masters, and others have not even been able to survive them. Obviously, all of this is related to the Oedipus complex. The relationship between a master and a disciple resembles that which befalls between a daughter or son and their parents, since both are particular cases of the universal pattern of those relationships that involve caring and dependence (analyst–analysand, doctor–patient, teacher–pupil, protector–protégé, guide–guided, government–people, pastor–flock). The great crisis in this relational model occurs when the previously fragile, dependent, and needy party finally grows up and confronts her mentor in equal terms. Oedipus and Laius inevitably have to meet in a crossroads, and it is up to them whether this encounter shall turn into a fight to the death or if they will be able to find a possible way of coexistence, in which the youth’s gratitude does not bind her forever to the thoughts and will of the elder, and this may enjoy the youth’s growth and independence, while accepting the inevitability of old age and death, as the old Oedipus living and dying in Colonus. This is what happens between a master and a disciple, if they are both alive. But, how will the relation come about, if it is with an ideal object, a mythical ancestor, a perennial master, as Freud is for us? In this, the drama no longer happens in the socially shared world, but in that other scene of the internal world. Every human being undergoing a process of growth and development (which, given the intrinsic characteristics of human life, is actually interminable) needs a protective other—parent, teacher, guide

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—who is capable of steering her course along the most difficult path of development. This is a universal archetype, which represents our deep need, but here everything depends on meeting an adequate and sufficient response from some real person in our environment. Then emerges a protective object, which derives partly from the internalisation of the good aspects of actual experience and partly from a construction by the dependent subject, who invents an object by means of the projection of her inner need. Sometimes, this invention is made on a flimsy, almost non-existent basis (as Freud did with Fliess). These are those parental imagos which are simultaneously idealised and persecutory, and which have to be defended to the bitter end, since they become veritable lifesavers for emotional survival in an inhospitable world. More frequently, such construction is based on a selection of the good aspects of the actually experienced relationships, and the omission or minimisation of their bad aspects. This kind of relationship proves to be adequate in fostering development, but sooner or later needs be questioned, attacked, and destroyed, in order to open the way for a more complex, nuanced, and realistic view of that human being who has taken care of, taught, and guided us. This was pointed out by Winnicott (1968–1969), in his analysis of adolescent development as an inherently violent and destructive act, as can be seen in the following quotation: If, in the fantasy of early growth, there is contained death, then at adolescence there is contained murder. Even when growth at the period of puberty goes ahead without major crises, one may need to deal with acute problems of management because growing up means taking the parent’s place. It really does. In the unconscious fantasy, growing up is inherently an aggressive act. And the child is now no longer child-size. (p. 144, original italics) In the total unconscious fantasy belonging to growth at puberty and in adolescence, there is the death of someone. . . . In the psychotherapy of the individual adolescent . . . there is to be found death and personal triumph as something inherent in the process of maturation and in the acquisition of adult status. . . . Parents can help only a little; the best they can do is to survive, to survive intact, and without changing colour, without relinquishment of any important principle. This is not to say they may not themselves grow. (p. 145, original italics)

This comment of Winnicott is based on his conception of the use of an object (Winnicott, 1969), which is a much more general concept. For

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him, the only way to transcend the imaginary relation with an object one depends on requires that it be violently attacked and destroyed, in fantasy, and then discover that it has actually survived, in reality. Only thus will it be possible to transform a relation with a subjective object (what Winnicott calls “object-relating”, implying an imaginary relation) into a relation of “object use” with a real object, which will allow the subject to enjoy everything that the object has for giving. In the relationship with protecting objects, with whom one has had a bond of dependence, the destructive attacks aim at deconstructing the role of the father, the master, the guide, or the analyst, without destroying the person who has had to play this role, so that the previously dependent one who now emerges as an independent adult may assume her own thoughts, desires, values, acts, and destiny (Bollas, 1989). But this delicate transition in the relation with the other can only happen when such relationship has been sufficiently satisfactory (what Winnicott would call “good-enough”), that is, when the real good aspects of the object, which provided the raw material for the construction of its ideal image, are more than its bad aspects, which had to be ignored in this construction. On the contrary, when the ideal object has really been invented, in a usually unsuccessful attempt to deny a deeply unsatisfactory relationship, calling this into question leads inevitably to a definitive rupture. Such a persecutory bond masked by idealisation generates the most dogmatic, rigid, and arbitrary defence manoeuvres, in order to avoid its collapse. One such instance is Freud’s relationship with Wilhelm Fliess, who certainly did not deserve the fervent praise that Freud bestowed on him. So Freud, led by a passionate attachment that may only be compared to being in love, tried to protect and uphold his invented interlocutor, until he finally realised that “the Emperor wore no clothes” and this meant the definitive breach of their friendship. This is in sharp contrast with his relationship with Charcot. When Freud arrived in Paris, there he found his master, whom he would never disown. Thus he wrote to his fiancée, Martha, on November 24, 1885, one month after having met him (E. L. Freud, 1961): Charcot, who is one of the greatest of physicians and a man whose common sense borders on genius, is simply wrecking all my aims and opinions. I sometimes come out of his lectures as from out of Nôtre Dame, with an entirely new idea about perfection. But he exhausts me;

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when I come away from him I no longer have any desire to work at my own silly things; it is three whole days since I have done any work, and I have no feelings of guilt. My brain is sated as after an evening in the theater. Whether the seed will ever bear any fruit, I don’t know; but what I do know is that no other human being has ever affected me in the same way. (p. 185)

Here we are dealing with the same idealising fervour, but now with someone who truly deserves it. Freud is so fascinated by Charcot’s personality and by the intellectual and emotional impact he has on him, that he begins to construct his own ideal master, building on his good features and minimising or justifying his limitations or defects. The brief reference to Nôtre Dame bears witness to the religious quality of the experience. Franco Borgogno (1983) points out that the portrait Freud draws of Charcot is not consistent with the descriptions of others. This, he feels, bears out his hypothesis that such an image was a reflection of a specific ideal of Freud. The author believes that the young student found in his teacher a realisation of his own ideals, so that his depiction of Charcot presents what was going to be his personal evolution in the future and the characteristics of what even now we feel define a good psychoanalyst. This he described in his very first psychological writing, which inaugurates the Standard Edition of his Complete Works, in which he reports, in 1886, about his studies in Paris and Berlin (Freud, 1956a): One could see how, to begin with, he would stand undecided in the face of some new manifestation which was hard to interpret, one could follow the paths along which he endeavoured to arrive at an understanding of it, one could study the way in which he took stock of difficulties and overcame them, and one could observe with surprise that he never grew tired of looking at the same phenomenon, till his repeated and unbiased efforts allowed him to reach a correct view of its meaning. (p. 10, my italics) He did not seem to me to be at all one of those men who marvel at what is rare rather than what is usual; and the whole trend of his mind leads me to suppose that he can find no rest till he has correctly described and classified some phenomenon with which he is concerned, but that he can sleep quite soundly without having arrived at the physiological explanation of that phenomenon. (p. 13, my italics)

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Curiosity, patience, constancy, painstaking description, capacity to consider a same phenomenon from multiple perspectives, and acceptance of uncertainty, they all are those features that make for a good psychoanalyst. But Charcot gave Freud much more than an ideal of knowledge and observation. In his description of the master, he highlights his kindness, generosity, humility, and consideration towards all his students, including the younger ones and foreigners, like himself, as well as his benevolent attention and respect towards hysterical women patients, who used to be (and still are) so rejected and despised by their doctors. In other words, Charcot represented for Freud not only an ideal doctor and scientist, but also an ideal of manhood, a benign father figure, whom he admired and identified with. This did not prevent him from taking note, in passing, of some of his less amiable features, although without giving them much weight (Freud, 1893f): Among the circle of young men whom he thus gathered round him and made into participants in his researches, . . . now and then, even, it happened that one of them would come forward with an assertion which seemed to the master to be more clever than correct; and this he would argue against with plenty of sarcasm in his conversation and lectures, but without doing any damage to his affectionate relationship with his pupil. (p. 15)

But this tolerant attitude towards those of his master’s character traits that might have been considered negative, did not prevent the young student from criticising his ideas and clearly stating his disagreements with him in the intellectual domain. Consequently, when he translated and wrote a Preface to the German edition of Charcot’s Leçons du mardi (Freud, 1892–1894), he allowed himself the impertinence of adding a number of critical notes, without asking the author’s permission, an act the latter did not take well. Freud justified thus this decision in his Preface, as follows: I must add a few words to justify the notes which, printed in smaller type, interrupt the flow of Charcot’s exposition at very irregular intervals. These originate from me and consist in part of explanations of the text and additional references to the literature, but in part of critical objections and glosses such as might occur to a member of the audience. I hope these remarks will not be understood as though I were trying in

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any way to set my views above those of my honoured teacher, to whom I am also under a personal obligation as a pupil. I am merely claiming, rather, the right to criticize which is used, for instance, by every reviewer in a technical journal irrespectively of his own merits. There are so many things in neuropathology that are still unexplained and debatable and an understanding of which can only benefit from ventilation, that I have ventured to enter into discussion of a few of these points which are touched on in the lectures. I do so, naturally enough, from my own point of view in so far as this differs from the theories of the Salpetriere. Charcot’s readers, however, have no occasion to pay more attention to my remarks in this connection than these might otherwise deserve on their own account. (p. 136, my italics)

Obviously, this thirty-six-year-old youngster felt absolutely entitled to dissent with the opinions and judgements of his revered teacher, and to make his dissent public, without putting at risk his bond with an ideal object that he was to keep for the rest of his life. This is an impeccable solution to the complex problem of how to preserve one’s relation with an icon, without having to submit to the thought of that person who served as its model.1 Now, Sándor Ferenczi tried to do the same thing with Freud as the latter had done with Charcot, but the relationship between them was too close, intimate, and passionate for this to be acceptable for the master, so this turned into a violent conflict with tragic consequences (Balint, 1968; Tubert-Oklander, 1999a). However, Ferenczi kept alive his admiration and gratitude towards Freud, in spite of questioning his theories and technique, and the latter continued appreciating his disciple and even carried on their discussion, up to his very last works, written years after the younger man’s death (Green, 1987; Martín, 1997; Muñoz Guillén, 1996; Tubert-Oklander, 1999a). Another famous disciple-turned-into-master, Wilfred R. Bion, comments that when he started working with Melanie Klein, after having been in analysis with her, he firmly stated that his condition in so doing was that he should preserve his total freedom of thought and action. This was a sensible measure, considering Klein’s habit of exerting a previous censure on her analysands’, disciples’, and co-workers’ publications (Grosskurth, 1986). Bion (1980) tells that “she said that she was prepared to agree, to put up with it” (p. 36), but he does not think that this was particularly acceptable to her, because she was quite emphatic in making it clear that she really meant what she said

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in her theoretical statements. On the other hand, Borgogno (1997) points out that reading Cogitations—a diary of Bion (1992), which he compares to Ferenczi’s (1985) Clinical Diary—shows how difficult it was for him to really grow out of his dependence on her influence and that of the group that clustered around her. Borgogno believes that the tragedy that emanates from Cogitations is that it shows how an institution can, in the name of an alleged truth, stifle the individual’s uniqueness and specificity and, even though a lucid thinker like Bion may be conscious of this, he may also remain trapped in the very perspective that he is trying to fight. Obviously, this is not only a question of the personal relationship between master and disciple, but the point in which we have to start taking into account the collective psychology of groups and institutions, that is, the group-analytic perspective, as we shall presently see.

Iconoclasts and idol-worshippers Chapter Thirty-two of Exodus (Holy Bible, 1991) tells us that, Moses having ascended Mount Sinai in order to converse with his God, when he delayed coming back the Israelites became restless and distressed, and decided to build themselves a new guide that would replace their absent leader. So they told Aaron, “Up, make us gods which shall go before us; for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him” (Exodus 32:1). So they got hold of their wives’, daughters’, and sons’ golden earrings and took them to Aaron, who made with them a molten calf and they said, “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (32:4). This being said, they set out to prepare “a feast for the LORD” (32:5). When the Lord found out what they had done, He wanted to destroy them, and Moses had a tough job in appeasing Him with his reasoning. But, when he finally descended from the mount and beheld the feast and carousing in honour of the idol, he erupted in a rage, 19. And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses’ anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. 20. And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire,

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and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it. (32: 19–20)

Consequently, the Law that Moses gave to his people made a special emphasis in forbidding idolatry, so that there was an outright prohibition of any iconic representation: 1. And God spake all these words, saying, 2. I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (20: 1–6)

This episode depicts two possible attitudes towards idolatry. On the one hand, there are the Israelites who, frightened by and burdened with uncertainty, substitute their human living guide, and the personal God he serves, by a material object of their own making. In other words, this is the arrogant triumph of narcissistic omnipotence, which denies need and dependence, and affirms self-sufficiency. In terms of Donald Meltzer’s (1966) study of anal masturbation, we might say, metaphorically, that they acted like a baby who has substituted the real good breast by an ersatz, a fake “breast” made of its own faeces. (But, it should be noted, I am only taking this image as an iconic representation of a particular relational attitude of denying the true need for other human beings, and not as a factual description of a concrete unconscious phantasy, as Kleinians do.) Obviously, this is far from being a favourable situation, but Moses’s reaction is equally inadequate, since he bans all icons, in order to avoid their misuse. This is akin to “throwing out the baby away with the dirty bath-water”. As he does not differentiate between the icon and the idol, he summarily forecloses a whole dimension of symbolism, which is indispensable for a full mental functioning. Such confusion was pointed out by Gregory Bateson (Bateson & Bateson, 1987), by reference to the behaviour of the English Puritans who followed Oliver Cromwell, in a flagrant confusion of the symbol

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and the symbolised: “Cromwell’s troops could run around England, breaking the noses and even heads and genitals off the statues in the churches, in a religious fervor, simultaneously stressing their own total misunderstanding of what the metaphoric-sacred is all about” (p. 29, original italics). Hence, it is necessary to underline the difference between the icon and the idol. The icon has no pretence to being identical to the spiritual entity it represents, but rather has only the function of indicating its existence, pointing out the path that leads to it, and inviting us to follow it. The idol, on the contrary, usurps the place of that which it represents, substituting it by a self-generated and appropriable material object. This is the same difference as that between the breast and a baby’s dummy, a sexual human object and a fetish, love and impersonal sex, a human guide and a fake invented “guide”, a living dialogue with a seminal text and a mechanical parrot-fashion repetition of its contents. The icon represents hope, while the idol is born from hopelessness. This is the case with the reading of Freud, and also with any other text of those we call “classics”. A classic is a text that has the peculiarity of stimulating the reader’s living thought, inviting her to explore new paths that had remained untrodden till that very moment. In order to do so, it must fulfil two requirements: the first is that it must be amenable to multiple interpretations and the second is that it should have a strong ontological basis, that is, that it must refer to the basic universal human experiences. This distinguishes it from other texts that can be read with the head, but which do not have an impact on the heart: Contact with texts is true nourishment for the spirit and here, just as it happens with the body, nutrition always requires fresh food, not the carefully preserved remains of the banquets of the past. The function of interpretative reading is to revive old texts, restoring their original properties. In this, not all texts are the same. Some of them turn out to be rigid, sterile, and dusty, so that they are beyond any attempt to refurbish them, while others seem to retain forever their vitality, which joyfully spurts in response to any interpretative effort. These we call “classics”, quite apart from the age of their inception. (TubertOklander, 2009b, pp. 50–51, translated for this edition)

This kind of reading requires that the reader have a particular tolerance to uncertainty and that she take the revered author as a valuable

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interlocutor, who stimulates her own creative and critical thinking, and not as an omniscient being who prescribes what to think. But when readers mistrust their own capacity for thinking, they turn the text into some sort of revelation of an eternal truth, unquestionable, and identical to itself, something like an amulet that can be appropriated and used to alleviate the anxiety that is always generated by true thinking. This is a form of idolatry and a corrupted use of the text, as inadequate as using a volume of Shakespeare to prop up an unbalanced table. Since psychoanalysis is always putting forward forever unfinished thoughts that send us on a quest for the exploration of the unknown, its study will necessarily bring about anxiety and uncertainty. Those readers and students who cannot tolerate this unavoidable distress have protected themselves by means of a defensive use of the foundational texts of our discipline, in a mechanical and unreflective repetition of their contents. This has resulted in an ever-growing emphasis in the ritual learning of the Freudian texts, which resembles a cult. But those who have criticised and denounced this phenomenon run the risk of falling, like Moses, into iconoclasm, which does not distinguish between icons and idols, and does away with both in a single blow. For it is not a question of breaking up with Freud, but of putting an end to the ritualistic and magic use of his figure and works, in order to recoup a living bond with his ever-valid way of thinking, rather than with his conclusions, which may have been surpassed, and with that ideal object of which he is an icon: psychoanalysis. In other words, to develop with him a relation similar to that he had with his master Charcot, full of gratitude and admiration, but without renouncing one’s right to criticise and harbour one’s own thoughts. Of course, this is easier said than done, since it is impeded by powerful emotional forces, both in our intimate inner world (fear of the unknown, need for certainty, despair in front of delays, incredulity about our own capacities) and in the collective life of our professional community and its institutions.

The psychoanalyst and his community The problem is that the icon represented by Freud has, apart from the functions it fulfils in the emotional equilibrium of psychoanalysts as

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individuals, others which are in the service of the cohesion of a group that is always in danger of fragmentation, namely the psychoanalytic community. Human groups tend to cohere on the basis of similarities among its members, and to split on that of their differences. They therefore seek an identity in terms of sharing a common origin and aims, the same beliefs, the same symbols, the same ritual practices, or the same enemies. This dynamic has been described by Bion (1948–1951, 1952) in terms of his theory of the basic assumptions (ba), which rule the unconscious life of groups. He postulated three of them: (i)

Dependence, in which the members of the group seem to believe that they have met in order to depend on an idealised omnipotent and omniscient leader who will solve all their problems and respond to all their needs; (ii) Fight/Flight in which the group members are looking for a person who will lead them into identifying their enemies and either destroy or flee from them; and (iii) Pairing, in which the members focus on a couple that is expected to mate, sexually or otherwise, so that they may produce an offspring (a messiah) that will eventually solve all the group’s problems. This irrational, unconscious functioning is in sharp contrast with another level of group mental functioning that he calls the Work Group, and which is rational, cooperative, and task-oriented. Earl Hopper (2003b) has added a fourth basic assumption, Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification. This occurs in groups that either have been formed by members who have previously experienced the fear of annihilation and its vicissitudes, or that have been traumatised as a group, the latter being the case of families, communities, organisations, ethnic groups, or nations that have been discriminated, harassed, or victimised. Such collective entities have a tendency to fragmentation that they try to compensate for by means of two complementary defensive manoeuvres: aggregation, which means being together without a real bonding, and massification, which corresponds to an illusion of identity, which is not based on an actual sympathy or interaction. Aggregates and masses are not really groups, but ways of being together in spite of the ever-impending danger of

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fragmentation and personal annihilation. This is how Hopper defines them: Aggregates and masses are the two most simple, primitive social formations. They are not merely collections of people, but nor are they groups. They are not merely crowds, but they are not audiences. An aggregate is characterised by a minimal degree of mutual attraction and involvement among three or more people who are neither interdependent nor in sympathy with one another on the basis of shared beliefs, norms, and values. In contrast, a mass is characterised by a maximal degree of mutual attachment and involvement among three or more people who are neither interdependent nor in sympathy with one another, but who share the illusion of solidarity with respect to beliefs, norms and values, usually for a brief period of time. (2003b, p. 67)

In other words, the basic assumption group emerges whenever there is a failure of a group’s interaction and culture to keep an optimal degree of cohesion, vis-à-vis the group’s aims and task. The problem with the psychoanalytic approach to groups is its psychopathological bias, which underscores whatever goes wrong and has very little to say about the factors that are in action when things go as they should. Bion (1961) himself could not say much about work group functioning, except that it is rational and conscious and relies on the scientific method in order to accomplish the group’s aims. In this matter, the social sciences may have much more to contribute to our concerns. In any case, there is no doubt that the psychoanalytic contributions have pinpointed the various defensive practices that collective entities use to neutralise their tendency to incohesion and fragmentation. Freud (1921c) affirmed that a human group may maintain its cohesion and continuity—that is, become an institution—inasmuch as all its members share an identification with an idealised leader (Bion’s ba: Dependency) or feel threatened by the same enemies, alien to the group, and identify with their leader in fighting or fleeing from them (ba: Fight/Flight). The institutions that realise and incarnate these two basic assumptions are the Church and the Army. Bion adds a third one, which represents (ba): Pairing, namely Aristocracy. Our professional community looks pretty much like a church, since it has found the idealised leader of the (ba): Dependence in the

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figure of its founder, and this is the main reason why it is essential for its members to preserve their bond with this icon, which risks becoming an idol. But it has also found support for its cohesion in the (ba): Fight/Flight, by finding an enemy in the external critics of psychoanalysis or in those groups of analysts who differ from one’s own in their definition of what psychoanalysis actually is, thus turning analytic groups into an Army, and in the (ba): Pairing, since its main resource for producing new generations of analysts is a private relationship of a couple, which fosters the fantasy that we analysts form an aristocracy of sorts. Small wonder that the transference–countertransference relation in the analytic pair shows so many features of baby-like dependence, aggression and violence, and sexuality! The psychoanalytic community is inherently unstable, owing to the fact that analysis fosters a freedom of thought and emotional experience that conspires against the uniformity of ideas that maintains the identity of other organisations. Socrates was tried and executed as an “enemy of the City (State)” because he persistently roamed the streets of Athens conversing with his friends, youths, and other citizens, trying to teach them the art of critical thinking. Psychoanalysis is contrary, by definition, to every form of dogmatism, but this becomes a danger for its own survival. That is why psychoanalytic institutions so frequently become dogmatic and authoritarian. This was pointed out by Bion (1970), in Attention and Interpretation, in the following terms: Psycho-analysis cannot escape ideas of cure, treatment, illness, in psycho-analysts and patients alike. Eissler warns against a structure that is too rigid and too limited to permit development. At the opposite extreme the Sufis have no rigid institution yet have endured; their solution would open the way for an “expanding universe” of psycho-analysis but it would not be long before members of the psycho-analytic movement could not understand each other. (p. 83, my italics)2

The conflict between freedom of thought and enquiry, on the one hand, and the danger of fragmentation of the group, on the other, has been with us since the beginnings of psychoanalysis. At first, while the founder lived, cohesion was attained by means of the uniformity of doctrine, but there was ample berth for technical experimentation. Freud was the unquestionable judge of what “was psychoanalysis”

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and what was not. As he grew old and started to anticipate his own death, he convened a secret group of faithful disciples who were charged with watching over the development of psychoanalysis, so that, when he were no longer with them, psychoanalysts would not deviate from the basic principles of his doctrine. Nowadays, the International Psychoanalytical Association is the institutional heir to this charge, albeit other smaller psychoanalytic institutions also claim to be its sole true untainted heirs. Freud’s death opened a wide space for theoretical differences, which originated various schools of psychoanalytic thought. The search for unity within the psychoanalytic movement then turned towards a uniformity in the concrete details of technique: we might now have overtly different theoretical views, but we all should see our patients on the couch, a minimum of four forty-five- or fifty-minute sessions a week, in different days, and maintain an analytic attitude of anonymity and abstinence. It seems that we need to keep rigidity and fixedness in one part of the field, in order to allow flexibility and change in the other.3 In our present world, in which we have gone through radical changes in the life conditions and expectations of the patients, which have led us to experiment with multiple settings and ways of doing analysis, there has been a new swing of the pendulum towards theoretical uniformity (at least within each of the groups that claim to be the sole heirs to Freud’s legacy). But, as history can never go back, there is no way to avoid the multiplicity of psychoanalytic frames of reference, so we have found our cohesive factor in the fidelity to the figure of Freud. We consequently all declare ourselves to be Freudians and seek support for our own thought in fragments of his writings, which are, more often than not, minute and decontextualised. Such practice is surely intellectually suspect, but it allows us to harbour a feeling of continuity with our origins. As Gadamer (1960) pointed out, it is only possible to interpret and innovate within the context of a tradition. But it is not only us who have to deal with such problems; it is an observed fact that such dynamics is found in other psychotherapeutic communities and in all groups that set themselves the mission of bettering the world and the life conditions of its inhabitants, be they political, religious, or ideological. Obviously, the helping professions have a striking tendency to develop this kind of functioning.

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For instance, Edgar A. Levenson (1992), an interpersonal psychoanalyst from the William Alanson White Institute, shares with us the following reflections: We all have our myths of the primal ancestor. Traditional psychoanalysis has Freud: we have H. S. Sullivan. In both cases, a great deal of fancy hermeneutical footwork is necessary to maintain tradition and continuity: to show that—what the founder meant, should have meant, would have meant had he lived—is what we are claiming today. I never met Harry Stack Sullivan; he died in 1949, several years before I entered the William Alanson White Institute. However, I did work intensively and enthusiastically with many of the people who knew him well and were great proponents of his work. So, I suppose that qualifies me as an early disciple, if not a true Apostle. Someone once said—rather sourly—that one gets the disciples one deserves. I don’t know whether Sullivan would endorse my particular brand of interpersonalism; but I do believe that what I have to say is an extrapolation of Sullivan’s position. (p. 450)

What the author tells sounds familiar to us. Nonetheless, there is a difference: Levenson (1984, 1992) feels quite free to analyse and criticise the personality and ideas of his master, which is in a sharp contrast with the solemnity that most of us exhibit when talking about Freud. There is obviously a significant distance between Sullivan and Freud, and no one would claim that they have had the same weight on the history of ideas, but Freud’s greatness can also be an inconvenience for the younger generations. Certainly, being a grandchild or a great-grandchild of Charles Chaplin can be a liability for a youth who is planning to become an actor, actually much more than if she descended from someone who was only a good actor. On the other hand, there are important differences between these two traditions. Sullivan, unlike Freud, never pretended to develop a consistent theoretical system. And then, there is also the mythical structure of the community: Freud incarnates the myth of the Lonely Hero who is fighting for a cause, while Sullivan appears as the synthesiser and representative of a scientific revolution that emerged in the second quarter of the twentieth century, with the appearance of the paradigm of cybernetics and information theory. Freud thundered with a giant’s voice, while Sullivan represented a whole generation of scientists. However, what is significant for our present discussion is that both communities show similar phenomena.4

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Now, the maintenance of an institutionalised group’s cohesion and continuity depends on the fact that “each individual is bound by libidinal ties on the one hand to the leader (Christ, the Commander-inChief) and on the other hand to the other members of the group” (Freud, 1921c, p. 95), so that its imaginary and emotional organisation resembles that of a family. Therefore, it is not only the vertical relation with the leader that counts, but also the horizontal peer pressure and the need to belong, for the determination of which behaviours are possible and acceptable for an individual member, and which are not. We may illustrate this with a significant episode in the history of psychoanalysis. During the 1930s and 1940s, W. Ronald D. Fairbairn (1952), a Scottish psychoanalyst who lived and worked in Edinburgh, “living hundreds of miles from his nearest colleagues, whom he seldom [met]” (Jones, 1952, p. v), and hence quite unfettered by immediate peer pressure, wrote a series of articles in which he seriously questioned some basic aspects of Freud’s theories—mainly, the theory of instinctual drives and the energetic point of view—and was sternly criticised for that. When these texts were published in his 1952 book Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality, Donald W. Winnicott and M. Masud R. Khan (1953) wrote an overtly ambivalent review of it. There they said, A reviewer is in a less fortunate position than an ordinary reader, since Fairbairn makes a definite claim, and it must be this claim that gets the appraisal and the criticism. The claim is that Fairbairn’s theory supplants that of Freud. If Fairbairn is right, then we teach Fairbairn and not Freud to our students. If one could escape from this claim one could enjoy the writings of an analyst who challenges everything, and who puts clinical evidence before accepted theory, and who is no worshipper at a shrine. But the claim is there. (p. 329, my italics)

Obviously, here there is a difference in their respective criteria. Fairbairn writes as a critical thinker, whose only loyalty is to truth, while Winnicott and Khan do it as members of a community held together by the libidinal bonds among its members and with the mythical figure of its founder. But Fairbairn had had no real psychoanalytic education: although he was analysed, his learning was mainly based on the painstaking reading of texts, according to the philosophical tradition he had acquired before studying medicine,

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and on the systematic reflection from clinical experience, following the best medical tradition (Scharff & Birtles, 1997). He was later accepted as a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society for his clinical and academic merits. Besides, he lived over three hundred miles from the nearest psychoanalyst and his personality structure, of a clearly schizoid character, made him especially suitable to play the role of a lonely thinker (Sutherland, 1989). On account of all this, he seems to have been impervious to the emotional pressures that acted on and in his commentators. But Winnicott and Khan’s argument is a fallacy. If in our discipline “there are so many things . . . that are still unexplained and debatable and an understanding of which can only benefit from ventilation”, as the young Freud (1892–1894, p. 136) wrote, when justifying his critical notes on his master Charcot’s Lessons, then we should not feel obliged to choose between Fairbairn and Freud, but would rather have to study them both, and many others, and participate actively in the debate, putting forward our own ideas, as that young Jewish doctor did vis-à-vis his revered master. And what is “an analyst who challenges everything, and who puts clinical evidence before accepted theory, and who is no worshipper at a shrine”, if not the incarnation of that ideal represented by Freud, which the latter received from that Charcot who said «La théorie, c’est bon, mais ça n’empêche pas d’exister» (Freud, 1893f, p. 13) (“Theory is good; but it doesn’t prevent things from existing”)? This was one of Freud’s favourite quotations, which he repeated throughout his life. We are seriously running the risk of no longer being Freudians—that is, psychoanalysts who are deeply identified with the indefatigable enquiring and critical spirit of Sigmund Freud, who valued truth over any other concern—and becoming mere Freudists—members of the Sigmund Freud Fan Club, who uncritically repeat his sayings. And this takes us to the problem of the psychoanalytic education, which is perhaps the only thing that might help us to avoid such a pitfall. .

