Division Review Issue #30 Winter 2023

DIVISION A QUARTERLY PSYCHOANALYTIC FORUM

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AN ALY TIC

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FIELD

LIKE A FUGITIVE LOVE: | MATHES EMPIRICALLY-SUPPORTED PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY | GOTTDIENER

REMINISCENCE Bion’s IPTAR Lectures | FRIED

SPECIAL SEC TION LAPLANCHEAN DIALOGUES WITH HÉLÈNE TESSIER | BATISTA-THOMAS

CAROLINE LEFEVRE

PHOTO G R A PH Y

Official publication of Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology, Division 39, American Psychological Association

EDITOR

Loren Dent SENIOR EDITORS

Steven David Axelrod, J. Todd Dean, William Fried, William MacGillivray, Marian Margulies, Bettina Mathes, Manya Steinkoler

CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

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Bettina Mathes

Like a Fugitive Love

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William Gottdiener

A Psychoanalyst’s Experience as a Patient in an EmpiricallySupported Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Gemma Marangoni Ainslie, Ricardo Ainslie, Christina Biedermann, Chris Bonovitz, Steven Botticelli, Ghislaine Boulanger, Patricia Gherovici, Peter Goldberg, Adrienne Harris, Elliott Jurist, Jane Kupersmidt, Paola Mieli, Donald Moss, Ronald Naso, Donna Orange, Robert Prince, Allan Schore, Robert Stolorow, Nina Thomas, Usha Tummala, Jamieson Webster, Lynne Zeavin BOOK REVIEW EDITOR

Anna Fishzon

FOUNDING EDITOR

David Lichtenstein

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

Caroline LeFevrel

REMINISCENCE

DESIGN BY

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William Fried

Hannah Alderfer, HHA design, NYC

Recollections of Bion’s IPTAR Lectures

DIVISION | REVIEW a quarterly psychoanalytic forum published by the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association, 2615 Amesbury Road, Winston-Salem, NC 27103.

SPECIAL SECTION 13

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Bryan Batista-Thomas

Laplanchean Dialogues with Hélène Tessier

interviewer

First Dialogue

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Photography by Caroline LeFevre www.carolinemlefevre.com

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Like a Fugitive Love

Everybody who has been in psychoanalysis (or psychoanalytic psychotherapy) knows something about the transformative power of projection. Patients do it, therapists Atmospheres of Projection: Environmentality in Art and Screen Media

By Giuliana Bruno Chicago University Press, 2022, 200 pages, $31.96 do it. Projective identification, transference, screen memories, mirror stage, dream screen, etc. – back and forth; all the time.

Everybody who has been doing psychoanalysis also knows something about the healing power of revising one’s vocabulary: finding new descriptions for past experiences, breathing new life into old words and concepts. Again, this is as true for the analyst as it for the so called patient. However, when it comes to projective processes therapists are, generally speaking, rather disinclined, if not averse to renovating their vocabulary; a vocabulary that is grounded in the discourse of mechanical reproduction, relying on the cinema as model to describe and explain psychic processes. It is precisely this 20ieth century cinematic orientation, I believe, that makes it difficult for the contemporary analyst to adjust their professional stance in a digital world replete with screens and projective environments that have moved far beyond the

Bettina MATHES

cinematic apparatus. Not surprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic has left many therapists unprepared to relate to screens in nondefensive ways. Reports from the world of tele-therapy usually focus on loss, on what doesn’t work and isn’t possible. There’s disappointment, overwhelm, frustration, resentment; there’s anger at the screens we now work on a lot of the time. Screens are experienced as obstacles to be overcome, preempting ‘real’ connection and ‘real’ intimacy; the implicit assumption being that reality happens when the therapist has potentially first-hand access to the physical body of the patient.1 While most therapists seem to feel helpless in front of their screens, some have somewhat angrily disqualified screen-analysis as “a degraded sensory experience”, where corporeality is lost and voices are disembodied entities; as “relationship lite”, and as “working with a condom on”2 (unprotected sex as the model for what goes on in therapy?). In a recent article entitled “The derangement of the atmospheric unconscious” working on screens is presented as a consequence of the “hazy, deranged ambience of modernity”.3 I think as clinicians we can do better than this. I believe that we can come up with a more realistic and benign vocabulary of what screen relations are and can be. If anything, the psychoanalytic setting has always been a form of projective reality.

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So, in the spirit of updating (and uplifting) our projective vocabulary, I want to begin this review essay with a number of psychoanalytically inflected terms: ‘projective imagination’, ‘atmospheric corporeality’, ‘becoming screen’, ’relational transit’, ‘projective empathy’, ’environmentality’. Needless to say, none of these terms can be found in a psychoanalytic dictionary. Whereas they feature prominently in Giuliana Bruno’s absorbing and, frankly, quite unforgettable new book Atmospheres of Projection: Environmentality in Art and Screen Media—conceived and written before the Covid pandemic.

As the title suggests, the book re-configures projection in terms of atmosphere and environmentality as a spatial rather than visual phenomenon. Not satisfied with the narrow, because one-directional and somewhat negative view of projection as the expulsion of unwanted feeling states, Bruno goes deep into history, philosophy, science and (contemporary) art to re-think and rejuvenate ‘projection’ by reconnecting it to its origins in alchemy, magnetism, cartography, and architecture. What she brings back from her archeological expedition is a dynamic, wideranging and most of all humane re-description of projective practices. Projection, Bruno shows, is a supreme technique to overcome walls, borders and defensiveness.

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Bruno treads lightly. She wonders, explores, and probes; she demonstrates, suggests and indicates – and occasionally she’s an advocate. But she refuses to carve out sharp edged definitions, as this would, I think, contradict the fluid and fugitive quality of projective atmospheres she wants us to recognize. Here’s three out of many variations of what projection might be(come): “Projection is about being immersed in an environment of screening and absorbed in an atmosphere beyond representation. A sympathetic exchange […] which forms a seam between the animate viewer and the inanimate screen” (p. 102).

“As this book aims to demonstrate, projection is a space of potentiality in which many forms of mediation and interaction are made possible in an atmosphere that is itself a transitory site, an intermediate space – a moving between internal and external, subjective and objective, private and public.” (p. 7).

“A projective act can […] become a vital form of commonality, and so in speaking of atmospheres of projection I hope also to launch a conversation on forms of communing, communality, and collective practices.” (p.13) Bruno urges us to think of projection as a creative force, a vehicle of communication and at the same time, and importantly, as an atmosphere, something fleeting that can be felt, that envelops and transforms, acts on bodies and objects. Seen this way, projection is the opposite of lost corporeality and disconnect. Rather, it is a relational possibility, and a forward looking process by which we can make contact with what surrounds us in order to imagine a kinder, more open future.

Bruno’s term to describe this creative potential is “projective imagination”.

Taking contemporary psychoanalytic conceptualizations of projection as one point of departure, Bruno’s focus is not on individual acts of projection but on projection as a response to what is ‘in the air’. When she wonders what would happen if “we imagined that relationality, not individuality, comes first, and reformulated the idea of projection accordingly” (p.63), Bruno is reminding psychoanalysts that we do indeed have quite a bit to draw on. To name just three: there’s Melanie Klein’s often misunderstood notion of projective identification, there’s Winnicott’s ideas of the mother’s face as mirror, the baby’s necessary illusory capacity directed at the breast, and the role of the environment mother; there’s, of course, Jessica Benjamin’s concept of ‘The Third’. However, as Atmospheres of Projection makes exceedingly clear, psychoanalysis has

not taken enough interest in linking projection to creativity and environmental transformation. For example, C.G. Jung’s research into the alchemy of projection as a transmutation of substance has been marginalized, if not excluded from psychoanalytic discourse; and in some psychoanalytic circles the mere idea that ‘projective identification’ might be a useful concept to understand intersubjectivity will immediately shut down the conversation.

This defensiveness is, I think, at the heart of many psychoanalyst’s fraught relationship with screens.

Projection, Bruno argues, begins when an object can be used as an active surface, when the object becomes a screen, as it were.

“Becoming screen” is a relational process in which a surface becomes enlivened, endowed with receptivity and responsiveness (p.74–78).

Thus, for Bruno a screen is neither an obstacle nor a dead object but a (moving) surfacespace that elicits a projective response, and facilitates transformation. Screens can be hard or soft, solid or hazy, flat or curved, impermeable or porous, still or moving. They can act as threshold, door, window, partition, and filter. Clouds, air, steam, smoke, weather, and landscapes have historically lent themselves to “becoming screen”. Screens bring up questions of transparency and privacy, edges and boundaries, they test the relationship between plane and circumference. Digital screens are especially capable of playing with frame and framing due to their capacity to have multiple windows open at the same time.

