We are pleased to publish Alice Maher’s op ed piece – especially on the eve of our Future of Psychoanalytic Education conference on Dec. 1 & 2 – an ecumenical conference that is bound to influence us all.
Alice says: “The ability to tolerate time, tension, paradox, and ambiguity, to develop greater capacity for empathic imagination, and to be able to learn and change in relationship to an Other, are essential elements of a good analytic process. They need to become goals for our society as well.”
This is exactly what this first ecumenical conference aims to accomplish.
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Harnessing Thanatos : Is it possible to analyze the forces of war in a way that leads to real change? by Alice Lombardo Maher, M.D .
I find that I’m unable to address the topic of conflict among analysts without focusing on the larger phenomena of prejudice and war. If it’s true that there’s more dissention within the analytic community than outside it, it’s because we’ve yet to find ways to address group conflicts on a scale larger than our individual consulting rooms, so the same dynamics that lead to war are emerging in bold relief from within our own community. If we can discover ways to use analytic tools to address the problem of large-scale inter-group conflict, we have an opportunity to unify our paradigms and give society an invaluable gift. If not, the problem will continue to play itself out in our own society, and our “Tower of Babel” will eventually collapse.
Freud taught us that the need to disavow aspects of our selves can lead to symptoms, problematic relationships, and self-destructive acting out, but the opportunity to give voice to those forbidden thoughts, over a long period of time and struggle, can be healing. But his model of thanatos gave us no useful tools, and a feeling of impotence, in relation to social forces. Individual analyses tend not to deal with prejudice except as it arises as part of a dynamic construct in the treatment. But can a democratic analyst analyze a patient to become a better republican? Can a Kleinian analyst give birth to a Freudian or a Relationist?
Individual and group processes are different, and the dynamics of neurotic suffering is not the same as the dynamics of difference and prejudice. Improving our training analyses, overstimulating our candidates by teaching them all the disparate analytic theories and methodologies in intimate detail, or an “I’m OK, you’re OK” group hug, ain’t gonna do it.
It’s been 100 years. Why haven’t we discovered these tools? I believe the historical root of the problem arises from the fact that Freud was acting out his creativity rather than analyzing the nature and origin of his own creative genius. (Remember, “Beside the problem of the creative artist, psychoanalysis must, alas, lay down its arms”…?) Artists, mothers, gods… all things creative and fertile seemed beyond his desire or ability to comprehend. (“What do women want?” Babies.) As a result, he presented his model in such a way that it unconsciously forbid his analytic descendents from creatively transcending him without devaluing him and fragmenting.
What didn’t Freud bequeath his children? Transitional spaces. There are no arenas where people with new ideas can experiment with human subjects until they separate their idiosyncratic personal worldviews from their visions of potentially new truths, and figure out how to intrigue others to see what they might be defended against seeing. Because we have no analytic playgrounds, no spaces for new models to struggle together, intrigue and fertilize one another, and test hypotheses safely, we give birth to premature or stillborn babies in journals that no one outside our own communities read.
I trained at one of the most classical institutes in APsaA. When Kohut came on the scene, he was instantly rejected as the quintessential narcissist who thought he knew about narcissism, and, in the “Two Analyses of Mr. Z,” dared to present his own dynamics as if they were his patient. How horribly unethical!
I say, OF COURSE Kohut knew about narcissism, and OF COURSE the model arose out of himself. On the couch, every thought we have arises out of ourselves. How could that not be true of our theories? If he had had a safe arena, like an analytic IRB, to test out his model with patients, and had the time and space and support to help him separate his personal distortions from his new insights, the classical and the self psychological models might have been unified from the start. What actually happened was that my 2-class study of Kohut was in a course entitled “Deviant Schools.”
OK, so that didn’t happen, and our schools are at war with one another. Can we do something about it now? Yes. It’s harder, but it’s possible.
If sex and aggression were the “forbidden thoughts” of a century ago, it is my belief that prejudice has become the new “forbidden thought” – in analytic society, and in every society. Prejudice, conscious and unconscious, exists in each and every one of us, and we most often deny that we have those thoughts, judge ourselves negatively and keep silent about them, or band together and decide that they’re acceptable. Or alternately, we try to convince ourselves that if we all just shared a meal with our so-called enemies and talked about elements of our common humanity, the problems arising out of our differences would eventually fade by themselves. Those rationalizations, denials, and idealistic fantasies make us more comfortable, but let’s face it, they aren’t true. Like democrats and republicans, religious and non-religious, analysts have no idea what to do with their prejudices against one another, except to arm themselves with worthy theoretical arguments that convince few who aren’t predisposed to be convinced.
Some analysts think that “getting along” means accepting differences, while others (like me) demand a paradigm shift, believe that one is essential, and are willing to fight for it. Both are end points, not places to begin. The first step is to accept that we have these prejudices toward one another, and then we need to create safe arenas in which to verbalize them. We need to speak directly to the people we’re prejudiced against, and we need to tolerate hearing their views of us, so that both sides can struggle to understand their distortions, develop a greater capacity for empathic imagination, and find creative solutions to the conflicts that arise from the expression of difference. Lord Alderdice came closest to the model I have in mind. He brought a representative group of people together in meetings that lasted 8 hours/day, 3 days/week, for 11 years, before they reached the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland. That’s the kind of struggle, and the kind of time, we as humans need before we can attain genuine insight, conflict resolution and creative transformation.