Rebuilding the Freudian spirit Identification with an idealised mythical ancestor is not the only way to maintain cohesion in an institution or movement. There are indeed various models that fulfil this function. Thus, for instance, Winnicott

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(1954) compares as follows the two rival groups in the British Society—the Kleinian and the (Anna) Freudian—in a letter addressed to both their respective leaders, dated June 3, 1954, in which he urges them to put an end to the alienation of the two training groups in the Institute: There is a comment that I would like to make at this point which is that there is a slight but interesting difference between the formation of the two groupings. In the case of Mrs. Klein’s colleagues and friends it is true, whether by chance or otherwise, that inclusion in the group depends on the fact of having analysis from Mrs. Klein or an analysand of Mrs. Klein or an analysand of such an analysand. The only exception that I know of is Mrs. Rivière and I know of no analyst who has completed an analysis in the Klein group who is not included by Mrs. Klein as a Klein follower. In the case of Miss Freud’s followers, the matter is more one of a type of education and it happens that this gives a less rigid boundary. One could say that whereas the followers of Mrs. Klein are all children and grandchildren, the followers of Miss Freud all went to the same school. (Winnicott, 1954, p. 72, my italics)

There was, however, another group model in that Society. The members of the so-called “Middle Group” did not constitute, for many years, a political or ideological ensemble. They were all British analysts who, although they did not reject any of the two conflictive positions wholesale, would neither identify with one of them, so that they were able to benefit from both their contributions. We might say that they were like civilians trapped in midst of the crossfire of a merciless civil war. Nevertheless, it was only some of them—notably Sylvia Payne—who were able to mediate in order to reach an armistice and eventually a negotiated solution. But it did not take long for them to realise that, in spite of having diverse origins and not sharing a leader, a formal methodology, or a unified theory to define their identity, this group of analysts did indeed have something in common, and this was their interest in the problematics of the subject’s—baby, child, adult, analysand—relations with the real external “objects”—that is, human beings—in his environment. So they represented a movement analogous to that of the Impressionists in painting, of creative individuals who shared analogous preoccupations and explorations, without in any way claiming to be identical. A few decades had to pass before they

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allowed themselves to become a formal group and adopt the name of the “Independents”, in order “to indicate the philosophical attitude of mind held in common by its members. . . . This is to evaluate and respect ideas for their use and truth value—no matter from whence they come. Here the positive use and enjoyment of doubt is essential. Ideological certainty is alien to this spirit” (Rayner, 2000). But all this happened in the context of an organisation unified by the figure and works of the founder of their discipline, acting as a mythical ancestor and the sole author of a foundational text. Nonetheless, what this example illustrates is that different groups of analysts may find their cohesion in diverse ways. Be that as it may, the fact is that our professional community has developed on the basis of its relation with that icon represented by Freud and his work. Consequently, in order to join this group, a new member is required to internalise this bond. This is one of the reasons why our curricula always include an ample study of Freud’s writings. Nevertheless, there may be quite different solutions to the problems posed by our relation with Freud and with psychoanalysis, which give origin to diverse psychoanalytic traditions. This determines, as shown by Eizirik, severe difficulties in the communication and mutual understanding between the various groups of analysts. (See Chapter Three for a discussion of the ideological determinants of such misunderstandings.) Here, much depends on the form in which the relationship with Freud is introduced and worked through in the psychoanalytic education. We tend to think that this should be a subject for the students’ personal analyses, but the problem with this lies in the fact that both the training analyst and the analysand have their own conflicts in their relation with their shared common ancestor, as well as their own solutions for them. One would think that the analyst must have already worked through these problematics for many years now, but there still remains the fact that she is surely committed to her own solution, both consciously and unconsciously. Since there are multiple answers to this common question, it would not be right for the analyst to induce the patient to follow her own path, as this would be tantamount to indoctrination. Analysing this fundamental theme would require an explicit discussion of the various possible perspectives for viewing and solving it, but, as the more generally accepted conception of the analyst’s role precludes expressing her own convictions or

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sympathies during the analysis, this makes it extremely difficult to reflect together on the matter and enquire the underlying unconscious meanings. This would therefore be much more feasible in a group and, in the course of a traditional psychoanalytic training, the only possible space for that would be the theoretical seminars. We shall see below how a group-analytic education has much more suitable instruments for this task, if we are willing to do so. For many years, I endeavoured, in my classes at the Institute of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association, to stimulate a critical discussion of the reading materials, emphasising that there are no definitive truths in our discipline and that each one should develop and apply his own capacity for thought. The results were mixed. On the one hand, a few students appeared to be happy and relieved at not having to submit to a single authorised version of truth, but most of them showed a tenacious resistance towards the very possibility of doing a critical reading of Freud’s writings and theories, a resistance that was not so generalised or intense when we were studying other authors. In the latter case, such resistance became manifest in those students who were deeply identified with some particular school of psychoanalytic thought and practice—usually that of their own analysts— when we discussed the texts of its founders or some of its more prestigious writers. I especially remember one episode that struck me. On one occasion, I said during a class that “one of the aims of the training analysis is to set free the Freud that we all carry inside”. What I meant with this metaphor is that our identification with Freud must be with his critical spirit, his freedom of thought, and his tireless enquiry of everything that called his attention; that we all have the potential capacity to do so, at our own level, although it might be repressed or inhibited, and that the future analyst’s personal analysis should heal this mutilation. I was greatly surprised when one of the students, who used to be a passionate defender of every one of Freud’s concepts and theories, reacted to this idea with horror. Although I decided not to pursue the matter any further, I kept thinking about it, and eventually came to think that, when I suggested that his ideal figure was really an icon of his own capacity for thought, which should be acknowledged and assumed as such, I was robbing him of an object that seemed to be essential for his security and peace of mind when facing the terrifying world of analysis—in other words, an idol.

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Nowadays, I would make use of such an occurrence to open the discussion in the group about our relationship with Freud. Without touching, of course, the personal determinants of this kind of bond, I would pose the idea that putting oneself in contact with the unconscious is always a terrifying event, as suggested by Bion (1974–1975), and all of us tend to defend ourselves against the anxiety generated by uncertainty, by seeking an external source of reliable ready-made answers. I would expect that, from the following open discussion of the matter, various perspectives and positions should emerge, about how to develop a relationship with Freud that allowed us to have our own thoughts about the problems posed by his work, without losing the continuity of our bond with him. How did I come to acquire this new position towards a problem that I had been observing since the beginning of my career as a teacher in the Institute? (And even before that, as a student, although I did not have at the time the elements to think it through.) A few years ago, I came to work with a group of students in the last term of their fouryear course of psychoanalytic formation, by teaching them an optional course that I named “Theory and clinic of interpretation”. (In our Institute, an optional course is a planned subject in the curriculum, which is chosen by each group of students among the various courses offered by some teachers, which correspond to a subject that the teacher is investigating at the time.) In it, we studied and discussed texts by representative authors from the various contemporary psychoanalytic orientations, with an emphasis on those that included clinical narratives, so that we might enquire together the underlying logic of their thought and their interpretations—that is, what sort of hermeneutic system they applied to the clinical experience. The results were excellent, since the group developed a most creative approach to this task. Nevertheless, there were also difficulties. The principal one derived from an aspect of my own participation in the discussion. I usually emphasised, following my intellectual habit of comparing and contrasting the implicit assumptions of the various theories, the similarities and differences of the work of each of the authors with the way in which Freud constructed his theories. But the students tended to feel that these observations were personal, unfair, and destructive attacks on Freud’s figure. This reaction emerged especially when, having read an author that impressed them as being particularly valuable, I pointed out that some of his assumptions

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diverged from or were contradictory to those of the founder of psychoanalysis. Since I did not identify in myself the hostility towards Freud that they perceived in me, I came to think that we were witnessing and experiencing a group phenomenon that deserved to be studied, most probably an instance of misunderstanding. (Pichon-Rivière (1971a) believed misunderstanding to be a universal phenomenon that signalled the beginning of the communication process in groups, and which required an interpretative enquiry in order to turn it into a mutual understanding.) Certainly, I could not dismiss the students’ reaction as an expression of a particular rigidity in them, since I was well-aware of the flexibility and creativity they had shown when studying and critically analysing the extremely diverse thinking of the various authors. Therefore, the difficulty ought to come from another quarter. Finally, I felt that I had found a possible answer to the question, after one of the classes. We had been discussing some texts of a contemporary author who underscored the importance of the subject’s projection through his own future project (Bollas, 1989). I commented that this represented a kind of teleological thinking, similar to that of the existential analysts, which would have hardly been accepted by Freud, whose whole scientific training led him to rely exclusively on causal determinism. The students immediately reacted: they complained that they felt I was doing a biased reading of Freud. They thought that I made a partial selection of some of his postures and criticised him for them, while leaving aside many other instances in which he posed other points of view, which were those that had been developed by many of the authors we were studying. In other words, they felt that I was applying the “Straw Man” argument—that is, “turn your opponent into a man of straw and then criticise him for being a dummy”. This being, of course, a fallacy. I replied that I was fully conscious that Freud’s work is enormously complex and often contradictory, but that it seemed important to me to underscore his epistemological convictions and his theoretical strategies, which were consciously intended and assumed, even though they were frequently at odds with his new discoveries and ideas. Indeed, we had already discussed in the seminar one of my own articles (Tubert-Oklander, 2008a), which analysed the contradiction between

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Freud’s epistemological position, strongly identified with the positivistic and physicalist nineteenth century science, and his revolutionary discoveries and theoretical developments. But the impression remained that there was a mismatch between us, since I emphasised the divergence between Freud’s thought and many contemporary psychoanalytical developments, while they were looking for the similarities between them. Both parties were right in what we said, but they highlighted continuity, while I stressed discontinuity. During the following days, I kept thinking about what had happened in class, and concluded that perhaps the students might be right in their complaint, that I could be leaving out some important aspect of the question. For many years, I had acted like Fairbairn, placing the intellectual clarity of the critical analysis of texts and theories above any other consideration, thus ignoring the emotional substrate of our relationship with them. It was as if I truly believed that an academic discussion could and should be purely rational, without taking into account the emotional unconscious dimension, and this in a class taught by a psychoanalyst with a group of psychoanalytic students! It was clearly an instance of the shoemaker’s son always going barefoot. On the other hand, the very authors we were reading seemed to be preoccupied by the same problem as the students. In the text we had been discussing in our last class, Christopher Bollas (1989), one of the main present psychoanalytic thinkers, had felt, after having postulated that a patient in a psychoanalytic treatment needs to discover and acknowledge her own unconscious project for the future—what he calls her “destiny”— the need to find a brief quotation of something Freud wrote in passing, in order to recoup a continuity between his own thought and that of the master. In “The ‘uncanny’ “ Freud (1919h) wrote “There are also all the unfulfilled but possible futures to which we still like to cling in phantasy, all the strivings of the ego which adverse external circumstances have crushed, and all our suppressed acts of volition which nourish in us the illusion of Free Will” (p. 236). Although the reference to “all the unfulfilled but possible futures to which we still like to cling in phantasy” would seem to support Bollas’s contention that Freud had somehow envisioned the possibility that the ego might strive towards a much-needed future, the rest of the quotation dispels such teleological interpretation, by qualifying them as “suppressed acts of volition which nourish in us

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the illusion of Free Will”—in other words, a form of self-deception that denies the unsavoury fact that we are not at all free, but strictly determined by causality. But why did the author resort to such a rhetorical manoeuvre? It does not seem to be a case of the compulsion to affirm that “this that I am saying now has already been said by the Master”, since he had shown no reservations in stating his disagreements with Freud on other subjects, but rather a need to find a continuity in psychoanalytic thinking, when dealing with a particularly delicate matter, as that of reintroducing final causes in our analyses. Once again, it is only possible to innovate in the context of a tradition, and not by breaking up with it. From this new perspective, the members of the group had been right in identifying violence in my approach, inspired in Karl Richard Popper’s (1935–1959) contention that the best way to test a theory is to attempt to refute it. But Popper was thinking about scientific theories, not psychoanalytic ones (and even scientists do not usually treat their theories as suggested by Popper’s reconstruction). This may be valid for road-testing car prototypes, which are subject to extreme conditions in order to find out which of their pieces breaks down, but this is certainly not a way to treat a delicate bond, having to do with the construction of an identity. What prospective analysts need is to work-through their relationship with that object which symbolises the ideal of their profession, in order to preserve and develop their freedom of thought, without losing the exemplary effect of the figure of the master, just as Freud did with Charcot. And what I was offering was a violent destruction of the object, such as that posed by Winnicott (1969), which they felt as the equivalent of being orphaned. It was then that I realised the possibility of applying the concepts of the icon and the idol, in order to better understand this problem. Apparently, I had been working as an iconoclast, attacking an idol that I felt—quite rightly, of course—to be an inhibitory factor for creativity and thought. But I had not realised, and neither had they, the need to preserve the icon as a source of inspiration and guide, which shows us the path to follow and gives us the hope that is necessary in order to do it. Consequently I reached the conclusion that the teacher’s function in a psychoanalytic education is always two-fold: to teach the students to know and critically analyse the various points of view and theories, but also to analyse and work-through with them

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the problematics of the psychoanalytic identity and the membership in our professional community and institution, an issue that is unavoidably shared by teacher and students alike. As soon as I had developed these thoughts and understanding, I shared them with the group, and we had an open discussion on the matter. The result was that the tension that had developed between us was dispelled, and there was a clear improvement of our work together. So, this intervention of mine was the equivalent of an interpretation, which helped us all to surmount what had been a major obstacle that hindered our common task, as posed by Pichon-Rivière (1971a) in his operative group approach to group analysis (TubertOklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004). My final contribution to this group was writing the first version of the present text, which I shared with the students in our last class. They were moved by the fact that their concerns had been listened to, that I had taken the time and the trouble to think and write about them, that they had had an impact on me, much as I had had on them, and that we had all learned from our being and working together. This experience makes me think that, if the various teachers who work with each group of students were able and willing to make use of the opportunities that the study and discussion of psychoanalytic and group-analytic texts open for us, in order to carry out with them a shared reflection on these matters, the prospective analysts who are our students would have an access to the various perspectives about and solutions for a problem which is common to all psychoanalysts, group analysts, and other psychotherapists, and this would allow them to find their own position on the matter. Besides, this might foster a more open attitude towards the inevitable differences that emerge in our community, resulting in better communication among its members. This may sound an unattainable ideal, since we psychoanalysts and other psychotherapists are not exactly known to be open-minded and tolerant about differences. Dogmatic thinking seems to be an endemic disease in our professional communities. Besides, the only instrument known to us for enquiring and hopefully solving such tensions is group analysis, which has grown and developed out of the psychoanalytic institutions. But, anyway, this is worth trying, and a start may be made by those of us who are both psychoanalysts and group analysts. It is quite possible, when conducting a psychoanalytic

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seminar, to observe and understand the unconscious dynamics of the group, including the conductor, and to intervene in ways that help to make explicit the implicit problems that are being dealt with unconsciously. This can be done without ever defining the seminar as a group-analytic group, much as in the spontaneous group-analytic interventions in natural groups I described in Chapter One. The situation is, of course, more favourable in group-analytic institutes, in which a wider and deeper awareness of the impact of group, institutional, and social factors in learning-teaching groups has led to the development of such technical devices as large groups, which allow the group members to engage in an exploration of the social unconscious in their institutions (de Maré, Piper, & Thompson, 1991; Hopper, 2003a; Kreeger, 1975). Pichon-Rivière (1971a), on the other hand, used group analysis in order to enquire, together with the group members, the set of preconscious and unconscious assumptions that constituted each one’s Conceptual, Referential, and Operative Scheme (CROS), thus helping them to transcend their initial misunderstandings and construct a common CROS for the group, which allowed them to work together more effectively in their common task. It should be noted that the CROS does not only include the cognitive aspects, but also the affective and the conative, this aiming at an integration of thought, emotion, and action (Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004). Also in Argentina, Alejo Dellarossa (1979), who had worked with PichonRivière, used his reflection groups in the Institute of Group Techniques as a group-analytic resource to complement both the dynamics of the seminars and the students’ personal treatment.5 (For a similar approach to the teaching of group-analytic family therapy, see Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004, see Chapter Five current volume.) In any case, I believe that a group analytic enquiry and understanding of the unconscious side of analytic education—whether psychoanalytic or group-analytic—should explore the students’ and teachers’ relationship with their community, its founders and ideal objects, and its tradition. This is by no means an easy task, since it meets with the most intense resistances, which sometimes tend to conceal these institutional problematics behind a “therapeutisation” of large groups and other institutional dynamic approaches. On the other hand, in psychoanalytic institutes, the more common form of resistance consists in demanding that the group members strictly limit their discussions to the cognitive task at hand—analysing a text,

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supervising a case, etc.—thus avoiding any exploration of the emotional and institutional substrates, which are hopefully left to the students’ personal analyses. After the experience I have recounted, I have used the previous version of this text as a reading material with several groups of psychoanalytic students at the Institute, irrespective of the subject we were studying. Sometimes I gave it to them at the beginning of a course, in order create a context for the discussions that were to follow during a twenty-class term; others, I left it for the end of our period together, so that they might re-signify the discussion that we had already had. In every case, I noticed that the reading and group discussion of these ideas fostered a fruitful reflection on the psychoanalytic identity and our relationship with Freud as an icon. This implies that there may still be many such instruments that we might develop, in order to contribute to the construction and development of an analytic or therapeutic identity in our various orientations and institutions.

Notes 1.

It is interesting to remark that Freud’s lifelong attitude of appreciation, gratefulness, and recognition towards Charcot did not extend to another of his masters, Franz Brentano, who was his teacher of philosophy in 1874–1875. Although we know now, after the publication of Freud’s letters to Edward Silberstein (Boehlich, 1990), of the great impact that this former Jesuit had on the young medical student—he even went as far as considering “under Brentano’s fruitful influence” (p. 95) taking his PhD in philosophy and zoology—he never mentions Brentano in his published work. He and his friend Paneth had discussed extensively their objections to their master’s theism, both in writing and in a few visits at the latter’s home, and Freud considered him “a splendid man, a scholar and philosopher, even though he deems it necessary to support this airy existence of God with his own expositions” (p. 71) and described him as “this remarkable man (a believer, a teleologist (!) and a Darwinian and a damned clever fellow, a genius in fact), who is, in many respects, an ideal human being” (p. 95). So, why did Freud completely disavow a teacher who had had such an effect on him, and whose influence can be read, between the lines, in many of his later psychoanalytic concepts? Answering this question would require a whole chapter in itself, but I can

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now advance the idea that Freud repudiated and repressed his keen interest in philosophy and theology, much as he did with politics (Pines, 1989; Chapter One) and later would not want to hear anything about these subjects, or about the teacher who so nearly propelled him on an completely different course from that of positive science. Bion’s comparison of psychoanalysis with Sufism comes particularly to the point. The Sufis represent the mystical side of Islam, and they have been duly persecuted by the organisational Establishment of their religion, since they are by principle opposed to every form of dogmatism. Even though they have relinquished any standard doctrines or institutions, they are still able to communicate, on the assumption that, having had the mystical experience of Truth, which is the reference of any words, metaphors, texts, images, and procedures they use, they are bound to understand each other (Shah, 1964). (The opposite is also true: anyone who has not had the mystical experience will never understand what it is they are actually saying—”the Secret protects itself”.) Is this the case of psychoanalysis? Could it be that anyone who has had a personal experience of the unconscious is bound to understand what any psychoanalytic text really means? This is partly so, as with any kind of experience-based knowledge and thinking, but we cannot assume every psychoanalytical experience to be the same. There is ample evidence that analysts belonging to diverse schools of psychoanalytic thought may have had very different analytic experiences, both as patients and as analysts, as a consequence of their theoretical and technical differences. This is the rationale behind Bion’s contention that “psychoanalysis cannot escape ideas of cure, treatment, illness, in psychoanalysts and patients alike”, in order to maintain a suitable base for their mutual understanding, since, if every analyst-analysand pair were free to develop their own metaphors and models for understanding their analytic experience (like the Sufis with mystical experience), the result would be pretty much that depicted by the Babel myth. But can we really afford to relinquish this freedom in order to preserve the integrity of the psychoanalytic movement? Is this not too great a price to pay? This is a moot question that deserves much further discussion. It is symptomatic of this trend that the International Psychoanalytical Association put up with Jacques Lacan’s revolutionary theories, but not with his introduction of the “variable-length session”. Apart from any discussion of the possible value or dangers of such technical manoeuvre, and its implications for the analytic process, what is in need of an explanation is that it became the apparent reason for what amounted to a full

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excommunication from the international psychoanalytic institution. For instance, Alain de Mijolla (1996) points out that the whole conflict, which started as internal strife within the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, was related to the enormous increment in the power of the International Psychoanalytical Association, which started to exert a new function of arbitrating and policing the training practices of its component societies. One instance of this, pointed out by Mark J. Blechner (1996) is “the tremendous dread that many Interpersonal analysts feel about Sullivan’s homosexuality” (p. 230), which is more often than not dealt through outright denial. Personally, I had the chance to work with Dellarossa during the 1971–1976 period, first as his student and then as a junior colleague. I was also a member of his first reflection group. This experience had a major influence in my later development as a group analyst.

CHAPTER FIVE

A Hermes in London: the subtlety of interpretation in Donald Winnicott’s clinic

Introduction to Chapter Five his chapter was originally written for the First Winnicott Meeting, “Winnicott in the Contemporary Clinic”, organised by the students of the Institute of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association in April 2011. Having been invited to contribute with a lecture on the subject, I was happy to have the opportunity to develop conjointly two themes that had occupied me for many years: the work of Winnicott and the theory of interpretation. This effort was enriched by the work I had been doing with my friend, Mexican philosopher Mauricio Beuchot, on the articulation of psychoanalysis and hermeneutics, as well as my interest in the analogical use of mythology as an aid to the understanding of highly complex theories and processes—both of them subjects that the reader will surely have already found in the previous chapters. My original presentation was in Spanish, and it has not been previously published, but the present version is not just a translation, but a rewriting of it, in order to integrate this text into the general context of the book. I have also added a postscript that deals with Winnicott’s relation with relational analysis.

T

Winnicott on interpretation A few years ago, I received a desperate call from a student, asking for my help. He had written an essay on Winnicott, as a requirement for passing one of his courses; in it, he said that this author believed that 157

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the main therapeutic factor in psychotherapy was the therapeutic relationship, not interpretation. His teacher, who was very angry at that, said most emphatically that this was not true and demanded that the student bring to the following class the exact quotation in which Winnicott said such thing. The young man did not have it and had no way to locate it, but, as he had heard me say precisely this in my classes, he requested my aid in order to avoid failing the course. It was not easy for me to find the quotation, since Winnicott used to write his papers in a conversational style, something like table talk, in which any given observation or reflection may have nothing to do with the title of the article. Nonetheless, I did find it and gave it to the student, who was consequently saved from his teacher’s fury. The quote, taken from “Mirror-role of mother and family in child development” (1967b) was as follows: Psychotherapy is not making clever and apt interpretations; by and large it is a long-term giving the patient back what the patient brings. It is a complex derivative of the face that reflects what is there to be seen. I like to think of my work this way, and to think that if I do this well enough the patient will find his or her own self, and will be able to exist and to feel real. Feeling real is more than existing; it is finding a way to exist as oneself, and to relate to objects as oneself, and to have a self into which to retreat for relaxation. (p. 117, my italics)

This brief text clearly expresses the author’s therapeutic ideology, as well as his fundamental disagreement with the Kleinian technique, for which the only therapeutic factor in psychoanalysis is the analyst’s correct and timely interpretation. Winnicott firmly believed, as a doctor, a paediatrician, and a psychoanalyst, in the self-healing processes of the organism and the person, and mistrusted any conception of analysis as a purely technical intervention, by means of which the professional “did something” to the patient in order to cure him. In this he agreed with Freud’s (1912e) recommendation that every analyst follow the motto of the old French surgeon Ambrose Paré, «Je le pansai, Dieu le guérit» (I dressed his wounds, God cured him) (p. 115). Consequently, he could only object to the claim that the analyst’s interpretations are the sole therapeutic factor. In November 1952, he wrote a letter to Melanie Klein, in which he said, referring to a colleague:

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The worst example, perhaps, was C’s paper in which he simply bandied about a lot of that which has now come to be known as Kleinian stuff without giving any impression of having an appreciation of the processes personal to the patient. One felt that if he were growing a daffodil he would think that he was making the daffodil out of a bulb instead of enabling the bulb to develop into a daffodil by good enough nurture. (Winnicott, 1952, p. 35, my italics)

And no one who happens to be familiar with Winnicott’s sense of humour would ever think that his choosing of a plant of the genus Narcissus for his metaphor could be due to mere chance or whim! Nonetheless, my student’s teacher was also partly right, since Winnicott never stopped making interpretations or downplayed them. More than that, in his letters he corrects, over and over again, the misinterpretations some readers made of decontextualised fragments of his writings, which may seem to disqualify the work of interpretation. On this, F. Robert Rodman (1987) writes, in his “Introduction” to his selection of Winnicott’s letters, He remained steadfast as a reader of the unconscious and a believer that accurate, well-timed interpretations are the chief instrument of change. It was only in the treatment of deeply disturbed patients that he believed a phase of management to be indispensable. . . . He said “psychosis is a deficiency disease”, but he knew that to arrive at the point of deficiency required a long period of psychoanalytic interpretation. (p. xxxii)

What Winnicott actually mistrusted were certain interpretations that he qualified as being “clever”—that is, explicative interpretations on a merely intellectual level, especially if they were too long. This he wrote in a letter to Donald Meltzer, in which he said (Winnicott, 1959), It is unfortunate that the sort of presentation which you gave last night makes people feel that the followers of Mrs. Klein talk more than their patients do. Perhaps they do speak more than other analysts, and I would very much like to know about this. In a report of a case, however, if the analyst makes too long an interpretation, the listener gets the impression that the analyst is talking to himself rather than to the patient. (p. 125, my italics)

From Winnicott’s (1960a) point of view, interpretations of this kind run the risk of playing up to the patient’s false self, who would then

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be learning psychoanalytic theory, instead of being analysed, since “only the true self can be analysed” (Winnicott, 1959–1964, p. 133, original italics). This implies that the only interpretations worth saying are those that come into contact with the patient’s present emotions. This can only happen when the analyst manages to communicate with the patient from the positions in which he has been placed by the transference neurosis or psychosis. Hence, the need to always pose and answer the question of “What does the patient bring to me today?” (Winnicott, 1962b, p. 167). For him, the aim of analysis is “to verbalize the nascent conscious in terms of the transference” (p. 170). However, we cannot but have the impression that Winnicott’s interpretations were something different from traditional psychoanalytic interpretations, albeit it is not easy to identify wherein lies this difference. It is not just a divergence in their contents, derived from the application of diverse psychoanalytic theories, such as that we find when contrasting the interpretations of Kleinian analysts with those of contemporary Freudians, but something deeper and subtler. Perhaps this is the more adequate term to refer to this indefinable sensation: Winnicott’s clinic is characterised by a great subtlety of interpretation.

Subtlety in hermeneutics “Subtle” means “delicate, elusive, obscure, imperceptible, intangible”, but also “perceptive, refined, skilful, ingenious”, and even “devious, wily or insidious” (Merriam-Webster, 2002)—the latter probably being an expression of the mistrust that most insensitive people have towards subtlety. A subtle spirit can grasp delicate and elusive meanings, which are not perceptible at first sight, and it does so through its perspicacity and ingenuity. This requires that quality of mind that Blaise Pascal (1670) called the “esprit de finesse” (the spirit of finesse), that is, the capacity to perceive the many aspects of a complex situation, detect its pattern or patterns, and hold together all these elements in a harmonious balance, through the application of the Aristotelian virtue of Phronesis (prudence) (Aristotle, 2011). The resulting configurational mode of knowledge is much wider and quite different from the theoretical mode of knowledge (Pascal’s “esprit de géométrie”—the geometrical spirit), which is logical, precise, and narrow. It is knowledge from the heart, in a sharp contrast with the crude manipulations of the brain.

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This is the very essence of hermeneutics, which is, as we have already seen in Chapter Three, the philosophical discipline engaged in formulating the theory and practice of the interpretation of texts. Here we should note that the very word “text” is itself a metaphor, derived from the Latin textus, which means “tissue”, and refers to the way in which words are interwoven, as the warp and the weft in a loom, in order to form configurations and images—that is, ideas. In contemporary hermeneutics, the term “text” refers to any complex symbolic configuration that is capable of conveying and generating meanings, when dealt with by an interpreter (Ricoeur, 1965). This includes such apparently diverse entities as a written document, a speech, a dialogue, a chorus, a dance, a musical piece, a gesture, a picture, a sculpture, an architectural construction, a culture, a life, a psychoanalytic session, or a whole treatment (Tubert-Oklander, 2009a). Every text demands to be interpreted, seeks an interpretation, and every interpreter requires a text to interpret. Hence, text, interpreter, and interpretation all form an indissoluble unit, albeit a dynamic, mutable, and living one. Hermeneutics comes from the remotest times of Humankind, since the human being is by nature an interpreter of his whole experience— a Homo Hermeneuticus—but it is finally structured with Plato and Aristotle. Some attribute its name to the Greek god Hermes, although this assertion has been challenged by other scholars, since the word apparently derives from the Greek “hermeneuiein”, which means expressing or enunciating a thought, deciphering or interpreting a message or text. Nonetheless, this deity has been always associated with the practice of interpretation. It is Hermes, the son of Zeus and the nymph Maya, the messenger of the gods, who translated their designs into the language of men, a born liar, the patron of thieves and merchants, the master of dreams, guardian of doors, who dwells in thresholds and crossroads, in charge of weights and measures, teacher of interpretation and oratory, who presides all crossings and transitions, passages and journeys, and aids humans in their final trip to the realm of Hades, the abode of the dead. This makes him a most suitable god to represent hermeneutics, quite apart from the uncertainties of philologists (Tubert-Oklander & Hernández-Tubert, 2007b). But it is not just Hermes, since the mythologies of various cultures have included similar gods: mediators, messengers, sometimes wise

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counsellors and teachers for human beings, others restless genii, tricksters and mockers, lords of crossroads, thresholds, and boundaries, patrons of movement, interchange, and measures. Such is the Egyptian god Thoth, for instance, and Eshú-Eleguá of the Yoruba religion in Africa, which was to transmute and syncretise in Latin America as Umbanda and Santería. It seems that many peoples have needed to personify this inherent activity of the human spirit—that of interpreting and translating from that mysterious place in which there is a contact between two realities: quotidian and magical (Beuchot, 2003). In our time, it has been Freud who inaugurated a new path for the study of this essential liminality of human existence, that penumbral area we meet in the brief instant that lays between unbounded dream and the return to our everyday life. As we have already discussed in Chapter Three, hermeneutics has had, from its very beginnings, three different forms in its attitude towards the relation between text and interpretation. We call the first one univocality—from “univocal”—that is, “only one voice”. This way of interpreting assumes that, for any given text, there is one and only one true interpretation, so that all others are false. Such belief provides us with a tranquilising certainty, while breeding an authoritarian dogmatism. The second mode is equivocality—from “equivocal”, meaning “many equal voices”. This assumes, on the contrary, that for every text there are numerous, perhaps infinite, possible interpretations and that they all have a similar value. Consequently, there is no rule for choosing one of them over the others, with the exception of personal taste and practical convenience. This way of looking at things is certainly richer and more varied, but it tends to fall into a sterile relativism, which renounces the very concept of truth. The third one is analogism—from “analogy”, meaning “proportion” or “fair measure”. It poses that there are, in effect, various possible interpretations for any given text, but not infinite, and neither are they all interchangeable, since some of them are better, others are not so good, many are poor, and yet some are just bad. This allows enough space for an interpreter’s creativity and ingenuity, but not without rigour, since it does not relinquish the search for truth. What it does indeed disclaim is the omnipotent belief that any of the interpretations we might formulate could ever be an absolute and definitive truth.

