American Psychoanalysis Research Articles

Introduction to “Reconciliation: The Continuing Role of Theory” by Leo Rangell and “American Psychoanalysis Today: Plurality of Orthodoxies” by Arnold M. Cooper

Introduction to “Reconciliation: The Continuing Role of Theory” by Leo Rangell and “American Psychoanalysis Today: Plurality of Orthodoxies” by Arnold M. CooperMarianne Horney EckardtMarianne Horney EckardtFounding member of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry.Address correspondence to Marianne Horney Eckardt, 3066-A Via Serena S., Laguna Woods, CA 92637.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:July 2008https://doi.org/10.1521/jaap.2008.36.2.213PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations About Next article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Cited byCited by1. Bion and Sullivan: An enlightening comparisonOnline publication date: Go to citation Crossref Google Scholar Volume 36Issue 2Jun 2008 Information© The American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic PsychiatryPDF download

E Uno Plurus: Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the Age of Pluralism

Until 1970 the dominant theoretical framework in American psychoanalysis was Freudian ego psychology. Since then a number of additional theories, such as object relations theory (including, but not restricted to, the Kleinian approach), self psychology, relational psychoanalysis, and attachment theory have evolved and compete with contemporary ego psychology in the current marketplace of psychoanalytic ideas. There is considerable controversy about whether it is advantageous to work from one theoretical model and apply it to all clinical situations, or whether to utilize all the available paradigms, making judgments about which model or combination of them is most useful in a particular clinical situation or at a particular clinical moment. The latter approach might be termed pluralistic. Though a pluralistic approach is not without its philosophic and practical difficulties, such a perspective is helpful in understanding the complexity of human behavior and in facilitating therapeutic growth. A pluralistic approach is familiar to contemporary psychotherapists, who must utilize multiple frameworks in constructing biopsychosocial formulations of their patients. A pluralistic perspective is advantageous in promoting a therapeutic alliance, since it lends itself to a collaborative therapeutic process with patients. A brief clinical vignette is presented to illustrate these ideas.

Preface

Preface Peter L. Rudnytsky I owe the inspiration for this issue of American Imago to Howard Faulkner and Virginia Pruitt, who submitted their manuscript, "The Unpublished Menninger," in March 2006. Despite its length, it was clear to me that this monograph recounting their experiences as the editors of Karl Menninger's correspondence, and detailing the material that they had been obliged to omit from their two published volumes, was eminently worth accepting. With the paper by Faulkner and Pruitt as my centerpiece, I then sought to burnish the issue by soliciting contributions from distinguished psychoanalysts who were associated with the Menninger School of Psychiatry in its heyday, and who could thus supplement the scholarly narrative of Faulkner and Pruitt from their unique first-hand vantage points. Emboldened by his previous acts of kindness, I began by contacting Robert Wallerstein, who offered to furnish a "personal perspective" on Karl Menninger the man. Next, at the Winter Meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association, I sought out Howard Shevrin, who consented to address the research component of the Menninger enterprise. Finally, in May, at a lecture by Eric Kandel at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, I serendipitously encountered Herbert Schlesinger, who yielded to my entreaties and found the time to complete his paper, "The Treatment Program at Menninger," by my altogether unrealistic deadline. Having drawn three kings to go with my aces in the hole, I am now confident that this full house will supply the wherewithal for anyone who wants to travel back to the bright, shining moment when Topeka, Kansas, became the Camelot of American psychoanalysis. Although Faulkner and Pruitt come in, as it were, near the end of the story—in the mid-1980s, when Karl Menninger was already over ninety—they, too, had personal contact with the great man. In psychoanalytic fashion, their attempt to secure Menninger's cooperation in preparing their edition of [End Page 135] his correspondence led not only to a reawakening of his past but also to a reenactment of earlier dynamics in their present relationship. Thus, just as Wallerstein describes his own indignation at being subjected to the "almost mandatory blow-up" that marred Menninger's dealings with his associates, so, too, Faulkner and Pruitt recount how Menninger, after an initial honeymoon period, turned on them with accusations of betrayal and dramatically introduced them to his lawyer as his "former friends" after they showed him a prepublication version of their manuscript. The purely subjective basis for Menninger's recriminations is all the more apparent because Faulkner and Pruitt had in fact taken pains to suppress from their two volumes any letters having to do with the most sensitive areas of his personal life: his divorce from his first wife, Grace Gaines Menninger, and subsequent remarriage to Jean Lyle Menninger, as well as his experiences of analysis first with Franz Alexander in Chicago and then with Ruth Mack Brunswick in New York. Now, Faulkner and Pruitt are making public all their archival discoveries that discretion had led them to withhold during Menninger's lifetime. Although their work will be of great interest to intellectual historians and scholars of psychoanalysis, Faulkner and Pruitt's engrossing study does not cast Menninger in a favorable light. Writing to Jean Lyle in 1940 about his acrimonious conflict with the popular writer and sociological researcher, Leo Rosten, for whom Lyle had briefly worked in Hollywood while Menninger was trying to extricate himself from his marriage to Grace, Menninger brazenly assures his mistress, "I can do some lying too." Despite being told by Menninger himself, the tale that emerges of Rosten's alleged highhandedness toward Lyle lacks credibility and indeed seems to warrant Rosten's castigation of Menninger's behavior as "paranoid" and "hysterical." Menninger was certainly not the first psychoanalyst to have understood Freud's teaching as a warning, in Faulkner and Pruitt's phrase, against the "danger of repression," or to have appealed to this doctrine to justify his extramarital affairs. But it remains disconcerting to see a spin-off from the Dora case play itself out in the American heartland during the late 1920s. In handwritten letters that mysteriously disappeared from the archives more than five years after...