Thinking of projection as a medium for imagination opens up a world of possibilities.

One of the most fascinating (and useful) ideas Bruno introduces is “projective empathy”, with empathy (Einfühlung) being understood as a “spirit that moves in space” (p.81), as something that not only occurs between individuals but “especially between persons and (art) objects” (p.79). Here, empathy is a kind of casting oneself forward into the material environment in an effort to resonate with it.

It is “a form of ‘transport’: a psychic passage set in motion not simply with physical beings but also with material space, including such things as the surface of the earth, settings and locales, forms and formations, tints and tones, hues and shapes” (p.80).

At this point it becomes clear that projection is intimately bound up with what we call ‘atmosphere’, ‘Stimmung’ (attunement, tonality, literally ‘voice-ing’) and ‘ambiance’.

Words and concepts with a long history themselves. Related to projective empathy insofar as they conceptualize the material and psychic container we call the environment.

Stimmung, for instance, implies the animation of the inanimate, “a form of communicating that is diffuse, suggestive, pervasive and, at the limit, so infectious as to be contagious” (p.90), “the atmosphere that one breathes in, 5

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the milieu in which one is incorporated, the sense of opening to others in empathy, and hence also the medium that connects the subject with the environment” (p.91). In a sense, ‘becoming screen’, ‘projective empathy’ and ‘Stimmung’ are different terms for atmosphere, which Bruno relates to ambiance and milieu, and describes as a vaporous and luminous immersive environment in which “boundaries between bodies, distinctions between bodies and matters, human and nonhuman, can be not only negotiated but crossed” (p.50). An atmosphere is vital, fluid, mixed; like a mood it can be comforting, volatile, infectious, disturbing and moving – all at once.

Katherine Joyce’s (Ingrid Bergman’s) famously transformative visit to the hot volcanic springs near Naples in Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia (discussed in Bruno’s Atlas of Emotion4) is a mesmerizing filmic visualization of an atmosphere of projection.

Combining projection and atmosphere Bruno arrives at “environmentality” – yet another angle from which the author approaches projection as a medium of transformation and relationality. This evocative term describes an imaginative force that has the ability to transform matter aesthetically, experientially and psychically. Environmentality reminds us that our mind is inside and outside at the same time, impactful and receptive.

In Part Two of Atmospheres of Projection (chapters 5–11) Bruno turns to contemporary art where, as she argues convincingly, we are given an opportunity to make contact with the atmospheric forces of projection. How? In their art artists expose the mechanisms of atmospheric projection and becoming-screen.

I don’t have the space here to discuss Bruno’s brilliant interpretations of contemporary artists and their installations. The chapters on Cristina Iglesias and Giorgio Andreotta Calò alone make the book worth owning. The final chapter is an homage to nebularity. Haze, mist, fog, smoke, clouds and weather share the ability to overcome borders, to create and shift atmospheres, to bring about transformation. At the same time, the nebulous is “a necessary condition for the act of perception”, which it also perturbs. “I would go so far,” Bruno writes, “as to claim that haze is the manifestation of perception itself, understood as a movement in time and space—a phenomenal ‘perturbation’” (p.277). Here, it seems to me, Bruno makes the implicit claim that absolute transparency, favored by certain architectural firms and urban planners, is a form of aesthetic totalitarianism.

Where the first part of the book takes us on a journey to several archaeological sites, Part Two introduces a more lyrical register.

I found myself moved (sometimes to tears), carried by the interplay of Bruno’s intimate knowledge of contemporary art and the superb photographic reproductions of the

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art works she discusses. Almost as if Bruno had given herself permission to become atmospheric and environmental - and to convey to the reader that, perhaps, projection and atmosphere are two words for …love.

Atmospheres of Projection is an admirable accomplishment. Bruno presents to us a kinder, fonder, more open-minded and more relational way of speaking about projective processes and screen environments - processes and environments whose very qualities are ’up in the air’, more affective than verbal. As psychoanalysts and psychotherapists we have much to learn from Bruno’s tender and fearless scholarship. Can we reconsider our defensive relationship with projective screens?

Might we become aware of our very own projective desires and fears? Will we re-formulate what we mean by projection, screen, environment? Or, will we turn psychoanalysis into an analog religion?

I cannot end without mentioning that as a material object Atmospheres of Projection is itself a handsome projective environment.

Divided into 11 chapters this square book contains numerous high quality still photographs of contemporary art installations discussed in the book. The cover, featuring a beautiful still photograph of Agnes Varda’s stunning installation ‘Bord de Mer’, is pleasing to the touch and the eye. Even though the book is divided into two parts, the boundary between the two sections is fluid so that readers may open the book at a random page and feel held by what they’re given. There’s none of the annoying

‘I’ll prove you wrong’-argument so commonly found in academic books in the humanities.

Bruno is genuinely curious how far into the ‘atmosphere’ she’ll be able to take projection and screening …and not lose touch with the reader. In fact, Atmospheres of Projection is like a space ship taking us on a journey through the expansive universe of the arts of projection and screening. We’re voyagers, never voyeurs.

Last not least, Atmospheres of Projection is a gentle yet insistent objection to the silently agreed upon assumption (at least among psychoanalysts) that the psychoanalytic vocabulary offers useful ways to think and speak about the arts (is indeed as as old as psychoanalysis itself ), whereas the vocabulary of the arts has little of substance to offer to the practice of psychoanalysis. How wrong we are. Bruno’s book makes it abundantly clear that as psychoanalysts we must apply ourselves to the obvious fact that the visual arts have a far more sophisticated vocabulary of projection, screens, transferences, and ambiance than psychoanalysis does. Projection is “like a love that is fugitive” (30), Bruno writes almost in passing; and psychoanalysis, I want to add, began as a project to trace and understand fugitive love. Freud, it seems to me, was on to something beyond himself and his time when he set out to analyze Wilhelm Jensen’s novella Gradiva: a Pompeiian Fantasy.

For Freud, the question was: is Gradiva a fantasy, a ghost, a real person, a delusional projection? Giuliana Bruno asks us to step forward further in order to “redefine projection

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as the relational transmission, transfer, and transport that creates and transforms an atmosphere in psychic terms” (p.50) and, ultimately, to re-engage with this fugitive love making use of the empathetic environment of screen media, “where transparency flirts with opacity” (p.206).

REFERENCES Adleman, D. / Vanderwees, Ch. (2020): “Covid’s metamorphoses: the derangement of the atmospheric unconscious,” in: The European Journal of Psychoanalysis https:// www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/articles/covids-metamorphoses-the-derangement-of-the-atmospheric-unconscious/ accessed June 2023.

Bruno, Giuliana (2018): Atlas of Emotion. Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film, Verso.

Ehrlich, Lena Theodorou (2019), Teleanalysis: slippery slope or rich opportunity,” in JAPA vol. 67/2, pp.249–279.

DOI: 10.1177/0003065119847170.

Freud, Sigmund (1907 / 1959): Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva, in SE, vol 9, pp. 1–96. The Hogarth Press.

Harris, A, / Boyle, F. / Bruse, W. / Liner, D. / Caputo, L. (2020): “Working in the reverberation of après-coup: three ecologies”, in: The European Journal of Psychoanalysis https:// www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/articles/working-in-the-reverberation-of-apres-coup-three-ecologies/ accessed June 2023.

Leutrum, Matthias (2022: “The analyst as user illusion: therapy in the time of COVID-19,” in: Journal of Analytical Psychology. 67 / 1, pp.170–182.

Sayers, Janet (2021): “Online psychotherapy: transference and countertransference issues,” in: British Journal of Psychotherapy, vol. 37/2, pp. 1–11, open access DOI: 10.1111/ bjp.12624, accessed June 2023.

ENDNOTES 1. For recent interventions see for example Harris, et al.

2020, Sayers 2021, Leutrum 2022. Ehrlich 2019 offers a persuasive, clinically informed analysis of common objections to tele-analysis.

2. The remark is mentioned as a comment from a colleague in an opinion article by Lori Gottlieb (2020), and has since been cited widely.

3. Adleman, D. / Vanderwees, Ch. (2020), online publication.

4. Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion. Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film, Verso 2018.

