In this issue of Critica, we address the importance of climate change, the political and social issues in the world, and how psychoanalysis is attempting to adapt and respond to these changes.
I will comment briefly on the social and political scene, both locally and globally. In the last part of this editorial I will share my views on American psychoanalysis in the past and present, and what could be the psychoanalysis of the future. The last part is not a history of psychoanalysis but a look at the past to reveal and direct us to the present. Due to the vast literature, I will use pertinent articles to facilitate the reading. Note ( 1 ) at the end of the paper.
Currently, the social and political aspects worldwide are complex and unpredictable. The war in the Middle East is at a critical point. Thousands of people have been killed and there is no discussion of peace, only escalation.
On another front, the war between Russia and Ukraine is in its second year, and there is no plan for negotiation. In Venezuela, 30 million people were forced to leave their country due to the violence and lack of food. This forced displacement will have global impacts.
In the United States violence and killings are becoming part of our daily life. The violence in the schools is escalating. At this time 43 shootings have taken place. In some schools, students wear bulletproof vests and practice safety drills in case of attack. The education field is becoming a training camp.
In the last few months, former president Donald Trump has been shot twice. These shootings indicate a fragmentation in society. Is this fragmentation perhaps a repetition from the past to help us understand the present?
The present is also enigmatic. Listening to the news can be perplexing and disturbing. Trump accuses most of it of being fake. His political debates can be incomprehensible, with unclear focus and fabricated data. The political scene is affecting the physical and mental health of many people.
How do we react when the world is falling apart? In these chaotic times are we just spectators? Are we paralyzed? We use sophisticated defenses such as denial, negation, depersonalization, splitting, and breakdowns. These breakdowns which can include loneliness and despair, are becoming more prominent in our clinical work. John Steiner in his classic work introduced the concept of psychic retreat, a defense used especially in psychotic states. The word “retreat” has a military connotation. To retreat is to avoid seeing a world that is violent, traumatic, or indifferent.
Should we give up, be passive, retreat, or react? To give up implies remaining stuck to avoid taking action.
Hannah Arendt and Rosa Luxembourg addressed this topic many years ago. These authors captured the state of despair and alienation in a fascist world. Reading Arendt’s correspondence with the philosopher-psychiatrist Karl Jasper, which spans 1926 to 1969, is illuminating. (Arendt—Jasper, 1985). Arendt’s political understanding of the United States was uncanny. The politics of her time speak to our current politics.
In Hermsen, J. A Good & Dignified Life. The Political Advice of Hannah Arendt & Rosa Luxemburg (2022), Hermsen notes that Arendt points out, “What we mustn’t forget is to remain vigilant for a new totalitarian tendency in our society. Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations, which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.” (p. 75) Arendt anticipated and wrote about the destruction of Hitler’s regime.
How psychoanalysis responded, survived, and managed to stay alive. The psychoanalytic institutions barely survived during the War. During that time it was a clinical method to cure mental disturbance, but it was also involved in social issues and political ideas.
The Berlin Institute was political and ran clinics for workers and children. The institute’s staff paid for the treatment. Danto’s (2005) writings on Freud’s Free Clinics described these clinics in depth, pointing out the psychoanalytic work applied to social experiences.
The analyst in charge was Otto Fenchel, a Marxist analyst and a brilliant thinker, who was not afraid to challenge Freud’s work, in particular the death instinct. Fenichel was anti-institutional. He formed a study group outside the Berlin Institute to investigate the implication of the social on the clinical process. The reader is referred to the classic book by Russel Jacoby, “The Repression of Psychoanalysis,” a study of Fenichel’s ideas. Fenichel left us a very important correspondence with his colleagues describing the political aspect of psychoanalysis. He died in Los Angeles. He was in medical school to become a doctor. American institutions did not recognize his medical degree.
Did Fenichel’s work have an impact on American psychoanalysis? Yes. There was a political psychoanalysis, but it was silent. The Jewish analysts who came to the United States were traumatized, feared deportation, and spoke very little about the past. They wrote many books and papers forming the American Ego Psychology, a doctrine that lasted 50 years. These analysts had tremendous power and control in psychoanalytic institutions.
However, during the same time, there was an alternative current that was very political. One analyst who personified this current was Arnold Richard, (2017). In a series of papers, he outlined the many changes in American Psychoanalysis. He is an outstanding analyst, versed in psychoanalysis, and interested in science from a methodological point of view. He was the editor of The American Journal of Psychoanalysis for many years. He aimed to create a more fluid psychoanalysis. Reading his works is exciting. The formation of PINC and alternative institutes around the country was in reaction to the orthodoxy of The American Psychoanalytic Association.
The changes took place in two directions, a political stand against American psychoanalysis and an enlarged scope of psychoanalysis in opposition to ego psychology.
The theoretical shift is reflected in the book, “Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory,” published in 1983 by Mitchell and Greenberg. This was the changing paradigm in American psychoanalysis. The book was well-researched and seminal in the United States, introducing many theoretical models dealing with object relations in psychoanalysis, as also reflected in the work of Klein, Bion, Winnicott, Kohut, and many more.