The Culture of Psychoanalysis in the United States: The Use of State and Federal Government to Advance Psychoanalysis

This paper focuses on the New York State law that licenses and defines the practice of psychoanalysis. The influences in American psychoanalysis that led to the law are explored, as well as the ramifications for the profession of psychoanalysis. Currently, in the United States, two psychoanalytic organizations, the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Consortium (comprised of four national psychoanalytic organizations), are vying for which will exert the most influence on state licensing laws in psychoanalysis and federal guidelines for psychoanalytic training standards. In other countries, psychoanalysts are responding defensively to attempts by the State to regulate psychoanalytic practice. In the United States, some psychoanalytic organizations are pursuing establishing state licensing laws in psychoanalysis and federal guidelines for training standards in psychoanalysis.

The Quiet Revolution in American Psychoanalysis: Selected Papers of Arnold Cooper

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article This article has been corrected | View Correction Book ForumFull AccessThe Quiet Revolution in American Psychoanalysis: Selected Papers of Arnold CooperROBERT S. WALLERSTEIN M.D.,ROBERT S. WALLERSTEIN M.D.Search for more papers by this author,Published Online:1 Nov 2006https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.2006.163.11.2021AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail The title The Quiet Revolution in American Psychoanalysis aptly describes the more than half-century-long impressive transformation of psychoanalysis in America, from the discipline and profession created almost single-handed by the prodigious life’s work of Sigmund Freud, its founder—who at the same time maintained its inherent continuity and identity within change—to Arnold Cooper, psychoanalytic clinician, theoretician, and educator, who is both a vivid chronicler of as well as prominent contributor to that story of maintained continuity within transformative change. This volume, marvelously edited by Elizabeth Auchincloss—who herself contributes a most informative introduction about Cooper as a man and friend as well as scientific luminary—comprises 19 of Cooper’s most significant articles from an overall oeuvre of some 140 listed in the bibliography. Cooper’s body of work is divided into four major thematic areas: 1) the description of the unfolding “quiet revolution” over time; 2) the boundaries with cognate disciplines of knowledge of human mental functioning in their own evolving, mutually enriching interactions with psychoanalysis; 3) the important clinical contributions of Cooper focused around his insightful exploration of the powerful linkages between the narcissistic and the masochistic facets of character functioning, both in health and illness; and 4) finally, the changing ways of psychoanalytic working under the impact of the half-century of continuing change in analytic theorizing internally and altering sociocultural context externally. In all this, we clearly see Cooper at a nodal position, as both psychoanalytic contributor and as forceful expositor of contemporary psychoanalytic thinking and practice as it has evolved over the more than half-century of his active involvement and, at the same time, as a psychoanalyst who has always maintained his deep psychiatric roots, which are marked by his many years as director of education in a major medical school department of psychiatry and, simultaneously, his many years as an associate and deputy editor of The American Journal of Psychiatry . We also see that he maintained his voice as a major proponent of the continuing place of psychoanalysis as the provider of a comprehensive explanatory psychology for psychiatry, a crucial pillar for understanding and therapeutic practice within the tripartite biopsychosocial model. Cooper’s outstanding success is amply demonstrated in his direct, lucid, descriptive, and explanatory language, translating what can be the all too complex jargon of in-house psychoanalysis into directly understandable and useable knowledge of human mental functioning and of what can be done to mitigate its malfunctioning. This book is one of special value for the psychiatric practitioner. Belevedere, Calif. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 163Issue 11 November, 2006Pages 2021-2021THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY November 2006 Volume 163 Number 11 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 November 2006 Published in print 1 November 2006

