Changing Conceptions of Psychoanalysis: The Legacy of Merton M. Gill

Abstract

DORIS K. SILVERMAN AND DAVID L. WOLITZKY (EDS.): Changing Conceptions of Psychoanalysis: The Legacy of M. Gill. The Analytic Press, Hillsdale, NJ 2000, pp. viii+317, $36.00, ISBN: 0-88163-235-X. This outstanding text, available in paperback, should be in the library of anyone practicing psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy. is divided into four parts, with essays by a variety of contributors constituting each part. A few of these have been reprinted from elsewhere. The parts are: I. Merton Gill's Place in Psychoanalysis, II. Personal/Professional Reminiscences, III. Merton Gill: Theoretician and Psychoanalyst, and IV. Current Controversies in Psychoanalysis. The fourth part is divided into sections on the debate over natural science and the hermeneutic orientation, on psychoanalysis as a one-person and a two-person psychology, on psychoanalysis and psychotherapy: critical differences or blurring of boundaries?, and on transference. Most of the contributions are of high quality and when studied together produce a volume that offers an overview of some of the most current controversies in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Each contribution is preceded by a short editorial introduction that helps to orient the reader to what is to follow. The late Gill, M.D., was one of the outstanding figures in contemporary psychoanalysis. Apparently he was an iconoclast and as a result did not rise high in psychoanalytic politics, but he was respected, and, as I gathered from this book, a feared scholarly debater on a number of salient issues. All of these issues are well covered in the volume under review. changed his opinions continuously throughout his life, including the production of a major change on the order of the revolutionary transposition undergone by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, a complete overturning of his previous point of view. He began as a classical psychoanalyst and one of his papers (1954) for a long time was considered a paradigmatic description of orthodox classical analytic style. In his later life however, perhaps influenced by another personal analysis conducted by Samuel Lipton of Chicago, he began to argue that transference was insufficiently explored in clinical work. Transference for emphasized the interaction of the patient and the in a mutually influencing relationship. We are told Gill forcefully rejected the idea that the had a superior view of the patient's intrapsychic reality and that the transference was a distortion to be judged and corrected by the analyst. He stressed instead the exploration of the plausibility of the patient's construal of the analyst (p. 4). This evolved into a position, often labeled the hermeneutic-constructivist position, too complex and controversial to be discussed in a brief book review, and to a major change and deviation from so-called classical psychoanalytic technique. in his new approach emphasized that interpretation should focus primarily on the here-and-now transference from the very beginning of the treatment. This is carried to the point where defines psychoanalysis as a treatment that contains such a central focus, regardless of the frequency of the sessions, use of the couch, etc. This is consistent with the view of those who maintain what is known as a postmodern stance but it carries the danger of sliding into relativism, as was well aware. raises a whole host of philosophical and epistemological issues, which are explored in the present text. So It was not unusual for in 1984 to find himself differing sharply with someone who cited `Gill, 1954' to buttress his or her own (pp. 49-50). tended to support the traditional position of the central importance of drives in development, a position with which I am in agreement, and this separated him to a certain extent from his colleagues who were more radically postmodern and constructivist in orientation. …