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Nevertheless, there is the opportunity to reach some truth, a humble and partial truth, which must necessarily coexist with other versions of it, but good enough to be able to go on thinking, discussing, acting, relating, and living (Beuchot, 1997, 1998, 2003; Tubert-Oklander, 2009a; Tubert-Oklander & Beuchot Puente, 2008). Analogy is, therefore, an intermediate position between certainty and uncertainty, knowing and not knowing, imagination and rigour, being and doing. It is the quest for a middle ground, but not an average. It is not a question of mixing cold and hot water, and getting a lukewarm one, but of keeping a fruitful tension, a dynamic equilibrium, a coexistence of apparent opposites, which can only be talked about in a strange and unsettling manner that forces us to oscillate between two polar statements that can never be reduced to just one: this is paradox.

The analogical analyst In our profession, we have had, and still have, a large number of univocal analysts who are convinced that interpretations based on their theory are the only true ones. There are also equivocal analysts, who believe there is no truth to be found, but only multiple points of view, more or less ingenious or appealing. Their motto might be one traditional Spanish proverb that says “Nada es verdad, nada es mentira, todo depende del color del cristal con que se mira” (“Nothing’s false and nothing’s true. It all depends on the colour of the glass you’re looking through”). But we also have analogical analysts, who have been able to avoid the pitfalls of an exclusive “either–or” thinking and apply what Hernández de Tubert (2000; Hernández Hernández, 2010) calls the principle of inclusion, which is based on the logic of “both–and”. An analogical analyst, writes Ricardo Velasco (2010) “works with a partial certainty and a tolerance of uncertainty” (p. 199, translated for this edition), in order to experience and enjoy the psychoanalytic experience that stems from the encounter of two unconsciouses—or, as I would rather say, the unconscious encounter of two human beings who are willing to explore together the unseen dimension of their encounter. And one major example of such analogical analysts is the landmark figure of Donald Woods Winnicott, master of the intermediate

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area, virtuoso with paradoxes, playful and often burlesque spirit, interpreter and translator, considerate and prudent sage, who systematically applied the Aristotelian virtue of Phronesis (Aristotle, 2011), or search for the fair proportion, always in benefit of the patient. In sum, a true Hermes in London, a humorous and playful elf, who enjoyed exhibiting and denouncing the absurd and pretentious solemnity of so many members of our profession. One example of this is the anecdote told by Margaret Little (1985) about her first meeting with the man who was going to be her second analyst, The first scientific meeting of the British Psycho-Analytical Society that I attended was a noisy evening with bombs dropping every few minutes and people ducking as each crash came. In the middle of the discussion someone I later came to know as D.W. [Donald Winnicott] stood up and said, “I should like to point out that there is an air raid going on”, and sat down. No notice was taken, and the meeting went on as before! (p. 19)

This is a typical instance of Winnicott’s sense of humour! Now, making an analogical interpretation is a truly complex task, since it implies finding novel forms of approaching a truth that we intuit to be there, while knowing that we do not know it now and shall never have a complete knowledge of it. This cannot be done by merely applying a pre-existent theory to the patient’s expressions and claiming that “What you are really saying now is . . .” whatever! It is an intuitive and creative activity that demands all of the analyst’s esprit de finesse, sensitivity, creativity, and subtlety, in order to construct an image, a verbal expression, or a behavioural response that represents “a long-term giving the patient back what the patient brings” (Winnicott, 1967b, p. 117).

Winnicott’s interpretative clinic Winnicott’s clinic was remarkable precisely for such interpretative delicacies, born from a penetrating and almost preternatural empathy with the patient’s true being, and the unshakable will to strive to put into words that which words cannot say. And the results were some strange and paradoxical statements that many unsympathetic readers

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may find absurd, incomprehensible, or even shocking, but which his patients could well appreciate. Let us consider a few examples: First, in his article “Ego distortion in terms of True and False Self”, Winnicott (1960a) warns us of the danger that the analyst may take a spurious character invented by the patient, as a defence, to be her total personality. This would lead the analytic pair to engage in a merely intellectual dialogue, in which the patient might learn psychoanalytic theory, without ever being cured. With such patients, he tells us, the only interpretations that have a real effect are those that inform the patient that the analyst has realised that she (the patient) does not really exist, that is, that she who is coming to analysis is a constructed character, not a living person. This he illustrates with the following vignette: A patient who had had much futile analysis on the basis of a False Self, co-operating vigorously with an analyst who thought this was his whole self, said to me: “The only time I felt hope was when you told me that you could see no hope, and you continued with the analysis.” (p. 152)

Here, Winnicott’s paradoxical statement made the patient realise that his analyst was listening to him with an open heart, accepting to experience with him and for him a feeling of utter hopelessness, without losing the firm conviction that, as Ferenczi (1931) used to say, “as long as a patient continues to come at all, the last thread of hope has not snapped” (p. 470). Second, Harry Guntrip (1975) tells us that, right at the end of his analysis with Winnicott, he had a sudden return of hard talking in a session. Then the analyst said what he qualifies as “a different and extraordinary statement”, which went as follows: It’s like you giving birth to a baby with my help. You gave me half an hour of concentrated talk, rich in content. I felt strained in listening and holding the situation for you. You had to know that I could stand your talking hard at me and my not being destroyed. I had to stand it while you were in labour being creative, not destructive, producing something rich in content. You are talking about “object relating”, “using the object” and finding you don’t destroy it. I couldn’t have made that interpretation five years ago. (p. 153)

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Guntrip felt that, on saying this, “He became a good breast mother to my infant self in my deep unconscious, at the point where my actual mother had lost her maternalism and could not stand me as a live baby any more”. But Winnicott then added something even more astonishing, when he said, You too have a good breast. You’ve always been able to give more than take. I’m good for you but you’re good for me. Doing your analysis is almost the most reassuring thing that happens to me. The chap before you makes me feel I’m no good at all. You don’t have to be good for me. I don’t need it and can cope without it, but in fact you are good for me. (p. 153, my italics)

Here Winnicott was recognising the existential position that the patient had taken throughout his life, of denying and projecting his own need and fragility, and taking care of and helping others, but without qualifying it as a merely defensive activity, that is, psychopathological. He therefore acknowledged the value and the loving aspect of his patient’s creative act, in terms of doing good to the analyst, but without falling into the trap of identifying with the projected part of the patient’s self, which belonged only to him, and thus avoiding a recreation of the patient’s usual transpersonal defensive system.1 Third, in his paper “The split-off male and female elements to be found in men and women”, Winnicott (1971b) tells us a fragment of the analysis of a male patient, married and with a family, who has been in treatment for many years with various analysts. In a Friday session, the analyst suddenly realised that his patient was talking of penis envy, a feeling not usually found in men, but in women. Then he said, “I am listening to a girl. I know perfectly well that you are a man but I am listening to a girl, and I am talking to a girl. I am telling this girl: ‘You are talking about penis envy’ “ (p. 73). The patient’s reaction was of intellectual acceptance, accompanied by a feeling of relief, and some more remote effects. After a brief pause, he said, “If I were to tell someone about this girl I would be called mad”. Then Winnicott found himself saying, to his own surprise, what follows: “It was not that you told this to anyone; it is I who see the girl and hear a girl talking, when actually there is a man on my couch. The mad person is myself” (pp. 73–74).

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The patient then said that he was now feeling sane in a mad environment, and added, “I myself could never say (knowing myself to be a man) ‘I am a girl’. I am not mad that way. But you said it, and you have spoken to both parts of me” (p. 74). This interchange represented a great advance in the treatment and the breaking of a vicious circle in the analysis of a man who appeared as a well-behaved patient, but had managed to keep untouched a deep node of illness, during a quarter of a century of analysis. Winnicott was convinced that, when the patient was born, his mother saw and treated him as if he were a girl and that he had later denied and repressed the whole situation in order to avoid reaching the conclusion that his mother was mad. Nowadays, we would see this whole analytic interchange as an enactment of a repressed scene from the patient’s unconscious, in which the analyst accepted being turned into a crazy mother who hallucinated a girl, while actually looking at a baby boy, but a mother who, unlike the original object, explicitly acknowledged her own madness (Jacobs, 1986; Ponsi, 1997; Renik, 1993). This represented a fundamental change for the patient. Here we can see the work of interpretation as a stage in an analytic dialogue, an ongoing conversation, from which new truths emerge unawares for both parties. Rather than speaking of “interpretation”, we should perhaps think of an interpretative process that evolves as a result of the interchanges between the analyst and the analysand (Tubert-Oklander, 2006c). The fourth and last example comes from the analysis of Gabrielle, a two-year-and-four-months-old girl that Winnicott took in treatment in February 1964, whom we all know as The Piggle (Winnicott, 1977). The circumstances of the treatment were most unusual from the very beginning, since Gabrielle and her family lived far away from London, so that the analyst decided to treat her by means of the controversial technique of a psychoanalysis on demand; that is, that the parents should arrange an appointment and bring her for a session whenever she asked for it. This requirement could not always be fulfilled, and this brought about some important consequences. From February 1964 through October 1966, the child attended sixteen sessions with Winnicott and, when they finally terminated the treatment, her initial symptoms had been completely solved.

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Gabrielle had a good beginning in life, with a flourishing and energetic early development, but when her baby sister Susan was born, when she was twenty-one months old, she fell into apathy and depression. Her parents consulted on account of her night terrors, in which she was visited by a black mummy and daddy, who frequently were found in a strange and terrifying place she called the “babacar”; every night she asked them quite desperately to tell her “all about the babacar”. But, in the end, it was the girl herself who asked her parents to take her with Dr Winnicott, of whom they had told her that he “understands about babacars and black mummys” (p. 7) and hence would be able to help her. The treatment was duly initiated, and Winnicott started to work on the assumption that the child would come to each session with a problem or conflict which, having been somehow cleared during their meeting, she would continue working through at home, until she met a new obstacle that she could not surmount by herself, and then she would ask for a new session. Things worked as expected for some time, until an external difficulty interfered with their agreement. After the eighth consultation, which took place on December 1, 1964, the mother wrote to Winnicott that Gabrielle was urgently asking to see him, apparently in relation to the work they had done in the last session about the “black mummy”, but unfortunately he could not arrange to receive her until almost two months later, on January 29, 1965. The session starts with Gabrielle having a cold, but she says that it is her small sister Susan who is ill. (During the previous anxious interval between the sessions she had insisted on being called “Susan”, while she kept sucking her thumb.) The analyst says, “I suppose I’ll be sneezing tomorrow”, and the child approves: “You’ll be sneezing tomorrow, I know, Mr. Winnicott” (p. 112). But the contagion comes from another quarter. Immediately after this dialogue, she talks for a while about the black mummy, saying, “The black mummy likes me. She thinks I am dead”, and then adds, “She doesn’t know about children or babies. The black mummy doesn’t know about babies” (p. 114). She feels very sad and starts to join an engine and some trucks—a difficult job, because they do not fit. Then comes what Winnicott calls “a long period of indefinite activity”, and he becomes drowsy and confused. On this he writes, “My withdrawal here has to be taken into account. It itself was related to the indefinite material because of Gabrielle’s withdrawal. In a sense, I ‘took’ her

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projection, or ‘caught’ her mood” (p. 115). In the final part of the session, the analyst tries to make it clear for her that the black mummy belongs to the world of dreams, and not to reality. She responds by telling him a dream, and then adds, “It was only a dream” (p. 116). Finally, she asks to leave, saying, “Mr. Winnicott, I can’t stay here for quite a lot longer, so could you see me another day?” (p. 117). At this point of his narrative, Winnicott apparently felt a need to excuse himself for having been sleepy during the session, as he wrote, It would be easy to think that she was dissatisfied with me because of my having been sleepy, but in fact it is likely that the whole episode (even including my sleepiness) had to do with Gabrielle’s great anxiety, making clear communication impossible. Anxiety had certainly to do with the black mummy dream. I asked here about dreams and she said: “I dreamed she was dead. She wasn’t there.” (p. 117, original italics)

Then, something happens that changes the whole quality of the session. Gabrielle takes a blue eyebath that she has transiently been interested in, during the second session, and enthusiastically puts it in and out of her mouth, making sucking noises. Then she says, “I loved her very much. Baah. This is nice. Who shot mummy? Teddy had a gun and it’s broken. The black mummy is my bad mummy. I liked the black mummy” (p. 118, original italics). At this point, Winnicott puts an end to the session. In the following days, her parents telephoned the analyst and told him that there had been a great improvement in Gabrielle’s mood; she was more vital and loving with her mother, and spontaneously declared, “I put out my bad worries on to Dr. Winnicott and took in good ones” (p. 119). Something obviously significant had happened during the session. According to Winnicott, “anxiety had been overcome in some way during the hour—a new stage in the achieving of ambivalence” (p. 118). Gabrielle was clearly working on a reconciliation with her mother, on discovering that the bad mother was also the loved one. But there is still a major subject that both have been playing with, without actually calling it by its proper name (although the girl had): that of Death. Who is dead here? Is it Gabrielle or the black mother? Is Winnicott dead or dying, in an identification with the black mother who has been shot, as

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suggested by his drowsiness? And what is his personal contribution to this enactment? We shall presently know more about this in the following sessions. Gabrielle’s improvement lasted three weeks, during which she asked when was Winnicott’s birthday, since she wanted to take him a present. Then she started to worry about the black mummy again, and once told her mother, “You become a black mummy when you are cross” (p. 119). On the day of her mother’s birthday she told her to write to Winnicott and ask him to see her; she seemed upset that the birthday was not hers. When he finally manages to receive her, in her tenth session on March 23, 1965, she starts talking of the long distance of the train trip to London, which he interprets as a reference to the long time that has passed between the last visit and this one, and adds, “Gabrielle is taking a long time to find out if I am alive” (p. 124). Apparently, this acts as a cue for her to plunge into the underlying subject, and she immediately asks him when will his birthday be, because she wants to give him some presents. His reply is, “What about my death day?” This play upon words is obviously an attempt to introduce the theme of the relation between birth and death, since death had already appeared during the previous session. Then comes the following dialogue: Gabrielle: We will see what we can get for you. Mummy wrote a letter to France; it takes three hours, quite a day to get there. [DW]: If I were dead it would take longer still. Gabrielle: You would not open it because you would be dead. It’s terrible. (p. 124)

From this moment on, the patient starts to talk about various dangerous situations, such as facing serpents. The rest of the session focuses on analysing her feelings of guilt, on account of her destructive impulses aimed at the good object. In this vignette, we see Winnicott interpreting the theme of illness and death, which did not only affect Gabrielle, but also himself. Let us consider that he was sixty-nine at the time, had already undergone two coronary episodes, and had been dealing for fifteen years with a cardiac insufficiency, compounded by his heavy smoking habit. He

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was obviously trying to prepare the child for dealing with his eventual death. One gets the impression that the girl intuited this fragility in Winnicott, hence her preoccupation about his birthday. But the question became even more evident when, after the eleventh session, which took place in mid-June, the girl urgently demanded to see him, with expressions of intense anxiety. Winnicott wrote in mid-July, apologising for not being able to see her until September. About this, he tells us that “The summer of 1965 was an exceptionally demanding time and included a period of illness” (p. 145, n. 3). Gabrielle’s response was to dictate to her mother a letter for Winnicott, saying: “Dear Mr. Winnicott, Dear Mr. Winnicott, Dear Mr. Winnicott, I hope you are keeping well (I can’t write)” (p. 146). Obviously, his disease was a severe one, since, when he finally was able to see her, in the twelfth session, in early October, Winnicott sat for the first time on a chair, instead of doing it on the floor. Neither he nor the child mentions this, but she plays for a moment with a female figure, which she makes lie down, and says, “This lady is always lying down. She lies down again and again and again” (p. 152). Winnicott only asks her whether it is mummy, and she assents, but then returns to the subject of blackness, saying, “Black is nothing. What is it?” This is noticed by the analyst, and the following dialogue ensues: [DW]: Is black what you don’t see? Gabrielle: I can’t see you because you are black. [DW]: Do you mean that when I am away then I am black and you can’t see me? And when you ask to come and see me and you have a good look at me and I am light or something else that isn’t black? Gabrielle: When I go away and look at you you go all black don’t you Dr. Winnicott? [DW]: So after a time you have to see me so as to bring me white again. (pp. 152–153)

Gabrielle seems to have incorporated this idea, and she goes on to try to get a little figure to stand on a truck, which proves to be an impossible task, but, while doing it, she manages to bump her head against his knee. Winnicott feels rather confused.

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Here we see how difficult it is for them to open the subject of death, the analyst’s death, now that it is really roving about, so they rather stick to analysing the theme of absence. But one month afterwards, in the thirteenth session, they take up again the pending subject, allegorically, with a reference to the famous nursery rhyme: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, / Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. / All the king’s horses and all the king’s men / Couldn’t put Humpty together again”. Humpty Dumpty was a large egg that fell down and broke in pieces, and no one could repair him, as it was going to happen to Winnicott himself, a bit more than five years later. So they managed to talk, by means of a pregnant metaphor, about a grave problem that affected and preoccupied them both, as well as all of us (p. 171).

Conclusions What we can see in these examples of Winnicott’s clinic is how he strained the use of language to its very limits, much as in poetical language (Hernández Hernández & Tubert-Oklander, 1994; TubertOklander, 1993, 1999b), in order to respond simultaneously with his interpretations to the various parts of the patient, at one and the same time. He thus strictly followed his own principle of giving back to the patient what the patient had brought to the session, but this meant for him giving back everything she had brought, and not only a part of it (Winnicott, 1962b, 1968). As these various parts are usually contradictory, the result was a paradoxical interpretation, which nonetheless found an analogical mean. We also see him interpreting emotional and vital situations, which are not a part of the traditional psychoanalytical perspective, such as birth, life, creation, time and distance, presence and absence, old age, disease, and death—precisely those issues that have been highlighted by existential analysts, and which have also been a significant part of the British Independent tradition (Lomas, 1966; Rycroft, 1979). The result is that these interpretations are, in the end, as valid for the analyst as they are for the patient, since they illuminate, through the analysis of an individual case and a particular relationship (the analytic relation), some universal aspect of the human condition. All this determines an interpretative style that differs from the usual psychoanalytic interpretation, as it is based on the shared living

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experience of the analytic encounter, on dialogue and subtlety, by both patient and analyst. And here we bid farewell, for the time being, to this contemporary Hermes, who had his last bow on the stage, paradoxical as ever, with the phrase he intended to use as an epigraph for the autobiography he was writing when he died, on Monday 25, January 1971: “Oh God! May I be alive when I die!” (Kahr, 1996, p. 125).

Postscript: was Winnicott a relational analyst?2 The title of this section poses a very important question: can we consider Donald Winnicott a precursor of relational psychoanalysis or should we think of him only as a member of that liberal wing of the Freudian tradition that we know as Object Relations Theory? This is a question that can be extended to the whole group of the British Independents. The overtly ambiguous answer is “yes and no”. What does this mean and how are we to understand it? It is true that most relational analysts have been influenced by and are sympathetic to this particular brand of object relations theory—and not so much with the Kleinian or Ego-Psychological versions of it—but some have stressed the fact that, although these analysts have taken into account the impact of the “real external object”—both the mother and the analyst—and paid attention to the importance of the cultural context, as we have seen in Chapter Two, the subjective processes of the mother, the other family members, the analyst, and the community are usually not taken into account. This is particularly so in the case of Winnicott, who emphasises the impact of the mother and the analyst as functional entities—that is, care-givers—but not as human beings with their own history, beliefs, expectations, conflicts, and defences. Hence, in his descriptions, a mother may fail her baby because she is “not good-enough” in providing adequate and timely care, or even outright “bad”, if she is too sick and disorganised, but not as a result of her projecting her wishes, expectations, and fears onto her child. (One major exception is, perhaps, the above-mentioned case of the man whose mother saw him as a girl, during his infancy.) Even in the case of The Piggle, in which he interviewed and corresponded with the parents, they are both seen as responsible adults, who offer information about the girl and take care of her in actual life,

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but no effort is made to explore and understand their own dynamics. In this, Winnicott remains always a Freudian, who focuses on the intrapsychic, understood as intrapersonal. I would like to quote here two different evaluations of the relational import of his work, written by two leaders in the relational psychoanalytic group, both of whom share a great admiration for Winnicott: Stephen Mitchell and Lewis Aron. Aron (1996) emphasises Winnicott’s introduction of mutuality in the analytic relationship, a theme that had been originally posed by Ferenczi (1985) in his Clinical Diary of 1932 (Tubert-Oklander, 2004d,e, see Chapter Six current volume), but which takes a new form in Winnicott’s conception of child development, clinical work, and social life. The analytic interchange is compared with his famous squiggle game, in which at first the analyst draws a line and the child is invited to turn it into something else; then the child draws the line and the analyst turns it into a drawing (Winnicott, 1971c). But the drawings that emerge do not belong to either of them, but are rather a joint creation, à deux, which springs from their interaction. The same is true in the case of the analytic dialogue of adults: Whose squiggle is it? Is it the child’s or Winnicott’s? Like the transitional object, it does not belong inside or outside, to Winnicott or to the patient. Like an interpretation, in Winnicott’s view, it does not come from the analyst or from the patient; rather, it emerges from the transitional space between them. . . . Similarly, by the end of his life, Winnicott advocated that the analytic process be thought of as an expression of play between analyst and patient. (Aron, 1996, pp. 101–102)

From this point of view, Winnicott was, like Ferenczi, a relational psychoanalyst avant la lettre, who indeed shifted the focus from the intrapersonal to the bipersonal mental processes, at least in his clinic and his reflections on it, if not in his theoretical perspective, which remained faithful to the Freudian viewpoint: Winnicott fundamentally altered our understanding of the meaning and function of interpretation. As one component of the analytic setting, interpretation represents for Winnicott a form of provision analogous to maternal care. . . . Winnicott shifted our view of the analyst as active and in control (as the interpreter) to one in which the patient actively takes in from the analyst what is most useful and

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reshapes it to meet his or her own needs. . . . Winnicott’s conceptualization of transitional phenomena destroys the sharp distinction between interpretation and free association that is central to classical technique. In this respect Winnicott not only makes clear the importance of mutuality of regulation and mutuality of recognition between patient and analyst, but also, in his clinical approach, he advocates the mutual generation of psychoanalytic data. (p. 102)

The concept of a “mutual generation of psychoanalytic data” implies that the minimal field of observation in the psychoanalytic situation is made up of two people, not one—that is, that the analyst’s subjective experiences, emotions, assumptions, values, and actions are also a part of the material to be interpreted. And it is here, precisely, where Winnicott is weary of going all the way in his clinical revolution. Even though it is clear that he acknowledges the existence and importance of a tacit form of communication between analyst and patient, he is unwilling to explore it, when it comes to interpreting the analyst’s personal contribution to the analytic interaction. And this leaves him at just one step from becoming a fully fledged relational psychoanalyst. Stephen A. Mitchell (1993) has pointed out that Winnicott’s (1955, 1956) approach of fostering a regression to dependence, in order to open the possibility of the analyst purveying the sort of maternal care that was lacking in the patient’s childhood—a theory similar to that introduced by Ferenczi (1929)—worked well in the treatment of Margaret Little (1985, 1990), who shared the conviction that that was precisely what she needed. Since this underlying agreement and its possible consequences were not analytically explored, neither of them considered the possibility that the fit between her experience in analysis and his theories about it might “possibly [contain] a dimension involving a re-enactment of Little’s lifelong pattern of bending herself into a shape corresponding to the expectations of others” (Mitchell, 1993, p. 69). On the other hand, in his analysis of the unnamed patient of his posthumous book Holding and Interpretation, Winnicott (1986) met a man who seemed to have a quite different idea of what he needed from him and the analysis, and who repeatedly hinted that his analyst was too absorbed with his own theories to be able to listen to him. Mitchell (1993) suggests that this is a consequence of the fact that his analytic approach

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. . . derives from what remains of the one-person (rather than dyadic or two-person) features of his model of the analytic situation. In his frame of reference, to address the interaction between patient and analyst would be to water down the analytic process, to focus on the shallow, interpersonal dimension rather than on the depths of the patient’s regression to points of developmental fixation. (p. 72)

This happens because Winnicott is totally convinced of the universal validity and scientific truth of his developmental theories and their consequences for the analytic process and the conduction of the treatment. Hence, he does not consider that his own theories and convictions, and their effect on the patient, might be part of the field that is to be examined and questioned: The patient seems to suggest that he labours to produce material that corresponds to Winnicott’s ideas about what is important. Rather than exploring the patient’s need to please, his ideas about what Winnicott thinks is important, and his ideas about Winnicott’s investment in his own theories, Winnicott responds by recounting his own ideas of the developmental function he is providing. (p. 70)

If Mitchell is right about this (and I believe he is), one could surmise that what prevented Winnicott from taking that further step to become a relational analyst was the fact that exploring the way in which the patient interpreted his analyst’s relationship with his own theories, would have unleashed a crisis in Winnicott’s clinical and theoretical thought, as well as in his transference with Freud (see Chapter Four). It seems to me that Winnicott also had to deal with the materialistic and positivistic assumptions of his medical studies, which obliged him to inevitably associate “mind” with “brain”, and hence could not conceive the existence of transpersonal mental processes, such as the social unconscious, which are much more acceptable to those analysts coming from the social sciences (Hopper, 2003a,b; Hopper & Weinberg, 2011b). I personally feel that Winnicott would have benefitted and found the elements he needed in order to complete his clinical and conceptual revolution, if he had had the opportunity to be part of a group-analytic experience and share Foulkes’s (1967a) firm conviction that “communication, verbal or otherwise, can take place, from one mind to the other with complete disregard of whether the brain substance is located in one or other skull of the participants” (p. 18).

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Nevertheless, and in spite of Mitchell’s (1993) sensible suggestion that Margaret Little’s agreement with her analyst could have implied a re-enactment of her pattern of submission to her mother and her former training analyst (Ella Freeman Sharpe), there are reasons to believe that this did not prevent her from benefitting from her treatment with Winnicott (unlike the case of the other nameless patient). First, there is the well-documented fact that she did not merely repeat her analyst’s theses but rather built on them and took them much further on the path of incorporating and exploring the participation of the analyst’s subjectivity in the analytic process (Little, 1981). But then, there is an episode from that analysis that shows how Winnicott helped her transcend this submissive trait (Little, 1985, 1990). Little was a physician and a psychiatrist, and a very good clinician. During her analysis with Mrs Sharpe, she clearly noticed that her analyst had a chronic heart disease and she duly mentioned it in her associations, but never received any response from her analyst—the subject was clearly off limits: Always on the couch reality had to be set aside, including observations of her age and her health, and specifically of her heart condition. It was not only my “prerogative” to say whatever came, I was bound by the “analytic rule”, so I spoke of what I could not have failed to recognize as signs of longstanding heart disease, cyanosis and clubbing of her fingers. She made no reply, so I knew this must be secret and forbidden, and in making a “personal remark” I was automatically being “rude”. I, much younger and in good health, was not allowed to help but had to stand by useless, while she, who was in danger of heart failure, dragged a heavy couch from one end to the other of a long room, at every session. (My mother used to say I was “spineless, always taking the line of least resistance”. “What use would you be on an Arctic expedition?” and quoted Milton “On his Blindness”.)3 (Little, 1985, pp. 16–17)

So, a vast area of the transference (not to mention the countertransference) remained unanalysed. But how different was Winnicott’s reaction in a similar situation! Let us listen to his patient’s words, One day his secretary told me that he was not well and would be a little late for my session. He came, looking grey and very ill, saying he had

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laryngitis. I said, “You haven’t got laryngitis, you’ve got a coronary. Go home.” He insisted that it was laryngitis, but he couldn’t carry on; he rang me that evening and said, “You were right, it is a coronary.” This meant quite a long break which was very painful, but at last I was allowed to know the truth: I could be right, and I could trust my own perceptions. It was a landmark, and he knew it. (Little, 1985, p. 24)

Hence, with him she found out that her own perceptions (and not just ordinary perceptions, but a professional diagnosis) were validated by her analyst, that she was allowed to help him, and that the value of her help was being acknowledged, quite unlike what had happened with her mother and her previous analyst. This was a first class corrective emotional experience. But was the whole episode analysed, that is, explicitly discussed? Little does not tell us, but I am quite sure that Winnicott must have referred to what it meant to her finding in him a mother that valued and respected her, and accepted her help. This is transference analysis, and he was a master at doing precisely that. But I cannot imagine him inquiring about what she thought of the fact that, at the beginning, he was actively denying the severity of his illness, and hence was not able to take care of himself and needed her to do that for him. That would have been relational analysis. Therefore, perhaps we should say that Winnicott acted as a relational therapist, inasmuch as he recognised, allowed, and made use of the therapeutic power of the analytic relationship, but, although he was most certainly a psychoanalyst, he failed to become a relational analyst. This is, of course, quite understandable, considering his origins and education, as well as the period in which he developed and worked, and the tradition he belonged to, and in no way tarnishes his momentous contribution to the way we conceive and do analysis today.

Notes 1.

Heinrich Racker (1960) always emphasised that an interpretation should include both sides of the patient’s conflict. For instance, if the analyst’s interprets a patient’s latent hostile transference, she or he should also include in the interpretation the fact that repressing this hostility is an expression of a positive transference—that is, the wish to protect the analyst from the patient’s aggression. Not doing this, and interpreting only the repressed instinctual wish, whether sexual or aggressive, would

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be tantamount to saying to the patient “You are bad”, thus fostering a persecutory relation with the analyst as a harsh super-ego. This same caring attitude towards the patient can be found in Winnicott’s interpreting not only the patient’s compulsive altruism as a defensive manoeuvre, but also his actual capacity for love, as expressed through giving. This final section was not a part of the original text, but I decided to add it for this chapter, in order to connect it with other subjects that are dealt in the book. In this poem, a blind man asks, “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”, and the answer is, “God doth not need either man’s work or his own gifts”.

