The Truth About Freud's Technique. Michael Guy Thompson

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      In this regard, Thompson has done us a service in pointing out the affiliation—direct or not—of Michel de Montaigne with Freud. The sixteenth-century essayist had discovered that allowing his thoughts to run on would bring him to insight into motivations as unexpected to himself as to his readers, and at a long remove from his ostensible subject. We need not assume that Montaigne’s essays were spontaneous products of his free associations, knowing that they were subjected to his careful editing, but we remain astonished and delighted at this candor and conscientiousness in allowing so many unorthodox expressions to persist, and so doing to produce, as Didier Anzieu noted, “an awareness of universal mental processes.”

      Thompson tells us that some of the implications of Heidegger’s philosophy for psychoanalysis were developed by the late Hans Loewald, who was in his youth a student of Heidegger’s. Being reminded of that, I want to put in a word here in the defense of traditional psychoanalytic institutes and their training programs. It is true that the often excessive length of both training analyses and training programs may inhibit independent thought among young analysts, and that years of confinement to the teachings of a faculty limited in numbers, if not in talent, may narrow openness to new ideas. Nevertheless, I was a colleague of Loewald’s in one of those schools for over twenty years, where his influential presence attested to a latitude of psychoanalytic theory that has been not only permitted but encouraged. Anyone with an ear to hear with could discern that Loewald’s traditional psychoanalytic vocabulary, and his close following of Freud, delivered a message profoundly different from the mechanistic or “behavioral” prejudices of other formulations. In my career as a training and supervising psychoanalyst, I did not find that the sometimes oppressive structure of the training program kept down native ingenuity, spontaneity or personal responsiveness among candidates who possessed those qualities. Psychoanalysis, despite sometimes heavy-handed theorizing in the institutes, still liberates and enlightens. The ironist Karl Kraus wrote, with malice aforethought, that psychoanalysis cures the neuroses that it creates; we might paraphrase the aphorism to say that the psychoanalytic experience ought to make us impatient with the theories supposed to explain it.

      Michael Thompson has earned our thanks in producing a book that qualifies as what Heidegger called a “Lichtung,” that is, a “clearing” in the woods that opens the way for further exploration.

      STANLEY A. LEAVY, M.D.

      New Haven, Connecticut

Introduction

      We speak of psychoanalytic “schools” in a rough and ready way. In the early days its schools were identified with the cities where they were located. Over time, some of Freud’s followers introduced ideas that competed with his (Adler, Jung, Rank, Klein). Subsequently, analytic schools became identified with the work of specific analysts and only vaguely with the city where they resided. Yet, even now psychoanalysis is essentially identified with Freud. How far can analysts stray from the Master and still call themselves a “psychoanalyst”?

      Increasingly, analytic schools are recognizable in the ways that they disagree with Freud. Some schools still emulate him (New York, Vienna) and others are critical (Kleinian, Kohutian). The vast array of schools and the respective theories they promote are so complicated that one’s position in relation to the others isn’t so easy to determine. For example, one needs to distinguish between the American Freudians, on the one hand, and the French, on the other; or between the British object relationists and the Latin Americans. There is so much to choose from, one envisions the possibility of “menus” comprised of endless variations and nuance, selecting what one likes and rejecting the rest: a little bit of this, a dash of that, a spoonful of the other.

      When we invoke Freud, to which Freud do we refer? We talk about “the Freudians” as though they’re apart from the rest; as though they agree amongst themselves; as though we could spot one if we saw one. We typically say there isn’t one Freud, but many. There’s the Freud of Hartmann and Arlow and Brenner, and the Freud of Rappaport, Gill, and Schafer. And then there’s the Freud of George Klein, Hans Loewald, and Stan Leavy. And those are only some of the Americans. What about the Freud of Jones, Strachey, and Freud’s own daughter? And that of Lacan, Mannoni (Octave), or Brown (Norman O.)? Or the Freud of Laing, Binswanger, and Sartre? Then there’s Freud himself and his output: all twenty-three volumes. Who has read them all? There’s the Freud of the structural model, which many believe is the “best,” and the Freud of the “technical papers,” who analyzed Dora and the Rat Man. The earlier Freud was wild and in his prime, humanistic and personal. He made all the “mistakes.” He talked—and acted—like an outlaw, a “conquistador of the mind.”

      Later he gave us the “death drive,” a theory about life’s enigma, existential to the core. It’s been rejected by almost every one of the Freudians I just mentioned. In fact, this brief inventory of Freud’s interpreters shows how extensively his influence has transcended the selfenclosed boundaries of conventional analytic institutions. His reach is legion. The impact is still too immediate, too close to our age to assess. It’s too much to take in. When we speak of the school of Freud, we speak of a “university”—a universe even—of possibilities. He is the source of a point of view so basic to our era and culture that we grasp at the wind to contain it. How does one go about separating it from the other schools of analysis when they, in turn, are a part of it?

      Will the real Freud please stand up? Is there a true Freud? If so, is he good or rotten? Of all the Freuds that are said to exist, is there an essential Freud that they all share in common? Or was Freud hopelessly eclectic, a tinkerer whose thoughts were too restless to pin down? The fact is, there was only one Freud. He was the man who wrote all those works, who lived his life and gave us psychoanalysis. We meet him on every page that we read. He was, and still is, just human. We love him—and hate him—for the person he was. We talk about the man and his ideas. We aspire to separate the two. Surely, if we want to understand his ideas we should come to terms with the man.

      The Freud I want to discuss is no stranger. We all know him. You accept him or reject him for who he is, but who he is isn’t in dispute. He’s the one, with increasing frequency, we disparage and attack. We say he was too personal with his patients. He was “excessively involved” and out of control. He never understood countertransference—a concept he invented. This was the Freud who, for many, was too real. Yet, this is the same Freud we continue to hold up as the primogenitor—in fact, the epitome—of “classical” technique, a term whose implied definition is as far from his behavior as the moon. What explains this contradiction? How can the same man embody the two views we have of him: the exemplar of neutrality, on the one hand, and the most brazen psychoanalyst ever, on the other?

      The Freud I am going to discuss in these pages may come as a shock to those who have reduced him to the epitome of the aloof, controlled, inscrutable depth behind a mask of implacability; the man who introduced neutrality so he could keep his thoughts to himself. Freud never acted that way and we know it. They say that Freud should have been neutral but wasn’t. Freud was involved. There’s no denying that. His views are classical, but not because they’re recognizable in the style of analysis that has evolved since his death. His views are classical because they’re his. There’s so much confusion about this issue that it is now impossible to depict Freud’s clinical behavior as at all “classical.” For this reason I prefer to call it existential. In this book I explain why.

      About this issue—Freud’s classical status and his alleged betrayal of it—there are some who claim there are two Freuds: the one who wrote the technical papers (between 1911 and 1915), where the technique of classical analysis was established, and the Freud of his famous cases (Dora, the Rat Man, the Wolf Man), the clinician we accuse of disregarding his recommendations and who failed to apply them correctly. This is a picture of a Freud who said one thing and did another, who failed to practice what he preached. Yet, when I read Freud I see no contradiction. СКАЧАТЬ