Three years ago I began such an experiment. Two months before the last presidential election, with the support of the International Assn for Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, I brought about 100 analysts and lay people together on a listserv to discuss issues related to psychoanalysis and society, with the hypothesis that the issues we’d be discussing might come alive and become data for us to examine. The process that resulted had every element of war but the bloodshed. I don’t know if there exists an individual instinct toward death and destruction – I tend to think not – but I now believe that if you bring a group of random people together and invite them to speak openly and honestly about a controversial issue, without a concrete task or reward, and without the opportunity to see one another’s faces and bear witness to the other’s humanity – i.e, the internet – you’re going to get distortion, conflict, withdrawal, and the aggressive regression known in internet circles as “flame wars.” Group process language would call it a “basic assumption” group. It’s the phenomenon that I represent to myself as “thanatos.”
The following paragraph is quoted from a paper I wrote about the experience that I presented at the Conference on Prejudice in Salt Lake City 2 years ago. The title is “Is ‘War’ Essential for Peace? A Methodology for the Psychoanalysis of Conflict and Prejudice.”
“The group regression was powerful and dramatic. There were huge distortions, humiliating attacks, scapegoating, and accusations of prejudice, particularly anti-Semitism. Subgroups formed and armed themselves against other subgroups. Posts were forwarded to other sources for the purpose of discrediting the writers. There were threats of law suits, ethics issues, and hacking into the mechanism of the list. Thoughtful, non-provocative or gently questioning posts were typically ignored. Some left in humiliation and outrage; others moved to the sidelines. I once made a poorly timed and unconsciously aggressive joke about sending a computer virus to my “enemies” in a way that was consciously intended to defuse the intensity, but it had the opposite effect, as if I had revealed my true hidden desire to destroy those who disagreed with me. We started out as members of the “intelligentsia” interested in exploring ideas together, and we regressed to states bordering on paranoid mistrust and brutality.”
It was a war, in a laboratory.
Conceptualizing it that way, as a “war in a laboratory,” and wanting to write a paper about it, may actually have helped – it certainly did for me – because it suggested that meaning might exist where there seemed to be none. The group fought with me about the content of the paper and my desire to write it, but, after a two-month hiatus, a core group survived, and some jumped in to help.
Despite a constant drumbeat of “this is bad; this is bad….,” creative energy rose to the surface. The remaining members of the group wrote a contract together, stating the purpose of the group and asking for informed consent from new participants. We renamed the group “Self vs. Other,” with the mission to discuss the topic, “If I sincerely, powerfully believe something to be true and others around me don’t, what, if anything, should I do?” Others reprogrammed the listserv into a lovely forum, making it safer and easier to express affect and associate to the group process as a whole. Others helped me design a website, and I’ve since begun several other forums on the same site. One has the goal of synthesizing and decoding psychoanalytic theory and making it useful for people outside the profession, and the other is dedicated to a discussion of masculinity and femininity. I’m planning to begin two others soon – anti-semitism and islamophobia, and wealth, poverty and the middle class. Others are considering moderating their own forums – on aging and agism, multiculturalism, and psychosis. At that point we’ll create a forum for people who create forums, and slowly deepen our understanding and methodology.
If any of you are interested in joining us, you’ll discover that it’s extremely hard, probably impossible, to say something that’s true to yourself and your core belief system that doesn’t at the same time hurt, confuse, contradict, ignore, repudiate or enrage one or more people. Our worldviews and communication styles impact others, and theirs impacts us, whether we like it or not. The ability to tolerate time, tension, conflict, paradox and ambiguity, to develop greater capacity for empathic imagination, and to be able to learn and change in the relationship to an Other, are essential elements of a good analytic process. They need to become goals for our society as well.
Some of you may know Drew Westen’s new book, “The Political Brain” – the most recent example of “groupthink,” documented with magnetic resonance imaging. He took a group of political partisans and showed them evidence of contradictory statements made by their candidates. Thirty percent didn’t see the contradictions at all – the “contradiction” part of their brains didn’t light up on MRI. They simply reinterpreted the remarks to confirm their preexisting ideas. The thirty-five percent in the middle could see the problem, struggle with it and potentially change, but only if they were presented with the right combination of affect and idea. Unfortunately, Westen uses his conclusions to coach the democrats on their advertising techniques rather than look more deeply into the implications.
His own partisan prejudice makes me suspicious about the study, but as an analyst I’m inclined to believe it, since it seems obvious to me that a large subgroup of people are guided by their feeling states and the need to feel comfortable, and can’t be budged in their core worldview. Others are willing and able to look at themselves through different lenses, if interpretations are presented in the right way, using the right combination of affect and idea, and they’re permitted sufficient time and space for reflection.
Our political system, including analytic politics, invites those on the opposite ends of Westen’s spectrum to rise to the surface – people with strongly held opinions who can win debating points without “waffling.” As a result, our right eye continues to argue with our left, leaving us with little or no depth perception. If the people who are able to listen to others and change were more valued, and were offered safe arenas in which to struggle together over time, social conflicts might one day be solved through insight and creative synthesis rather than Supreme Courts and bombs. The computer – the next generation of “blank screen”- is bringing the force of thanatos to the surface, and making it potentially analyzable, at the same time.
Cyberspace is an extraordinary and dangerous place, but like it or not, it’s the place where our children will spend much if not most of their time. The risk of further dehumanization arising from this medium is real and terrifying. We owe it to our children to find ways to harness the energy of cyberspace in the service of deepening our understanding of one another and discovering creative solutions to psychodynamic problems.