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A Psychoanalyst’s Experience as a Patient in an EmpiricallySupported Psychodynamic Psychotherapy William GOTTDIENER

There is a growing body of empirical research, mostly in the form of randomized controlled clinical trials, that supports the efficacy and effectiveness of psychoanalytic treatments (Leichsenring & Klein, 2014; Shedler, 2010). The now decades long turn to testing the efficacy and effectiveness of psychoanalytic treatments via empirical research methods has been controversial in some quarters within the psychoanalytic community because some people believe that clinical case studies are the best method to advance psychoanalysis (Hoffman, 2009). Arguments for the case study approach are that it supports the idiosyncrasy of each treatment, the humanity of the experience, and the focus on the individual. Arguments against empirical research are that it proscribes and prescribes treatment and therapeutic technique, eliminating the clinician’s freedom and creativity to make new clinical and theoretical discoveries and to offer the best treatment for the individual person who is before them.

Are empirical research and the art and freedom of the clinician that is found in the case study method at odds? Can they co-exist or even be complementary? I am a practicing psychoanalyst and psychoanalytic researcher who has made contributions to the science of psychoanalytic treatments (Gottdiener, 2006; Gottdiener & Suh, 2015) and I am someone who has argued that the case study and empirical research are complementary and not mutually exclusive (Gottdiener & Suh, 2012). I decided to go a step further by going through an empirically-supported psychodynamic treatment, rather than solely rely on making academic arguments, when I recently decided to return to psychotherapy to continue to work on some personal problems. I had several questions about what I might experience in an empirically-supported psychodynamic treatment. Would my therapy follow a lockstep formula based on a treatment manual, lack creativity, humanity, and not offer me anything idiosyncratic that would tailor the treatment to me? Would the treatment be effective? How would it compare with my previous personal and training analyses?

My Experiences as a Patient in Psychoanalysis I have been in psychoanalysis twice. Each was a classical analysis where I laid down on the couch and was seen between four to five times weekly. My first analysis began when I was 20 and ended when I was 30. My second began when I was 35 and ended when I was 39. The first analysis was a personal analysis and the second was a training analysis. I

entered each treatment with similar problems and similar goals. Both of my analysts were Caucasian males. They were psychiatrists trained at a classical analytic institute with a focus on ego psychology.

My psychoanalyses helped me accomplish many of the therapeutic goals I had. I increased my capacity for intimacy, had better relationships, and was more successful academically and professionally. Importantly, both of my psychoanalyses helped me to engage in self-analysis and that helped me to better understand myself and continue to grow personally and professionally during and following each treatment. My self-analyses also helped me to realize the limitations of each analysis and to appreciate what I liked and disliked about each treatment and the treatment results.

Upon reflection, I found classical psychoanalysis was limited in its attention to my emotions, especially as my feelings appeared in sessions in the transference. Although I was outwardly successful in my professional and personal life, I continued to live with attenuated forms of the same problems that originally brought me to my first analysis. I concluded that my continued problems were due to my difficulty using free-association. I realized it was a technique that I was able to use with limited success, in part, because it was too cognitively focused and did not focus on emotions and how I defended against them. Whenever I was silent on the couch my analysts would ask me “What are you thinking?” and never “What are you feeling?” As a result of the cognitive focus of free association, I never became fully consciously aware of the transference relationship with either of my analysts and, therefore, never experienced a resolution of those transference dynamics and the defenses that helped to maintain them. And, as a result, I was unable to effectively see how transference lived in my relationships outside of my analyses and never resolved the transferences in those relationships.

I wanted to return to treatment after finishing my training analysis, but was hesitant to return to formal psychoanalysis because I was concerned that an analyst would use free association again and that it would have too much of a cognitive focus. As noted above, I did a lot of self-analysis and read a lot about different forms of psychodynamic therapies. Several forms impressed me: The psychodynamic approach developed

by David Shapiro (Shapiro, 1989, 2000), the Supportive-Expressive Therapy approach developed by Lester Luborsky (Book, 1998; Leichsenring & Leibing, 2007; Luborsky, 1984) and the Intensive Short-Term 7

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Dynamic Psychotherapy developed by Habib Davanloo (Abbass et al., 2012; Coughlin Della Selva, 2004; Coughlin, 2017; Davanloo, 1992). I read and conducted self-analysis for nearly 14 years, influenced by my analyses and by my readings, before deciding that my self-analysis and reading were also limited in their effectiveness. I wanted to resolve my problems and I decided that I needed an emotion-focused experiential psychodynamic therapy and chose to begin treatment using ISTDP, which is an empirically-supported emotion-focused experiential psychodynamic treatment (Abbass et al., 2012; Coughlin Della Selva, 2004; Coughlin, 2017).

My Experience as a Patient in ISTDP Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) begins with a 90 minute to four-hour initial session (Coughlin Della Selva, 2004). The long duration of the first session serves several aims. First, it provides the patient and therapist with a trial therapy that assesses the patient’s psychopathology. Second, it helps both people to determine if ISTDP is the appropriate treatment for the patient’s problems by giving the patient and therapist an experience of a session and an opportunity to begin resolving the problems the patient has come to address. Third, the long session helps to establish all three components of the therapeutic alliance: the therapeutic goal(s), the therapeutic tasks, and the positive emotional bond between therapist and patient (Bordin, 1979). Fourth, the long session aims to help patients to begin to experience and resolve the complexities of the transference. This is done by trying to help patients focus on their feelings and the defenses against those feelings, especially as they arise toward the therapist. A considerable body of research shows that ISTDP benefits people with a wide range of problems and that people often make significant progress during the first session because the techniques “unlock” the unconscious (Abbass et al., 2012; Coughlin, 2017). In this model, feelings are the royal road to the unconscious. The “short-term” in ISTDP is a misnomer in that the treatment is not artificially short and limited to a specific duration. It is usually practiced once weekly, but in an open-ended manner with research showing that most patients find resolution to their problems after approximately six months of therapy while others might take as long as several years (Abbass, 2002).

Feelings in the Transference One of the differences in my experience of psychoanalysis compared with ISTDP is

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that while I was in psychoanalysis, I was never able to directly address my anger toward others, especially people I love and like, and I did not address my guilt and shame over that anger. Instead, I frequently used defenses to avoid fully being aware of my anger and expressing it directly.

Addressing my anger and the guilt and shame I experienced over it in my ISTDP treatment, helped create intimacy in the therapeutic relationship and increase my capacity for intimacy. My therapist doggedly pursued my feelings that I felt toward her, including anger, in the first session. She pursued my feelings toward her compassionately and addressed my defenses against those feelings in real-time as they occurred, which I experienced as a life-line and a love-line. My experience in classical psychoanalysis laying on the couch, while my analysts gave me the freedom to free associate, did not help me address my defenses against experiencing and expressing my feelings. I needed a therapist who could actively and consistently engage my silent withdrawal and what was happening inside me emotionally at the moment, which happened rarely. In this way, classical analysis became a cognitively-focused intellectualized and overly long process for me that caused me to continue to have painful problems after completing both of my psychoanalyses.

Treatment Outcome and Termination As mentioned above, my previous analyses had lasted 10 and four plus years, respectively. My ISTDP therapy lasted two years, which is on the longer side for ISTDP. Also, as noted, although my psychoanalyses helped me, I was left with attenuated versions of the same problems at the end of each treatment and I still had considerable difficulty identifying, experiencing, and expressing my feelings at the end of those analyses. I no longer had the same problems at the end of my ISTDP therapy and, in particular, I was much better able to be in touch with my feelings and express them to others.

Despite the long analyses I had previously, neither of those treatments addressed the complex feelings I had toward my analysts, including when I terminated those treatments. I rarely expressed my feelings towards my analysts—any feelings. The inhibitions I experienced in daily life were ever present in the transferential relationships with my analysts, but they were not addressed fully in my analyses. I could not express anger, love, or grief toward them when finishing my analyses because those feelings had not come up previously to be expressed to them and I never analyzed the difficulty I had expressing my feelings toward them. My complex feelings toward my ISTDP therapist were addressed in the first session and continued

to be revisited, especially during termination.

Termination also addressed what I had accomplished and what remained to be worked on via self-analysis, something which also occurred in my previous analyses.

Conclusions It is possible to think of this essay as a form of comparative psychoanalysis with an n of 1 sample (Tuckett, 2008). I clearly benefitted from my experiences of classical psychoanalysis and from my ISTDP therapy. Classical psychoanalysis and ISTDP are grounded in ego psychological conflict theory (Abbass, 2002; Brenner, 1982; Coughlin Della Selva, 2004). Both are supposed to focus on transference and defense analysis, but in my experience, my ISTDP therapy did a better job of it than my classical analyses. Of course, my ISTDP treatment benefited from my previous experiences of classical analyses, but ISTDP was a different type of therapy experience and one that I ultimately valued more because of its focus on my feelings in the transference.