Friedman's corpus Since His Anatomy: A Psychoanalytic Odyssey

Lawrence Friedman is a preeminent theorist, critic, and commentator in American psychoanalysis today. The major themes of his work, beginning with his magnum opus, The Anatomy of Psychotherapy (1988), are examined in an effort to identify conceptual shifts and problems in contemporary psychoanalysis. In the years since publication of that work, Friedman's texts have increasingly focused on the epistemological controversies faced by contemporary psychoanalysts. He has become a vocal critic of recent developments in relational psychoanalysis, advancing views that are explored here and subjected to critical appraisal. To better understand Friedman's ideas, areas of disagreement with other authors, including Schafer, Renik, Hoffman, Mitchell, Rorty, and Michels, are explored. Finally, Friedman is presented as a crypto-intersubjectivist whose work effects a realignment of theory with practice.

Changes in the Psychiatric Landscape

Changes in the Psychiatric Landscape

The Quiet Revolution in American Psychoanalysis: Selected Papers of Arnold M. Cooper (review)

The Quiet Revolution in American Psychoanalysis: Selected Papers of Arnold M. Cooper (review)

Abraham Arden Brill, 1874–1948

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Images in PsychiatryFull AccessAbraham Arden Brill, 1874–1948Arnold D. Richards, M.D., and Paul W. Mosher, M.D.Arnold D. RichardsSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., and Paul W. MosherSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Mar 2006https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.163.3.386AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail A.A. Brill was one of the most influential American psychiatrists of the past century. His efforts and personal views were major factors in the development of psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis in the United States during the century’s first half. Brill left the Eastern European village of his childhood at the age of 14 and came, alone and without resources, to the United States and New York City to seek his fortune. By the time he was 29, he had graduated from the Columbia University College of Physician and Surgeons and then trained in psychiatry and neurology. In 1907, he traveled to Europe to pursue the latest advances in psychiatry and became acquainted with the work of Sigmund Freud. Upon his return to New York City, he began what was the first private practice of psychoanalysis in the United States (1).Brill became Freud’s first English translator, and Brill’s translations played a major role in the popularization of psychoanalysis in the United States. In 1911, Brill organized a group of 20 physician colleagues to found the first American psychoanalytic organization, the New York Psychoanalytic Society. Brill thought of himself as the father of American psychoanalysis, writing in 1938:Psychoanalysis was unknown in this country until I introduced it in 1908.…[psychoanalytic terminology], some of which I was the first to coin into English expression, can now be found in all standard English dictionaries. Words like abreaction, transference, repression, displacement, unconscious, which I introduced as Freudian concepts, have been adopted and are used to give new meanings, new values to our knowledge of normal and abnormal behavior. (2)Throughout his career, Brill was unalterably opposed to the practice of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy by nonphysicians and worked diligently to promote psychoanalysis as a subspecialty of psychiatry. In 1931, he helped to found the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, devoted to training physicians in psychoanalysis. As a result of almost a decade of Brill’s efforts, the American Psychiatric Association established a Section on Psychoanalysis in 1934 with Brill as its first head. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Mosher, 6 Woodlawn Ave., Albany, NY 12208; [email protected] (e-mail). Figure 1.