CHAPTER SIX

The clinical diary of 1932 and the new psychoanalytic clinic

Introduction to Chapter Six his chapter was originally written as a presentation for the International Congress “Clinical Sándor Ferenczi”, held in Turin in July 2002, under the chairmanship of Franco Borgogno. It was originally written in English and then translated into Italian, the language in which I read it, although I was only able to discuss it in English (being a polyglot is hard work indeed). In this text, I develop the argument that Sándor Ferenczi initiated a new way of recording and sharing our clinical experiences in psychoanalysis, one that strikingly differs from the style that emerged from Freud’s case histories. This new genre was characterised by its emphasis on the analytic relationship and the inclusion of the analyst’s subjective experiences. Such style has flourished, during the past few decades, in the clinical writings of psychoanalysts of a relational bent. This is in line with the idea that Ferenczi has been the pioneer of the relational turn in psychoanalysis, a proposition I expounded and developed in a previous paper (Tubert-Oklander, 1999a). I then present three clinical narratives of episodes from different psychoanalytical treatments, and use them as examples for the discussion of some of the issues generated by the contrast between traditional analysis and relational analysis, particularly the polemical subject of countertransference disclosure. Two previous versions of this article have been published in French (Tubert-Oklander, 2004d), in Le Coq-Heron, and in Italian (2004e), in the

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book Ferenczi oggi (Ferenczi today), edited by Franco Borgogno, the latter having been somewhat reduced, in order to comply with space limitations. The present version not only restores the original whole text, but has also been revised, updated, and enlarged, for the purposes of this book.

Two kinds of clinic This paper is about the clinical aspects of psychoanalysis. I shall use the word “clinic” with the full extension of the French term “clinique”, which implies the treatment of patients, its use for the instruction of medical students, the writing of such experiences, and the knowledge that is thus imparted. Therefore, what I call the psychoanalytic clinic is the whole set of the operations of the analyst’s understanding, when perceiving, identifying, thinking, interpreting, recording, communicating, and teaching the experiences shared with his patients during the analytic sessions—what we might call the “couch-side experiences” (Tubert-Oklander, 2000b). As we have seen in Chapter One, Freud (1923a) defined psychoanalysis as a threefold entity that comprises: 1) a method for the investigation of unconscious mental processes, 2) a therapeutic procedure for the treatment of neurotic disorders, based on this method, and 3) the building of a new scientific theory, on the basis of the collection of knowledge that is thus acquired. He therefore always used his clinical practice as a means for enquiring the unconscious. His clinical descriptions, however, were focused, with very few exceptions, on the patient’s behaviour and utterances, and on his inner unconscious mental processes that could be inferred from his visible and audible manifestations. There seldom were any references to the analyst’s internal experiences, his behaviour and physical appearance, or the physical, geographical, and social environment in which the sessions took place. His momentous influence has set an imprint on the development of psychoanalytic clinical descriptions. Most of our clinical literature follows the model of Freud’s case histories. Sándor Ferenczi, on the contrary, took a very different approach. For him, the only sound basis for conviction about the discoveries of an analysis, for both patient and analyst, was to be found in what he called the “psychoanalytic experience”. This was first and foremost a

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shared emotional experience, which only afterwards was to be subject to painstaking analysis, in order to give it a meaning. His chosen field of observation therefore covered both parties of the analytic situation, as well as the whole of the patient’s environment. This he explains, in his book on The Development of Psycho-Analysis, written with Otto Rank (Ferenczi & Rank, 1924), in the following terms: A correctly executed psycho-analysis is from this point of view a social process, a “mass structure of two”, according to an utterance of Freud, in which the analyst must take the place of the whole heterogeneous environment, particularly of the most important persons in the surroundings of the patient. (p. 27)1

This emphasis on emotional experience as the living core of the psychoanalytic experience, and on the complex unconscious interaction between analyst and patient, led him to a very special interest in the countertransference and in the effect of the analyst’s personality, behaviour, and mental processes, as a stimulus for the development of the patient’s transference. The clinical study of these interactions required that the analyst’s mental processes be recorded and interpreted with the same detail as the patient’s. One technical answer to this problem was to be found in his experiments of mutual analysis, in which both he and his patients associated and analysed each other’s unconscious fantasies. He then set out to record these experiences in writing, and this was the essence of his Clinical Diary of 1932, which would only be published more than fifty years after being written (Ferenczi, 1985). This was a completely new sort of psychoanalytic clinical writing; in it the analyst’s mental processes intermingle with those of the patient, and their simultaneous unravelling enriches and deepens both parties’ understanding. This is described by Ferenczi as follows: It is as though two halves had combined to form a whole soul. The emotions of the analyst combine with the ideas of the analysand, and the ideas of the analyst (representational images), with the emotions of the analysand; in this way the otherwise lifeless images become events, and the empty emotional tumult acquires an intellectual content. (p. 14)

In this same entry of January 19, 1932, corresponding to R.N.’s (Elizabeth Severn’s) analysis, Ferenczi analysed with his patient one

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of his own traumatic childhood memories that was in resonance with the patient’s dream. The result was that, in his own words, The analyst is able, for the first time, to link emotions with the above primal event and thus endow that event with the feeling of a real experience. Simultaneously the patient succeeds in gaining insight, far more penetrating than before, into the reality of these events that have been repeated on an intellectual level. (pp. 13–14)

After Ferenczi’s fall from Freud’s grace and his untimely death, the psychoanalytic community suppressed any reference to his main interests, including the traumatic genesis of neurosis, the countertransference, and the analysis of psychotic patients (Balint, 1968). When, more than fifteen years later, several analysts, such as Winnicott (1949, 1960c), Heimann (1950), Little (1951, 1957, 1981), and Racker (1953, 1957, 1960) reintroduced the analysis of the countertransference, none of them mentioned Ferenczi as a precedent.2 Besides, their valuable advances were much more cautious and more limited in their scope, although they deepened our understanding of some aspects of the countertransference, particularly its use as a tool for generating knowledge about the patient. For many years, very few analysts dared to suggest that psychoanalysis is really the interpretative study of a two-person relationship. Perhaps Michael Balint (1968), a former analysand of Ferenczi, was the main exception. In 1969, Willy and Madeleine Baranger published a collection of their papers, written between 1956 and 1968, called Problems of the Psychoanalytic Field (Baranger, W. & Baranger, M. 1969), in which they used the concept of “field”—derived from Gestalt psychology and the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty—to emphasise the complexity of our subject matter. What is being analysed, according to them, is really a field that comprises both parties, with all their mental processes, their mutual relationship, and the context in which all this takes place.3 The clinical literature on countertransference increased during the 1950s and 1960s. Harold Searles’s contribution (1965a, 1979, 1986), in particular, stood out from the rest, on account of the candidness of his disclosure of intense countertransference reactions and the way in which he used them for advancing the psychoanalytic treatment of psychotic patients.

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It was only during the past two decades that several writers, such as Theodore Jacobs (1993a,b), Thomas Ogden (1991, 1994a), Maria Ponsi (1997), Owen Renik (1998, 1999), and Evelyn Albrecht Schwaber (1998), among others, have begun to publish clinical papers in which they painstakingly register their own mental processes and emotional experiences during a session, and show how they intertwine with the patient’s and help in the interpretation of what is actually happening. But they do not refer to Ferenczi’s pioneering studies in this endeavour. Many other such articles have been published in Psychoanalytic Dialogues: The International Journal of Relational Perspectives, since its inception in 1991, and here the name of Ferenczi has appeared over and over again. Quite a few colleagues have taken exception at this new psychoanalytic clinic. André Green (1993), for example, has framed a very severe criticism of Jacobs’ (1993a) interactional description of a session. On the other hand, Leonardo Wender’s (1993) comment on the same paper was sympathetic and understanding. The issue is still open, and it seems to be based on contrasting epistemologies and worldviews (Hernández de Tubert, 2000, 2004, 2009; Tubert-Oklander, 1999a,b, 2000b). Even if no one seriously advocates the practice of mutual analysis, as originally suggested by Ferenczi, many present-day analysts believe that at least some of the analyst’s associations and inner experiences may, and perhaps should, be disclosed to the patient, in order to achieve a better understanding of the unconscious meaning of the development of the session (Ragen & Aron, 1993).

Clinical examples I shall now present some clinical vignettes from three analytic treatments that show the intertwining of the patient’s and the analyst’s mental processes.

The patient’s influence on the analyst’s mental processes Hermann, a thirty-two-year-old drug addict, had been living for two years in a psychiatric hospital.4 Most of the time, he was a mild, adolescent-looking, and easy-going man, who apparently complied

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with the formalities of the psychoanalytic setting. However, as soon as he managed to escape surveillance, he found a way to obtain and use drugs, thus generating in himself severe psychotic states, which outlasted the pharmacological effect of the substance. In the initial stage of such states, he turned intensely aggressive, making me the target of envious and disdainful attacks, attempting to injure every possible aspect of my self-esteem. He then entered a period of delusions and hallucinations, facing all kinds of threats and dangers, which reached near-cosmic dimensions. Finally, a new calm ensued, but it was an autistic stillness, in which he underwent a confusional state with a severe thought disorder, while keeping prolonged silences. Hermann had a dismal view of the world, one that highlighted violence, horror, authoritarianism, manipulation, and corruption. This was certainly a projection of the realities of his family life, in which he had sacrificed his freedom, his integrity, and his whole existence in order to wait for a large inheritance that never came about.5 Hermann’s object relations were essentially dyadic. He did not seem to recognise the existence of various others around him, but only one gigantic and all-powerful Other. Everyone who had some significance in his life was subsumed under an undefined “You”. This symbiotic object, magical and omnipotent, included his mother and siblings, myself, and other therapists involved in his treatment, and he demanded that it should immediately satisfy all his wishes and needs. Every time that “we” failed to fulfil his never-ending demands, we became a monstrous, mendacious, and dishonest persecutor, who was bound to harass and torture him, steal all his values, drive him crazy, and destroy him. In our actual relationship, however, it was he who attacked me in every possible way, insulting, belittling, humiliating me, and striving to drive me crazy (Searles, 1959). He especially sought to break into any available fissure in my self-esteem. I was a poor devil, a nonentity, a mediocre starving physician who barely managed to survive. My office would certainly seem nice to a pauper like me, but it was a true rathole for anybody of his social class and race; if I were a true doctor, I would have a luxurious office, full of modern gadgets and computers, and a beautiful blonde secretary to treat him to whisky and champagne. Who on earth had ever heard my name? How many books had I written? How many millions of dollars did I earn each

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month? How many Nobel prizes had I received? I was a fat, bald, and old wreck, something the cat brought in, and I envied his youth, his beauty, and his money. I was an impotent dastard, who was surely afraid of sexuality and was resigned to suffer a fat and ugly wife, because I was incapable of getting the harem that I really desired, as everybody else did, and so on . . . Needless to say that such a patient induced in me the most intense countertransference feelings of hate, and that I frequently had fantasies of throwing him out. But I did not do it. One day, he made one of his worst attacks on my self-esteem and my human dignity. When he left, I was utterly stunned and feeling a wreck. I asked myself why did I tolerate such abuse. The next morning I had an anxiety dream. It was as follows: I was climbing a steep hill, covered with precarious shacks. There was a huge dog by my side. It looked like a German shepherd, but it was much larger. The dog was sick, and started to vomit copiously. I tried to help it, by holding its head, but its response was to bite my hand. However, it did not pierce my flesh deeply with its teeth, but rather scratched my skin, leaving painful furrows behind. I clearly felt the pain. Then, I caught the dog with both hands and held it high, with a superhuman strength, and threw it into the void that lay behind the hill.

At that very moment, the telephone woke me up. Still half asleep, I clumsily took the call. While I was mechanically talking, I kept feeling the pain of the grooves in my hands. After I finished my conversation, I took that morning’s newspaper and gave it a perfunctory glance. All the news was horrid and disheartening. The world was a corrupt and odious expanse, with no place for hope. Suddenly, I had an astonished thought: “This is how Hermann sees the world!” That very day, when my patient came, I calmly informed him that his behaviour was absolutely unbearable for me, that it induced in me an intense hatred towards him, and that I had been seriously considering putting an end to this treatment. I also told him that I had asked myself what reasons could I have for enduring this kind of abuse; certainly, it was not on account of the money his family paid me, since there were easier and more pleasant ways of earning a living. The only valid motive I found for continuing his treatment was that I had sometimes had a fleeting image of him as a desperate and sick child,

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starving for love and care, and this was an image with which I could sympathise and identify. Hermann kept a reflective silence for a while and then apologised for his previous behaviour. He told me that he was truly desperate and did not know what to do to make us understand this. I answered that I knew that the abuse he actively imposed on me was akin to some experiences he had passively suffered during his childhood, and was surely still experiencing in his relation with himself. However, if this treatment was to be of any use, he should have to find a way to speak to me about such experiences, instead of expelling them and making me feel them.6 From that moment, things began to improve, but not without ups and downs. Our relationship became more cordial, and for the first time it was possible for us to have some brief moments of a more traditional analytic work.

Comment The self-analysis of my dream helped me to further disentangle the transference–countertransference situation. The dog was clearly Hermann, and it represented the expression “biting the hand that feeds you”, which corresponds to the Kleinian concept of “envy” (Klein, 1957). But my associations suggested that it could be a more complex condensed image. The vomit referred to a person with whom I then had a conflict that brought me much suffering. The hill covered with shacks was similar to some hills I had seen near Acapulco, which were associated with the same person. But it also had other connotations. In those days, the media had reported a public figure’s tragic death, by falling in a car from a hill that resembled the one in my dream. This person’s physical appearance was associated with one of my childhood’s love objects, at a time when I had had to relinquish all contact with this person I loved, on account of a tragic disease. Things became clearer now. My patient’s sickness—in its triple meaning of “disease”, “nausea”, and “disgust”—was making me suffer, and I wished to get rid of him, just as I had done in the past and was considering doing now with another relation. I therefore disposed of the three of them in one single blow. But such a feat could not be done without misgivings and guilt, and this had been the subject of my cogitation on the previous day. Therefore, I decided to

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share with my patient my mixed feelings about him. In taking this unorthodox decision, I was following Winnicott’s (1949) suggestion that the analyst’s feelings of hate towards a psychotic patient should, at some time, be “interpreted”—that is, disclosed—to the patient, as a necessary part of the cure: If all this [his concept of an “objective hate” in the countertransference7] is accepted there remains for discussion the question of the interpretation of the analyst’s hate to the patient. This is obviously a matter fraught with danger, and it needs the most careful timing. But I believe an analysis is incomplete if even towards the end it has not been possible for the analyst to tell the patient what he, the analyst, did unbeknown for the patient whilst he was ill, in the early stages [tolerate and hold his or her hatefulness]. Until the interpretation is made the patient is kept to some extent in the position of infant, one who cannot understand what he owes to his mother. (p. 74)

It took us some time to discover that Hermann was also in a conflict about getting rid of some of his love objects, both past and present, which held him in submission and under their absolute control. This was what he was trying to make me feel and what I represented iconically, in a confluence with my own conflicts.

The interweaving of the analyst’s and the patient’s mental processes In this clinical example, I shall show how these phenomena can be revealed in a much calmer and less dramatic setting, one in which all the rules of analysis would seem to be preserved. The material consists in the report of two sessions of the analysis of Bernarda, a middle-aged psychiatrist, who works in a hospital and has had a distinguished career. This is her fourth analysis, and we had started it only a couple of months before.

First session When my patient comes and lies down on the couch, I take my notepad and pen, and wait. I frequently draw during the sessions and, every now and then, I take some notes. Perhaps I am also influenced by my wish to find a suitable material for a clinical presentation. I soon find, however, that I am not taking any notes, even though I make a few drawings.

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After an initial silence, Bernarda starts by saying that somehow she cannot connect with the session, or perhaps she cannot disconnect from other things. I see that her hands are clutched, as if she were praying. She then lowers her hands, on both sides of her body, and continues speaking in a monotone, while her whole body is very still. I have become used to this in the short time we have been working together. The content of her discourse is business as usual. Her conflict with her husband is still very much alive. Apparently, there is no way for her to forgive him. Why is she so strict and unbending? Perhaps she should be more reasonable about the whole thing . . . A few days ago, she met her father. She got very angry when he criticised her husband, and found herself defending him. This goes on for a long time. Her voice is lifeless and her detailed utterances are interspersed with extended periods of silence. I intervene with one or two perfunctory questions and she makes a long pause before answering, as if she were reflecting on my question. This is usual with her, but today I find it hard to bear. I cannot get in touch with her. I feel that I should say something, but nothing comes to my mind. Her quiescence has a doll-like quality. I find myself drawing a doll, but it turns out to be something like an Egyptian sarcophagus, one of those that have a life-like painting of the dead person on the cover, or perhaps a matriushka, one of those Russian dolls that have a series of ever-smaller dolls inside. I take a look at a colourful matriushka, placed on a bookshelf, just in front of me, and I notice that both the sarcophagus and the Russian doll have a series of containers, one inside the other, and a smaller, solid, content in its core. Perhaps I am watching only the outer case of Bernarda . . . But why am I thinking of her in terms of dead or inanimate bodies? After a long silence, she says that she feels that I have been silent for too long and that she would expect me to say something now . . . My silence? And what about hers? I feel unfairly accused and experience a transient irritation. Then I try to respond to her demand, which I consciously consider quite valid. I tell her that I have found it difficult to get in touch with her; I feel her aloof, as if she were not here. I have also noticed that, whenever I tell her anything, she makes a long pause before responding. And, when she does, her words seem to come from far away, as if they were an echo . . .

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Bernarda stays silent, while I feel most inadequate. My interpretation was clumsy, and sounded hollow to me. She then says that she recognises this distance in many of her relations, but has not felt that way here. Besides, she is not an insensitive person; quite on the contrary, she is intensely committed to other people’s suffering: that is the reason why she studied and practices medicine. I try to elaborate on my previous interpretation, but I am still not satisfied with what I am saying. I tell her that I think she is interpolating some mental process between listening to my words and responding to them; this lets the mental content get through, but avoids any emotional impact that my speech may have had on her. That is why I had the image of an echo . . . (I fleetingly remember the answer that another patient gave to a similar interpretation: “It is as if I translated your words into English, and then back to Spanish, before even trying to see what they mean.”) I then remember, and tell her, the story of how Perseus killed Medusa: he could not look at the monster directly, lest he be turned into stone, so he used his bronze shield as a mirror, to see a harmless reflection of his enemy, and cut the Gorgon’s head with a swift blow of his sword. Perhaps she is afraid of a direct contact with me . . . (The metaphor of “cutting off the Gorgon’s head” is obviously a reference to feelings of intense hatred in the transference–countertransference, but I did not make this explicit in my interpretation.) There is still a brief silence, and I put an end to the session.

Second session The next day, she starts speaking after a rather short silence. She says that she went away from her last session feeling that I had scolded her. She even thought that I had punished her with my silence, for not being more open. My silence would have been a way of making her understand just how disconnected she was. She does not feel, however, that she is being defensive or not really present in her sessions, although she recognises this attitude in many instances in her everyday life. Perhaps there is a difference in conceptions about psychoanalysis. I ask her what would this difference in our conceptions of analysis be, from her point of view. She says that she understands that the analyst should not be present as a person, but only as a mirror, although he is, of course,

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present in some way. It is just like my metaphor of Perseus and his shield, which acts as a mirror, just like the analyst. Notwithstanding, the analyst is there also . . . She repeats two or three times, in different words, this contradiction between what an analyst should be and what he actually is. I tell her that of course we differ in our understanding of psychoanalysis, and that there is no reason why we should not. We shall have to find a way of understanding each other, in spite of our differences. For some reason she feels more comfortable with a conception of analysis that excludes an actual presence or a real relationship, even though she recognises that this does not fit with what happens in the sessions. Perhaps this is why she had to transform the meaning of my metaphor, which had originally been meant to convey my belief that she was putting a mirror between us, in order to avoid any direct contact with me. She says that she knows there are differences among analysts. She has had three previous analytic experiences. In one of them, the analyst was completely aloof and she felt that there was an impenetrable barrier between them. Another one, who called himself an analyst, was the opposite: he told her of his personal experiences and misfortunes, and set himself as an example of how to solve things. The third one held an intermediate position, and this is where she felt more comfortable. I interpret that she seems to be worried about how things are going to be with me. I also want to inform her that I do believe there is an actual personal relationship going on in every analysis, and that this is what I think we should be trying to understand in the first place. I also tell her that, as far as my conscious intentions go, I do not intend to show her anything by acting in such ways as to make her feel what I want her to notice. Whenever I feel that I have understood something, I shall say it with words. She thanks me for this. I go on saying that, in this case, my conscious intention was to inform her of what I believed to be a defence that she uses, not only with me, but also in her other relations. However, this was only on a conscious level. Perhaps I was also unconsciously scolding her; perhaps I did punish her with my silence and made her feel forsaken. This we should try to find out together . . . Bernarda ponders over this, and then says that she is aware of being afraid of rejection and abandonment. She gives several examples. One

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of her colleagues at the hospital told her, in passing, that they might go together to a congress for a presentation. After some time, she learnt that he would be going with a younger female doctor. She felt terrible, not because she is interested in the man in any way, but because she became painfully aware of her age and thought that of course he would prefer to be with a younger and prettier woman. I interpret that she is feeling unwanted and discardable. Perhaps this is why she has to interpose a mirror, just like Perseus, to avoid a potentially damaging contact. After a longer silence, she says that, in order to clear the books, she should tell me another thing that has been troubling her. In the past couple of months, she has felt that I was more interested in her public activities than in her as a person. It was as if hearing gossip about the hospital and the other institutions in which she participates were more important than she. But she is accustomed to feeling that nobody really cares about her . . . I wonder silently whether she may be right about this. I know I have more actively interpreted her relation with her work and her professional position. This was a conscious decision, since this material seemed to be clearer and more accessible than her entangled personal relations; besides, I was convinced that both subjects were an expression of the same basic conflict, between her desire to be considered significant and her profound conviction that she did not deserve it. I do not have any particular interest in her hospital or her colleagues, but it is true that I have been committed to a general criticism of psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric practice. Perhaps this has influenced my selection of what material to interpret. I then remember what another patient told me about her previous analysis. She was a relative of a well-known colleague, and her psychoanalyst seemed to be especially curious about knowing the details of her relative’s life. This is why she left that analysis . . . I then tell Bernarda that she seems to be afraid that I might exploit her merely as an access to other things that really interest me, instead of looking at her. That would make her feel invisible. But where could this fear come from? She says that it is clear to her that it comes from her relationship with her father. She always felt that he preferred her sister. (This explanation is related to the previous material about rejection, but she has left out the exploitation theme, which is to be analysed only much

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later.) She cannot get over her conflict with Father. Every time she meets him, she is resolved not to fight with him, but ends up by doing precisely what she had meant not to do . . . This is what happened last week. She tried so hard to have an agreeable meeting, but then he criticised her husband, and she had to tell him that it was her husband, whom she loved, and he should respect him as long as she decided to keep the marriage, in spite of their conflicts. I point out to her that this is the first time that she mentions her love for her husband. Since she started her analysis with me, she has been extremely critical of him, just as her father was in this meeting. It is obvious that she has mixed feelings towards her husband, but prefers to take only one side of this conflict and leave the other side to her father. She agrees with this interpretation. I go on saying that her anger towards her husband stems from her feeling used and betrayed by him, just as she fears might happen with me. All this could account for her own aloofness. The time is over, and I end the session.

Comment After writing this material, I found another side to it. Her fear of being used by me was at least partly justified, since the beginning of the first session must have been influenced by my wish to find some clinical material for this presentation. On the other hand, she announced verbally that we would be dealing with her disconnection, and then proceeded to withdraw. Apparently, I felt her silence as a rejection, perhaps even as a betrayal, and this accounted for my momentary irritation at her reproaches, which must have turned my otherwise correct interpretation into a true scolding. The day before that first session, another patient had abruptly left treatment, without any explanation. This made me feel rejected and betrayed. I now think that I came to that session with an inner traumatic disposition to reproduce such feelings. This fused with my patient’s perpetual fear of rejection, abuse, and betrayal, and generated a minor enactment of the unconscious traumatic scene, which then had to be analysed. One other aspect of the situation, which was not analysed at the time, is Bernarda’s narcissistic defences. It is quite clear that she was trying to control me, by ordering me to speak at the moment in which

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she felt ready to listen to me. And my association about Perseus also included an element of negative transference, contained in the image of “cutting the Gorgon’s head”. If Bernarda was Perseus and I the Gorgon, this meant that she was trying to suspend my thinking processes. But I did not interpret it in these sessions, because my main source of information was what Racker (1957, 1960) called a “countertransference occurrence”, and I felt that I needed more clinical evidence before interpreting this as an attack on linking (Bion, 1959). On the other hand, was I perhaps Perseus and she the Gorgon, ready to turn me into stone? If that were the case, we would be talking of negative countertransference, or rather, of a violent and hostile transference-countertransference field. I then wondered whether I should inform Bernarda of my own contribution to this enactment, or not.8 The question was how much information I should give her, in order that the whole situation could be understood. I decided that nothing would be gained from giving her further information, since she had seemed satisfied with my recognition that I had somehow contributed to her feeling. What a patient needs in such instances is not to have a glimpse of the analyst’s personal life and inner conflicts, but only the acknowledgement that he is not the only person who is responsible for everything that happens in the session. There are, of course, other clinical situations in which I would feel that providing such information would be vital for a fuller and deeper understanding of what is going on in the analytic field, as we shall presently see in the following clinical vignette and in Chapter Seven.

The analyst’s influence on the patient’s mental processes9 I shall now present a brief vignette of what we may call the patient’s “countertransference reactions” vis-à-vis the analyst’s state of mind. The example comes from the analysis of Alicia, a young neurotic woman who came to treatment during the mourning period after her father’s death. This episode happened years ago, during her third year of analysis. One morning, I arrived at my office just in time for Alicia’s session. It was a bad day for me, as I was feeling very sad. I decided, however, not to cancel her appointment. My patient came in and lay on the couch, as usual. I was glad that I did not have to face her. Alicia immediately

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started a humorous account of her dealings at work. She was witty and her stories were pleasant to hear. I did not say much, and the session was soon over, or so it seemed. The next day, she was quite distressed. “I must be crazy,” she said. “Yesterday, when I left, I went into my car and, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I clearly saw an old woman’s face.” I asked her what she thought about this experience. She did not know what it meant, but she was frightened. All her hypotheses pointed to a self-destructive melancholic state. I did not know what to do. I was quite certain that this illusion was related to my state of mind during the last session, so I tried to explore whether she had perceived anything unusual the day before, but nothing came out of this. So, I decided to give her some information that might help in understanding her symptom. I told her then that I believed this vision to be related to the fact that yesterday’s session had been different from others. She asked me why. I answered that I had been quite sad at that time. She immediately asked, in a worried tone of voice, “What’s happening to you?” I assured her that nothing serious had happened, that I was only sad. We now had to analyse what this situation meant to her. She said that her fantasy had been that my mother had died. I was surprised at the accuracy of her perception, since, although my mother had died a few years ago, my gloomy mood was related to a belated working-through of the mourning for her death; but I said nothing about this. Alicia then said that, anyway, she knew nothing of this on the previous day. I replied that I thought she had unconsciously perceived my mood at the time. She had given me forty-five minutes of an agreeable conversation. It seemed to me that she had taken on the task of entertaining me and taking care of me, just as she had always done with her father. She suddenly remembered that the day before, when she came in, she had noticed that my eyes were red, as if I had been crying, but she immediately put it out of her mind and forgot all about it, until now. I interpreted that she had somehow absorbed the venom of my sadness, in order to make me wholesome again. But this had poisoned her emotionally; this is why she saw herself as an old woman in the mirror. She also had become my mother in her fantasy, in order to give me back what she believed I had lost. This taking care of me was

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a reproduction of the role she had had in her relation with her father, and she was recovering this relationship, when recreating it with me. The rest of the session was devoted to analysing her relationship with her father, and its new edition in the analytic relation. When she left, at the end of the session, her farewell was: “I wish you get over your sadness soon.”

Comment Alicia’s symptom is clearly an expression of her suppressed perception of the analyst’s mental state. Here it was my whole personality, in its present state, that acted as a stimulus for the patient’s transference reaction, in which she related to my fragility in the same way that she had always done towards her father’s. Standard analytic technique would require that her reaction be analysed without any countertransference disclosure (in Spanish, we usually refer to it as a “countertransference confession”, a term that clearly implies that countertransference is a sin!). But how can you analyse a reaction to a stimulus whose perception has been suppressed by the patient and that is being silenced by the analyst? In such an instance, the disclosure of the analyst’s circumstances that acted as the stimulus becomes mandatory, since any other behaviour would impede the analysis of the transference. Of course, the whole episode may be seen as an enactment of the patient’s attitude towards her father’s and her own fragility, condensed with the corresponding attitudes in her father and her analyst. The truth is that my emotional state during the first of the two sessions had made me lose my analytic stance. I was there physically present and maintaining our usual routines, but I could barely wait for the session to end, and I surely thanked in my heart her taking care of me, instead of analysing her attitude. Alicia’s illusion shocked us both back into analysis; it was a brisk call to attention that made me recoup my analytic function. The patient, who has long since finished her analysis, has read this report, and her comment was as follows: This account is very similar to what I remember, and I like the way you have told it. When reading it, I felt a longing for that time. I was then completely in love with you—not sexually, but romantically—

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and this love helped me through most difficult times. I no longer feel this way about you; this is growing up, but it is also a loss.

I also discussed with her, in this post-analytic meeting, the impact that our concurrent mourning processes had on her analysis. When she came to me for treatment, soon after her father’s death, I was also going through the initial stages of my own mourning for the loss of my mother. This circumstance surely aided my understanding of her plight, but it also set in motion a series of resonances between us, in which our common resistances took the form of bastions to be analysed. In this case, we could retrospectively identify the moment in which she perceived that something was amiss with me. On many other occasions, such perceptions are only inferred from their results. Nonetheless, there are numerous instances of almost instantaneous perceptions, by either analyst or analysand, of the other’s mental, emotional, or physical state, which take place at the very moment in which one opens the door and welcomes the patient. Of course, we know more about our own flashes of insight than about the patients’, since they very frequently repress or silence their intuitions about the analyst. But the fact is that very intense and clear countertransference responses frequently occur on the spur of the moment, sometimes taking no more than a second, and there is no reason to suppose that the same may not be true for patients, especially since we have quite a few evidences that it is so.

Discussion These three clinical examples illustrate the relevance of the analyst’s inner processes for the fuller understanding of the complex transference-countertransference field that is generated whenever two people meet in a closed room, in order to “do psychoanalysis”. The first one comes from the analytic treatment of a psychotic patient, who indulges in extensive acting out during the sessions. This induces an intense countertransference reaction in the analyst, reminiscent of Winnicott’s (1949) “Hate in the countertransference”, Searles’ (1959) “The effort to drive the other person crazy”, and Bion’s (1959) “Attacks on linking”. This is shown to be the result of a complex condensation of the patient’s and the analyst’s past and present conflicts.