My ISTDP treatment was on the longer side, which gave me a chance to work through my problems and resolve the transference conflicts that arose in it. My current way of practicing combines aspects of classical analysis with a focus on transference conflicts that manifest in a wish-fear manner and a focus on conflicts between defense and feelings. I use free-association, but instead of asking what people are thinking, I usually ask them what they are feeling and what they are feeling toward me (Frederickson, 2013).

Asking people about their feelings will ultimately also get them to discuss what they are thinking. Asking people about their thoughts tends to support intellectualization and isolation of affect, defenses that lead people to have an intellectual understanding of their problems, but that do little to stimulate internal and behavioral change.

The Case Study and Empirical Research Revisited I return to the questions that began this essay: Would my therapist follow a lockstep formula based on a treatment manual, lacking in creativity, humanity, and anything idiosyncratic that would be tailored to me? No. My ISTDP therapist did not follow a treatment manual. She was creative and discussed a variety of ways to help me get in touch with my feelings. She valued my humanity and tailored the treatment to meet my needs.

Would the treatment be effective? Yes. The treatment was effective. I became able to identify, experience, and express my feelings toward others. This enhanced my professional life: I was a better teacher, supervisor, clinician, and scientist. Being more emotionally 8

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aware and expressive especially enhanced my personal life, by enabling me to be able to create greater intimacy in my relationships.

These effects have lasted for over two years since the completion of my treatment.

How would ISTDP compare with my previous personal and training analyses?

My ISTDP treatment was shorter, less frequent, face-to-face, more emotional, more intimate, and more immediately focused on transference analysis than my classical psychoanalyses.

This essay was a personal case study of me and my experience in an empirically-supported psychodynamic treatment. I hope that I have shown that psychoanalysis continues to benefit from case studies and empirical research and that psychoanalysts can benefit from both too.

REFERENCES Abbass, A. (2002). Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy in a Private Psychiatric Office: Clinical and Cost-Effectiveness. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 56(2), 225–232.

Abbass, A., Town, J., & Driessen, E. (2012). Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Outcome Research. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, March/April, 97–108. https://doi.org/10.3109/106 73229.2012.677347 Book, H. E. (1998). How to Practice Brief Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme Method. American Psychological Association.

Bordin, E. S. (1979). The Generalizability of the Psychoanalytic Concept of the Working Alliance.

Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice, 6(3), 252–260.

Brenner, C. (1982). The Mind in Conflict. International Universities Press.

Coughlin Della Selva, P. (2004). Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy. Karnac.

Coughlin, P. (2017). Maximizing Effectiveness in Dynamic Psychotherapy. Routledge.

Davanloo, H. (1992). Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy.

Jason Aronson.

Frederickson, J. (2013). Co-Creating Change: Effective Dynamic Therapy Techniques. Seven Leaves Press.

Gottdiener, W. H. (2006). Individual Psychodynamic Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia Empirical Evidence for the Practicing Clinician. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 23(3), 583– 589. https://doi.org/10.1037/0736-9735.23.3.583 Gottdiener, & Suh (2012). Expanding the Single-Case Study: A Proposed Psychoanalytic Research Program. The Psychoanalytic Review, 99(1), 81–102.

Gottdiener, & Suh (2015). Substance Use Disorders. In P. Luyten, L. C. Mayes, P. Fonagy, M. Target, & S. J. Blatt (Eds.), Psychodynamic Approaches to Psychopathology (pp. 216–233).

Guilford.

Hoffman, I. (2009). Doublethinking Our Way To “Scientific” Legitimacy: The Desiccation Of Human Experience.

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 57(5), 1043– 1069. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003065109343925 Leichsenring, F., & Klein, S. (2014). Evidence for psychodynamic psychotherapy in specific mental disorders: A systematic review. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 28(1), 4–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/02668734.2013.865428 Leichsenring, F., & Leibing, E. (2007). SupportiveExpressive (SE) Therapy: An Update. Current Psychiatry Reviews, 3, 57–64.

Luborsky, L. (1984). Principles of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Manual for Supportive-Expressive Treatment.

Basic Books.

Shapiro, D. (1989). Psychotherapy of Neurotic Character.

Basic Books.

Shapiro, D. (2000). Dynamics of Character: Self-Regulation in Psychopathology. Basic Books.

Shedler, J. (2010). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. The American Psychologist, 63(2), 98–109. https://doi. org/10.1037/a0018378 Tuckett, D. (2008). Psychoanalysis comparable and incomparable: The evolution of a method to describe and compare psychoanalytic approaches. Routledge.

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Recollections of Bion’s IPTAR Lectures In the fall of 1977, The Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) in New York City, contracted with W.R. Bion to deliver a set of lectures to its members and others. They would take place over the course of five consecutive days. Under the same auspices, clinicians might also schedule individual supervision or consultation sessions with Bion. Several did.

Thirty-seven years later, on November 22, 2014, a small group of IPTAR members who had attended Bion’s lectures gathered to share their recollections of the experience with an audience of analysts and other Bionians at a conference held in New York City for the purpose of recalling and reviewing Bion’s clinical seminars in Los Angeles and New York. I was one of the presenters. The essay that follows was my contribution.

Bion’s lectures had been arranged by Saul Tuttman, who was president of IPTAR at the time. He was an analyst, psychologist and psychiatrist whose principal interests, so far as I can recall, were in group therapy. It was perhaps this connection that led him to Bion who was not so well known then as he has since become.

Although there must have been a program committee that planned the event, I don’t know who served on it but I doubt they received much gratitude for their efforts after the fact. At the time, IPTAR seemed to be in a transitional phase in which power, prestige, and leadership passed from the so-called “founding mothers” to a coalition of relatively prominent Freudian, male analysts led by Bertram Freedman and a group of his colleagues.

The schedule of Bion’s visit called for lectures on each of the five weekdays. The participants could register either for days 1,3, and 5, or 2 and 4. I think I signed up for 2 and 4, but the transcript shows that someone made a comment during lecture 5 that sounded suspiciously like one I would have thought of. It was a quotation from Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Kahn” in response to Bion’s quoting from Paul Valerie to the effect that ...it is assumed that the poet is a person who is undisciplined, disordered goes into a rhapsodic state and emerges, wakes up with a poem in his mind as the outcome of an undisciplined, intoxicated--literally and meta-phorically--state of mind. Valerie believed that, on the contrary, the poet is much nearer to an algebraic mathematician than to an intoxicatedindividual.

What I, or someone who sounded like me, interpolated, was, “Coleridge would say, ‘Weave a circle round him thrice,’ in the hope of refuting Bion and Valerie on at least two counts: first that, since “Kubla Khan” was

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composed in an opium dream, some poets sometimes produce poems in an intoxicated state; second, the relevant passage from the poem reads, And all should cry Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed And drunk the milk of paradise. which strongly suggests that the poet in question is of Dionysian, not Apollonian persuasion. Moreover, whoever made the comment would certainly have hoped and assumed that Bion, whose literary erudition was well known, would recognize the quotation and respond to it. Alas, the transcript shows that he did not, although he did later insert a footnote specifying that the quote was from Coleridge. To round off this digression then, if it was I who made the comment, I must have attended the 5th lecture in addition to the earlier two for which I had registered.

At a remove of thirty-seven years, the overwhelming majority of the events are present in my memory as general impressions picked rather clean of the details that add vividness and verisimilitude to reportage. What I am most certain of, however, is that the atmosphere in the room was anxious from the start as a function of the audience’s preconceptions regarding Bion’s discourse which, as the transcript will attest was abstruse, difficult and, as it seemed to me. densely intellectualized. This effect only became more pronounced within and between sessions as many participants felt a mounting frustration with Bion’s apparent failure either to meet their initial expectations or to respond to their questions in a way that they might find satisfying.

Many in the room seemed familiar with at least some of Bion’s writings and some tried to get him to address the ideas he’d written about. Most of these efforts failed, however, because Bion’s responses to questions tended to be experienced as evasions or non-sequiturs. I think that most of the audience came expecting a format and approach that was and remains typical for psychoanalytic conferences, in which the presenter reads a prepared paper that sets forth certain of her views and is usually replete with clinical material that illustrates the author’s theses. This is ordinarily followed by a Q & A period when the participants have the opportunity to clarify, challenge, and contribute. Invariably, a presenter will provoke a wide variety of reactions in an audience of psychoanalysts, almost all of which create a tension for release as verbalization. This tension is present 10

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to varying degrees in everyone in attendance, whether or not they are quick enough to be called on or up to the microphone. As a result, some approach the speaker after the Q & A, some whisper their remarks to their neighbors, and still others discharge the tension in a more delayed fashion that night or the day after.