The book proposed a division in psychoanalytic thinking. One psychoanalysis is classical and drive-related, and another is related to objects from a relational point of view. Forty years later, the book has recently been discussed again—a discussion that can be found on YouTube: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory with Jay Greenberg PhD.
Thomas Ogden’s original work expanded and clarified Object Relation Theory and should be considered as the new American psychoanalysis. Concurrently, the work of Laplanche, Pontalis, Green, and many more also expanded American psychoanalytic thinking, though Lacan’s work was marginal from a clinical point of view.
The important change that transformed psychoanalysis was the legal battle against the American Psychoanalytic Association that started in 1989. The legal battle was to be admitted PhD in psychoanalytic training. [PINC became a psychoanalytic institution and part of the International Psychoanalytic Association. The reader is referred to PINC history on the PINC webpage.
Ulterior changes took place in American Psychoanalysis. Douglas Kirsner’s (2000) book Unfree Associations summarizes the politics of the various institutes in the United States, stressing the power that the training analyst had in the formation of the candidates. The historian James Fisher further clarified this perspective in an excellent review in American Imago (2002) about institutions’ politics and their unconscious functioning. The bibliography included in this review is very thorough and gives all the references mentioned in my editorial.
What about Freud? Was he political?
I do not think that he was political like Fenichel, Reich, Fromm, Langer and many more. Freud did not like Marxism. For him, neither the social nor the political could cure the neurosis. Freud was not naive about the political situation in Germany and Austria, He kept a diary from 1926 to 1936. For unconscious reasons, he did not want to move from Vienna. Much has been written about Freud, especially Freud’s later ideas. A superb book on this subject is by Matt Ffytche (2022), Freud, which also has an impressive bibliography of books on Freud.
The evolution of psychoanalytic theory and practice is part of the changes in culture, politics, and social media.
Covid also dramatically changed our lives. The change from the office to Zoom was difficult. Covid changed our relationship with our community. The isolation, the loss of friends, as well as the current political climate are making most of us uncertain about our future.
Politics has again entered into American psychoanalysis. In 2023, The American Psychoanalytic Association was confronted with the war in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. The confrontations created tension in the American psychoanalytic society. In this regard I will mention in passing an article by Bill Glover in Japa, 2023, and the responses in Free Association magazine (2023). In Japa (2024 ), the completer Holmes’s report is presented in full. Their main point is the systemic racism in American psychoanalysis.
My understanding is that there are two views in the American psychoanalytic community. One is a more conservative one, that psychoanalysis should not be political The other view is that psychoanalysis should be more inclusive of different views in psychoanalysis. The entrance to a psychoanalytic institution has many gated communities. Some of these factors are unconscious.
Currently, I think we are in a transitional stage.
What will be the future of psychoanalysis? It is difficult to read the future. At this time the vision of psychoanalysis is more complex and more political. I think that psychoanalysis has made many important changes, such as the focus on the importance of the body, the sensorial body, and the evolution of Gender and Sexuality. ( communication with Dr Elizabeth Papagni) The psychoanalytic discourse has changed from a binary system to a fluid Queer Theory. An important change in psychoanalysis is the inclusion of minorities and the change in the structures of psychoanalytic institutions that are still very elitist and dogmatic.
Psychoanalysis should expand into different fields, such as philosophical and literary studies. As I was finishing this editorial, I read about the death of Fredric Jameson, his work on the political unconscious, and the seminal book, The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present, which is revelatory about French thinking. Jameson’s work introduced French thinking about psychoanalysis.
To conclude Nicolle Zapient in an Email to PINC wrote about” a new book edited by Himanshu Agrawal, entitled Dear Institute: Candid Commentaries from Candidates in Psychoanalytic Training. It is a response to Fred Busch’s Dear Candidate, letters from psychoanalysts from around the world to candidates “I think this book will be extremely important because it is not about the institute’s functions but how candidates experienced psychoanalytic institutions.
In this brief overview of American psychoanalysis, I tried to point out major trends in psychoanalysis. The most important areas I think are the emergence of the political and the social.
These changes would take a very long time to be introduced in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. ●
Note ( 1)
I have not referenced many books cited in this editorial. I mentioned a few books where the readers can find references. Most of the books and journals are on the PEP Web.
Arendt , H. Jaspers, k. ( 1992) Correspondence, 1926 – 1969 Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich, New York.
Danto ( 2005) E, A, “Freud’s Free Clinics”. Columbia University Press, New York.
Ffytche, M. (2022) Critical Lives, Freud. Reaktion Books, London.
Hermsen, J . ( 2022) A Good & Dignified Life. The Political Advice of Hannah Arendt –& Rose Luxemburg. Yale University Press.
New Haven
Kirsner, D. ( 2000) Unfree Associations. Process Press, Londoon.
Richards, A., ( 2017) Psychoanalysis Perspectives on Thought Collectives. International Psychoanalytic Books Volume 2. Astoria, New York.
