When Thomas Ogden invited us to “rediscover psychoanalysis” for ourselves (2009), he invited us to discover psychoanalysis as a deeply personal and constantly evolving therapeutic experience. Psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method is unique in so many ways and distinguishable from other forms of therapeutic dialogue precisely by evoking the personal interaction between analyst and patient, their unique thinking and emotional experience in speaking together, as the therapeutic agent. Engaging others in psychoanalytic conversations, Ogden tells us, “entails an act of freedom of thought… of humility… [and] an act of thinking for oneself” (2009, p.1). Rather than expecting the psychoanalytic conversation to be reserved for the “right” or objectively “true” interpretations of the patient’s narrative, which might be learned from studying theory, Ogden reminds us that “simply speaking… and speaking simply” (p.3) is essential to approach what truly matters to people seeking psychoanalytic help. 

To re-discover psychoanalysis for ourselves is an invitation to recreate psychoanalysis in ways that are reflective of who we are, how we think, and what we believe to be important and useful in psychological growth. For me, psychoanalysis is a conversation that facilitates a patient’s learning about who they are and what they aspire to. It is a conversation that encourages reimagining one’s goals and expanding one’s beliefs about what it takes to find fulfillment and, dare I say, happiness in life. As co-participants we are asked to hone our own ideas of worthy goals and conceptions of a “good” life and at the same time accept that what we deem “good” is always in flux. We cannot ever be certain about our justification for our formulations of the good and the worthy, nor be sure about what is important or what something means to others, without learning from them first. We must utilize our compassion, imagination, creative playfulness and every unique capacity and ability we possess to meet the challenge of facilitating a conversation of therapeutic value to the participants. To an extent, we are invited to “throw away the book” (Hoffman, 1998) and rely less on the dictates of analytic rules and procedures, less on psychoanalytic truths, and more on our own experience and understanding of what matters in living. As Bion tells us, “The analyst you become is you and you alone: you have to respect the uniqueness of your own personality” (1987. In Ogden, 2009, p. 81) and, in this way, allow patients to find their own creative response to our personal notions about living. Thinking and speaking directly from experience, from what we think in the moment, from what we have come to know about ourselves and others, and from what life has taught us about its joys, sorrows and challenges, invites the patient to do the same.

Ogden’s invitation places the responsibility on analysts and patients to discover and rediscover themselves as they engage in direct conversation and speak to each other in their best effort to meet the human need to be heard, seen, and known. Psychoanalysis as a healing dialogue offers us an opportunity to expand our awareness and think about our positions in relation to life’s challenges through the potentially self-expansive stressors of being in the presence of another person’s difference and uniqueness. I believe that especially for many starting out in the field, but not reserved to them, there is a tendency to avoid revealing what they’re thinking, especially if it is a sense of confusion or uncertainty about what is being spoken about. The choice might be to hide their subjectivity and avoid exposing who they are, how they think, and what their beliefs and values are, thereby diminishing their ability to “simply speak and speak simply” as Ogden recommends. As a consequence I believe both analyst and patient can feel discouraged with regard to ever being heard, seen, and understood. Mutual recognition becomes unattainable.

To view psychoanalysis simply as an explanatory system that describes people to themselves, tells us what is “true,” or espouses a normative versus pathological narrative, neglects the vast diversity of people’s living styles and perspectives. It denies them the opportunity to share those ways of being, so necessary for expansion and transformation to occur. It also invites entry into an unequal relationship of “knower and known,” of subject and object, of “doer and done to” (Benjamin, 1990). If, on the other hand, psychoanalysis follows a discipline of understanding, of exploration into the lived and experienced life of another, granting unequivocal purpose and meaning to people’s behaviors and emotional experience, then a relationship of subject to subject, mutuality, and equality can emerge and the two subjects can enter a cooperative, co-inquiring, and co-participating (Fiscalini, 2004) dialogue. 

We first try to understand the patient’s problems as they see them, which in itself can be of such significant value. We inquire into their assessment and struggle with the problems as they see them and ask what their reasoning for how and why the problems persist. We wonder conjointly about the meaning and purpose of the problems and attempted solutions. As equal subjects with minds of our own, we might think about how these issues and proposed solutions compare to our own ways of operating. Do we experience these issues and try to solve them in our lives similarly? Can we imagine how the patient’s ways of operating in the world makes sense? We draw on our theories and knowledge of life to offer alternate formulations, perhaps different ways of perceiving the same problem, perhaps ways of thinking that diminish the sting of the problem, perhaps our own ideas of where this problem might come from and what it serves. As equals, these ideas are put forth “to be played with– kicked around, mulled over, torn to pieces–rather than regarded as the official version of the truth” (Bollas, 1987, p. 206). We do not have, nor is there, a privileged position of knowing or a final say on what something means. Not even of ourselves and our intentions. Just as we offer thoughts to our patients, they offer their thoughts to us, sometimes directly and often implicitly, about who we are to them, what we might intend, and how we are getting it wrong (and occasionally right). Just as we don’t have the final word, neither do they. This is the negotiation of meaning between respectful and co-equal partners. It is here that psychoanalysis has the potential to offer an experience that compares to no other. We slow down, we look for and even generate problems where a tendency might be to gloss over them. We reimagine the problem in order to think anew and rediscover new perspectives. Rather than rushing towards being “fine” or “great” or “healed” or “resolved,” as our society seems to demand of us all, we stop, we think, we feel, we share, we look for life under rocks, and we delight in the mystery and vastness of living.  

 

Robert Levin, LCSW, is faculty, supervisor and training analyst at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis. He is in private practice in New York City.  

References:

Benjamin, J. (1990) Recognition and Destruction: An Outline of Intersubjectivity. In Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition, ed. Mitchell, Stephen A & Aron, Lewis. New York/London: The Analytic Press

Bollas, C. (1987) The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known. New York: Columbia University Press

Fiscalini, John (2004) Coparticipant Psychoanalysis: Towards a New Theory of Clinical Inquiry. New York: Columbia University Press

Hoffman, I. Z. (1998) Ritual and Spontaneity in the Psychoanalytic Process. The Analytic Press, Inc.

Ogden, T.H. (2009) Rediscovering Psychoanalysis: Thinking and Dreaming, Learning and Forgetting. London and New York: Routledge.   

 

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