If what I have just described is accurate for most psychoanalytic presentations, it was intensified by many degrees as a result of Bion’s enigmatic, elliptical, and ambiguous utterance. For Bion spoke spontaneously, without a written text or notes. His remarks often seemed associative rather than logical, and his ideas were at times circumstantial. Those who wished for relevant, coherent answers to their questions showed their disappointment in their body language and, to an increasing extent, in their vocal expressions of frustration.

Though he implied that he sympathized with their irritation, he did nothing to relieve it.

It may be instructive, at this point, to draw upon some observations of the occasion made by Saul Tuttman in something he wrote several years later: I came to know Bion (1959) and his wife quite well when I invited them to New York for the first time to deliver lectures and conduct seminars, although I found Bion quite extreme in his reaction to the neediness of the group members who, in the study group I had organized for the occasion, were relatively mature professionals in the field. The participants became frustrated and in fact enraged at his unwillingness to “feed” them. Personally, I found his approach very interesting, but the extreme position of group leader and group members impressed me as unnecessarily frustrating to all, although he certainly made his point in that way as to how needy and angry those who feel like neglected children can be. (p.293) Among those most exercised were several of the senior women analysts to whom I referred previously as “the founding mothers.” More outspoken than most of them was Susan Deri who, ironically enough, had been Saul Tuttman’s first and well loved analyst.

Some of the participants dealt with the situation by adopting, either consciously or unconsciously, a stilted version of Bion’s convoluted syntax in addressing him. Others flatly declared their puzzlement and still others seemed to suspend their critical inclinations for what they professed was the sheer pleasure of listening to Bion’s improvisations. Many of them tended to explain their behavior with the

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rationale that their own original ideas would be stimulated and provoked by this process.

One aspect of Bion’s discourse that seemed especially vexing to many in the audience was his repeatedly emphasizing how little we know, and how risky it might be to entertain any certainties about psychoanalysis. A significant segment of the attendees felt this to be an undermining of their power and authority as psychoanalysts, as though the great effort they’d exerted studying and mastering theory and technique, and their long experience, were all being declared of little value in the face of the tasks at hand. And if this were not sufficiently chastening, the Jeremiah who subjected them to it categorically refused to comfort them by substituting something for what he was taking away.

This procedure was familiar to me and others who had attended the International Conference on Borderline Disorders at the Menninger Foundation in 1976, where Bion had been the last speaker. His presentation on emotional turbulence provoked consternation among the audience because of its radical divergence from the papers that

preceded it, the great majority of which were based on empirical and clinical foundations, its startling initial exploration of the phrase “bloody cunt,” and its meandering discussion of intrauterine experience. Moreover, anyone who had read Bion’s Experiences in Groups, would have known of his preference for indirection from his description of the way he abdicated leadership of the therapy groups for which he was nominally responsible. It would not be far fetched to assume that he applied the same principle to the IPTAR group; that is, that he refused either to lead it or to relinquish his position as the invited “speaker.”

He explained this method as a procedure for inducing thought in his audience. To quote from Francesca Bion’s Preface to the transcript of the New York Lectures, He believed that “La reponse est le malheur de la question”; both in his professional and his private life problems stimulated in him thought and discussion—never answers. His replies—more correctly, counter contributions—were, in spite of their apparent irrelevance, an extension 11

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of the questions. His point of view is best illustrated in his own words: “I don’t know the answers to these questions—I wouldn’t tell you if I did. I think it is important for you to find out for yourselves” “I try to give you a chance to fill the gap left by me” “I don’t think that my explanation matters.”

(Preface) Bion asserts here, and in many other places, that he fails to answer questions because he wants people to think for themselves. I have written that he wanted people to be original, to accomplish transformations in O, not merely in K, to be creative. He also said that he wanted people to attain to truth.

What the IPTAR audience resented was that he had made all of these stipulations for them a priori, without their permission or participation. The final quotation in Francesca Bion’s preface reads, “When I feel a pressure—I’d better get prepared in case you ask me some questions —I say ‘To Hell with it, I’m not going to look up this stuff in Freud or anywhere

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else, or even in my past statement—I’ll put up with it.’ But of course I am asking you to put up with it too.”

Perhaps there was an implicit contract between Saul Tuttman and Bion that permitted him to assume this or perhaps he assumed that anyone who asked him to come and lecture was thereby giving him license to do what he did. The question abuts a more general one regarding both a speaker’s responsibility to ascertain what his audience might expect of him and an analyst’s to determine what his patient expects or wishes for from the treatment. In both cases, conscious and unconscious components must be taken into account.

A significant proportion of the IPTAR Seminars was focused on the ideas Bion had put forth in “Notes on Memory and Desire,” a short, aphoristic paper. Many of the questions raised by the participants were attempts

to get Bion to flesh out and elaborate that which seemed cryptic, compressed, and intriguingly obscure in the paper. At the same time as his oblique responses gave grudging but fleeting acknowledgement to the questions to which they were superficially directed, they often created further obscurity. It is my belief that Bion did this deliberately not merely to induce thought in his audience but because he wanted to shock them out of what he saw as a kind of smug self satisfaction with their status and knowledge-base as analysts.

Being Bion, he could scarcely have ignored the models of his illustrious predecessors and rivals who’d been invited to present their views to new audiences: Jesus, who said “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth: I did not come to bring peace but a sword;” and Freud, who upon arriving in New York, commented to Jung, “They don’t realize that we are bringing them the plague.”

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I believe Bion thought of himself as an avatar of the messianic tradition, on the one hand and on the other, that of the conquistador. As both, he appropriated the license to say what he wanted to, not what people wanted to hear.

Having just violated the first part of Bion’s admonition to eschew memory and desire, I look forward both to the accounts of my partners in crime, and to the contributions, today, of those who will certainly violate the second part.

The reader may have observed that my own reflections here have clearly violated Bion’s admonition to eschew memory; whether they also reflect a failure to have banished desire is for you, alone, to judge.

REFERENCES Tuttman, S. (1996). Family influences. In Reppen, J. (Ed), Why I became a psychotherapist (pp. 283-295). Northwale, New Jersey, London: Jason Aronson, Inc.

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Laplanchean Dialogues with Hélène Tessier November 1, 2022 - January 3, 2023 1ST DIALOGUE Bryan Batista-Thomas: Thank you for participating in these dialogues, Hélène. We have worked together on Laplanche’s thinking for the last three years. Aside from being the Vice-President of the Conseil Scientifique de la Fondation Jean Laplanche, you are a Full Professor, psychoanalyst, and former human rights lawyer. I know you have written several papers and books on the themes of ethics, rationalism, emancipation, and epistemology in Laplanche’s work. With this in mind, what are the Ethics of a Laplanchean style? How does this relate to metapsychology, clinical practice, and culture?

Hélène Tessier: I will start with the formulation of the question. I am not comfortable with talking about ethics in general.

However, I am more comfortable with the adjective ethical because I would not like to substantiate ethics. Ethics and psychoanalysis are two different things. Analysis can be practiced ethically as much as science. Theory

building in psychoanalysis, like metapsychological developments, can be done ethically.

Ethics is a domain of its own. There are obviously ethical dimensions in Laplanche’s theorizing and theory of practice. I am comfortable with discussing these ethical dimensions.

I also want to emphasize the accuracy of your word “style.” It is very relevant in the context.

There is indeed a Laplanche style, meaning that his thinking has a quality found in almost all his work. This style has an ethical component: dedication to clarity, precision, elegance, and coherence. It is ethical since it is the basis of his method of thinking, governed by a quest for truth.

If we want to examine the ethical dimension of Laplanche’s work, we must consider two aspects separately: the scientific and the anthropological aspects in relation to the theory of practice. The ethical dimension of the scientific or metapsychological developments of Laplanche’s theory has to do with truth, scientific truth. The anthropological dimension relates to the conception of what it is to be human that this theory conveys. More specifically, it relates to the conditions for being a human and becoming

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human. It is closely linked to the theory of practice. Laplanche’s theory postulates a human capable of transformation - aiming for freer and more global auto-historicizations (or phrased a little differently, translations).