Identifying marks of Latin American psychoanalysis Towards the definition of a River Plate model

The author considers the influences that different psychoanalytic trends have had on the thought processes of psychoanalysts in the River Plate region. She begins by giving a history of the way in which these trends were shaped by the sociocultural context of the region, and of how the dialectical relationship between these two factors produced the River Plate region's (Argentina and Uruguay) own theoretical model. The author includes a study--albeit incomplete--of major local developments, and attempts to define the characteristics of a regional model. The model is based on the following parameters: the fundamental rules of evenly suspended attention and free association; the technical frame; links between theory and clinical practice such as transference-countertransference, resistance, identification, the analytic field; the concept of psychic change and its indicators; and the interpretive instrument. The author considers the past and present influence of Lacanian thought on this model. She concludes by reviewing some of these theoretical and clinical concepts.

Identifying marks of Latin American psychoanalysis: Towards the definition of a River Plate model

The author considers the infl uences that different psychoanalytic trends have had on the thought processes of psychoanalysts in the River Plate region. She begins by giving a history of the way in which these trends were shaped by the sociocultural context of the region, and of how the dialectical relationship between these two factors produced the River Plate region's (Argentina and Uruguay) own theoretical model. The author includes a study‐albeit incomplete‐of major local developments, and attempts to defi ne the characteristics of a regional model. The model is based on the following parameters: the fundamental rules of evenly suspended attention and free association; the technical frame; links between theory and clinical practice such as transference‐countertransference, resistance, identifi cation, the analytic fi eld; the concept of psychic change and its indicators; and the interpretive instrument. The author considers the past and present infl uence of Lacanian thought on this model. She concludes by reviewing some of these theoretical and clinical concepts.

'Yes, we have bananas!'

This paper takes as its starting point 'identifying markers of Latin American psychoanalysis'. The authors see this theme as a compromise between two diverging approaches. On one hand, the conference at which the content was presented provided the opportunity for Latin American psychoanalytical thinking to be discussed and, as a reward to the best papers, to be published. On the other, both the conference and the reward are more indicative of the observer's biases than of the object's peculiarities. The authors consider that the conference mistakenly focused on the search for minor differences (secondary identifications) instead of looking for invariances (identities). Considering that uncertainty, pluralism and complexity are issues relevant to the whole of psychoanalysis in its current stage of development as a scientific discipline, the authors think that treating these elements as 'identifying markers of Latin American psychoanalysis' is evidence of prejudice brought about by a coloniser-colonised relationship. To develop their argument, the authors discuss a paper on editorial criteria by Tuckett as a clinical case, and use an episode of Brazilian history as further illustration. They address issues such as conformity to cultural patterns; the search for certainties and proofs; the domination of some groups over others; and editorial power-more specifically, its influence on the acceptance or rejection of scientific ideas. These issues have distracted attention away from the fundamentals of psychoanalysis by introducing other, extraneous aims. Publication plays a key role in feeding a possibly vicious circle wherein only a small proportion of scientific contributions manages to reach a wide audience--exactly those contributions that conform to established patterns. The act of publication turns that portion into official knowledge, while unpublished ideas become increasingly excluded.

