It’s the twist of a knowledge
“The psychoanalysis does not exist”
By Alejandra Castillo Flores
The title is a phrase that psychoanalysts know very well—though I recently heard it again in the video ¿Guardar silencio o interpretar? Una idea de Racker (Being silent or interpreting? An idea by Racker) by Juan Manuel Martínez. And what this phrase refers to seems a good way for me of entering the subject, since it means there is not a psychoanalysis but there are many; and there it lays the complexity we have nowadays of giving a clear answer to the most common question—in my experience—analysts receive: “and what is psychoanalysis?”
If we go back to the source, Sigmund Freud, in the beginning of psychoanalysis it was him who decided what was and what was not psychoanalysis, being a concrete proof of this Freud’s text from 1914, ‘On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement’: “no one can know better than I do what psychoanalysis is, how it differs from other ways of investigating the life of the mind, and precisely what should be called psychoanalysis and what would better be described by some other name”.[i]
These words make it difficult for us to have a precise definition, since the patriarch of the movement is no longer with us to tells us what psychoanalysis is. We can see this clearly in the different ways taken by the post Freudian schools of thought, so much so that nowadays they can even be contradictory among them. Even so, all these groups recognise that the unconscious exists and that we know so due to its effects—psychoanalysts train to be able to detect these effects in session with a patient—however, which are the effects or how can we detect them are the radical differences between one school of thought and another.
It is worth mentioning that not only psychoanalysts are the ones who deal with this particular problem, both psychology and psychiatry—usual members of the same mental health triad—have been divided in as many or even more branches than the ones we can find in psychoanalysis.
If we go back to our first question, knowing now the plurality it implies, the simplest answer is the one given by the dictionaries of this particular subject. Thus, each psychoanalytic branch proposes a theory of the human mind, a form of therapeutic treatment, and a research methodology. [ii] These three points can have common ground, like the use of the divan, or the use of certain concepts like transference, defences, neurosis, etcetera; nevertheless, the way we use them can also be different.
Now, if the question is changed into ‘which one works?’ Or ‘which one is better?’ The answers would be ‘all work’ and ‘none is better’. There are analysts and patients, not all analysts will accept all patients nor all patients would like to work with any analyst.
Finding a good fit * can be disheartening for many—unless jumping from one divan to another is used as an effective method of defence so as not having to deal with one’s problems—but if the suffering is there (my reality is unbearable), the automatism (I always do the same and I don’t know why), or the constant failure (I can’t obtain what I want or I don’t even know what I want), then there will be a reason to search for that fit.
[i] Freud, Sigmund. ‘On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement (1914)’. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by James Strachey et al., James Strachey, vol. XIV (1914-1916), The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1957, p. 7. ↑
[ii] Laplanche, Jean, and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis. ‘Psychoanalysis’. The Language of Psycho-Analysis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis., 1973, p. 367. ↑
* Reason why a small directory of colleagues is added to this web page.