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The second example comes from an ordinary analysis. Most published examples of transference–countertransference enactments come from the treatment of severe personality disorders. This is only natural, since these phenomena are more evident in such cases. This illustration seems, however, to support the contention that such regressive phenomena are part and parcel of every analysis (García Badaracco, 1992; Hernández de Tubert, 1995, 1997a, 1999; TubertOklander, 1985, 1991, 1994), and that these levels should be accessed in the psychoanalysis of ordinary neurotic patients, as well as in training analyses, as Ferenczi (1931) originally suggested. The third example shows how the transference develops as a reaction towards very complex stimuli, provided by the whole of the analyst’s personality, and not only by her or his consciously intended professional attitude and manners. The analysis of such situations may require that the patient be provided with relevant information about the stimulus, so that her or his transference reactions may be thoroughly analysed. There are, of course, many issues to be discussed about this material. We could approach it from the psychopathological, technical, or theoretical perspectives, but these shall have to be left for some other occasion. Now, I intend to focus on the structuring of clinical discourse, which is fundamental for both our understanding and our reporting of our analytic experiences. The analytic experience is something radically new in the history of Humankind. It was born when Sigmund Freud invented the psychoanalytic device, defined by the conjunction of two rules, one for the analysand and one for the analyst: free association and evenly suspended attention (Freud, 1912e; Tubert-Oklander, 1999b, 2000b). And this new form of personal experience was as difficult to depict as any other inner experience, as the poets well know. So, it was necessary to create a new literary form, in order to record and communicate such experiences. The problem of recording analytic experiences can be profitably compared with map-making. When one is trying to draw a map of a territory, what is really being recorded is the relation that develops between the cartographer and the territory (Bateson, 1972, 1979). So, her interests, preferences, and cognitive style determine what is going to be included in the map and what is going to be left out. Besides, a map is always meant to be used by someone else, as an instrument to

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help him find an orientation in dealing with the territory, so that the user’s interests and other characteristics should also be taken into account. Map-making is therefore the result of a complex relation between territory, cartographer, and user—all within the context of a common culture that includes semiotic conventions and a cartographical language. The Map is not the Territory (Korzybski, 1933–1948), but only a more or less useful representation of it, a projection of its salient features on some available surface, according to conventional rules. What stands out of a whole, to become a figure, distinct from the ground, depends on the perceiver’s interests and capabilities, as the Gestalt psychologists clearly stated. And the rules, being necessarily conventional, have to be known and understood by the cartographer and the user alike. The situation is quite the same in the case of clinical reports. Freud created a new literary genre for these, when he wrote his case histories. This he conceived according to his conceptions and theoretical interests, and set down the rules for this kind of reporting, rules that were generally respected by the following generations of analysts. These rules can be summarised as follows: a) focus your description on the patient’s history, appearance, attitudes, behaviour, and utterances; b) omit any reference to the analyst’s participation in the analytic situation, with the exception of those verbal communications that are intended as technical interventions; c) keep a record of the analyst’s inferences as to the patient’s unconscious thoughts, feelings, intentions, and operations, as well as the patient’s reactions when the analyst informs her of such inferences. The resulting protocols are the basis for further discussions on theory and technique. Sándor Ferenczi (1985) created another such genre for reporting clinical experiences, which was also based on his own personal interests, values, and conception of the world. It focused on the subtle emotional and symbolic unconscious interchanges that take place between the analyst and the analysand. It therefore required a detailed description of the analyst’s conscious internal experiences, including his emotions, bodily feelings, perceptions, impulses, thoughts, fantasies, memories, and associations, which were to be checked with his observation of the patient’s behaviour and with the latter’s description of her own internal experiences. The result was an interpretative construction of the unconscious aspects of their interaction, which would shed a new light on their whole life perspective.

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I have presented the protocols of fragments of three analyses, conducted and written in the spirit of Ferenczi’s object relations approach to the psychoanalytic clinic, in order to illustrate how this can be applied in the context of modern psychoanalysis. I believe I have shown the deep emotional and symbolic resonance that develops between analyst and patient, how unconscious contents and experiences are transmitted in enigmatic ways, and how all this can be used to further the psychoanalytic endeavour. I have finally given some examples of that particular form of clinical reporting that can be derived from Ferenczi’s (1985) Clinical Diary of 1932. Some readers may be surprised by the personal nature and the intensity of the reported countertransference experiences. However, this is the way things actually happened in the clinical situation. Besides, such experiences are not unusual when the analyst approaches the treatment from a bipersonal perspective based on the emotional experience. But the issue remains open. This was the subject of a controversy between Harold Searles (1965b) and Edith Jacobson (1968). Searles suggested that Jacobson’s approach was influenced by her fear of symbiotic relations, which he considered unavoidable in the analysis of regressive transferences. Jacobson answered that, although primitive identifications, based on the fusion of ego and object images, do occur in the treatment of psychotic patients and foster the analyst’s empathic understanding of them, the latter should not allow these to develop to the point of threatening his own feeling of identity. From her point of view, whenever this occurs, it is due to a previous pathological tendency in the analyst. Obviously, my own perspective on this issue is more akin to Searles’s than to Jacobson’s. However, I have also shown in my examples how the analyst’s dispositions concur with the patient’s projections in the genesis of transference–countertransference enactments. From my point of view, interpretations and insight are never objective, even though some are better than others (Tubert-Oklander, 1994, 1999b, 2009a; Tubert-Oklander & Beuchot Puente, 2008; TubertOklander & Hernández Hernández, 1995). They are a shared construction, by both parties of the analytic relationship, and this construction stems from their whole life experience, previous knowledge, beliefs, and values. The same is true for both transference and countertransference. Transference is not only a repetition of previous relational patterns, but also a reaction to present stimuli, emanating from

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the analyst’s personality, behaviour, and context. And countertransference is neither a mere expression of the analyst’s pathology— as posed by traditional psychoanalysts—nor an allegedly “objective” reflection of the patient’s projections—as some writers like Leon Grinberg (1962, 1976) seem to believe. Both experiences are created in the unconscious encounter between patient and analyst. André Green (1993) pointed out, when discussing Jacobs’ (1993a) paper, that an analyst would not be able to work, if he had to indulge in such soul-searching in every session. Leonardo Wender (1993) suggested that the analyst has no need to do this, during ordinary sessions. It is only when he undergoes a traumatic experience that makes him lose the accustomed analytic attitude, that the need emerges to engage in self-analysis in order to recover the analytic stance. This regularly happens in what Puget and Wender (1982) have called the phenomenon of the overlapping worlds. This is when there is superposition between the analyst’s world and the patient’s. Such overlapping may happen when: a) b) c)

d) e)

the patient gets to know something about the analyst’s personal life; the patient speaks about some other person that the analyst knows; both analyst and patient are exposed to the same traumatic situation, as in the case of earthquakes and other natural disasters (Tubert-Oklander, 1987), wars, revolutions, economic and political crises, or death of public figures (Hernández de Tubert, 2006; Hernández-Tubert, 2011a); when analyst and patient share a common social or institutional space, as it regularly happens in training analyses; and when there is a resonance between the patient’s and the analyst’s personal traumatic experiences (see Chapter Seven for an example of this).

In all these cases, the analyst tends to lose his professional position, and he has to do some amount of self-analysis in order to recover it. These are special—though by no means unusual—situations, but they have the advantage of exposing a series of intrapersonal and interpersonal mental processes that go unnoticed in ordinary circumstances, since they are mainly unconscious. And what we learn from

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the understanding of the analytic interaction that we painfully acquire in overcoming these difficulties is that there is a constant interweaving of both parties’ mental processes, in every analysis and in every analytic session. These interpersonal unconscious processes should be thoroughly analysed, even when they are not spontaneously apparent. So, we have moved from an initial conception of enactments as discrete events in need of explanation, to a new understanding of the analytic situation as a field and process of constant unconscious interaction, mutual influence, and dramatising of unconscious scenes, which is the very stuff of relational psychoanalysis and group analysis (Tubert-Oklander, 2006b,c, 2010a (see Chapter Eight current volume)). Although such phenomena become more apparent with traumatised patients and groups (Hopper, 2003b) and situations as those described by Puget and Wender (1982), in which the analytic pair suffers the traumatic effect of a shared reality, we now know that they may be found, seen, and interpreted in every analytic treatment. An example of this may be found in Chapter Seven, in the case of bipersonal psychoanalysis, and another one, in that of group analysis, in Chapter Eight. Our present-day new psychoanalytic clinic is a development of Ferenczi’s proposal. It keeps its original orientation, while avoiding its more obvious pitfalls, such as the blurring of the psychoanalytic asymmetry in mutual analysis (Ragen & Aron, 1993). This ill-fated experiment was most probably Ferenczi’s attempt to obtain further analysis of his personal pathology, which he could no longer expect from Freud. He therefore turned to some of the people with whom he shared an intimate and intense relation, as well as a common enquiry into the inner workings of the unconscious: his own patients. But he was also trying to untangle the complex unconscious knots of the analytic interaction, and in this I believe he succeeded. There are many reasons to expect that we, contemporary analysts, should be in much better conditions to continue this enquiry without losing our way or forsaking our commitment to help the patient. This is because we should have had better, deeper, and longer analyses, and also have at our disposal all sorts of novel theoretical and technical instruments, many of them derived from Ferenczi’s inheritance. I therefore believe that it is high time for us to lift the heavy veil that fell over his manifold contributions, and that we can only profit from recognising that we are the beneficiaries of his legacy.

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Notes 1.

2.

It is worth mentioning that this concept of the treatment situation as a “mass of two” immediately relates his conception of psychoanalysis with the much later developments of group analysis, object relations theory, and relational analysis (Tubert-Oklander, 1999a, see Chapters One & Two current volume). One may wonder why the psychoanalytic community threw such a veil of silence and invisibility on the work and the memory of one who had been one of its major intellectual leaders and teachers. Such radical excommunication can only be compared to that suffered by Lacan, for perhaps quite different reasons. (The case of Jung is different from both, since he chose to break with Freud, and even stopped using the name “psychoanalysis” altogether for his theory and practice. Yet, there is still the fact that most psychoanalysts have eschewed any contact with analytical psychology, while Jungian analysts regularly consult and quote psychoanalytic literature.) Another case worth mentioning, since it involves both the psychoanalytic and the group-analytic communities is the shroud of oblivion that fell on the figure of Trigant Burrow, who was, as we have seen before, the true pioneer of group analysis (Pertegato, E. G. & Pertegato, G. O., 2013). But this would require a much more extended treatment. Now, coming back to Ferenczi, was he rejected and punished for, a) having countertransference feelings and thoughts, b) communicating them to his patients, or c) writing and publicising them (Hopper, 2013)? This was certainly partly a matter of maintaining a carefully retouched narcissistic image of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts, both for the public and for themselves. Indeed, Freud’s enquiry had begun precisely by exploring the conflict between what a person pretends to be and what he or she actually is. Here we are dealing with similar phenomena in the realm of the social unconscious, and this generates overtly violent responses from the group, whenever one of its members dares to cry out that the Emperor has no clothes. Besides, as we have seen in Chapter Four, groups, institutions, and communities strive to maintain cohesion by means of an identification with the idealised leader. From this point of view, Ferenczi’s differentiation from Freud was experienced as a crime of lèse-majesté and a danger to the cohesion and the very survival of the group. This matter clearly deserves a much more extensive discussion, but for now it is enough to underscore the fact that such events are not a question of academic, scientific, or professional controversies, but an unconscious piece of the sociology of our profession, moved by the structural functional needs of an organisation and by the underlying passions.

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4. 5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

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A selection of papers by the Barangers (Baranger, M. & Baranger, W., 2008, 2009) have been recently translated into English. Antonino Ferro (1991, 1993, 1996) has reviewed and further developed these ideas. This analysis has already been briefly reported in a previous paper (Kolteniuk & Tubert-Oklander, 1986). Although I did not recognise it at the time, I would now say that his delusion was also a reflection of the sombre side of our contemporary society, from which his late father had benefitted, thus amassing a large fortune. In this we can see a triple set of mutual reflections between the patient’s inner life, the dynamics of his family group, and the realities of the social, cultural, and political context (see Chapter Eight.) This is, of course, a clear description of the modern use of the Kleinian concept of “projective identification” (Bion, 1980; Grinberg, 1976). Here “objective” means “generated by the object”—the patient, and not from the analyst’s subjectivity. The idea is that the analyst’s hate towards the patient is an inevitable reaction to the latter’s hateful behaviour, which has to be held and contained by the analyst, until the time comes in which it becomes possible to give back to the patient what really belongs to her. The term “enactment” refers to a staging of an unconscious object relation, which takes the form of a scene. The actors are the patient and the analyst, who play their roles without being aware of the script, or even that they are playing them, until a thorough analysis of the whole episode reveals its unconscious meaning. An enactment always implies action by both parties. Maria Ponsi (1997) emphasises its interactional nature, in the following terms: “Even if we identify an enactment through our countertransference response, in order to understand the overall sequence in which it takes place we must see it as a mutually induced relational episode, demonstrable through joint behaviour by the analytic couple” (p. 247). The whole literature on enactment defines it as a common—perhaps even inevitable—occurrence in every analysis (Filipini & Ponsi, 1993; Jacobs, 1986; Ponsi, 1997; Renik, 1993). So, far from being a mistake or a failure of the analyst, it is part and parcel of the analytic enquiry. The case of Alicia has also been included in Chapter Eight of my book Theory of Psychoanalytical Practice: A Relational Process Approach (TubertOklander, 2013b), as part of a more ample discussion of the relational process.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lazarus’ resurrection: the inclusion of political and religious discussion in the analytic dialogue Introduction to Chapter Seven his text was originally written as a presentation for the Fifth Meeting of the International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, “Close Encounters: Relational Perspectives at the Psychological Edge”, held in Boston, MA in January 2006. It was read in a paper workshop and then extensively discussed by the audience. Some of the ideas that emerged in this discussion have been included as a postscript. The paper presents a clinical vignette of one whole week of a treatment that quite clearly depicts the way I presently conceive my work in bipersonal psychoanalysis, from a relational perspective. The other point that I discuss is clearly posed in the chapter’s subtitle. Psychoanalysts have traditionally avoided any discussion with their patients of political, religious, or ideological issues, in an attempt to preclude using the power of transference for indoctrinating them. In this they followed Freud’s (1919a) injunction to be able “to help people with whom [one has] nothing in common—neither race, education, social position nor outlook upon life in general— without affecting their individuality” (p. 165). Group analysis, on the other hand, could never afford to omit such considerations in its analytical enquiry, since it is based on the axiom of the unavoidable social nature of the human being. Besides, the very nature of the group setting and dialogue fosters the emergence of such issues during the sessions, as a direct consequence of the similarities and differences between the various patients’ (and the analyst’s) outlooks.

T

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More recently, relational psychoanalysis has increasingly included the enquiry of the impact of the social, cultural, ideological, and political contexts in the analytic dialogue. Having accepted the assumption that the minimum unit of observation in clinical psychoanalysis is made up of at least two persons, their mutual relationships, and their context, the similarities and differences between their respective conceptions of the world, values, and perspectives, have become a subject for the analytic enquiry. My own conception of analysis, which corresponds to a confluence of the group-analytic and the relational perspectives, necessarily includes dealing with such issues. The present version of this text has been revised and updated, to include my present views and references.

The story I am going to tell you a tale of two people who use to meet in a closed room, in order to do psychoanalysis. Since I am actually one of them, I might as well begin by telling you about myself. I am a tall man, corpulent—a rather fancy word that thankfully avoids saying “fat”— almost bald, but I compensate it with a flourishing beard, which is very nearly white; I am also blue-eyed and clear-skinned—hardly a standard Mexican. Unsurprisingly, small children tend to think that I am Santa Claus. (When this paper was read at the Boston meeting, I had to add the following clarification: “Now, since you are not only listening to my story, but actually looking at me, I should tell you that I have lost more than twenty pounds since I wrote this text. Such information does not change the story a bit, but it certainly reminds us of the unavoidable gap that lies between language and sensuous experience.”) I live in the south of Mexico City, an area that is associated with culture and intellectuality, since it hosts the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the largest and oldest institution of higher learning and research in the country and in Latin America. This, of course, reflects on the composition of my practice. My borough is called Tlalpan; a long time ago it used to be a small village where the wealthier inhabitants of the city went for their summer vacations, but it has long since been swallowed by the monstrous conglomerate of the megalopolis. It remains, however, very

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provincial and surprisingly human, a friendly haven sequestered from the rush of the city. Most of my life happens here and I seriously try, with varied success, not to go anywhere I cannot reach by walking. My wife and I are both psychoanalysts and group analysts, and we have our offices at home. A few months ago (at the time of this narrative) we moved to a large house with an ample garden.1 My office is independent from the rest of the building, since it is placed underground, with stairs coming down from the garden. Although such disposition may suggest a gloomy catacomb, it is really very luminous during the daytime, cool in summer and warm in winter. This is where we meet. Now, let us proceed with our story. Lazarus is a young writer who has been in treatment with me for some time. He has four sessions a week, but the treatment is carried out on a face-to-face basis. He has frequently expressed that he feels he should lie down on the couch, but is terrified at the idea. I have answered that the couch is here for him to use, if he so wishes, just as the chair and other conveniences, and that it is up to him to decide what to do. In the course of his treatment, we have analysed his shyness, which makes him go unnoticed in many social situations and is occasionally overcompensated by grandiose and arrogant attitudes. Another feature of this analysis is that there has been a steady presence of ideological elements, such as politics and religion. Lazarus has always been a leftist, in sharp contrast with the rest of his family. He has no active political commitments, but keeps himself wellinformed about what is going on and attends popular political meetings when something serious happens in the country. Lazarus knows for sure that I share his political position, since he has had evidence of this, not only because I am willing to discuss some of the current social situations that concern him, but also because he has seen me wear emblems of my own political stance. For instance, during the past year (2005) there has been a period of social turmoil in Mexico, on account of a wholesale campaign by the Federal Government against the Major of Mexico City, a left-wing politician with good chances of becoming the next President in the coming 2006 elections.2 The aim of this operation was to strip him of his constitutional immunity and prosecute him for a concocted felony charge, in order to prevent his participation in the presidential race. The whole affair was so ludicrous that it generated widespread popular

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opposition, one of whose signs was to wear a three-coloured lace, resembling the Mexican flag, as an expression of our repudiation of the impeachment procedure. Now, Lazarus had seen me wear this emblem, and commented on this. I explored with him what were the consequences for him of knowing that I shared his political feelings and opinions. He replied that this made him feel more secure in his relationship with me. On one occasion, in which there was a call for a large political meeting against the impeachment, he came and told me that he would not be attending a session, because “he had a pledge with his country”. I told him that it was just as well, since I would not be working that day, on account of the same obligation, and suggested that we reschedule our appointment, which he readily accepted. Of course, I did not see him there, among the 350,000 people who attended, but we commented on the experience during the following session.3 We have also discussed his religious feelings, which had been quite intense as a child, but had later been replaced by an irreverent, sceptical, and manifestly atheistic attitude. When he discovered that my own stance towards religion was one of respect and esteem, he began to tell me his uncertainties about it and his wish to recover his early religious feelings, although this was not easy for him, since he found it impossible to accept uncritically the dogmas of faith. In the first session after the Holy Week, which takes place on Monday, he recounts what he did during this holiday. I worked until Wednesday, but he decided to skip the first two sessions of the week and go out for a vacation with his wife and children. He would not have done this in the past, as he felt an obligation with me and with his professional activities, but now he deemed that he deserved it. On other occasions in which he had had to go away, I had rescheduled his sessions at his request, but, since this time he did not ask for it, I abstained from volunteering such an offer. I thought it was important for him to feel that he was a grown-up man who assumes his own responsibilities and the consequences of his decisions. In this session, he tells me about the days he spent with his family of origin—parents and siblings—and those he reserved for being exclusively with his present family. Nonetheless, as we have frequently discussed, he is still very much bound to his parents and siblings, and suffers as a result of the many conflicts that underlie the apparently tranquil surface of their relationship.

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The next day, he tells me that he also went to church on Sunday. He liked to do it, but, when the priest talked about the Resurrection of Christ, he felt that he could not believe such thing: how on earth could anybody raise from the dead? I then think that I also went to church that day, although of another confession—he is a Roman Catholic and I am an Anglican—and that the priest had talked about the very same question, though giving it a symbolic interpretation, based on Orthodox theology. I frequently resort in sessions to story-telling, using various tales, narratives, fables, or myths, as a means of conveying complex ideas. I also believe in what Lewis Aron (1996) calls “mutual data generation”, which for me implies engaging in a fluid conversation with the patient, as a first step towards gaining an access to the underlying unconscious meanings (Tubert-Oklander, 2006c,d). This is equivalent to Winnicott’s (1971c) dialogic approach of the squiggle game and the analytic dialogue as play, as well as Foulkes’s (1948) “free-floating discussion” in group analysis (see Chapter Five). Consequently, I decide to tell him what the presbyter had said, although I do not yet know why I am doing it. I then tell him that, according to the Gospel of John (Holy Bible, 1991), Mary Magdalene went to the sepulchre and found it open. She then ran to tell Simon Peter and another disciple, who presently came to the tomb, looked in and saw the linen clothes lying on the floor, but not the body, since it was no longer there. As Mary stood weeping without, Jesus appeared standing by her, but she did not recognise Him and thought that He was the gardener who kept the orchard. It was then that He called her name and she knew Him (John 20). The Anglican priest who was preaching that day asked, how is it possible that she did not initially recognise her Master, with whom she seemed to have been in love? Orthodox theologians say that this is so because it was actually the gardener. The crux of the matter is that the Resurrection is not a mere resuscitation, as in the case of the biblical Lazarus, but a new incarnation, by which the spirit of Christ is displayed on the face of a stranger, and on that of every other human being. This is an utterly new way of living and relating with others, for those who have received Him in their hearts.4 I end my story by telling him that, beyond any historical or theological meanings that one might assign to this interpretation, at least it shows that it is possible to read such biblical accounts in a

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non-literal way, which would preserve us from having to either believe or reject blindly something that seems absurd to us. We comment briefly on this, and Lazarus leaves in a pensive mood. I remain plagued by uncertainty and doubt about having done the right thing: am I not betraying my pledge as a psychoanalyst, in order to give myself the narcissistic satisfaction of discussing religious interests of my own?5 On Wednesday, he starts to talk about an important conflict he has with his family of origin. He feels invisible with them. For instance, one of his brothers was telling, a few days ago, about a football game he had once gone to see with a friend of his and with one of Lazarus’ friends. “You should have been there,” he said, “for my friend and yours were jesting and laughing all the time; they were so funny!” Lazarus replied, incensed, “But it was I who was there that day!” His whole family stood aghast at his reaction. He tells me that this happens to him with every member of his family; it is as if they did not see him at all. This is a source of deep pain for him, even if most of the time he seems to wish to go unnoticed, since he keeps long silences when being with other people. I suggest that he has forsaken all hope of being seen and that he has then decided that, if they are not going to see him after all, at least it will be because he wants it so, thus turning a passive suffering into an active stance. Lazarus laughs at the idea, and then adds, in a more serious vein, that this seems very likely to him. I suddenly remember the previous session, and tell him that I had stayed with doubts about whether telling him of the priest’s sermon had been the right thing to do. Now I realise that we had been dealing precisely with the same theme as today: when Jesus appears beside Mary Magdalene and she does not recognise him, this is very similar to the experience of not being seen or remembered by his brother. “That’s the way it is!” he tells me. He feels as if he were a ghost, whom nobody sees. Lately, he has been trying to change his relationship with his family, but every time he tries to act independently, instead of going along with the whole bunch, as they all use to, they look at him in bewilderment, as if he were a stranger. I tell him that what strikes me most is that he feels like a ghost, a walking dead, precisely when he is more alive than ever. It seems to me that, for some reason or other, his family recognises him when he

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is least visible and fails to do so when he is actively present. This leads us once again to the theme of death and resurrection, being known or being disavowed. While saying these words, I suddenly remember a most important fragment of his childhood history. Lazarus was born prematurely and was very ill indeed, so that it was doubtful whether he would survive or not. He therefore had to spend many weeks in the incubator, until he finally came home. I then tell him that he was the resurrected one, whom they did not know, and that, both for his family and for himself, he has ever been the present-absent figure that he was during those two interminable months in which he had not yet reached home. This new idea impresses and moves him deeply. He had never thought it before, but it fits with what he has always felt, that he does not have a place of his own in the world and that he constantly has to give a lot of himself in order to acquire other people’s attention. He leaves in deep reflection. When he comes on Thursday, he tells me that he was much distressed when he left the previous day. He felt transparent. I ask him what does he mean by this, and he answers that it is as if everyone could see though him. I tell him that it is not everybody, but I who has seen into him beyond what he is willing to show. He then remembers a fight he had with his older brother in his adolescence, during a family party. His brother attacked him viciously with contemptuous words, saying that he always had to ruin everything. Lazarus could not restrain his anger and fell upon him with strokes and blows. This is the only time he has ever physically fought with anyone. The other relatives pulled them apart; the brother retired crying to his room and never harassed him again. The only thing his father said at the time was that he should have done this long ago, obviously referring to the fact that his brother used to abuse him, both verbally and physically. But what really amazed him was that recently, when he mentioned this episode, he discovered that his brother had completely forgotten it; his father, on the other hand, remembered it perfectly. Once again, he seems to be invisible. I tell him that I think I understand what happened to his brother. Older siblings tend to feel that the smaller brother or sister has come to ruin their lives. In this case, things were even worse, since there was not even a baby in the house, as Mother’s attention was absorbed by a faceless ghost who had remained in the hospital. But what impresses

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me more is that Lazarus cannot consider this to be his brother’s problem, but rather takes it as information about his own nonexistence. It is as if he were looking at himself in a mirror that did not reflect his image, as in vampire stories. We continue talking about his quest for an image of himself in other people’s responses. However, although some people actually see and recognise him, as his father does when he remembers the fight, all his attention is focused precisely on those who ignore him. I say then that I believe that the whole session has revolved around the opposition between being seen and being invisible, which is somehow linked with that of being alive or dead. As a result of his doubts about his own existence and the staggering experience of lying as a baby in a place where every single function in his body was under scrutiny, he seems to have needed to create a private space inside himself, which no one should enter, in order to feel real. Hence his demands for being seen actually take the form of having the other see the image of himself that he intends to project, but not the intimacies that he conceals. This is what happens between us, when he wants me to see him, but not all that much. He answers that, usually, he feels seen, known, and acknowledged by me, but that last time he felt that I was seeing too much. I say that now I understand his doubts about whether to lie down on the couch or not, since for him this interchange of mutual glances and reflections is vital, in order to revive and keep alive.6 The session is over and we bid each other farewell till next Monday. After Lazarus left, I felt an urge to write down these four sessions, and this I did on Thursday and Friday. During the next two weeks, things went on uneventfully, but I knew that sooner or later I should have to tell him about my writing and share with him this account. When I finally did, Lazarus was astounded, and told me that he had felt the same urge and written his own version of that week, on Wednesday and Thursday. This means that he started to write one day before I did. When I read him my report, he was surprised and deeply moved to recognise himself and his experience of the sessions in my narrative. I told him that I sometimes used this sort of material for my presentations, and that I would like to ask his permission to do so. He said that he had to think it over, since it was one thing to have all this between us, and quite another to have it publicly exposed. He left with the promise of bringing me what he had written.

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The next day he did so, read and discussed it with me, and left me a copy. I would have liked to include this text in the paper, but Lazarus asked me not to. It was not a question of secrecy, as there was nothing he wanted to hide, but of privacy, since he felt this to be the most intimate thing he had ever written. To have it exposed in a public discussion with strangers meant to him being transparent once more, and he did not want it. He felt that, were he to accept it, it would be something that he would do for my sake, not his, and we both agreed that this would not be a good reason for allowing me to use this material. So, I shall only comment on his text. He starts by describing, in poignant images and a powerful language, his experience of being a ghost, relating it explicitly with my hypothesis of the family’s experience of a being that has been born, but never arrives. He ends this part by stating that, for him, to exist, to be able to grow and become a human being, implies killing the ghost, and that he fears he might thus lose his family. Then he describes several examples of his invisibility vis-à-vis the various members of his family. He reflects that each of us has somehow to kill the ghost in us, in order to become a real human being, as he is trying to do now, to start from scratch, to resuscitate, to be reborn. This he feels he might perhaps do, with the help of a new family that has adopted him in Tlalpan.7 In the next section, he discusses the question of being “invisible or transparent”, recreating a painful description of the incubator as a cold and impersonal environment, under a merciless light that never falters, and which reveals every detail of his body and insides.8 Transparency and invisibility are the poles of his experience, either that everything in him is seen, or that nothing in him is seen. In this all-or-none logic there is no place for a third option. Finally, he reflects about mirrors, human mirrors, and his attitude towards what they reflect. Why is it that he heeds those in which he looks bad and despises those in which he looks good? Then again, what kind of a mirror is he? How does he look at others?