The distinction between the ethical dimension of Laplanche’s metapsychology and his anthropology is somewhat artificial because the metapsychological conceptions fit with his anthropological conception. Nonetheless, let us keep the distinction for the sake of our discussion.

Let us start with the issue of truth. For Laplanche, science must formulate truth about its object or at least strive to do so.

Laplanche argues in favor of a scientific status for metapsychology. This status involves consequences: the possibility of proposing an integrated model coherent with an explanation of the mode of action of psychoanalysis as a clinical method. A model that can also be refutable. Regarding epistemological trends, Laplanche’s choices are in debate with the current postmodern cultural conditions. He formulated strong criticism against eclecticism in contemporary psychoanalysis. He argues, for example, that if a

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definition of the unconscious is true, an opposite definition cannot be true as well. His definition of the sexual unconscious and his description of its formation are very specific.

According to it, mythosymbolic and primary contents are not part of the Sexual or repressed unconscious in a psychoanalytical sense. Epistemologically, Laplanche takes strong anti-postmodern positions. I argued in a previous paper that epistemological choices have ethical dimensions (Tessier, H, 2012). You can find such a position in Laplanche’s work, especially in the papers collected in Between Seduction and Inspiration: Man (Laplanche & Mehlman, 2014).

Many object to Laplanche’s theorizing because of this anti-postmodern and antideconstructivist trend. His theory is a system in which all parts must fit with the others.

More precisely, (1) seduction, (2) the “fundamental anthropological situation,” (3) the translational hypothesis of repression, (4) the category of the message, (5) psychic reality, (6) the formation of the repressed unconscious and the ego, (7) and sublimation/inspiration, all these developments require one another. Besides, metapsychology and practice must go hand in hand. Metapsychology should account for the transformative action of psychoanalysis.

Laplanche’s theory is firmly grounded in the rationalist tradition. A manifestation of this orientation is seen in the description of the contents of the sexual unconscious. As I previously mentioned, such content does not exist outside history in the form of universal fantasies, and it cannot precede primary repression. In Laplanche’s theory, fantasies are historical and singular, different from one person to another. However, fantasizing is universal. Therefore, Laplanche’s theory is incompatible with a definition of the sexual unconscious that relies on primordial and universal fantasies, like the primal scene or Oedipus. Acknowledging this incompatibility is part of the search for scientific description, a quest for coherence, and the possibility of debate and refutability.

An example can illustrate the rationalist tradition in Laplanche’s thought, which, according to me, is part of its ethical stance. I will take the example of his rejection of his development on étayage (leaning on). For a certain time, until 1992, Laplanche said that the Sexual came from our self-preservation, which he later called the theory of emergence.

BBT: Leaning on as a theory of emergence.

HT: …leaning on, yes. He later rejected it because it did not work in his epistemology.

In his epistemology, if something is sexual, it must already be sexual. Something sexual cannot be created out of a nonsexual element.

This would be an unexplainable leap, a step

into irrationalism. Referring in an ironic way to magic and entertainment, he wrote that you cannot get the rabbit of the sexual out of the hat of the self-preservative. If something is sexual in the child, it is because it was already sexual in the adult.

BBT: Have we moved into the anthropological dimension, or are we still in the scientific?

HT: We are still scientific in the ethical dimension of the quest for scientific truth.

To stay in the ethical dimension, we can also mention the sober style of Laplanche, who avoids any type of pathos in referring to the unconscious or metapsychology. It is also part of a rationalist ethos.

We may now move to the anthropological side of Laplanche’s theory. As he writes, his theory is also an anthropology. It means that it describes what a human being is and the conditions for becoming a human.

Laplanche does not conceive of humans as being in continuity with animals. Even less so, he does not consider them an imperfect form of machine, as we can see in some forms of trans-humanism. Becoming human implies something specific. What is this specificity in the particular perspective of psychoanalysis? In the general theory of seduction, it is sexualization through primary repression.

Primary repression is one of the conditions to become a human because it is the condition for the formation of a sexual unconscious and of an ego, which are continuously engaged in psychic conflict.

Such an anthropology is not very much in fashion today. It is more usual now to situate humans in continuity with nature, even from a psychoanalytic perspective. I am not saying, nor is Laplanche, that from the perspective of other sciences, humans are not in continuity with other species. We are speaking here about the specific angle that is brought by psychoanalysis, which, if we take this discipline seriously, should be considered when considering the human being in its globality. This specific angle pertains to the sexual unconscious. Furthermore, Laplanche defined this specific angle of psychoanalysis, which corresponds to its object, in concrete terms, namely “fantasy in its relation to excitation.”

Laplanche’s anthropological conception is about a human that is historical and, therefore, transformable. His anthropology is one of transformation, in which psychic conflicts are key. They make the human transformable because of the movement they imply. In Laplanche’s metapsychological conception, the residues of translation, which are the core of the sexual unconscious, relate to the ego in only one mode, namely, to attack it. The motor of transformation is 14

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from attacks on the ego from the derivatives of the sexual unconscious, even from the sexual death drive, which is the more de-fleshed residues, the more cut off from meaning, the more unbound. Therefore, though it is not part of Laplanche’s terminology, I argued that this anthropology, besides being an anthropology of transformations, carries an ethics of emancipation.

Laplanche never used the word “emancipation.”. He left out the concept of emancipation because it is not a psychoanalytic concept. It belongs to other disciplines. I want to convey that Laplanche’s anthropological conception implies a human capable of transformation and, consequently, of emancipation. It then implies a conception of a world or a society where emancipation is a desirable moral concept. I use the word emancipation in its historical sense: the ending of the status of one as a minor - in the legal sense - where one is not considered responsible for their actions and, at the same time, not allowed to make decisions on their own, at least those involving legal consequences. Emancipation is thus a transformation in the sense of becoming freer and more responsible, acknowledging liability for one’s actions. Borrowing Laplanche’s terminology, this requires a transition from “answering to” to “answering for,” a theme Laplanche discusses in “Responsibility and Response” in Between Seduction and Inspiration: Man. According to Laplanche, unconscious derivatives force one to “answer to.” This derives from the centrality of the message in the general theory of seduction. Even if the message, originally from an external other, becomes an internal otherness, it interpellates, in other words, summons, or, in Laplanche’s terms, “makes a sign,” thus requiring a response. On the other hand, “answering for” one’s action, thoughts, or decisions, is a very different process. A human getting more and more able to “answer for” her/his/their actions is an autonomous human, an emancipated human, in the Kantian sense. The Kantian sense of emancipation can be summarized as not remaining a minor, as coming of age, being accountable for one’s actions.

Such a human who is becoming able to “answer for” his action, is part of Laplanche’s anthropology, though it is no longer in the psychoanalytic domain, but in the moral realm. However, Laplanche’s metapsychology, which includes the possibility of being able to have freer translations, shows some path into fostering this process. This doesn’t mean that analysis is about making a human totally responsible. The conflict will still be there. Humans will be humans, but there is an idea that you can change things to gain a little bit more of a freer translation, more global, more encompassing, less narcissistic, and less rigid.

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BBT: You just said emancipation is not a psychoanalytic concept. Can you say specifically what delineation would suddenly bring us out of psychoanalysis?

HT: Psychoanalysis has a specific domain: the sexual unconscious, psychic conflicts, and the way to access parts of the human soul that are not accessible through other methods. It would be ridiculous to argue that psychoanalysis can, as such, account for all human and social activities. Psychoanalysis, according to Laplanche, proposes to take into consideration “psychic reality,” a concept which, writes Laplanche, was often confused with psychological reality by Freud.

We will come back to the notion of psychic reality later. Laplanche defines psychic reality as a third order of reality parallel to psychological and material reality. Psychic reality invades everything: it permeates all other human activity, including relations with the body, interpersonal relations, erotic life, love, social activity, intellectual and scientific endeavor, etc. For Laplanche, the psychoanalytic being starts with primary repression, which results in sexualization (not sexuation).

Again, sexualization, or erotization, is one of the conditions of becoming human, in the psychoanalytic perspective. This dimension is

not taken into consideration by other disciplines, and this is where the boundary of psychoanalysis is drawn.

From this perspective, Laplanche’s work never implied that the psychic agencies, i.e., the sexual unconscious and the ego, were accounting for the globality of the person.

When we depart from discussing psychic agencies, we depart from psychoanalysis. We are at the border of other disciplines. What I want to underline is that Laplanche’s anthropological conception is compatible with the idea of a human being capable of forming a project, a quest for greater freedom. Freedom and projects are not psychoanalytic concepts.