‘Yes, we have bananas!’1

This paper takes as its starting point ‘identifying markers of Latin American psychoanalysis’. The authors see this theme as a compromise between two diverging approaches. On one hand, the conference at which the content was presented provided the opportunity for Latin American psychoanalytical thinking to be discussed and, as a reward to the best papers, to be published. On the other, both the conference and the reward are more indicative of the observer's biases than of the object's peculiarities. The authors consider that the conference mistakenly focused on the search for minor differences (secondary identifi cations) instead of looking for invariances (identities). Considering that uncertainty, pluralism and complexity are issues relevant to the whole of psychoanalysis in its current stage of development as a scientifi c discipline, the authors think that treating these elements as ‘identifying markers of Latin American psychoanalysis’ is evidence of prejudice brought about by a coloniser‐colonised relationship. To develop their argument, the authors discuss a paper on editorial criteria by Tuckett as a clinical case, and use an episode of Brazilian history as further illustration. They address issues such as conformity to cultural patterns; the search for certainties and proofs; the domination of some groups over others; and editorial power‐more specifi cally, its infl uence on the acceptance or rejection of scientifi c ideas. These issues have distracted attention away from the fundamentals of psychoanalysis by introducing other, extraneous aims. Publication plays a key role in feeding a possibly vicious circle wherein only a small proportion of scientifi c contributions manages to reach a wide audience‐exactly those contributions that conform to established patterns. The act of publication turns that portion into offi cial knowledge, while unpublished ideas become increasingly excluded.

William Menninger and American psychoanalysis, 1946–48

In the aftermath of World War II, a struggle ensued over the direction of American psychoanalysis. Led by William Menninger, who reluctantly assumed the presidency of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1946, a cohort of American-born psychoanalysts sought to make their profession more responsive to other medical practitioners and the general public. Insisting that divisive theoretical debates should be relegated to the past, these psychoanalysts promoted a medicalized, Americanized and popularized version of psychoanalysis that deliberately blurred the distinction between psychiatry and psychoanalysis. They were opposed by a group of more orthodox psychoanalysts, including many émigrés, who viewed their efforts as undermining psychoanalysis from within.

Emerging from Determinism

Keywords Freud, positivism, Lacan, intention Lacan has been ignored by philosophers (in the Anglo-American tradition) partly because he was always antipathetic to positivism and pragmatism, and drew on continental phenomenology instead. Psychoanalysis was forged in the Vienna where logical positivism also had its roots in the early twentieth century. After the diaspora in the late 1930s, due to the Nazi annexation of Austria, psychoanalysis then coalesced with American pragmatism to produce a psychoanalytic trend that became extremely mechanistic. The positivist view of reality led to the mechanisms of the ego being thought of as entities you could bark your shins on. American psychoanalysis derived from, and elaborated, Viennese "ego-psychology," regarding the unconscious as determined biologically, a set of drives and brain functions. It makes psychoanalysis in effect a biology. As a result, the conscious mind was a "determined" epiphenomenon through which the determining unconscious could influence psychology. This is a crass, mechanistic view that distorted the development of psychoanalysis in America—although recently that naivety has deservedly succumbed. The aberration has been breaking down since the 1970s (see Fromm 1971), although it is now desperately trying to survive through mating with the new neuroscience promoted in the American "decade of the brain" (the 1990s). Freud was himself nonphilosophical. Indeed, he might almost have been said to be antiphilosophical. He doubted . . . as to which of the countless philosophical systems, should be accepted [by the psychoanalyst], since they all seem to rest on an equally insecure basis. It seemed more prudent to wait, and to discover whether a particular attitude towards life might be forced upon us with all the weight of necessity by analytical investigation itself. (Freud 1921/1955, 270) Freud is claiming that philosophy should grow from psychoanalysis. As a result, psychoanalysts have mostly neglected philosophy. A further result of this lack of philosophical inquiry is that philosophers have felt justified in neglecting psychoanalysis, including its great achievement—namely, the discovery of the unconscious mind with its nonrational rules of operation that spawn irrationality, self-deception, and akrasia, and its profound implications for a very different view of reality. The unconscious is very difficult for a philosophy predicated on the enlightenment view of man as consciously rational.1 Unless such philosophies open up to a view of irrationality as the essence of humanity, they remain impervious to psychoanalysis, and indeed impervious to a comprehensive view of the human mind. Because of the antiphilosophical bias of analysts, nobody seemed to notice that psychoanalysis in fact does rest on strong implicit philosophical [End Page 79] assumptions about reality. Freud himself was formed as a nineteenth-century scientist basing his worldview on materialist conceptions of the laws of nature. However, Freud's raw material for his research (the human mind, its experience, its pleasures, and its pains) drove him, kicking and screaming in the opposite direction toward a romantic perception. As a matter of fact, despite the scientism in his work, Freud did adore German romantic literature, from Goethe onward. Because of the implicit philosophical assumptions of a positivist kind, one problem that Freud ducked was this: How does an intentional person emerge from biologically determined brain functioning? Lacan and Freud's Romanticism For most psychoanalysts—American, British, or Continental—the ambiguity in Freud is not addressed.2 It is to Lacan's credit that he exposed the philosophical divide most explicitly, between positivism and romanticism. He took possession of the reluctant Freud for the nonpositivist mode. Lacan confronted and castigated American psychoanalysis because it married into the family of American rationalism; it became committed to pragmatism, positivism, and adaptationism, and thereby accentuated psychic determinism. American positivism was a bête noir for Lacan, who confronted that ambiguity in terms that virtually construct it as an American–French conflict. Lacan's Freud is a purloined one, claiming him for French philosophy. This has made him difficult for both Anglo-American philosophers and Anglo-American psychoanalysts. In fact, Freud's "romanticism" was not invisible—even to Freud. It was literally...