Discussion Classical psychoanalysis implies an objectivistic epistemology, by which the observer strives to describe events as if he were not there at

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all to describe them. In other words, it assumes a chasm between the knowing subject and the known object. Relational analysis, on the other hand, implies a constructivist epistemology, in which knowledge is the result of the subject–object interaction, which tends to reach a viable dynamic equilibrium (Hoffman, 1983, 1991; TubertOklander, 1994; Varela, 1988; Watzlawick, 1981). Consequently, classical analysts try to keep their own assumptions, beliefs, and values out of the analytic situation, in order to preclude any contamination of the patient’s process by the analyst’s interference. This is, of course, impossible. If neutrality is to be understood as a complete non-interference by the analyst, it implies that psychoanalytic treatment can be carried out in an axiological and relational vacuum, and this is not the case (Greenberg, 1986). Both parties of the analytic situation are fully present in their mutual relationship, and permeated by the subjectless mental processes of society and culture (Tubert-Oklander, 2006b,c, 2010a (see Chapter Eight current volume)). Any claim of full objectivity on the analyst’s part would imply that she has no unconscious at all, when acting as an analyst, or that it is fully under control. Such claims are incompatible with the psychoanalytic theory of the mind. So, the only possible approach to objectivity would be to include the consideration of the analyst’s subjectivity, in order to understand its participation in the co-creation of the analytic process (Tubert-Oklander, 2006b). Such an option is also that of modern hermeneutics—especially in the case of analogical hermeneutics (Beuchot, 1997, 1998; TubertOklander, 2009a, (see Chapter Five current volume); Tubert-Oklander & Beuchot Puente, 2008)—in which the interpreter must explicitly recognise his or her own values, interests, assumptions, and general vantage point, in order to place interpretations in their generative context. This implies that the very interpreter is necessarily a part of the material to be interpreted, and that there is not a single “correct” interpretation for any given text (understood not only as a piece of writing, speech, or dialogue, but also as any other form of expression, such as gestures, manners, action, countenance, clothing, use of objects, images, or architecture—see Chapters Three and Five), but rather a whole set of possible interpretations. Some of them are better than others, some are not so good, and yet others are outright bad, but there may be several quite adequate interpretations, depending of the circumstances, the people involved, and their particular approach to the

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text. The touchstone for choosing among them is their reference—that is, the ontological reality they refer to—in the case of psychoanalysis, the analytic experience (Beuchot, 1997, 2004; Tubert-Oklander, 1994, 2011c). Political, religious, and ideological stances, views, values, commitments, and actions are very much a part of the analyst’s and the patient’s personalities, both consciously and unconsciously, and they inevitably contribute to the organisation and evolution of the analytic field and process. So, they should necessarily be included in the analytic dialogue, in order that both parties may examine their similarities and differences, and understand how they contribute to their mutual understanding or misunderstanding. Beside, political, religious, artistic, historical, and mythological narratives may also serve as suitable metaphors for hyper-complex emotional and relational situations, and may therefore be included in the analytic dialogue, even before identifying the unconscious contents that they may be expressing. In clinical practice, Antonino Ferro (1996) systematically understands the patients’ narratives as comments on the events that occur in the analytic relationship, and especially about the analyst’s conscious or unconscious feelings, attitudes, and acts vis-à-vis the patient. Nonetheless, he tends to keep such understanding to himself, and respond by engaging in a dialogue with the patient from within the explicit narrative, thus empathically acknowledging the underlying communication, while he waits for the patient to be emotionally able to approach this subject explicitly. This is all part of what Lewis Aron (1996) calls “mutual data generation”, as a consequence of the fact that the unconscious aspects of the analytic interaction generate an impersonal analytic process which evolves on its own and becomes the object of the analytic enquiry. The psychoanalytic dialogue then becomes a free-flowing conversation, in which the analyst participates spontaneously, while keeping an attentive eye on the underlying configurations and evolutions, in order to identify them and comment on them. The result is an ongoing linterpretive process, by which both parties develop a growing awareness and understanding of what is actually emerging between them (Tubert-Oklander, 2006c,d, 2013b). This approach takes the analytic dialogue to be a sort of play à deux, analogous to Winnicott’s (1971c) “squiggle game”, in which the

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analyst’s interventions are spontaneous, rather than an intentional technical act, and contribute to the development of a free living interchange and relation, from which new meanings are expected to emerge. Such free dialogue is obviously related to the free-flowing conversation that Foulkes (1948, 1964a, 1990) introduced as the datagenerating method in group-analysis. There, insight is expected to be the outcome of the dialogic process, and not of the analyst’s knowledgeable dictums. Finally, politics, religion, and ideology represent an essential part of human life, which is both conscious and unconscious, and is consequently related to all mental and relational processes. They are, therefore, in themselves objects for the analytic enquiry, since both persons and groups need to understand their own stance in these matters, its unconscious determinations, and its relation with all other aspects of life, in order to act on the basis of such understanding (HernándezTubert, 2011a; Samuels, 1993, 1997). Traditionally, the systematic omission of the analyst’s opinions, values, and conception of the world has been alleged to protect the patient from indoctrination or ideological manipulation by the analyst. Such claims are based on what Irving Z. Hoffman (1983) calls the “fallacy of the naïve patient”—that is, the assumption that the patient cannot have any access to what the analyst silences about herself. This is clearly an expression of the popular belief that “what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve”, which orients many of the adults’ attitudes towards children, and has proved to be as ineffectual with patients as it is with children. I believe that the only real way of factoring out the possible suggestive effect of the analyst’s values and beliefs is to make them explicit and analyse the patient’s conscious and unconscious reactions vis-à-vis the similarities and differences between the analyst and himself. In the case of Lazarus, politics and religion appeared as a natural development of our ongoing dialogue, and helped us to understand better what they meant to him and what the consequences were for him of being in treatment with an analyst who held such and such beliefs. In the sessions that both of us reported, the biblical theme of the Resurrection emerged as a mythical metaphor of his existential position and dilemma. However, this was not only his problem, since all of us have to deal, in one way or another, with Hamlet’s query: “To be, or not to be?”

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On my part, however, there was still a more personal engagement with the drama we were enacting. When writing this paper, I suddenly became aware of a particular resonance between Lazarus’ experience and my own, since I had also had what must have felt as a life-threatening experience at the beginning of my existence. I was the first son of two young parents, who were ill-equipped to deal with a newborn child. My mother, in particular, had a thoroughly symbiotic relationship with her own mother. Soon after I was born, my parents left for another city, and something happened when Mother had to deal with me without the assistance and guidance of Grandma. Apparently, I no longer thrived in this new situation and started to suck my thumb. A doctor was called and suggested that she anoint my hand with a bitter substance, so that I might relinquish such an undesirable habit. As things seemed to grow worse each day and I lost a lot of weight, Grandmother was called and, as soon as she arrived, concluded that my mother’s milk was insufficient, introduced artificial nursing, and the problem was solved. In my own analysis, I have discovered and worked-through many ramifications of an unbearable feeling of starving to death, which surely must have something to do with my corpulence. So, even though my personal ordeal looks pale when compared with Lazarus’s, I verily had the remnants of an early experience that reverberated with his and allowed us to be in tune, enact, and symbolise the emotional meaning of what we were partaking in. The fact that we also shared various political and religious concerns was a further element in our encounter, although this also required paying special attention to the inevitable narcissistic traits of a twinship mutual transference (Kohut, 1968, 1971).9 Lazarus has read this paper and exercised his editorial privilege on it. He was, of course, surprised at knowing something about my own childhood emotional experiences, but it made sense to him. The question was, and now what? Where are we going? Having been in analysis before, he knows well that this sort of analytic work is anything but standard, and feels at a loss without a map of our future ramblings. I answer that I do not know either, but that this sort of leap into the unknown is what psychoanalysis means to me. I can only tell him that I strongly believe that such new and startling experiences can be verbalised, openly discussed, and thought-through, and that this is all for the better. Of course, I cannot prove it to him, since such

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conviction is put to the test with every new analysis. The best that we can do is to find it out by ourselves. Psychoanalysis, as I understand it, is a thorough and relentless examination of our unconscious assumptions—both the patient’s and the analyst’s, and, in the case of group analysis, of the whole group and its cultural, social, and political contexts—that underlie our experience of ourselves, the others, the world, and reality. Such assumptions, which constitute what is called a Weltanschauung (Conception of the World) and a Lebensanschauung (Conception of Life), are derived from the culture in which we were reared, the family in which we were born and grew, and our own idiosyncratic experiences and the conclusions we derive from them, on the basis of our personal capacity for thought and creativity. The fact that such assumptions are largely unconscious, being, as they are, based on the earliest identifications, makes them a suitable subject for the analytic enquiry—both psychoanalytic and group-analytic—and this has the most significant consequences for its theory, technique, and clinical practice (Hernández de Tubert, 2004, 2009; Hernández Hernández, 2010; Hernández-Tubert, 2011b). The result of such reflection is not an impossible objective view of reality, but rather a recognition of the fact that our unavoidable ontological and epistemological assumptions—both conscious and unconscious—are only conventional rules for thinking and communicating with other people, mere rules of a game that we all play: the game of life. With this recognition, there is a development of the ability to play and enjoy various alternative games, or ways of looking at life, which brings about a greater freedom, creativity, and ultimately happiness. There is also, however, a surplus in knowledge, an intimation of how things may actually be, derived from the way they look from the various vantage points. Thus we attain a certain understanding of the ontology of human existence, always partial and relative to its context, but sufficient for us to continue thinking, operating, and learning (Beuchot, 2004). But what about the danger of recruiting the patient for membership in our own persuasion and community? Allan Watts (1961) has pointed out that, even though psychotherapists and ministers share an attempt to transform the individual’s consciousness and to free her from the conditioning derived from social institutions, the minister is inevitably committed to luring the person he is trying to help towards

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membership in his own religious community and view of the world, while the psychotherapist is not. Nonetheless, the therapist’s apparent advantage fades away when we consider that she or he is bound to unwittingly indoctrinate the patient with her own unexamined assumptions, and that, in the case of training analyses, there is also a commitment to transform the analysand into a member of the analyst’s own professional community. Once again, the answer is not to be found in some mythical concept of neutrality, which would imply that relationship can be avoided in a treatment situation, but in a thorough and unrelenting examination of both parties’ unconscious assumptions and their mutual influence. For me, this new experience is another turn of the screw in the working-through of my own stance towards life and death; for Lazarus, it is the beginning of a thorough reorientation in his existence. In this, he is not only reviving, like his biblical counterpart, but resurrecting, inasmuch as this implies much more than coming back to life, but a transmutation into a higher level of existence, which can truly be compared to the biblical theme of young Jesus of Nazareth, who had to go through a most painful ordeal and death, before coming back in a new form as the Christ. Religion has always been an aid in people’s transformation into a new way of life; in this, there is necessarily a kinship and a mutual fertilisation with our own analytic discipline and practice.

Postscript In the workshop in which this paper was presented, during the Fifth Meeting of the International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (Tubert-Oklander, 2006e), the discussion covered several issues which complement this text. Kadri-Ann Laar (2006), the official interviewer, commented on her surprise that I had somehow felt guilty about telling my patient about the priest’s sermon in my own church, and suggested that this might have been more of a countertransference reaction, as an expression of the unconscious relationship between us. She was right, of course, and my attempt to follow her lead made me further develop the analysis of this psychoanalytic event, in the following terms. At a conscious level, I know that I had been lately especially interested in the subject of religion, that it had occupied my readings,

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thoughts, and writings, and that I did not have many people with whom to talk about this. So, it is quite possible that I may have welcomed and desired the opportunity to converse with Lazarus about this subject. Whether this is undesirable, inadequate, unsuitable, or unethical, is mainly a question of having been trained in a Freudian institute or not. I imagine that anyone who has studied at the White Institute would not find it at all unsuitable, but I come from another family. Another point to be considered is that Lazarus was clearly ambivalent about religion. Religion meant a deep relation with mother. He had talked a lot in his analysis about his conflicts with father, but barely about his relationship with mother, and he himself had noticed that there was something missing there. He said that he had reached the conclusion that he must be afraid of touching this relationship, because it might be something fragile. During his adolescence, he broke completely with religion for quite a few years; at the time of these sessions, he was rather timidly trying to regain contact with it. Perhaps I felt that I should not interfere with something he had not completely decided yet. But there is more to it: Lazarus’ father is, from the patient’s description, rather dogmatic and authoritarian in his opinions. Well, I had that kind of father too, and religion was one of the points of disagreement with him. So, perhaps I was trying not to become that sort of figure. I know that, in my life, trying not to be dogmatic or authoritarian has sometimes taken me to the other extreme: being perhaps too tolerant or permissive with my children, students, and patients, or not exerting authority when I had to; so, this was also a part of my own conflicts. (This may have been one of the factors that led to the dramatic situation I lived through with Hermann, as told in Chapter Six.) Then again, there is the pressure of the community. As I have said before, Lazarus has been in analysis before; he has many friends who are in analysis—Freudian analysis—and he has told me once that his friends were shocked when he told them that he did not lie on the couch during the sessions, and this made him wonder whether there may be something wrong with it! Of course, I come from such a community myself. But the disapproval of the community also echoes the disapproval of his family when they noticed changes in him, the disapproval of my own professional community towards my clinical

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and theoretical evolution, and the disapproval of a very important and powerful sector of the larger community towards people who hold political convictions and views such as those that Lazarus and I share. So, this seems to be a reverberating system, which perhaps emerged in that small symptom of mine. Another point that was discussed then was the feeling that the interviewer had, while reading the text, that she was reading something written in Spanish, although she was aware that it was framed in correct English, from the orthographic, grammatical, and idiomatic point of view. Yet, the feeling remained. This is related to the point I made in Chapter Three, when discussing the subject of translation. A language is much more that a vocabulary and a set of rules and idiomatic expressions. It is the incarnation of a certain spirit, a style, an outlook of life. This is one reason why dubbed pictures usually feel wrong. I remember once watching on the TV a Fellini film that had been dubbed into British English; I had to turn it off, because I could not tolerate the conjunction of the most Italian non-verbal expressions of the various characters and the all-too-English words and intonation of the dialogue. Pretty much the same happens to me when I hear John Wayne, Peter O’Toole, or Elizabeth Taylor speaking in a strictly Iberian version of the Spanish language, which in itself sounds odd to my Latin American ears. But the result of such articulation of cultures is not always bad. The best possible English translation of García Márquez’s (1967) One Hundred Years of Solitude will be necessarily felt as something alien and marvellous by an English reader, but this is precisely as it should be. Reading a literary masterpiece from another culture is opening a window into a different world, and García Márquez’s novel itself was meant as an introduction to an amphibious dimension in which there is a coalescence of everyday reality and magic—this is the literary genre called Magical Realism, which emanated from Latin America, an inescapable hybrid subcontinent. Mestisation is characteristic of Latin American culture, and also, of course, of the Latin American version of psychoanalysis and group analysis (Beuchot, 2003; Hernández de Tubert & Tubert-Oklander, 2010; Hernández-Tubert, in preparation; Tubert-Oklander, 2011b; Tubert-Oklander & Beuchot Puente, 2008). Something like this must have happened with my paper. I know that it was conceived and written in English, not translated from Spanish, and that my own English is not bad, but the whole experience

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it narrates and revives is most un-English. Lazarus and I talked in Spanish, of course, shared a Mexican context and a history, and all our dealings occurred in the former village of Tlalpan, in which once there was a meeting, coexistence, and mating of the pre-Hispanic population and the invading aliens, a meeting that gave birth to a new race, a new culture, and a new country. And I firmly believe that their spirits still dwell in us and speak through our words and writings.

Notes 1.

2. 3.

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Quite a few years have passed since then, which once again highlights the unsurmountable boundary that severs the linguistic domain from that of reality—in this case, the present tense of narrative and the past tense of current life. He did not, and half the country’s population still believes that this was the result of a gross electoral fraud. The story of this political episode has been narrated, and its emotional consequences for individuals, groups, and the community, analysed by Reyna Hernández de Tubert (2006). Mexican philosopher and Catholic priest Mauricio Beuchot holds that the idea that God created man and woman in His own image (Genesis 1:26–27) implies that the human being is truly an icon of the Deity, and therefore stands metonymically for the latter, as it was clearly said of Jesus Christ (Beuchot, 1999). Kadri-Ann Laar (2006), who had the role of the interviewer during the presentation of this paper, expressed her surprise at this countertransference reaction, and this was further discussed with the other participants in the workshop, as I relate in the postscript to this article. Lazarus’ feeling that I had seen too much into him reminds me of Winnicott’s contention that the True Self must needs be and remain isolated “as a characteristic of health” (1960b, p. 591), hence “only the true self can feel real, but the true self must never be affected by external reality” (1959–1964, p. 133). For him “this core never communicates with the world of perceived objects, and . . . the individual person knows that it must never be communicated with or be influenced by external reality. Although healthy persons communicate and enjoy communicating, . . . each individual is an isolate, permanently non-communicating, permanently unknown, in fact unfound” (1963b, p. 187). Winnicott believed this to be a universal characteristic of the human condition, but I rather think

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it as a rationalisation of his own childhood experience in attempting to relate to a seriously depressed mother (Goldman, 1993; Kahr, 1996) and the solution he found for the dilemma of “to relate, or not to relate”, which was very similar to Lazarus’. This is a natural consequence of the fact that I, unlike Winnicott, believe the starting point of existence to be a commonality, not an individuality, a We that comes before the emergence of an I (see Chapter Two). In this there is, of course, a contradiction between Winnicott’s ideas on the self and his conception of primary undifferentiation. This is a reference to the fact that, as my office is in my home, he has unavoidably developed a certain relationship with my wife, with the maid who opens the door for him, and even with my dog! Of course, neither he nor I believe that he might consciously remember this experience, but he is constructing a mythical image, an icon of an emotional experience that is unquestionably true for both of us. This should not be understood as if we actually agreed on everything. There were, of course, differences between us, even in our understanding of what we had found in the analysis. For instance, Lazarus felt, just like Winnicott, that his true being, his soul of souls, should remain forever undisturbed, as the most private essence of his life. I, on the other hand, believed, as I have already stated, that our very essence is intrinsically relational and that this “self into which to retreat for relaxation” (Winnicott, 1967b, p. 117) is a defensive resource that could be profitably dispensed with. But we managed not to turn this into a struggle between us, and acknowledged, accepted, and respected this difference, and continued the analysis to its termination. The matter remained unresolved, since it is really a question of how each of us conceives life and the world, undoubtedly on the basis of our personal experiences and values, and not an objective matter that might ever find a definitive solution.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The matrix of despair

Introduction to Chapter Eight n May 2007, I was invited by Earl Hopper to deliver a plenary lecture in the 14th European Symposium of Group Analysis, to be held in Dublin in August 2008. The theme of the Congress was to be “Despair, Dialogue and Desire: the transformative power of the analytic group in the movement from despair to desire through dialogue”. After having accepted, I was told by Jacinta Kennedy, Chair of the Scientific Committee, that my lecture was to be on Wednesday, “a day we would like to address the theme of Despair with a focus on clinical work as the previous day will be mainly political/social”. This posed a challenge to me, since I had intended precisely to focus on the socio-political approach to the problem of the widespread feeling of hopelessness that pervades our contemporary, Postmodern world—a subject I had been working on for some time. But then I came upon clinical material that illustrated my views on the subject and my approach to clinical work in group-analytic psychotherapy, as well as some of my theoretical concerns. In this, I had the fortune of co-conducting the therapy group with my wife and colleague, Dr Reyna Hernández-Tubert, with whom I have shared clinical and theoretical work, and our writing, for the past twenty years. The lecture was well-received and amply discussed by the audience. One comment stands out in my memory among all others. A younger female colleague asked me, after the session was over, whether my patients did not find it difficult to leave the therapy with

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me. Apparently, she thought that I spoke too much in the sessions and excessively gratified my patients. I told her that this was not the case and that I believed that a group analyst should participate freely in the group discussion, and then invite the group members to reflect on what had emerged in their dialogue. The reasons for this have been expounded in the previous chapters and I shall add a bit more about it when discussing the clinical vignette included in this one. A briefer version of this text was published later as “The matrix of despair: from despair to desire through dialogue” in Group Analysis (Tubert-Oklander, 2010a). The reason for such trimming was, as usual, the need to comply with space limitations. The present version has restored the original text and added a few comments and references.

The individual and the group One of the main issues in the debate between psychoanalysis and group analysis is the question of the relation between the individual and the group. Although Freud (1921c) declared, in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, that there is no real opposition between individual psychology and social psychology, his whole approach at the time focused on the individual. For him, the subject of enquiry of social or group psychology required leaving aside the study of interpersonal relations and focusing on “the influencing of an individual by a large number of people simultaneously, people with whom he is connected by something, though otherwise they may in many respects be strangers to him” (p. 70). This clearly implied a rejection of any conception of a “group mind”. This view seems to be based on Freud’s materialistic metaphysics. For him, as for many other materialists, it was obvious that only individuals are “real”, and that group phenomena occur only when these originally isolated entities are forced by dire need to relate to each other. Erich Fromm (1959) suggested that such conviction was an expression of his bourgeois ideology, characteristic of nineteenth century middle class thinkers, who conceived man as primarily isolated and self-reliant, both psychologically and economically. Personal relationships are forced upon individuals by libidinal necessity, just as work and commercial relations are imposed by economic

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need. Man and woman may need and use each other, but in the end they are forever estranged from one another, just like the buyer and the seller in the marketplace. There is, however, as we have seen in Chapter One, another theoretical line to be found in Freud’s work, mainly in Totem and Taboo and Moses and Monotheism (Hernández de Tubert, 2008). In one, he explicitly postulated “the existence of a collective mind, in which mental processes occur just as they do in the mind of an individual” (Freud, 1912–1913, p. 157), while in the other he posed the concept of a cultural evolution, understood as a collective mental process, so analogous to the psychological evolution of the individual that it suggests that both may only be two aspects of a same reality (Freud, 1939a). So, there are two paradigms of human nature and mental functioning to be found in his writings: an individual paradigm and a collective paradigm. Nonetheless, the individual paradigm has become the orthodox interpretation of Freud’s thought, and most psychoanalysts and many analytical group therapists take exception at any suggestion of the existence of collective mental processes, a concept which they deem to be mystical, unscientific, and most certainly anti-analytic. On the other hand, the two major schools of group-analytic thinking and practice—S. H. Foulkes’s (1948, 1964a) group analysis and Enrique Pichon-Rivière’s (1971a; Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004) operative groups—have approached the study of group processes from the vantage point of clinical group practice and chosen to construct new theories stemming from the group-analytic experience itself, instead of merely applying a pre-existent psychoanalytic theory to this new field. The underlying epistemology is that theory is something we build in order to account for those strange and unsettling experiences that analysts and analysands share whenever they meet in a closed space in order to “do analysis”. This implies that, far from having foundational or normative functions, our theories are the most mobile and replaceable part of the edifice of analysis—a term I use in order to encompass both psychoanalysis and group analysis. Foulkes created the term “group analysis” as an equivalent to “psycho-analysis”. The main feature of our discipline is the analytic attitude, which is a distinctive way of looking, perceiving, thinking, relating, and acting in human affairs. It implies a systematic attempt to ascribe meanings and intentions to people’s actions and experiences, especially when they happen to be unaware of them (Tubert-Oklander

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& Beuchot Puente, 2008), and also reflective thinking—that is, a way of thinking that attempts to understand itself, while it is trying to understand its subject. It also implies a special attention and care for personal relations, as well as for individuality. So, we are all analysts trying to fathom the essence of human existence and experience, whether we do it vis-à-vis another individual human being—this being psychoanalysis—within a reflective group— group-analysis—or in the more complex inter-group, institutional, or community relations—socio-analysis. This view was one of Foulkes’s (1948, 1964a, 1975a, 1990) major contributions. Pichon-Rivière also approached the study of groups, whether therapeutic or non-therapeutic, with the same frame of mind he used in working with individual patients—that is, always attempting to understand their experiences and actions, by means of making explicit their implicit meanings and intentions. He suggested that any expression by a group member is always, at one and the same time, of herself and of the group. The individual member is therefore a spokesperson for the unconscious group processes and for her own mental processes. Interpretation should then always be twofold, addressing both the individual’s function of revealing the secrets of the group and his or her own secrets (Pichon-Rivière, 1971a, 1979; Tubert-Oklander, 1990; Tubert-Oklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004). Such an attempt to understand the human condition as both individual and collective demanded a theoretical frame of reference that fitted its complex nature, transcending the limitations of linear causal thinking, as we have already seen in Chapters One and Two. This required the introduction of new concepts, drawn from the groupanalytic experience, just as psychoanalytic concepts were derived from the bipersonal psychoanalytic experience. Thus Foulkes introduced his concepts of the network and the matrix, which we shall presently discuss.

The network and matrix These are two metaphors intended to bridge the deep gap that severs the natural connection between the individual and the group, both in everyday thinking and in orthodox psychoanalytic theory. Metaphors are useful to convey hyper-complex meanings, as a result of what

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Bion (1962) called their “penumbra of associations”—in semiotic terms, their connotation. Here we are dealing with a most complex dynamic evolution of phenomena, for which it not possible to define any part of it as a “cause” of all the rest that happens, since any one phenomenon can be seen either as a “cause” or an “effect” according to the way one decides to “punctuate” a sequence of events (Bateson, 1972; Watzlawick, Jackson, & Beavin, 1967). Therefore, we sorely need a non-linear model to include and highlight analogically complex interaction, simultaneity, reversibility, and mutual determination. Foulkes found such an analogy in the concept of the network, received from his neurologist teacher Kurt Goldstein (1940), who believed that the nervous system is better understood as a complex entity that reacts as a whole, and not as a complicated sum of individual neurones. So Foulkes applied this view to the group, conceived as a network of multifarious relations, in which individuals are its nodal points (Foulkes, 1973, 1975a,b). Therefore, any individual symptoms would be better understood if considered as the expression of a disturbance in the dynamics of the network, as in Pichon-Rivière’s spokesperson function. Of course, this network is not static, but behaves as a living organism—just like the nervous system—pulsating and evolving according to its own organisation and laws. Individual human beings are perpetually embedded in this gossamer tissue of communications and connections, which surrounds, contains, nurtures, and impregnates them, leaving its imprint in the deepest layer of the individual unconscious. In order to describe this intricate relation between individuals and the network of communications of which they are a part, Foulkes introduced yet another metaphor, which he named the matrix, understood as “the hypothetical web of communication and relationship in a given group [and] the common shared ground which ultimately determines the meaning and significance of all events and upon which all communications and interpretations, verbal and non-verbal, rest” (Foulkes, 1964b, p. 292). The term “matrix” implies the metaphors of origin, nurture, growth, container, and shaper. But, if there is such thing as the matrix, an individual immersed in and determined by it would unconsciously perceive the presence and influence of the group and social matrix, and feel as helpless and dependent towards it as the baby vis-à-vis its mother (Bion, 1952). He may also, of course, feel nurtured, protected, and

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guided by the matrix, whenever society works as it should, just like the baby feels when being satisfactorily mothered. This is a fundamental and momentous object relation, which sets the ground for the emergence of the more discrete subject and object, which are the substrate of interpersonal relations (Hernández de Tubert, 1997b, 2006). Therefore, in any group or social setting, there are various levels of relation, which are simultaneous, complementary and mutually determined: i) the more obvious level of conscious definitions of institutions and norms; ii) the level of interpersonal relations and conflicts; iii) the phantasmic level of imagination, dream and play, and iv) the primordial level of primeval fusion and ultimate identity of everything that is (Tubert-Oklander, 2004b,c, 2005, 2006a, see Chapters One & Two current volume). These four levels correspond to those described by Foulkes (1957), although framed in slightly different theoretical terms. One final observation about the matrix is that all mental phenomena—whether intrapersonal, interpersonal, or transpersonal (i.e., group, institutional, or social)—have a matricial organisation. The individual personality is also a matrix, and an open one at that, so that there is no essential discontinuity between the matrix of the personality and that of interpersonal, group, institutional, and social relations, although each of these areas also has its own specificity. All human processes may be conceived as a vast gossamer network of multiple contexts and relations, and all personal thinking, experience, or behaviour is, to a large extent, an emergent manifestation of the organisation, dynamics, and evolution of such a web. The clinical analytic situation—whether in a group or a bipersonal setting—is the condenser for such processes, which allows us to glimpse something of their nature (Tubert-Oklander, 2006b). None of this, of course, denies the existence of the individual subject, conceived as a locus of experience, thought, and action (Ogden, 1994b; Tubert-Oklander, 2009e). What it does indeed refute is any pretence of the existence of a fully autonomous subject, as postulated by Descartes and incorporated by the ethos of Modernity. Analytic clinical interpretation is therefore an attempt to describe some aspect of this hyper-complex whole, as seen from a certain chosen vantage point. Which of the manifold possible perspectives is to be chosen depends on the interpreter’s criteria, intuition, experience, creativity, and savvy, when dealing with the present circumstances and contexts (Tubert-Oklander & Beuchot Puente, 2008). So, in

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some instances one would focus on personal history and unconscious emotionally determined fantasies, while in others interpretations would hinge upon present interpersonal or group relations, or on social, cultural, or political traits, features, or events.

The matrix of hope and despair The relationship between the individual and the relational and social matrix from which she emerges, is embedded in, contained, and determined by, brings forth her or his essential attitude towards life. Whenever this relationship is mutual, satisfactory, and harmonious, the result is a feeling of trust, hope, and faith—the latter being understood as a deep conviction that life and existence are good in themselves, no matter what happens. When it turns out to be abusive, noxious, and traumatic, such experiences breed mistrust, despair, and nihilism. Sándor Ferenczi (1929) was the first to describe a particular syndrome, consisting of depression, suicidal cogitation and acts, severe psychosomatic disturbance, self-destructive behaviour, and a nihilistic philosophy, as a result of having been an unwelcome child in one’s household. He posed that these patients should be allowed to regress, in their therapy, to a childish state of dependence and be treated with consideration, empathy, care, and love, so as to allow them to experience, perhaps for the first time, the benefits of a normal childhood that might heal those deep-seated emotional wounds (Hernández de Tubert, 1995, 1997a, 1999). In the same vein, over twenty years later, Erik Erikson (1950) described as basic trust the outcome of a satisfactory mother–baby relation and as basic mistrust the aftermath of a severe failure of this symbiotic bond, which brings about psychosis. But none of them explicitly theorised about the failure of the relation with the social matrix, although Erikson’s case studies show clear examples of the individual’s collapse when disillusioned and bereaved by the fracture, decay, inefficiency, fragility, or betrayal by the group and social environment—that is, the matrix (Hernández de Tubert, 1997b, 2006; Hernández-Tubert, 2011a). Despair is a most painful and disrupting experience that ensues when there is a severe fracture in the relations that are the very stuff

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of the matrix—especially in their holding, containing, and nurturing functions. This includes all sorts of relations—with significant others, with the groups and institutions that one belongs to, with society at large, with culture and tradition, and with the matrix as a whole. Taking care of relationships implies healing such ruptures and recovering a space for illusion and faith (Winnicott, 1971a). In analysis, this is attained by means of a relationship that combines caring and reflecting together. Contrary to some naïve interpretations of the theory of therapeutic regression, I believe verbalisation, interpretation, and a shared reflection to be the indispensable complement of a nurturing, holding, caring, and loving therapeutic relation. In analysis, the intervening parties do not only relate, but also think conjointly about their relationship and their mutual experience of being together in such a context, sharing the adventure of “doing analysis”. Although this is just as valid for bipersonal psychoanalysis as for group analysis, there are some specific differences. The dyadic configuration of the psychoanalytic device places into a sharp focus the reflection of the early mother–child relationship, while the very fact that it implies that a pair be segregated from the group—a clear instance of what Bion (1961) called the “basic assumption of pairing”—tends to highlight the importance of sex and eroticism, while obscuring the influence of group, cultural, social, and political events. It therefore takes a clear theoretical conviction in order to hunt for these influences, which are less than obvious. On the other hand, group analysis is the optimal context for the exploration of the relation between the subjectivity of the parties and the wider contexts of their existence, thus opening a path for the healing of despair, not only derived from personal idiosyncratic experiences, but also from the vagaries, contradictions, and iniquities of social life and the world we live in. I shall now present a clinical vignette from my own group-analytic practice, to show how I use these concepts in concrete situations.