But psychoanalytic contributions, in their own domain, can enlarge the understanding of freedom, or the challenges humans encounter in the quest for freedom.

BBT: Could you speak a little bit about how Laplanche sees biology and psychology, etc. as outside of psychoanalysis? Which is to say that he sees psychoanalysis as a discipline that deals with aspects of the mind only accessible through the analytic method.

HT: It is important to note that Laplanche has total respect for other disciplines. He is also very strict in defining 16

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the epistemological field of psychoanalysis, which, as we said, is the sexual unconscious, its modes of access, and its way of invading other human activities. Biology, or physiology, for example, deal with phenomena central to psychoanalysis, but from a different angle.

Let us take the example of excitation: Laplanche keeps repeating that a nonspeculative definition of the object of psychoanalysis is fantasies in relation to excitation.

Biology, neurology, and physiology have much to say about excitation. Psychoanalysis postulates as a starting point a body that is excitable and focuses on the relation between scenes, ideas, fantasies, and their relation to excitation. The whole theory of binding [liaison] in Laplanche deals with the binding of affects, the binding of their quantitative dimension, namely excitation with their qualitative dimensions—the meaning of this excitation. I use this to illustrate the difference in focus between disciplines. The same goes for psychology. It deals, among others, with what is observable: perception, behaviors, etc. Psychoanalysis deals with what is not: the role of fantasies in their relation to excitation, behaviors, thought processes, and even perception. Reading Laplanche is always a good reminder of the epistemological boundaries between disciplines, which does

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not imply that the other disciplines are unimportant. On the contrary, it is based on the complementarity of disciplines. This is why Laplanche’s theory, according to me, is the only psychoanalytic perspective that allows for genuine bridges between disciplines.

BBT: Let us go back to the ethical dimension of Laplanche’s work. Can you link the ethical dimension and Laplanche’s theory of practice?

HT: To summarize the ethical dimension of Laplanche’s theory of practice, I would use the word freedom. As I just said, Laplanche’s anthropology describes a human capable of transformation and looking for freer, more encompassing translations.

This is embodied in his theory of practice in the way he refers to the use of interpretation. Laplanche insists that the interpreter, in Laplanche’s words, the “hermeneut,” in the session is not the analyst but the analysand.

The analyst’s role is to focus on de-translation to open up possibilities for freer interpretations by the analysand. This position refers to Laplanche’s focus on the message as the central vehicle and mediator of human experience. Thus, according to him, an analyst in a session should always focus on the position of the analysand as experiencing herself/ himself/themself as receiving messages and asking herself/himself/themself the question: “What does she/he/they (the analyst) want from me?” In my opinion, such a stance helps the analyst not to impose or propose interpretations that can be used as readymade translations. It is deeply respectful of the freedom of the analysand to find her/his/ their way in transformative moments.

Laplanche’s theory of practice revolves around two Freudian principles. First, the analytic method, in other words, free association and de-translation, re-translation, and second, the neutrality of the analyst. On this latter concept, Laplanche has added to the Freudian concept of refusement (Versagung in German). In addition to the fact that the analyst should refrain from giving advice or even direct support, refusement involves what Laplanche has described as an attitude of respect of the analyst towards his unconscious.

This means that the analyst must always be aware that he is also a conflictual being and that his unconscious is at work in his perceptions, thought process, and affective reaction. The work of the unconscious remains “unconscious” for the analyst. Refusement is a constant reminder of this fact, which is a basic premise of the whole discipline. Laplanche rejects the current use of the notion of countertransference, as it appears in contemporary psychoanalysis. His arguments are manifold.

He argues that the common reference to countertransference, more specifically within

the dyad transference-countertransference, is not scientifically sound with respect to his definition of the sexual unconscious. What is called countertransference in contemporary psychoanalysis has, according to Laplanche, little to do with unconscious processes. He argues, for example, that if you see five analysands a day, how can you first identify your reaction as “unconscious” and second, as being related to the patient you are presently seeing, or, in that respect, any of the analytic hours?

In addition, if you see transference/countertransference as a pair related to treatment, would you then form five different countertransferences? For further precisions, I refer you to the section “The Instrumentalisation of Countertransference” in the essay “Intervention in a Debate” in Freud and the Sexual (Laplanche 2011, p. 231-232). Furthermore, in his view of the analytic situation as a baquet [a tub], some conditions are necessary to put movement to the analytic process: free association and the method of dissociation/association, as well as free-floating attention from the analyst. These conditions are not in place for the analyst to gain access to his unconscious in a session. How would the analyst be conscious of an unconscious process? This is why, as I said, Laplanche strongly advocates for the concept of “Versagung” when referring to the analyst at work: Versagung [refusement], which, as we just said, is an attitude of respect of the analyst toward his unconscious.

The notion of transfert en creux [hollowed-out transference] is a great contribution of Laplanche to the theory of practice.

We can see it as a development with an ethical dimension in clinical analysis. Interpretations should not fill in the fantasies or translations of the patient. The analyst should instead try to identify what in the session could have been taken as messages by the analysand: what kind of messages they became and what kind of translation they have called for. It is a very non-intervening type of interaction. No interpretation is imposed.

BBT: How would an analyst give an interpretation or engage with an analysand in the hollowed-out transference? How would an analyst engage with an analysand in giving an interpretation, or would an analyst not give an interpretation? What would that look like?

HT: You must always remember the distinction between psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, which are part of the same treatment.

As Laplanche underlines, there are few genuine analytical moments in an analysis. Most of the work belongs to psychotherapy. Analysis has to do with de-translation, whereas psychotherapy involves working with an already existing translation. Working analytically or psychotherapeutically in a particular moment 17

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is a matter of clinical judgment. But if we, in terms of analysis proper, offer an interpretation, it aims at delinking, de-translating, and letting the analysand translate for himself in a new way. Remember what we just said about the analysand as the hermeneut: it is part of Laplanche’s ethics of practice. In my terms, I consider it an ethic of freedom.

BBT: The interpretation that is it delinking, would be delinking affect from representation?

HT: Yes, though this formulation remains very theoretical. It is about loosening the link between the quantitative side of the affect, the strength with which it “affects” the ego and the ideational content. We can also say that it is about delinking links that are rigid. It can be said that delinking is related to repetition to change the perspective. Delinking interpretations may provide conditions to highlight the repetitive aspects of thoughts or qualification of affects.

Delinking is not necessarily a dramatic experience. Something repetitive links different situations/messages to the same translations. It is very much about affects, which have two sides: one is the quantitative aspect, the “affective charge.” But this charge is linked with a qualitative aspect, which qualifies the affect as an affect in particular: anger, fear, etc.

Binding and unbinding are about linking the quantitative part, the charge, with the qualification. Rigid binding links quantitative experience with rigid qualifications that do not circulate freely along the associative chain. It is defensive insofar as it protects from anxiety, which is a de-qualification of affects. Delinking may allow, at least we hope so, for this possibility of movement to resume. Though Laplanche does not refer to Ego Psychology and developed a very different metapsychology and understanding of the repressed unconscious, he is nonetheless a psychoanalytic theorist who takes the ego and the defense mechanisms very seriously.

BBT: We were discussing affects, and you just mentioned Ego Psychology. How does a Klenian or Object Relations perspective differs from a Laplanchean perspective?

In previous discussions about Laplanche’s work, we discussed how one wants to move from a total object, a totality, or something that is a bit more rigid to be free to circulate as part objects.

HT: You mean that in Laplanche’s thought, the total object is not an achievement as it is in Klein. Laplanche considers the total object a narcissistic binding, a work of the ego always aiming at a totality. That is why he favors the circulation of part objects in his definition of sublimation. But let

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us start with some more fundamental comments about the conceptual differences between Laplanche and Klein. Laplanche paid tribute to Klein. He borrowed the terms partobjects and total object from Klein’s theory, though he defines them within a different epistemological system and metapsychology.

Laplanche’s theory is not genetically or developmentally oriented, as Klein’s case is. For him, the total object is there from the start, as the other who emits the message. The ego, which is formed by primary repression as the translated part of the message, tends to restore this totality as soon as it is formed.

Contrary to the Kleinian perspective, for which the total object is a developmental achievement, the total object, for Laplanche, is there from the start, namely in the other, the other of the message. When he writes that the ego aims at a totality, he means that the ego looks for totalizing linking, which replicates the totality, which is there from the start as (1) the other as a totality and (2) the ego as a totality. However, in Laplanche’s metapsychology, the residues of translation that form the sexual unconscious are the source-objects of the drive. They are the opposite of a totality: they are residues, parts of metabolized messages, out of context, with no connection to meaning and to historicization, which is part of a linking, or if you will, a totalizing movement. They tend to be less and less integrated in fragments of scenes. They have lost their flesh, like a bone without meat.