Contemporary American psychoanalysis: A profession? Increasing the role of research in psychoanalysis.

Contemporary American psychoanalysis: A profession? Increasing the role of research in psychoanalysis.

State of the Hope: The New Bad Object in the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalysis

Until recently, most psychoanalytic conceptualizations of the analyst as a new object have tended to equate newness with good experience and safety. Recent papers in the relational literature have explored not only the therapeutic value, but also the inevitability of the patient's experience of the analyst as bad, as well as the analyst's participation in this experience. This author examines the multifarious nature of hope, goodness, and badness in the clinical situation. The patient gets to know not only elements of his or her own self that are held by the analyst, but also ways in which the patient holds elements related to the particulars of the analyst's person in the analytic situation. Shifts in American psychoanalysis regarding conceptualizations of the analyst as a new object are examined. Limitations of a bifurcated approach to goodness and badness in clinical conceptualizations are also explored.

Beyond the Mainstreams

My interest in the theory and art of psychoanalysis is traced to some of its sources—my childhood and expulsion from Germany in the late 1930s, my experience as a member of a discriminated-against minority, my nonacceptance as a psychologist by American psychoanalytic societies, my invitation to participate in the development of self psychology, and my fortuitous encounter with personal and professional friends who have contributed to the scope of my psychoanalytic endeavors (e.g., to my abiding interest in research and, in particular, the empirical studies of the early mother–infant dyad). I offer this account as evidence of the varied and creative opportunities that await psychoanalysts not outside but beyond the mainstream of American psychoanalysis.

A history of Norwegian psychiatry.

In Norway the building of asylums started in 1855 with the establishment of Gaustad State Asylum. Until the 1950s Norwegian psychiatry was mainly a hospital psychiatry, strongly influenced by the pre-war German tradition. After World War II, it was influenced by British social psychiatry and American psychoanalysis. Psychiatric units in general hospitals were established in the 1960s onwards and outpatient clinics from the 1970s. During the last twenty years Norwegian psychiatry has taken a more biological trend with stronger emphasis on diagnostics and drug treatment. The increase in the number of psychiatrists and especially psychologists has been formidable during the last fifty years.

Dreams of America/American Dreams

Drawing on anecdotes that illustrate some European fantasies about the U.S.A. and its citizens, this paper suggests that what's American about American psychoanalysis has to do with differing cultural perspectives on human nature and on the relation of self to other. Via the European prejudices and stereotypes conveyed in the anecdotes, the essay delineates certain enviable things about what the U.S. stands for, such as persistent demands for equality and relatively greater possibilities for social mobility, as well as certain unenviable things, such as a superficial niceness and a tendency to deny the individual's embeddedness in social contexts. The paper puts relational analytic theory in its socio-historic context, praising its deconstruction of analytic authority while questioning the way it for the most part maintains the analytic tradition of grounding the individual in no larger social context than that of the family.