Theory as Trauma





Theory as Trauma
A foray into applied psychoanalysis

Emily Kuriloff, Psy.D.
… We forget that all of us are in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by a train is waiting. (Levi, 1986, pp.50-51)
…The greatest enemy of Fascism is man. (Grossman, 1980, pp.195)

It was Tuesday, September 11, 2001, and the radio in the taxi had just reported that the second tower had fallen. I paid my fare and proceeded to the third floor of the William Alanson White Institute. The weekly clinical services meeting would welcome Gail Hornstein, author of a new biography (2000) of Frieda Fromm Reichmann, a founder of an American psychoanalytic tradition upon which the White Institute was built, and a refugee from Nazi Germany.
The conference room on the Upper West Side of New York was far from empty that morning as the minutes passed, and while a small number of participants chose not to stay, it was decided fairly quickly that the program would proceed. Hornstein broke the tension by noting that Fromm Reichmann herself had not cancelled a similar weekly meeting on the Monday night of December 8th, 1941, despite the fact that Roosevelt had just declared World War II. When she was asked at that gathering what she would do for the war effort, Fromm-Reichmann reportedly stated, "I know what I'm going to do. I'll do what I know best. I'll do psychotherapy" (p. 117)

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THEORY AS THICK DESCRIPTION[1]

DRAFT
THEORY AS THICK DESCRIPTION[1]

Robert Prince, Ph.D.

The question, How did the cataclysm that befell Europe during the Holocaust effect Psychoanalysis?—has been seriously neglected if not repressed. An attempt to consider this question leads immediately to trying to understand its avoidance, and implications of its avoidances for psychoanalytic institutions and ideas.

Psychoanalysis is a survivor of the Holocaust. Certainly we approach all survivors, even those who happen to be psychoanalysts, with care, partly because of our own dread and awe and their sensitivity acknowledging the impact of the external world on their lives and especially to attributions of damage. If insight amounts to shining a light on something that is, in Salberg's(2007)felicitous phrase, "hidden in plain sight." then Emily Kuriloff's decision to look at six psychoanalytic theorists in the context of their personal Holocaust experience is a stunning illumination. To use a concept from anthropology, Kuriloff "thickly" (Geertz,C.1973) describes psychoanalytic theory by adding this layer of historical context. The goal of my discussion is to provide further historical support and elaboration regarding the perspective that Kuriloff brings to psychoanalytic ideas.

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Winnicott and Lacan and the space between

At the Spring 2005 meeting of Division 39, Deborah Luepnitz presented a paper on the relationship between the work of Donald Winnicott and Jacques Lacan. It is entitled:

"Thinking in the Space Between Winnicott and Lacan: Toward a New Middle Group?" She has kindly agreed to post it in our Essays section .

It is an intriguing study of two thinkers each who have had a complex and controversial relationship to their respective communities. As Luepnitz shows, they also had an interesting relationship to one another both personally and conceptually. The idea that we might think and work in ways that draw from both of these innovative figures is a promising and challenging notion. To integrate disparate approaches without overly diluting them is an admirable goal.

We post it with the hope that the discussion invited by the paper can take place in part on this website.

To see the essay go to: Essays

And please send your comments and reactions.

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Winnicott and Lacan

Thinking in the Space Between Winnicott and Lacan: Towards a New Middle Group?*

by Deborah Anna Luepnitz


Following André Green (1986), the author maintains that the two most original psychoanalytic thinkers since Freud were Donald Winnicott and Jacques Lacan. Whereas in the past the two attracted almost non-overlapping audiences, a recent trend shows more analysts making use of both humanist Winnicott and post-humanist Lacan. This paper contrasts their views of the aims of treatment, as well as their organizing tropes of selfhood vs. subjectivity. Gregory Bateson's notion of 'double description' (following C. S. Peirce's construct of 'abductive reasoning') is invoked to theorize the bringing into provocative contact of two radically different paradigms. A clinical vignette is offered to demonstrate crucial concepts from both traditions in practice. The author asks if we are on the brink of a new independent tradition or 'new Middle Group' comparable to the one that emerged in 1940s' London. The benefits and risks of working in the potential space between Lacan and Winnicott are discussed.


'In the same river, we both step and do not step, we are and we are not.'
—Heraclitus, Fragment 49a

'…What we saw and grasped, that we leave behind; but what we did not see and did not grasp, that we bring.'
—Heraclitus, Fragment 56

Following an interview in 1990, British Middle Group analyst Marion Milner showed me her paintings from the 1930s and '40s. Pointing to a medium-sized canvas with two hens tearing each other apart—blood and feathers flying—Mrs. Milner said: 'I like to say it's Anna Freud and Melanie Klein fighting over psychoanalysis.'


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A More Natural Conversational Style?

In his pursuit of the laudable goals of more passion, risk-taking, and activity in psychoanalysis Irwin Hoffman, in his keynote address to the Division 39 Spring Meeting in Toronto, made the error of throwing out the baby with the bath water. He dismissed free association and analytic listening in favor of a more natural conversational style of interaction. In doing so Hoffman recommends giving up what is in truth the richest source of the very things he says he is after.

Freud quoted Schiller and his advice to young poets when he described the open attention to what comes to mind. Freud's recognition that he was introducing into therapeutic service a tool of thought used by poets and artists should remind us that rather than a dry and formal routine, the method of free association is rooted in an appreciation of surprise and risk-taking.

'Natural' conversation on the other hand, while apparently more relaxed and informal is heir to all the checks and limits that socialization supplies. Regard for the other's turn in a conversation, indeed for the other's comprehension and general feeling of well-being, place reasonable constraints on what we say in 'natural' conversations. Relaxing these constraints and opening up the possibilities of speech, i.e. the possibilities of what one can say and how one can say it, is a way to let more not less passion enter the discourse.

Hoffman is right that analysis can drag on in a long and lifeless manner. He is also right that it is the analyst's proper responsibility to seek and suggest ways to enliven the work and its effects. However, this is best done by a greater appreciation and attention to the often subtle passion of free association not replacing it with the more obvious expressions of feeling in 'natural' conversations.


--David Lichtenstein

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