Clinical vignette This is brief report of a session of group-analytic psychotherapy. The group meets in the evenings once a week for a three-hour session. It used to be a twice-a-week group, but the hardships of transportation

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in Mexico City led us to condense the two sessions into one extended meeting, with encouraging results. This is a co-therapy group, in which I work with Dr Reyna Hernández-Tubert, who is also my wife. This particular session starts with a few minutes delay, due to a late arrival of the members. Traffic was impossible, they say. This happens every year, from early December, apparently due to the impending holidays. There are also major works going on in a nearby avenue, on account of the building of a new transportation system. This should be over by January. Armando, a middle-aged professional, tells us that his male mate is presently in the hospital, due to a medical emergency. This is a source of anxiety for him, as his companion lives in another town with his family, although he knows he is being well-cared for and expects to visit him this weekend. He is also worried because he is out of work. As an independent professional in the service industry, his income is discontinuous at best, but things have been very bad lately. This is incomprehensible for him: he is honest, good at his job, and provides an excellent service, but this does not seem to be enough. What else must he do, he asks in a woeful tone. He feels unworthy and ashamed, and also guilty because he is lagging behind in paying our fees. We remind him that our agreement with him is that he may delay his payments in such situations, and make them when he finally has an income. The group then discusses his plight. This is not only happening to him; there is a severe economic recession going on and things appear to worsen every day. However, Reyna points out that he has had other such crises in the past, and has always managed to recover. It is true, says Armando. A few years ago he suddenly lost his government job, which he had held for over a decade. He had always been a good and reliable worker, and the woman who was his boss trusted him, but then an internal audit of their department revealed that wages were illegally being paid to people who had never worked there at all, and the blame was on him. Even though he was able to prove that it was his boss who had committed those irregularities, he was the one to be fired, and without any compensation. It was then that he started his own business. The discussion now centres on the fact that it is not unusual for people to take advantage of him. When he broke his relationship with

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his previous live-in partner, he left him everything that they had acquired together and even kept paying his bills for several months. Apparently, he felt that this was the price he had to pay for leaving him. Isabel, a sixty-year-old divorcée, then tells us that she has decided to break up her relationship with a younger lover. They have been together for several years, but he is still seeing another woman and she cannot tolerate it any longer. Other group members point out that this was the reason for a previous attempt to break up, many months ago, and that she has yet kept on seeing him, so perhaps her present decision may also prove to be unreliable. She answers forcefully that she has taken a decision and she shall carry it through, but her attitude is clearly defensive. On the other hand, she says, this was to be expected: she is over sixty now, how can she ever compete with a woman in her thirties? Reyna comments that she seems to be absolutely certain about it, as if it were a law of life, that younger is always better. Of course, this is part of the values of present-day society that impinge upon us, but it is also her own conception of life and human relations. Well, answers Isabel, her father was always unfaithful, so was her husband, and her mother always tolerated this and said that these were the ways of men. All men are unfaithful. When the group argues that none of its male members are unfaithful to their partners, she answers that they are “an exception”. I then comment that the whole discussion seems to have centred on exploitation and abuse, not only in both personal and work relationships, but also in a society that does not seem to give people an opportunity to earn a living. Perhaps even the comments about the foul traffic were a part of this. On the whole, there is a hopeless feeling that we live in a very hostile and unfair world, and that nothing and no one are to be trusted. There is a sudden change in mood, and Isabel says painfully that this is precisely what is happening to her. She does not even feel like celebrating Christmas this year, especially since her mother, who died almost a year ago, will not be now with them. Other group members also express feelings of sadness and loss. Then Ernesto, a sociologist in his late thirties, tells us that something is happening to him, since he is again afraid of flying, and this feeling had disappeared long ago. Yesterday he took a plane on a work trip to another city and was ridden with anxiety. Of course,

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last week he had another trip, and the plane had three aborted takeoffs before they were told they should move to another plane. What struck him most was that nobody said anything; there were no protests, complaints, questions, or objections. After the second failed attempt, he felt that he should demand to abandon the plane, but did nothing. There are several comments about this kind of passivity. Another member recalls an occasion in which there was a bomb threat in a cinema and people kept going in, in spite of seeing the policemen and ambulances in front of it. And what about the authorities? Why did they not immediately evacuate the premises? But, mainly, why did people go on acting as if nothing had happened? Reyna says that we have all been raised, at least in Mexico, under the injunction of ever obeying and never questioning authority, not to be unruly, ill-mannered, or noisy, and that this internalised obligation is very difficult to overcome. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for accepting and condoning abuse. The emotional climate of the session seems to lighten, and Ernesto tells us about the visits he has been making to several poor Indian villages, far away up in the hills and too distant to receive any services. He is to evaluate their situation and the possibility of improving their lot. In the following discussion someone asks why would anyone ever choose to settle in such remote places. The truth is that they never chose to be there, but were rather forced to move away from their original abodes and excluded from participation in social development by many other groups and interests, starting with the European foreign invaders—another instance of abuse. It is a good thing, however, that institutions are taking notice of them, since they have been invisible for so long. I say that perhaps there is something we can do to change what seemed to be an overpowering set of hopeless conditions, but this requires that we take notice of the more fragile and needy parts of ourselves, others, and the community. After a brief silence Isabel says that she may nevertheless celebrate Christmas this year, inviting the rest of the family to her apartment. After all, they are less now than they used to be, so that she may well have them all there. This is the end of the session.

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Comment on the session This brief clinical report depicts how individual, group and social phenomena intermingle, fuse, and reflect upon each other in a groupanalytic therapy session. The group begins by portraying a most difficult environment that hinders their arrival. Then come various references to disease, distance from the people one loves, economic hardship, and the unfairness of the world we live in. The discussion turns to instances of betrayal, abuse, and despoilment by people they used to trust. It seems that some of the patients have a tendency to end up in such situations, always on the side of the victim. Another member of the group opens the subject of how difficult it is to break unsatisfactory relationships. She seems quite intent on preserving the relationship, in spite of the suffering it brings her. But then she expresses her conviction that this is her fate, if not her doom: she is old and discardable, and men are by nature unfaithful. The group’s reaction to her latter statement suggests that this may be a reference to the only couple that is actually present—namely, the two therapists— but we choose to leave aside, for the moment, this Oedipal connotation and concentrate instead on the social implications of her view of the world, which has been clearly transmitted through her original family experiences. Besides, her own feeling of being disposable links with the previous theme of a society that discards its members as useless encumbrances, which has also been the subject of prior sessions. Here, I attempt an integrating interpretation, recalling the various themes that have emerged during the session, and summarise it by saying that, “On the whole, there is a hopeless feeling that we live in a very hostile and unfair world, and that nothing and no one are to be trusted.” This seems to have an emotional impact on the group, and the whole climate changes from despondency and impotence to sadness and loss. Isabel, who has been the spokeswoman of a defensive attitude towards painful emotional experience, now refers to her mourning of her mother. Ernesto brings a new theme: that of collective and individual passivity in the face of danger. This is again interpreted as the individual manifestation of a collective trend, which is very much a part of our cultural inheritance, and linked to the acceptance of abuse in personal and institutional relationships. Now the atmosphere of unavoidable sadness and loss seems to dissipate, and a new feeling of hope emerges. Ernesto is part of an institutional effort to aid some of the poorest, destitute, and forgotten

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groups in our society, who are actually the survivors of centuries of despoilment, abuse, and bloody conquest. I then suggest that “perhaps there is something we can do to change what seemed to be an overpowering set of hopeless conditions, but this requires that we take notice of the more fragile and needy parts of ourselves, others, and the community”. This final interpretation seems to bring about a new pendular motion from the societal to the individual level, fuelled by the greater awareness of our common plight as individuals, group members, and part of our society. In Isabel’s last comment we find how she has been able to make a transaction, which implies the acceptance of the inevitable—her mother’s death—while avoiding falling into the trap of utter pessimism and doom, and recapturing the liveliness of actual and present relationships, as summarised in the image of her Christmas family gathering at home.

Process and dialogue I believe the clinical sequence I have presented to be an instance of the particular evolution that takes place in the analytic situation, which I prefer to call the analytic process—in this case, the group-analytic process. I conceive this process as a spontaneous development which takes place independently, and frequently in spite of, the intervening parties’ conscious awareness and intentions (Tubert-Oklander, 2006b,c,d, 2013b, see Chapter Seven current volume). The analysts’ contribution to this process is to be found in their creation of the group and its setting, their interpretative contribution to the establishment of a particular climate and dynamics, and their modulation, by means of their own participation in it, of a process that emerges and evolves by itself, stemming from the unconscious matrix of the group. This idea of an unconscious analytic process which includes, not only the unconscious interactions and relations between the parties, but also the social, cultural, and political context, is derived from the writings of Malcolm Pines (1987, 1989, 1994, 1996), and is clearly related to what Earl Hopper and Haim Weinberg (Hopper, 2003a,b; Hopper & Weinberg, 2011b, in preparation; Weinberg, 2007) call the social unconscious. Now, my own conception of the analytic process is that of a free-floating dialogue that, unlike Foulkes’s (1948, 1964a, 1990) “free floating discussion”, includes a spontaneous participation of the

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analyst in what is to become, in Lewis Aron’s (1996) words, a “mutual data generation”. In this I am influenced by Ferenczi’s (1985) early experiments in mutual analysis (Chapter Six), Winnicott’s (1971c) “squiggle game” and his conception of the analytic dialogue as play (Chapter Five), Gadamer’s (1960) dialogic hermeneutics and Beuchot’s (1997, 1998, 2003) analogical hermeneutics, the interpersonal analytic tradition (Levenson, 1992), and the novel contributions of relational psychoanalysis (Aron, 1996; Mitchell, 2000; Mitchell & Aron, 1999; Chapter Two current volume). This explains why Reyna and I participate freely in the group-analytic discussion with our comments of the social context of their personal experiences, which fuel the dialogic process and set a key for its style and evolution, while at the same time contributing to the data generation process that will eventually flower into insight. In this case, we have seen an evolution from despair and impotence to active desire and hope, mediated by a free-floating and reflective dialogue, as suggested by the main theme of the Dublin Symposium. And “dialogue” means here something more than argumentation and exchange of information, as it also includes mutual interaction and emotional relations (Hernández-Tubert, 2011a). The analytic experience of being part of an ensemble in which candid and daring communication brings about transcendence of what seemed to be an inescapable hopelessness, helps the group members to develop a new stance towards life. Much as in Ferenczi’s (1929) and Winnicott’s (1955, 1956) suggestion that living through a period of successful dependence might compensate and heal the aftermath of a troubled and unsatisfactory infancy, the group-analytic experience helps the members to overcome the limitations of their upbringing that prevented them from developing true intersubjective relationships,1 and the contradictions, inequities, and abuses of the leading trend in our present-day society, which seems to preclude any compassion, solidarity, or concern for others. This is one reason why our open and fluid participation as conductors of such an analytic group, far from stimulating an interminable and ultimately fruitless dependency, as suggested by my critic at the Symposium, becomes a major stimulus for the group members’ development and maturation, which brings them to a wider and deeper insight into the workings of their own minds, their relationships, the group they are in, and the institutions and society to which they

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belong. Consequently this fosters their ultimate necessary and inevitable departure from the group. Of course, there is a caveat here. One might argue that, if societyat-large is fully responsible for the plight of its individual members, it would be naïve to expect any kind of therapy to make a difference. From this perspective, the only way to change anything would pass through political action. Indeed, this was the position taken by many of my Latin-American colleagues in the seventies. Nowadays, it behoves us to give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and leave to God what belongs to God. In other words, political action is surely needed, and we may well choose to engage in it, but as group analysts we have a golden opportunity to aid some people in overcoming the emotional wounds and mutilations that stem both from their peculiar personal origins—which includes the transmission by the family of culture and a Weltanschauung (Hernández de Tubert, 2004, 2009; HernándezTubert, 2011b)—and their present-day immersion in a troubled and dehumanised world. The interpretation and group discussion of such reflections about society, far from fostering intellectualisation, as some analysts would argue, ploughs deep into the unconscious substrate of our personalities, represented by Foulkes’s (1973) foundation matrix,2 and reopens the intra- and inter-personal dialectics of inner and outer, individual and collective, self and others, past and present, identity and difference, fate and freedom, thus fostering an ever-widening process that takes place in both the individual and the group, at one and the same time. This is what Pichon-Rivière (1971a; Baranger, W., 1979; TubertOklander & Hernández de Tubert, 2004) used to call the dialectic spiral, since the spiral is a pregnant metaphor for a process that passes over and over again by the same points or issues, but which is never quite the same, as each circular turn implies a wider scope and an actual advancement, in terms of a deeper understanding. This threefold motion does not only involve a development of cognitive processes—what I have called the interpretative process—but also an expansion of feeling—called the relational process—as well as of interaction—the interactive process (Tubert-Oklander, 2006c). These are not three different processes, but three aspects or dimensions of one and the same mental evolution. The interpretative process evolves from an original rather concrete and conventional conversation and interpretation, towards a richer

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and more meaningful capacity for symbolic expression, in both the group members and the analyst (or the analyst and the analysand, in bipersonal psychoanalysis, as we have seen in Chapter Seven), which allows them to probe deeper into the emotional life and the unconscious dimension of human existence. The result is an ever-increasing verbal interchange on the subtleties of inner and outer reality, in which there are no omitted or forbidden themes, and which recognises and respects both the similarities and the differences between the parties. The relational process develops from an initial state of emotional isolation and rigidity, towards a more intimate, fluid, and emotionally meaningful way of relating, in which the other is taken as a true fellow human being, who has an inner life comparable to one’s own, which is to be fully respected and taken into account. This way of relating is what Aristotle (2011) in his Nicomachean Ethics called philia—usually translated as “friendship”—meaning a form of non-erotic love. Winnicott (1958) described it as “ego-relatednesss” and suggested that “it is the stuff of which friendship is made . . . [and] may turn out to be the matrix of transference” (p. 418). Martin Buber (1923) called it the I–Thou relationship, as a mutual way of relating, and contrasted it with the I–It relationship, which dealt with the other as if it were a nonhuman, non-alive, and non-real object, a merely functional contrivance for the fulfilment of one’s needs.3 When such a development takes place in a group, its members become more mindful and tolerant, both of themselves, their fellow group members, and people in general. This implies cultivating the Aristotelian virtue of prudence (phronesis), that is, the ability to keep the sober medium between the extremes and take wise and sensible decisions (Aristotle, 2011; Beuchot, 2007c; Tubert-Oklander & Beuchot Puente, 2008). In other words, they become better persons. Perhaps this is the sort of evolution that Melanie Klein (1952) had in mind when she introduced the concept of the “depressive position”, albeit from a quite different theoretical frame of reference. Finally, the interactional process grows from a ritualised and solemn behaviour, by both the analyst and the patient or the group members, to a conjoint exploration of the many possible options for relating and acting, this widening the scope of viable acts and developing the capacity for negotiation, with themselves as well as with others (Pizer, 1992, 1996).

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These three sides of the analytic process are the very stuff of dialogue in clinical group analysis, and the via regia that takes us from the stagnancy of despair to the fruitfulness of meeting one’s heart’s desire. I also believe the same to be true in the case of bipersonal psychoanalysis. This wished-for evolution in the group and its members has been described by Patrick de Maré with the Greek name Koinonia, taken from the early Christian communities. Koinonia is the binding of the members of a community by means of non-sensual and non-possessive love, a communion of kindred souls, which breeds responsibility, solidarity, and compassion (de Maré, Piper, & Thompson, 1991). The result is that its members become what Fromm (1958) called the “revolutionary character”—that is, a mature, reflective, critical and responsible member of the group, what Hopper (2000) would call a “citizen”. There is yet another aspect of this theme that I can only mention here, which has already been dealt with in Chapter One, with respect to both psychoanalysis and group analysis, and this is the potentiality of analysts to intervene at the social and political levels, in order to inform those who are in a position to decide on issues that affect us all, so that they may take into account the particular point of view that we, as relational or group analysts, have to contribute to a deeper understanding of human affairs. I am by no means implying a position, such as that advanced by Plato (1956) in The Republic, that philosophers—or analysts at that—should be in charge of government (the “philosopher kings”), but rather the much humbler task of becoming advisors, among other advisors who also contribute to a growing understanding human affairs. If this possibility ever proves to be something more than a wishful fantasy, we might make a valuable contribution to those efforts that many people, from all sorts of disciplines and positions, are making in order to restore humanness to our contemporary world. This effort is by no means limited to our influence on formal leaders, but should also include an open dialogue with the wider community. Our efforts to share our group-analytic perspective and findings with all sorts of social groups, and to project them through the media, may seem fruitless in the short term, but will prove with time to have been worth our while.

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Notes 1.

2.

3.

Here I am using the term “intersubjective”, not to refer to the fact that any human situation should be understood in terms of the mutual relation between subjects, but to the development of the capacity to recognise the other as another subject, a fellow human being, with a subjectivity of her or his own. The foundation matrix was not extensively studied by Foulkes, who rather tended to take it for granted. This may have had to do with the kind of selection of members for his groups. In the book he wrote with James Anthony (Foulkes & Anthony, 1965), the authors make the following comments on this: “As a rule, in the process of selection, a great deal of common ground is already taken for granted. For example, we know that our patients will be talking the same language against the same background of national feeling and participating in all the imponderables that go to make up a pattern of culture. . . . To these basic common experiences, we can add other shared conditions, such as age, sex, religion, social background, intelligence, education, profession, marital status” (p. 65). Although the authors consider that “a group selected on these general factors could not be called a highly selected group”, one may wonder whether this does not factor out, in practice, any possibility of analysing the foundation matrix in the group. In our present-day variegated, multi-cultural, and multi-ethnic world, there are many more chances of investigating the foundation matrix—that is, if one does not actively limit the group’s heterogeneity in that area. Earl Hopper and Haim Weinberg (in preparation) are presently editing a collective book, with authors from various countries who are writing about the foundation matrix in their own country. It must be said that the two forms of relating described by Buber also apply to the relation with our whole environment, not only to human beings; hence, our relationship with Nature can also be either loving, caring, admiring and respectful, or grossly instrumental and exploitive. Hence, after a successful analytic treatment—whether psychoanalytic or group-analytic—one would expect the former patient to be emotionally open to an empathic relation, not only with other human beings, groups, and communities, but also with animals, plants, and the environment (Tubert-Oklander, 1997). This may seem to be an unduly exacting ethical injunction, if one thinks it from the perspective of an individual paradigm, but it should certainly be considered a sign of mental, emotional, and relational health, when we see it in terms of a collective relational paradigm.

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INDEX

absence, 11, 71, 89, 119, 172 of contradiction, 10 of social criticism, 7 abuse, 4, 26, 29, 34, 187–188, 194, 213, 236–240 child, 4, 34 of authority, 26 sexual, 4–5 allegorical, 172 (metaphoric) reading, 121 ambiguity, 49, 59, 67–68, 72–73, 77–78, 100–101, 105, 119, 173 American Institute of Psychoanalysis, 56 American Psychoanalytic Association, 56 analogical, 7, 17, 31, 35, 46, 60, 69, 77, 97, 104–105, 117, 119, 121, 144, 157, 162–163, 174, 217, 231 see also: hermeneutics analyst, 163 complex interpretation, 231 interpretation, 164

mean, 172 model, 124 physical, 52 preoccupation, 144 psychological, 52 solution, 120 Anglo-American School of Intersubjective and Relational Psychoanalysis, 93 Anthony, E. J., 3, 18, 43, 97, 244 anti-Semitism, 5 anxiety, 22, 78, 115, 136, 147, 168–169, 235–236 see also: unconscious(ness) confusional, 78 dream, 187 fusional, 78 intense, 171 reaction, 22 Apollo, 69 Argentine Group Psychology and Psychotherapy Association, 1

277

278

INDEX

Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, xiii, 87 Aristotle, 92, 110, 114, 160–161, 164, 242 Aron, L., 8, 33, 40–41, 89, 133, 174, 185, 203, 211, 217, 240 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, 56 attitude, 126, 134, 151, 162, 191, 197, 200, 215, 217–218, 229, 236, 238 analytic, 15, 19, 140, 202 arrogant, 209 atheistic, 210 basic, 126 biased, 82 caring, 179 essential, 233 lifelong, 153 philosophical, 145 professional, 199 relational, 134 tolerant, 131 Atwood, G. E., 58 authoritarian(ism), xiii, 26, 139, 186, 222 dogmatic, 56, 162 social pattern, 26 Babel, 69, 154 Balfour, F. H. G., 15 Balint, M., 5, 39, 42, 132, 184 Baranger, M., 10, 184, 205 Baranger, W., 10, 184, 205, 241 basic assumption (ba), 54 dependence, 137–138 fight/flight, 137–138 group, 12, 138 incohesion: aggregation/ massification, 137 pairing, 137–138, 234 theory of, 137 Basic Assumption, Group, 12 basic unity (primary total undifferentiatedness), 65 Bateson, G., 13, 34, 134, 199, 231

Bateson, M. C., 134 Beavin, J. H., 231 behaviour(al), 7, 11, 21, 23–24, 26, 47, 51, 57, 134, 142, 182–183, 187–188, 197, 200, 202, 205, 232 compulsive, 32 destructive, 233 dynamics, 89 hateful, 205 human, 9 response, 164 solemn, 242 Benhaïm, D., 89–93, 96 Benjamin, J., 88, 111 Bettelheim, B., 77, 85 Beuchot, M., xviii, 51, 99, 104–105, 110, 117–118, 120–121, 157, 162–163, 216–217, 220, 223–224, 240, 242 Beuchot Puente, M., xviii, 19, 104, 117, 163, 201, 216, 223, 229–230, 232, 242 Bildung (formation), 115 Billow, R., 43 binocular vision, 13, 42 Bion, W. R., 11–12, 28, 68–70, 132–133, 137–139, 147, 154, 195, 198, 205, 231, 234 Work Group, 12, 137 Birtles, E. F., 143 Blechner, M. J., 155 Bleger, J., 23, 39–40, 65, 67–68, 72, 79, 100–101 Boehlich, W., 153 Bollas, C., 129, 148–149 Borgogno, F., 5, 130, 133, 181–182 Brandchaft, B., 58 Brentano, F., 31, 153 Breuer, J., 45 Brierley, M., 53, 78 British Independent Group of Object Relations Theory, 52 British Independent School of Object Relations, 40 British Psychoanalytic Society, 32, 113

INDEX

British Psychoanalytical Society, xii, 143 British Society, 53–54, 56, 144 Buber, M., 242, 244 Burrow, T., 15, 36–37, 204 Campillo, A., 124 Campos Avillar, J., 32 Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, 82, 109 Carroll, L., 12, 107 case studies Alicia, 195–198, 205 Armando, 235–236 Bernarda, 189–195 Elizabeth Severn (R. N.), 183 Elizabeth von R., 45 Ernesto, 236–237 Hermann, 185–189, 222 Isabel, 236–237 Lazarus, 209–215, 218–219, 221–225 causal(ity), 10, 119–120, 150 determinism, 148 theory, 34, 50 explanation, 47, 51, 57 -naturalistic, 59 relations, 11 science, 54 thinking, 230 Charcot, J.-M., 129–132, 136, 143, 150, 153 citizen, 29, 139, 243 clinic(al), 15, 22, 43, 49, 147, 160, 164, 172, 174, 182, 222 approach, 15, 21, 175 aspects, 182 descriptions, 182 Diary, 133, 174, 181, 183, 201 discourse and reports, 199–201, 238 evidence, 142–143, 195 experiences, 20, 40, 57, 143, 147, 181, 200 group practice, 229, 243

279

identity, xiii interpretation, 232 issues, xvii literature, 182, 184 manner, 48 material, 109, 227 merits, 143 narratives, 147, 181 papers, 39, 55, 185 perspective, 105 point of view, xvi practice, 17, 23, 37, 109, 116, 182, 217, 220 problem, 2 psychoanalytic, 55, 181–183, 185, 201, 203, 208 research, 45 revolution, 175–176 scope, 30 sequence, 239 situation, 20, 30, 55, 123, 195, 201, 232 studies, 64, 183 theory, 57 thinking, 59, 71, 176 traditions, xii, 109 understanding, 20 work, 13, 55, 174, 227 writings, 181 collective mind, xvi, 6–7, 31, 229 Columbia Psychoanalytic Institute, 56 communion, 66, 101, 110, 243 Holy, 77 conception of the world, 71, 84–85, 200, 218 see also: Weltanschauung Conceptual, Referential, Operative Schema (CROS), 84, 110, 152 conflict(ive), 4, 17, 24, 32, 36, 43, 48, 50, 57, 72, 115, 126, 139, 145, 155, 168, 173, 178, 188–190, 194, 198, 204, 210, 222, 232 basic, 193 contact, 32

280

INDEX

deep, 32 elements, 52 implicit, 26 important, 212 inner, 34, 195 relation, 126 instinctual, 8 Oedipal, 49, 56 personal, 6 political, 6, 76 positions, 144 primal, 6 sexual, 8 situation, 26 violent, 87, 132 conscious(ness), 3, 11–12, 19, 21, 31, 36, 39, 60, 76, 83, 92, 107, 120, 133, 138, 145, 148, 199, 217–218, 220, 225 see also: unconscious(ness) awareness, 239 calculation, 24 counterpart, 10 definitions, 232 experience, 12, 200 feelings, 217 field, 195 intent, 51, 192 interactions, 8 level, 12, 192, 221 mental system, 120 nascent, 160 pre-, 60, 152 reactions, 218 thought, 120 context, 2, 37, 82, 90, 99, 105, 109, 111, 145, 153, 184, 201–202, 208, 220, 232, 234 cultural, 57, 173, 200 for interpretation, 21 generative, 216 historical, 107 Mexican, 224 multiple, 232 of a tradition, 85, 140, 150

of relations, xii optimal, 234 person-to-person, 77 political, 5, 205, 208, 220, 239 significant, 109 social, xiv, 17, 21, 23, 240 specific, 23 countertransference, 10, 62, 67, 139, 177, 183–184, 188–189, 191, 197–199, 201–202 see also: transference confession, 197 disclosure, 181, 197 enactments, 201 experience, 201 feelings, 187, 204 hate in the, 189 hostile, 195 occurrence, 195 phenomena, 20, 23, 65 reactions, 21, 184, 195, 198, 221, 224 response, 198, 205 cultural evolution, 7, 229 de Maré, P., 29, 60, 152, 243 de Mijolla, A., 155 de Quiroga, A. P., 17, 74 Dehaene, S., xv Dellarossa, A., 152, 155 depression, 28, 168, 225, 233 position, 67, 72, 100, 242 severe, 48 Descartes, R., 93, 232 desire, 63, 129–130, 187, 193, 222, 227–228, 240, 243 see also: unconscious(ness) despair(ing), 28, 136, 227–228, 233–234, 240, 243 feelings, 22 matrix of, 228 development(al), xii, 3, 8, 20, 29–30, 33, 39–43, 49, 54, 59, 61, 63–65, 67, 71, 74, 78, 88, 91, 94–95, 100, 114, 116–117, 124, 127–128,

INDEX

139–140, 152–153, 155, 183, 185, 203–204, 218, 220, 240, 242, 244 adolescent, 128 child, 158, 174 conceptual, 35 early, 168 ego-, 49, 57, 64, 94–95 fixation, 176 function, 176 human, 70 individual, 66 infantile, 125 mental, 57 of cognitive processes, 241 phase, 70 process, 93 psychoanalytical, 149, 182 sequence, 70–71, 73 social, 237 spontaneous, 239 theoretical, 20, 149, 176 diagram, 118 dialectic(s), 95, 97, 99, 102 approach, 100 equilibrium, 71 interaction, 61, 101–102 interchange, 72 interrelation, 100 perpetual, 97 personal, 241 relationship, 102 spiral, 98, 241 difference, 13, 29, 37, 51, 55, 66, 79, 82, 93, 95–97, 99, 102, 105, 109, 111, 119, 135, 137, 141–142, 147, 151, 160, 191–192, 207–208, 217–218, 225, 241–242 cultural, 5, 109 essential, 107, 119 important, 141 in-, 4 inevitable, 151 interesting, 144 significant, 65 specific, 102, 108, 234

281

striking, 23 technical, 154 theoretical, 140 undeniable, 124 world of, 72 Dionysus, 40, 69–71, 79 dimension, 72–73 level, 75 myth, 101 organisation, 102 phase, 70 spirit, 70 way of existence, 72 dream, 5–6, 12, 72, 75, 103–104, 119, 123, 169, 184, 188, 232 see also: anxiety, Freud, S. character, 123 figures, 123 group, 12 imagery, 103 life, 31 master of, 161 persistent, 123 revolutionary, 6 thoughts, 11 unbounded, 162 world of, 169 Dublin Symposium, 240 Durkheim, É., 7, 35–37, 110 Dutt, C., 85, 107 dyad, xv, 15, 19, 176, 186, 234 analytic, 58 Eco, U., 103–104, 106, 118 education, 66, 114–116, 144, 178, 207, 244 analytic, 152 group-, 146 psycho-, 1, 114, 142–143, 145, 150 classical, 77 ego, xi, 16, 42, 57, 60, 62–64, 78, 92, 94–97, 149, 201 see also: development(al) distortion, 50, 165 -feeling, 63–64, 94

282

INDEX

functional, 92 group, 100 ideal, 115 -identity, 57 inner, 16 mature, 64, 95 needs, 50 non-, 62 pleasure-, 63 pre-, 94 -psychology, 47–48, 173 -reality, 64, 95 -relatedness, 42, 242 stages, 64, 95 states, 95 super, 22, 60, 179 training in action, 16, 29 Eizirik, C. L., 115–116, 145 Ellstein, I., 124 empathy, 57–58, 68, 164, 233 enactment, 167, 170, 194–195, 197, 203, 205 see also: countertransference re-, 175, 177 environment(al), 4–5, 67, 78, 98, 128, 144, 167, 183, 238, 244 adult, 53 ecological, 36 economic, 36 factors, 3 heterogeneous, 183 human, 70 impersonal, 215 social, 18, 26, 36, 182, 233 whole, 94, 244 envy, 14, 186, 188 malign, xi penis, 166 epistemology, xiii, 1, 84, 229 constructivist, 216 objectivist, 215 positivistic, 32 equivocality, 105, 119, 121, 162 Erikson, E. H., 56, 78, 103, 233

Esprit de finesse, 160, 164 de géométrie, 160 experience (passim) see also: conscious(ness), countertransference, trauma(tic), unconscious(ness) ambiguous, 67, 101 analytic, 17, 40, 43, 51, 109, 154, 176, 192, 199, 217, 229–230, 240 beneficial, 48 clinical, 20, 40, 57, 143, 181, 200 common, 36 complex, 13, 119 differentiated, 101–102 diverse, 83 emotional, 51, 119, 124, 139, 178, 183, 185, 201, 219, 225, 238 group, 15, 40, 43, 176, 230 human, 8, 24, 35, 61, 71, 76, 97, 99, 102, 135 idiosyncratic, 84, 220, 234 inner, 77–78, 182, 185, 199–200 mystical, 39, 70, 154 of reality, 12, 65 of seduction, 34 of the world, 13 outer, 77 personal, 25, 47, 154, 192, 199, 225, 240 pleasure, 58 psychoanalytical, 154, 163, 182–183, 230 relational, 20, 47 religious, 66 sensuous, 118, 208 social, 78 strange, 39 subjective, 51, 76, 110, 175, 181 unitary, 63 unpleasant, 64 Ezriel, H., 14 Fairbairn, W. R. D., 49, 52, 54, 58, 65, 142–143, 149