Ultimately, in their extremely de-fleshed status, they are the source-objects of the sexual death drive, quasi-nonobjects. They are not objects but an index [indice] in such a state.

We will come back to this notion later. They only interpellate and make a sign. But as they are signs left out of a semiotic system, they attack the attempt at linking, at totalizing by the ego. When some linking happens, but it is most of the time total, the quantitative charge of the indice is linked with ideational contents and becomes fantasies, more organized fantasies, or scenes than the index, they get some “flesh”: these are the part objects. Part-objects are also attacking, but less so. You can see that this is a major difference between Laplanche and Klein.

Another difference would be the definition of the object. Laplanche refuses the paradigm of a philosophy of the subject. He thus refuses the subject/object dichotomy.

The reference to the concept of objects in his thinking must then consider this position. An object for Laplanche is a fantasy. Objects are “correlates of our ego (Laplanche & Thurston, 2020, p. 154).” I do not think that this is the case in Klein.

Going back to the formation of part objects, the whole process should not be described in a dry vacuum: it has to do with affects. I have to stress that Laplanche’s theory,

contrary to Lacanian streams, is very focused on affects. One precision is that he considers that affects are not unconscious: they affect the ego. Laplanche considers that the mobility of affects is a great discovery of psychoanalysis. But contrary to Freud, he does not consider affects only in their quantitative dimension. He points out that affects also have a signifying aspect, which is linked to content, even though it can become rudimentary due to the de-linking work of the unconscious.

The linking between the quantitative side and the qualitative dimensions which means between the quantum and the meaning given to it—is at its least when the ego is under attack by the index, for example. This de-qualification is the work of de-linking —which is, unbinding the quantitative and the qualitative part of the affect—results in the most de-qualified form of affect, almost a mere quantity that makes itself known in the form of acute anxiety [Angoisse]. To avoid such attacks and to ease anxiety, some binding may be defensive, for example, narcissistic binding. Narcissistic binding tends to be rigid and leads to characterological defenses. Other types of binding are also possible, namely binding on the model of translation by way of symbolic connections, which is freer and leads to forming part objects able to circulate and transform themselves.

Anxiety in Laplanche is not necessarily described as a pathological phenomenon. It is also the motor of transformation. It leads to the rebinding of the quantity with various representations. Laplanche considers that the ego is susceptible to being destroyed in two different ways: either through excessive unbinding and attacks from the derivatives of the sexual unconscious or through excessive binding, totalizing binding, which freezes the ego into rigidity. For this reason, Laplanche defines sublimation as the circulation of part objects, which can always be de-translated, or re-translated.

BBT: It’s anxiety-provoking.

HT: Very much. Circulation of part objects is anxiety-provoking. The longing for a totalizing object is always there to alleviate the anxiety. But as I said, anxiety is the motor of transformation in Laplanche’s metapsychology unless it leads to total unbinding, which is the work of the sexual death drive, the complete destruction of the ego.

BBT: One question for me is “psychopathology.” I know Laplanche doesn’t think much about psychopathology, but patients come in with depression and anxiety. How would he conceptualize this?

HT: I wouldn’t say that Laplanche doesn’t think of psychopathology. Though, I think he 18

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never wrote about that very much because, for him, the same model accounts for all states.

For example, what is depression in the theory of general seduction? It could be conceptualized as ideas and scenes repeatedly attacking the ego, attacks from the sexual unconscious, which may involve masochistic satisfaction, which might be quite difficult to renounce.

Depending on the clinical presentation, it can also be conceptualized, at least partly, referring to other configurations involving what Laplanche names the “unconscious enclave,” formed of messages which face a radical failure of translation and are therefore not part of the topographical model that revolves around the sexual, repressed unconscious, and the ego. Laplanche conceptualizes the unconscious enclave to be able to present a unitary description of the human soul, whether the individual enters psychotic states or episodes or struggles with neurotic defenses. For Laplanche, nobody has a guarantee against a psychotic decompensation.

A pathological state can always be described in phenomenological terms. Still, for Laplanche, the source of the psychopathology and its unfolding must be described in terms of metapsychology involving seduction, messages, translation, binding, excitation, etc. The goal of the analytic project revolves nonetheless around allowing for less repetitive freer, and more encompassing translations. This is what he considers the cultural destiny of all humans, which, in Laplanche’s metapsychology, corresponds to drive renunciation: “translating and putting into narrative form for himself the messages of the other, including their most enigmatic sexual aspects (Laplanche 2011, 302).”

BBT: Here is a good place to stop for today.

REFERENCES Laplanche, J., & Mehlman, J. (1976). Life and Death in Psychoanalysis. John Hopkins U.P. Laplanche, J., & Pontalis, J.-B. (1988). The Language of Psycho-analysis. Karnac Books and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Laplanche, J. (2011). Freud and the Sexual. The Unconscious in Translation.

Laplanche, J., & Mehlman, J. (2015). Between Seduction and Inspiration: Man. The Unconscious in Translation.

Laplanche, J., & House, J. (2016). New Foundations for Psychoanalysis. The Unconscious in Translation.

Laplanche, J., House, J., & Thurston, L. (2017). Aprèscoup: Problématiques VI. The Unconscious in Translation.

Laplanche, J., & Thurston, L. (2020). The Unfinished Copernican Revolution: Selected Works, 1967-1992. The Unconscious in Translation.

Martens, F. (2022). Lacan pris au mot: Les fureurs de bonneval ou Laplanche maudit par son Maître. Hermann.

Ornston, D. G. (1993). Translating Freud. Yale University Press.

Tessier, H. (2012). “Métapsychologie, Épistémologie et éthique de la clinique psychanalytique, Psicologia im estudo.” Vol 17, no 3 Jul. Set. 2012, pp 373381.

Tessier, H. (2020). Rationalism and Emancipation in Psychoanalysis: The Work of Jean Laplanche. The Unconscious in Translation.

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

William Fried, Ph.D., FIPA is a psychologist and psychoanalyst who practices in New York City. He was formerly the associate director of psychiatry residency training and the director of training and education at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. Dr. Fried has published papers on clinical psychoanalysis, group therapy, applied psychoanalysis, mental health education and training, and has written essays for the exhibits of prominent artists. His book, Critical Flicker Fusion: Psychoanalysis at the movies was published by Karnac in 2016.

William Gottdiener, Ph.D., ABPP, FIPA is a licensed and board certified clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and tenured full professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York (CUNY). Dr. Gottdiener received his PhD in clinical psychology from The New School for Social Research. He is the Director of Clinical Training of the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program of the Graduate Center—CUNY that is housed at John Jay College. He is the chair of the Division 39 Fellows committee and he was also previously President of the Division 39 Psychoanalytic Research Society. He has published over 50 articles, book chapters, commentaries, and reviews and is on the editorial boards of the journals Psychoanalytic Psychology, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and Psychological Bulletin. He is an APA Fellow in the divisions of Addictions, Clinical Psychology, General Psychology, and Psychoanalysis, and he is a Fellow of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He was honored by Division 39 with its prestigious Research and Scholarship Award in 2015.

Bettina Mathes, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst and psychodynamic therapist in private practice in Vienna and Granada. She is also a translator, published writer and cultural historian. She has published widely on psychoanalysis and the visual arts, and was faculty of Humboldt University, Berlin, Penn State University and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Hélène Tessier, LL.M., D.E.A., Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst, a member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and the International Psychoanalytic Association, and a lawyer member of the Quebec Bar. She is a Full Professor in the School of Conflict Studies in the Faculty of Human Sciences and Philosophy at Saint Paul University (Ottawa).

She is the Vice-President of the Scientific Council of La Fondation Jean Laplanche/ Nouveaux Fondements pour la psychanalyse and the author of publications on Laplanche’s work and their epistemological and ethical implications.

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Bryan Batista-Thomas, LCSW, MA, is a psychoanalytic candidate at IPTAR and a graduate of Performance Studies from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where he focused on the queerness of temporality, the performativity of epistemology, and oral traditions.

He is currently preparing a manuscript provisionally entitled Readings of Jean Laplanche in Process: Conversations Amplifying Differences (forthcoming Routledge 2024). Bryan works full-time in private practice.