PSYCHOANALYTIC MANNER AND ITS RELATION TO THE LITERATURE

Abstract

This research continues the methodological discussion between psychoanalytically-oriented therapists and their colleagues, who understand the point, the process and the influence of psychotherapy through a CBT-oriented lens. The central point of research is the question of connections between psychoanalysis and literature, or even, of psychoanalysis itself as a kind of literature. The key features of a psychoanalysts mode of thinking is to be found in the plane of aesthetics. It is proposed, that, unlike a CB-therapist, who mainly goes by the rational principles of cognition, a psychoanalyst is prone to experience the reality of psychotherapy in terms of literary aesthetics, and their attempts to verbalize their understanding of the patient is based on a literary perspective. There exists certain similarity between a writers work, as he tries to embody an imaginary character onto a page, and an analysts work, as he tries to incorporate his analytic intuition into a psychodynamic hypothesis and create a psychological portrait of the patient. Thus, the article is focused on the empirical exploration of therapeutic texts, made by therapists based on viewing an unstructured first-session interview, executed by therapists with different levels of psychotherapeutic education, experience and predisposition to psychoanalytic thinking. (For measuring said predisposition an adaptation of the Comparative Psychotherapy Process Scale(CPPS) has been carried out, its inner coherence and diagnostic validity have been established. The results of simultaneous independent criterion-based analysis of the produced texts by literary experts and psychoanalytic supervisors have shown, that the literary aesthetic is an a priory feature of the descriptions of psychoanalysts, and the more so, the higher the analysts therapeutic quality. This does not so much concern the artistic value of the descriptions, but the artistic taste: the ability to distinguish kitsch and artistic form, and the ability to integrate them into new gestalts on basis of sensual harmony. Thus, the evidence supports the claim, that artistic taste is a fundamental feature of a psychoanalysts therapeutic cognition. It is particularly the aesthetic ability of the analyst, which allows for the specific non-goal-oriented approach to his therapeutic influence, which gives room to the development of the true Self according to Winnicott, and further separates the therapeutic process from the goal-oriented therapeutic learning. Thus it is concluded, that the analytic process from the position of aesthetics may fall under the risk of devolving into forms of kitsch practices.