INDEX

fantasy, 12, 36, 41, 68, 72, 75, 119, 128–129, 139, 196 see also: unconscious(ness) iconic, 102 wishful, 243 Ferenczi, S., xiii, 5, 10, 28, 40, 48–52, 62, 65, 77–78, 132, 165, 174–175, 181–185, 199–200, 204, 233 Ferrater Mora, J., 83, 93 Ferro, A., 205, 217 Feyerabend, P., 86 field, 10, 18, 59, 76, 97–98, 116, 140, 176, 184, 203 see also: countertransference analytic, 195, 217 concept of, 184 cultural, 47–48 dynamic, 16, 98 Freudian, 8, 57 inner, 96–97 interaction, 98 intrapsychic, 97 of education, 66 of enquiry, 9, 19–20 of intersubjectivity, 89 of observation, 35, 175, 183 of psychoanalysis, 20, 74 of study, 7 outer, 96–97 psychoanalytic, 184 psychological, 96–98 psychosocial, 99 social, 56 theory, 18, 97, 120 Filipini, S., 205 Fliess, W., 31, 34, 128–129 Foulkes, S. H., 2–3, 15–19, 29, 32–33, 37, 42–43, 59–60, 74, 94, 97, 126, 218, 229–232, 244 free association, 16, 175, 199 free-floating dialogue, 239–240 discussion, 16, 211 Freud, A., 2, 144 Freud, E. L., 129

283

Freud, S., xiii, xv–xvi, 1–2, 4–10, 13, 22, 30–32, 35, 40, 44–46, 48, 51–52, 59–64, 68–69, 73, 75, 77, 83, 85, 94–95, 99–100, 113–115, 117, 120–132, 135–136, 138–143, 145–150, 153–154, 162, 176, 182–183, 199–200, 203–204, 228–229 Count Thun Dream, 6 Irma, 103 rejection of politics, 6 Friedman, R. J., 89 Fromm, E., 1, 29, 36, 53, 56, 228, 243 Frosch, J., 56 fusion(al), 61, 64, 66, 68, 70, 101–102, 201 see also: anxiety complete, 43, 63 level, 64, 95 passive, 110 primary, 66 primeval, 35, 72, 94, 232 state, 67 structure, 78 unit, 42 Gadamer, H.-G., 47, 85, 104, 107, 140 Gandolfo, C., 17 García Badaracco, J., 199 García Marquez, G., 223 Garden of Eden, 69 Gardner, M., 107 Gauthier, M., 82–83 Gestalt, 124 psychology, 18, 32, 184, 200 theory, 17 Goldman, D., 225 Goldstein, K., 18, 32, 231 Gordon, P., xv Green, A., 132, 185, 202 Greenberg, J. R., 92, 216 Grinberg, L., 14, 202, 205 Grosskurth, P., 132 Grotstein, J., 35 Group-Analytic Society, 56, 74 Guntrip, H., 53–55, 165–166

284

INDEX

hallucinatory wish-fulfilment, 125 Hamilton, E., 68 Hartmann, H., 64 Heimann, P., 71, 84, 125 hermeneutics, xiii, xviii, 47, 81, 84, 104–105, 117, 121, 157, 161–162 analogical, 104–105, 216, 240 contemporary, 161 dialogic, 240 equivocal, 105 modern, 216 psychoanalytic, 19 univocal, 105 Hermes, 161, 164, 173 Hernández-Tubert, R., xiii–xiv, 2–3, 7, 10, 19, 21, 28, 30, 37, 43, 59, 76, 83–84, 87–88, 92, 151–152, 161, 163, 172, 185, 199, 201–202, 218, 220, 223–224, 227, 229–230, 232–233, 235, 240–241 Hill, M. M., 57 Hobbes, T., 92 Hoffman, E., 81 Hoffman, I. Z., 216, 218 Holy Bible, The, 133, 211 Holy Trinity (Triune God), 73, 102 Holy Week, 210 Holzman, P. S., 57 Home, H. J., xii, 9, 55–57, 78 Hood, V. G., 15 Hopper, E., xi, xviii, 5, 7, 13, 21–22, 24, 29, 33, 36–37, 43, 59, 60, 75, 137–138, 152, 176, 203–204, 227, 239, 243–244 Horney, K., 1, 53, 56 icon(ic), 10, 114, 117–118, 121–122, 124–126, 132, 134–136, 139, 145–146, 150, 153, 189, 224–225 see also: fantasy aspect, 124 conventional, 122 external, 122 representations, 118–119, 121, 134 signs, 118–119

techniques, 125 thought, 119, 123 iconoclast, 150 identification, 6, 22–23, 34, 115–116, 122, 126, 138, 143, 146, 169, 204 constitutive, 48 earliest, 220 individual, 67 loving, 116 participatory, 72 primary, 61, 101 primitive, 201 projective, 205 identity, xii, 59, 87, 99, 116, 137, 139, 144, 150, 201, 241 see also: ego absolute, 65 analytic, 48, 116 psycho-, 114, 151, 153 clinical, xiii concept of, 78 therapeutic, 153 true, 104 ultimate, 232 ideology, 22, 76, 218 basic, 54 bourgeois, 228 dominant, 22 therapeutic, 158 idol, 133–136, 139, 146, 150 image, 10, 46, 71–72, 84, 96–97, 101, 117–118, 120, 122–123, 125–126, 130, 134, 154, 161, 164, 187–188, 191, 195, 201, 214–216, 224, 239 body, 75 dream, 103 graven, 134 ideal, 129 lifeless, 183 mental, 75 mother, 75 mythical, 225 narcissistic, 204 perceptual, 118

INDEX

primordial, 75 representational, 183 sensory, 125 visual, 118, 125 instinct(ual), 54 see also: conflict(ive) death, 48–49 drives, 35, 47–48, 55–59, 78, 99–100, 142 factors, 96 forces, 99 intrapsychic, 42 motions, 12, 35 needs, 62 non-, 42 pressure, xvi -ridden, 53 stimuli, 62 theory, 57, 100 wishes, 50, 78, 178 Institute of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association, 146, 157 interaction, xii, 3, 6, 16, 21, 89, 91, 97–98, 100–102, 109–111, 116, 137–138, 174, 176, 183, 185, 200, 205, 216, 241–242 see also: conscious(ness), unconscious(ness) analytic, 175, 203, 217 complex, 231 dialectic, 61 mutual, 240 personal, 109 inter-, 88 International Association for Relational Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, 41 International Psychoanalytic Association, 115 interpersonal, 3, 20, 32, 41–43, 53, 75, 97, 141, 232–233, 240 see also: interaction dimension, 176 level, 35 processes, 56, 76, 202

285

psychoanalyst, 141 realms, 42 relations, xvi, 36, 41–42, 56, 72–73, 228, 232 interpretation, xii, 14–15, 17, 20–21, 25, 47, 54, 77, 84–86, 103–106, 118–119, 123, 147, 151, 158–163, 165, 167, 172, 174–175, 178, 185, 189, 191, 194, 201, 211, 216, 230–231, 233–234, 239, 241 adequate, 216 alternative, 119 analogical, 164 clinical, 232 correct, 216 equivocal, 106 explicative, 159 integrating, 238 multiple, 135 naïve, 234 nuanced, 23 orthodox, 32, 229 paradoxical, 172 personal, 17 psychoanalytic, 103, 105, 159–160, 172 teleological, 149 theory of, 157 true, 162 univocal, 105 verbal, 19, 123 interpretative activities, xii, 85, 105 construction, 200 contribution, 239 delicacies, 164 effort, 135 enquiry, 148 practice, 19 process, 167, 241 reading, xvii, 135 study, 184 style, 172 task, 103, 108–109 tradition, 21

286

INDEX

interpreter, xii, 85, 104–105, 161–162, 164, 174, 216, 232 intervention, 20, 23–25, 27, 30, 71, 151 analytic, 20, 23–25, 29, 218 group-, 152 corrective, 24 professional, 25 technical, 20, 23–24, 158, 200 therapeutic, 20 Isaacs, S., 12, 71, 125 Islam, xiii, 154 Sufism, 154 I–Thou relationship, 242 Izard, V., xv Jackson, D. D., 231 Jacobs, T. J., 167, 185, 202, 205 Jacobson, E., 2, 201 Jacoby, M., 123, 126 Jakobson, R., 103 Janus, 121 Jew, 5, 77, 143 Jones, E., 4, 142 Joyce, J., 107 Judaism, xiii Jung, C. G., 33, 36, 41, 75, 87, 123, 126, 204 Kaës, R., 37, 82, 88–93, 95–96, 98–99, 101, 111 Kahr, B., 173, 225 Kaplan, A., 44 Kardiner, A., 56 Khan, M. M. R., 52–53, 143 King, P., xii Klein, G. S., 57 Klein, M., xvi, 4, 12, 14, 17, 33, 35–37, 41, 64, 67–68, 71–72, 78, 100, 125–126, 132, 134, 144, 158–160, 173, 188, 205, 242 Kohut, H., 28, 57–59, 116, 219 Koinonia, 243 Kolteniuk, K. M., 205 Korzybski, A., 200

Kreeger, L., 152 Kris, E., 64 Kuhn, T. S., 86 Laar, K.-A., 221, 224 Lacan, J., 27, 33, 41, 71, 93, 106, 110, 126, 154, 204 supposed subject of knowledge, 27 Laius, 71, 127 Langer, M., 14 Langs, R., 66 Lazzarini, M., 17 Lebensanshauung (Conception of Life), 220 Legorreta, G., 109 Lemer, C., xv Levenson, E. A., 141, 240 Levin, C., 81–82, 86, 88–90, 93, 110–111 Lewin, K., 18, 37, 97 Lewis, E., 15 linguistic relativity, xv literal (metonymic) reading, 106, 121 Little, M. I., 10, 65–67, 164–165, 175, 177–178, 184 Loewald, H. W., 42, 50–51, 64–65, 67, 94–95, 101 Loewenstein, R. M., 64 logic, 8, 10–12, 28, 50, 83–84, 93, 102, 119–121, 147, 160, 163, 215 Aristotelian, 11, 120 asymmetrical, 11–13, 120–121 bi-, 12–13, 120–121 classical, 13 formal, 50 fuzzy, 50 inner, 105 symmetrical, 11–13, 120–121 Lomas, P., 78, 172 Mahler, M. S., 39, 64, 67 Malan, D. H., 15 Martín, L. J., 132 Masson, J. M., 31, 34

INDEX

matrix, 17–19, 42, 70, 75, 94, 230–234 see also: despair(ing), unconscious(ness) bipersonal, 19 common, 13 Foulkes, 33 foundation, 241, 244 group, 19, 74, 94, 231 individual, 19 infant–mother, 42, 94 institutional, 19 of human life, 19 of mind, 69 of transference, 42, 242 psychic, 42 relational, 33, 42, 233 social, 19, 27, 231, 233 Matte-Blanco, I., 11–13, 68, 120 Meltzer, D., 11–12, 134, 159 mental processes, 5, 7, 9, 34, 43, 46, 53, 58–59, 69, 74, 76, 124, 183–185, 191, 195, 203, 216, 229–230 see also: unconscious(ness) bipersonal, 174 collective, 1–2, 7, 19, 60–61, 74, 229 group, 74 human, 117 individual, xvi, 1–2, 60–61, 76, 108 interpersonal, 202 phantasmal, 79 trans-personal, 34, 53, 60, 176 Merleau-Ponty, M., 184 Merriam-Webster, 89, 92, 160 mestization (mestizaje), 87, 223 metaphor(ic), 18, 46, 52, 67, 70–71, 73, 77, 97, 101, 117–118, 134–135, 146, 154, 159, 161, 172, 191–192, 217, 230–231, 241 compelling, 102 happy, 46 major, 62 meaning, 106 mythical, 218 reading, 121 theatrical, 17

287

metapsychology, 30–31, 33, 40, 43–45, 47, 50–54, 57–61, 74, 76 classical, 50, 52, 59 Freudian, 32–33, 40, 43, 47, 51, 53, 59, 68 method(ology), xiii, 9–10, 14, 35, 57, 86, 90, 96–97, 105, 138, 144, 182, 218 metonymy, 117 Mexican Psychoanalytic Association, xiii, 114, 146, 157 Middle Group, 65, 144 Milner, M., 65–67 mind, xi, xiii, xvii, 7, 11, 16–17, 25, 31, 34–35, 41–43, 45–46, 51–52, 55, 59–60, 64, 67–69, 73–76, 92, 95, 100, 125, 130, 145–146, 160, 176, 190, 195–196, 208, 216, 229–230, 240, 242 see also: unconscious(ness) collective, xvi, 6–7, 31, 229 group, 91, 228 individual, 32, 44 living, 46 meeting of, 89 primitive, 70 social, 76 theory of, 40 misunderstanding, 81, 90, 109, 135, 145, 148, 152, 217 Mitchell, S. A., 8, 40–42, 50–51, 58, 92, 174–177, 240 model, 14, 17, 22, 30, 43, 46, 68, 73, 132, 143–144, 154, 176, 182 analogical, 124 French, 89 metapsychological, 99 Newtonian, 45 non-linear, 231 relational, 127 Tavistock, 15 monad, 93, 111 community of, 93, 111 Montevechio, B., 40, 68–71, 100–101

288

INDEX

Moses, 133–134, 136 Muñoz Guillén, M., 132 mutual(ly) see also: transference analysis, 183, 185, 203, 240 antagonistic, xvii attachment, 138 attraction, 138 data generation, 211, 217, 240 determination, 43, 231–232 emotional flow, 102 enriching, 71–72 experience, 234 generation of psychoanalytic data, 175 influence, 86, 203, 221 interaction, 240 misunderstandings, 90, 95 projection, 102, 120 references, 88 reflections, 205, 214 relations, xvii, 11, 19, 99, 184, 205, 208, 216, 233, 242, 244 inter-, 100 specular fascination, 71 translation, 102, 108 trust, 127 understanding, 108, 145, 148, 154, 217 mutuality, 174–175 narcissistic, xv, 72, 75, 79, 99 see also: image defences, 194 image, 204 limitless, 63 omnipotence, 134 phase, 79 primary, 61, 64, 70, 93–94 satisfaction, 212 traits, 219 Narcissus, 68–73, 75, 79, 101–102, 159 National Autonomous University of Mexico, 208 Natterson, J. M., 89

network, xiv, 17–18, 230–232 New York Psychoanalytic Society, 2, 56 New York University, 41 Newton, I., 45 Nietzsche, F., 69, 101 nodal points, 18, 231 Northfield, 18 Nouveau Petit Robert, 90 object, 11, 16, 43, 65, 67, 70, 78, 86, 93–94, 96–98, 100, 117–119, 121, 125, 128–129, 135, 146, 150, 158, 165, 205, 232, 237 anchored, 53 bad, 49 external, 96, 144, 173 extrapsychic, 42 good, 170 ideal, 115–116, 123, 127, 129, 132, 136, 152 images, 201 internal, 23, 52, 96, 99–100, 123 known, 215 -less, 70 love, 99, 188–189 material, 121, 134–135 of enquiry, 217–218 original, 167 perception of, 11, 224 protective, 128 real, 129, 242 relations, xv, 40–42, 49–50, 52, 65, 75, 78, 96, 100, 128, 165, 186, 201, 205, 232 theory, xvi, 1, 30, 33, 50, 52, 59, 93, 173, 204 representation, 79 response, 57 seeking, 49–50 specific, 78 subject-, 35, 61–62, 78, 215 symbiotic, 186 transitional, 174 use, 129, 216

INDEX

objective/objectivity, 47, 77, 93, 110, 201, 205, 216, 220, 225 hate, 189 reflection, 202 oceanic feeling, xvi, 62–63, 70 Oedipal conflict, 49, 56 connotation, 238 distinctions and discriminations, 102 late-, 73 organisation, 72, 102 phantasy, 14 phase, 71–72 post-, 73, 101–102, 111 pre-, 102 situation, xv world, 72 Oedipus, 69–73, 101–102, 127 complex, 8, 65, 68, 127 level, 75 myth, 68–69 organisation, 101 phase, 79 Oedipus at Colonus, 72, 102 Oedipus Tyrannus (Oedipus Rex), 72, 102 Ogden, C. K., 77 Ogden, T. H., 71, 92, 95, 185, 232 onomatopoeia, 118 operative groups, 15–16, 23, 37, 151, 229 psychoanalysis, 23–24 schema, 84 Orange, D. M., 58 Ornston, D. G., 77 Padel, J., 4 paradigm alternative, 41 change, 41 collective, 229 concept, 88 individual, 40, 229, 244 methodological, 90

289

of cybernetics, 141 of human nature, 229 of life (of existence), 85–86 scientific, 86 social, 73 syncretic, 40, 61, 73, 75, 100 Pascal, B., 160 Pertegato, G. O., 36, 204 phantasy, 14–15, 17, 37, 149 see also: Oedipal, transference, unconscious(ness) primitive, 72 phase, 75 see also: development(al), Dionysus, Narcissus, Oedipal of management, 159 primitive, 8 simultaneous, 71 Trinitarian, 73 undifferentiated, 39, 42, 64, 78 phenomena, 53, 70, 76, 91, 99, 111, 141, 189, 199, 203–204 see also: countertransference apparent, 30 collective, 10, 27 cultural, 2 evolution of, 231 group, 95, 97, 228, 238 human, 30 individual, 238 institutional, 31 mass, 70 mental, 232 natural, 118 observed, 31 of interaction, 91 parapsychological, 70 personal inter-, 21 intra-, 116 trans-, 21, 43, 76 regressive, 199 secondary, 48 social, 6–7, 21, 26, 99, 108, 238 transitional, 175 phenomenology, 89, 93, 98

290

INDEX

phrónesis (prudence), 110, 160, 164, 242 Pica, P., xv Pichon-Rivière, E., 3, 11, 15–18, 23, 37, 43, 59, 66, 74, 84, 87–88, 96–100, 110, 126, 148, 151–152, 229–231, 241 Pines, M., xviii, 3, 5–7, 30, 32, 43, 55, 60, 71, 77, 85, 94, 154, 239 Piper, R., 29, 60, 152, 243 Pizer, S., 242 Plato, 161, 243 Ponsi, M., 167, 185, 205 Popper, K. R., 110, 150 position see also: depression autistic–contiguous, 72 glischro–karyc, 67, 72, 78, 100 paranoid–schizoid, 67, 100 process (passim) see also: development(al), unconscious(ness) analytic, 116, 154, 174, 176–177, 216–217, 239, 243 cognitive, 241 collective, 17, 60, 74, 76, 229 communication, 148 dialogic, 54, 218, 240 dynamic, 3, 24, 33, 97 group, 14, 60, 74, 102, 229–230 inner, 198 interactive, 241–242 internal, 53, 58 interpersonal, 76 interpretative, 167, 241 intrapersonal, 7, 21, 56, 217 intrapsychic, 21 living, xvii maturational, 124, 128 mental, xvi, 1–2, 5–7, 9–10, 19, 34, 43, 46, 53, 58–61, 69, 74, 76, 79, 108, 117, 120, 124, 174, 176, 182–185, 191, 202–203, 216, 229–230 mourning, 198 political, 29

primary, 8, 10–12, 120–121 psychic(al), 46, 91 psychodynamic, 17, 43, 60 psychological, 7, 44, 74, 77 relational, 58, 205, 218, 241–242 secondary, 10–12, 35, 53, 69, 75, 117, 120–121 social, 33, 58, 183 subjective, 173 therapeutic, xviii, 16, 41 thinking, xvii, 11, 13, 124, 195 transpersonal, 32, 35, 58–59 traumatogenic, xi projection, xi, 20, 64, 83, 99, 128, 148, 166, 169, 173, 186, 200–202 mutual, 102, 120 projective identification, 75, 205 proto-mental system, 70 psychic apparatus, 41, 46, 99 psychoanalytic device, 21, 199, 234 Puget, J., 116, 202–203 Quebec English Branch (QE), 109 Racker, H., 10, 178, 184, 195 Rado, S., 56 Ragen, T., 185, 203 Rank, O., 10 Rayner, E., 145 reality, xvi, 7, 12–13, 36, 42, 61, 64–65, 83, 85, 92, 94–95, 120–121, 129, 169, 177, 184, 220, 223–224, 229 see also: ego actual, 98 elusive, 121 external, 10, 224 human, 95 material, 7, 66, 110 ontological, 217 outer, 62, 94, 242 pragmatic, 61 principle, 53, 66 psychic, 5, 10, 123

INDEX

shared, 203 social, 59 spiritual, 121 testing, 95 textual, 105 reflection, 25, 45, 55, 63, 71–72, 81–82, 110, 115, 130, 141, 158, 174, 202, 205, 214, 220, 234, 241 deep, 213 fruitful, 153 group, 152, 155 harmless, 191 mutual, 205 painstaking, 14 shared, 26, 151, 234 systematic, 143 Reich, W., 35 religion, 8, 13, 35, 62, 84, 154, 162, 209–210, 218, 221–222, 244 Remus Araico, J., 22 Renik, O., 167, 185, 205 repression, 9–10, 28, 49 reversibility, 11, 102, 120, 231 revolutionary character, 29, 243 Richards, I. A., 77 Rickman, J., xii, 35 Ricoeur, P., 104, 161 Rivière, J., 71, 125 Roazen, P., 52 Robberechts, L., 93 Rodman, F., 159 Rodrigué, E., 14 Rolland, R., 62 Rothe, S., 32 Rycroft, C., 11, 53–57, 66, 78, 113, 172 Samuels, A., 218 Sayers, J., 66 Scharff, D. E., 143 Schöllberger, R., 60 Schorske, C. E., 6 Schwaber, E. A., 185 Schwartz, E. K., 14 Searles, H. F., 70, 184, 186, 198, 201

291

self, 36, 50, 52, 58, 66–67, 70, 75, 158, 166, 225, 241 -analysis, 4–5, 16, 188, 202 and Other differentiation, xvi assertive, 58 -cultivation, 115 -deception, 150 destructive, 48, 58, 196, 233 encompassing, 73, 102 -esteem, 166, 186–187 false, 50, 159, 165 fragmenting, 58 -generated, 135 -healing, 158 infant, 166 loving, 58 lusting, 58 private, 54 -psychology, 3, 41 public, 54 regulation, 42 -reliant, 228 -representation, 79 -sufficient, 93, 134 true, 50, 159, 165, 224 whole, 165 sexual, 127, 135, 137, 178, 197 see also: abuse conflicts, 8 element, 69 morality, 8 sexuality, 48–49, 139, 187 homo-, 155 Shah, I., 154 Shakespeare, W., 106, 136 Shooter, A. M. N., 15 signs, 10, 62, 64, 117 iconic, 10, 118–119 verbal, 10, 103, 117, 119 Slavson, S. R., 14 Smuts, J. C., 78 Société Psychanalytique de Montréal, 109 socio -analysis, 19–20, 230

292

INDEX

-cultural, 57 -linguistic, 87 -political, 24, 27, 90, 227 -psychological, 1 Socrates, 139 Sophocles, 72, 102 Spitz, R., 125 splitting, 32, 58, 79, 88, 119, 137, 166 spokesperson, 11, 17, 230–231 Steiner, G., 127 Stolorow, R. D., 58 Stone, L., 2 Strunk, W., 106 subject, 9–11, 65–67, 78, 83–84, 89, 91–94, 98–100, 118–119, 121, 144, 148, 232, 244 autonomous, 232 dependent, 128 individual, 93, 110–111 -less mental process, 216 -object, 61–62, 78, 216 differentiation, 35 relations, xiv subjective, 68, 77, 86, 88, 99, 117, 177, 205, 216, 234, 244 experience, 51, 76, 110, 175, 181 fact, 62 individual, 99, 102 inter, xi, 41, 43, 82, 88–91, 93, 99, 102, 240, 244 object, 125, 129 process, 173 Sullivan, H. S., 1, 56, 126, 141, 155 Sutherland, J. D., 53, 143 symbol(ism), 4, 11–12, 18, 47, 71, 86, 102, 105, 110, 118, 120–122, 125, 134–135, 137, 150, 161, 200–201, 211, 219, 242 syncretic paradigm, 40, 61, 73, 75, 100 syncretism, 68, 72, 101 teleology, 148–149, 153 theory, xii, 4, 9, 14, 18, 20–21, 33–35, 43–44, 50, 52–53, 55, 58, 60,

68–69, 74, 82, 104, 109, 115–116, 122–123, 137, 142–143, 150, 161, 163, 175, 200, 204, 220, 229 see also: Gestalt anthropological, 92 basic, 50 building, 46 classical, 48–50 clinical, 57 Communist, 55 construction of, 40 deterministic, 34, 50 drive, 59, 99–100 field, 18, 97 Freudian, 32, 44, 47, 49, 56 group-analytic, 32, 60 hermeneutical, 105 high-abstraction, 59 information, 141 instinct, 57, 100 Kleinian, 35 meta-, xi psychological, 76 object relations, xvi, 1, 30, 33, 50, 52, 59, 93, 173, 204 of communication, 1 of instinctual drives, 35, 47, 55, 59, 142 of interpretation, 157 of libido, 48–49, 56 of mental development, 56 of mind, 40, 43, 51, 59–60, 216 of neurosis, 4–5, 34, 48–49 of primary narcissism, 93 of primary undifferentiation, 110 of psychic groupness, 101 of psychoanalysis, 9 of therapeutic regression, 234 of wish fulfilment, 31 personal, 54 political, 6 pre-existent, 164 psychoanalytic, xv–xvi, 7, 19, 30–33, 35, 43, 47, 55, 96, 120, 160, 165, 216, 229–230

INDEX

relational, 57 scientific, 182 seduction, 5 traumatic, 5, 34–35 unified, 144 unitary, 33 therapy, 9, 15–16, 19, 233, 241 analytic, 20, 114–115 family, 152 group, 15, 16, 227, 234 psycho-, xii–xiii, 1, 15, 114, 126, 128, 158, 227, 234 session, 238 thinking, xvii–xviii, 12, 18–19, 24, 32, 35, 40, 66, 74, 83, 85, 89, 105, 109–110, 117, 119–120, 136, 146, 149–150, 154, 163, 182, 190, 220, 229–230 see also: unconscious(ness) abstract, 119 agent, 92 clinical, 59 critical, 136, 139 diverse, 148 dogmatic, 151 dream-, 11 everyday, 230 holistic, 18, 65 human, 12 iconic, 123 linear causal, 230 personal, 232 process of, xvii, 11, 13, 195 psychoanalytic, 90, 93, 150 reflective, 229 relational, 40, 93 teleological, 148 theoretical, 71 -through, 29 verbal, 120, 124 Thompson, C., 56 Thompson, S., 29, 60, 152, 243 training analysis, 21, 146 transference, 9–10, 42, 62, 67, 114, 139, 160, 176–177, 183, 188, 191,

293

197–199, 201, 207 see also: countertransference allegiance, 32 analysis, 178 enactments, 201 hostile, 178, 195 level, 75 matrix of, 42, 242 mutual, 219 negative, 195 neurosis, 160 phantasy, 14 phenomena, 20–21, 23, 65 positive, 178 psychosis, 65, 160 reaction, 197, 199 regressive, 201 translation, 15, 77, 82, 84, 86–88, 90, 103–104, 106, 108, 157, 223 interlinguistic, 103 intersemiotic, 103 intralinguistic, 103, 106–107 lost in, 91 mis-, 37 mutual, 102, 108 problem of, 83, 88–89 theorists of, 86 transpersonal, 61, 74, 76 defensive system, 166 dimensions, 20 phenomena, 43, 76, 232 process, 32, 35, 58–59 mental, 53, 60, 176 relationship, 41 symbolic structure, 110 trauma(tic), 28, 137, 203, 233 see also: unconscious(ness) childhood memories, 184 disposition, 194 effect, 203 event, 22 experience, 5, 48, 57, 202 genesis of neurosis, 184 impact, 52 process, xi

294

INDEX

rupture of idealisation, 123 situations, 62, 202 theory, 35 of neurosis, 5, 34 Tubert-Oklander, J., xii–xiv, 3, 7, 9–11, 19, 28, 30–32, 37, 43, 51–52, 59, 65, 67, 70–72, 74–77, 81, 83–84, 87–88, 94, 97, 101–102, 104, 108, 110–111, 114, 117, 120–121, 124, 132, 135, 148, 151–152, 161, 163, 167, 172, 174, 181–182, 185, 199, 201–205, 211, 216–217, 221, 223, 228–230, 232, 239, 241–242, 244 Turner, J. F., 66 unconscious(ness), 8–12, 19, 21–22, 24, 31, 51, 60, 76, 83–84, 89, 91–93, 107, 110, 115, 120, 137, 145, 147, 152, 154, 159, 163, 166–167, 182, 194, 196, 202–204, 216–218, 220, 231, 233, 241 see also: conscious(ness) anxiety, 117 aspects, 200, 217 assumptions, 59, 152, 220–221 behaviour, 26 collective, 36, 75, 89 communication, 65, 89, 95 contents, 201, 217 delusion, 65 desires, 91 determinants, 21, 218 dimension, 8, 10, 19, 149, 242 dynamic, 152 factor, 4 process, 24 encounter, 202 experience, 36 fantasy, 128, 183 feelings, 217 functioning, 137 group, 91, 230 individual, 231

interaction, 183, 203, 239 interchange, 10, 200 level, 11, 43 living experience, 12 matrix, 239 meaning, 146, 185, 205, 211 mental life, 100 process, 10, 120, 182 system, 120 mentation, 11 mind, xi, 89 negotiation, 14 object, 205 phantasy, 12, 14, 35, 71, 100, 134 group, 14, 17 phenomena, 95 process, 89, 110, 202, 239 project, 149 psychic formations, 90 reactions, 218 relationships, 89, 221 scenes, 203 social, xi, xviii, 5, 36, 75, 152, 176, 204, 239 telepathy, 88–89 thinking, 11, 200 trauma, 194 univocality, 105, 119, 121, 162 Varela, F. J., 216 Velasco, R., 163 Watts, A. W., 220 Watzlawick, P., 216, 231 Weinberg, H., xi, 13, 24, 36, 60, 74–75, 176, 239, 244 Weltanschauung (Conception of the World), 83, 220 Wender, L., 116, 185, 202–203 Weyman, A., 24 White, E. B., 106 Whorf, B. L., xv, 84, 86 Wikipedia, 122

INDEX

William Alanson White Institute, 41, 56, 141 Winnicott, D. W., xiii, 4, 39, 42, 47, 49–50, 52, 54, 57, 59, 65–66, 93–94, 105, 125–126, 128–129, 142–144, 150, 157–160, 163–179, 184, 189, 198, 211, 217, 224–225, 234, 240, 242 Gabrielle (“The Piggle”), 167–171, 173 Holding and Interpretation, 175–176

295

split-off male and female elements, 166–167 squiggle game, 174, 211, 217, 240 Winship, G., 32 Wolf, A., 14 Yogev, H., 43 Zepeda, G. R., 124 Zeus, 72, 161 Zito Lema, V., 15