Barrier busting is a business term recently used by Amory Lovins*, an energy wizard and CEO of the Rocky Mt. Institute. He is referring to the need for all those concerned with oil consumption and alternative energy to work together towards a solution. I applaud this concept as it relates to psychoanalysis as well. Psychoanalysis needs to bust barriers too.
The richness of this profession is due to the mix of psychoanalysts, some with doctorates and many without. Exclusionary practices are damaging this profession. Case in point: Today I received an invitation to a meeting
NEW PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVES ON PREJUDICE
Making a Difference in Society
A Conference for the Application of Psychoanalysis to Problems in Society
Co Sponsored by the Harry Stack Sullivan Society,
William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Society, and
Contemporary Psychoanalysis
A conference on prejudice that clearly excludes clinical social workers on its program and on its planning committee – people who have earned the right to practice psychoanalysis, and who have made major contributions to this profession – is misguided and divisive.
My hope, in this short essay, is first of all to educate those who are prejudiced against masters level social work psychoanalysts and lay analysts, and secondly, along the same lines, to make a plea that we respect and listen to diverse points of view from different disciplines.
Anyone who embraces psychoanalytic work knows how difficult and rewarding it can be. Putting energy into turf wars is draining and takes away the chance to learn from each other. Discrimination persists now because of status issues, as the world of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy becomes increasingly stratified under economic pressure. But now is a time to join together as we have much to share.
The exclusionary practices that permeate this profession are diminishing as the American Psychoanalytic Association has extended the opportunity for MSW social workers to study at 28 out of 30 of its institutes across the country, the only hold outs being Columbia and NY Psychoanalytic Institute. Interestingly, the institutes in New York, a city known for its sophistication and acceptance of otherness, are continuing their exclusionary practices. Along with these two APsaA institutes, both WAW and NYU Post Doctoral admit only those with PhDs or MDs.
Other institutes are flourishing. Those affiliated with a group called NAAP, and the two IPA institutes in New York, NYFS and IPTAR, attract candidates every year. So the competition is great and the interest in psychoanalysis is alive and well.
Why are masters level social workers discriminated against? Some feel that a doctorate is proof of scholarship. I wish to challenge that thinking by presenting my credentials and those of many colleagues, but first a few words about the impact social work school made on me.
The first thing one learns in social work is: Be with the patient (Be where the patient’s at). It is this message that continues to ring in our ears. Not distracted by anatomy, diagnosis, prognosis, testing, and other evaluatory methods of looking at people (although many social workers are adept at using the medical model), social work education focuses on the individual. At least it used to. Nowadays, I hear that Freud is shunned and this is all the more reason to include social workers in our institutes. Those of you who have heard of and read Patrick Casement, Joyce Edwards, Jean Sanville and others from social work backgrounds will understand my plea for respect. Let me name a few others without degrees in psychology or medicine, people who enriched psychoanalysis and who today would be rejected by the four training institutes heretofore mentioned: Lou Andreas Salome, Marie Bonaparte, Hans Sachs, August Aichhorn, Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Erik Erikson, Ernst Kris, Otto Rank, Robert Waelder, Beta Bornstein, Betty Joseph, Martin Bergmann, Anni Bergman and the list goes on.
Psychiatrists and psychologists are trained differently. Diagnostic testing and research are the expertise of psychologists and medicine belongs to physicians. Both stress diagnosis. Diagnosis is not a psychoanalytic concept. Anna Freud said in her Adult Diagnostic Profile that the diagnosis could only come at the end of a psychoanalysis. (1965). A real psychoanalyst is a listener, not a measurer. The more we listen, the more we learn and as Ella Sharpe (1950) said:
The fundamental interest of a would-be [clinician] must be in people’s lives and thoughts. The dross of the infantile super-ego in that fundamental interest must by analysis be purged. The urgency to reform, to correct, to make different, motivates the task of a reformer or educator. The urgency to cure motivates the physician. A deep-seated interest in people’s lives and thoughts must in a psycho-analyst have been transformed into an insatiable curiosity which, while having its recognizable unconscious roots, is free in consciousness to range over every field of human experience and activity, free to recognize every unconscious impulse, with only one urgency, namely, a desire to know more and still more about the psychical mechanism involved. …. When we come to a habit of thought, a type of experience, to which we reply: ‘I cannot understand how a person can think like that or behave like this,’ then we cease to be clinicians. Curiosity has ceased to be benevolent.” [my underlining]
My education did not end with my social work degree. I attended two post graduate institutes. At The Institute for the Study of Psychotherapy my teachers were Gertrude and Reuben Blank and Donald Kaplan. That two year program focused on psychotherapy with the less structured or so called borderline and narcissistic patient, and added two years for psychoanalysis. At the same time I attended the New York Freudian Society. When I graduated from both programs, I continued my studies for 10 years in ongoing seminars with Martin Bergman, William Grossman, Gertrude Blank, Margaret Mahler, Jacob Arlow, and David Milrod. I continued my supervision until I had terminated two cases.
I am certainly not alone. My social work colleagues did not, as a rule, go on for doctorates as there were no clinical doctorate programs in New York and they preferred, as did I, to learn their craft from the masters. I wonder how many PhDs and MDs studied in the depth and breadth that we did.
Psychoanalysis is losing its place in universities and in the culture and it needs to tackle the problem by barrier busting – by working in concert and by shunning isolation. Think of all the energy we could harness – energy now spent on separating each other by using degrees and theoretical dissonance to keep us apart.
TEAM, the logo of the annual Psychoanalytic Education Conference stands for Together Everyone Achieves More. At the conference last year, all kinds of analysts met and found that they could indeed share ideas. Representatives from all societies, institutes, including the American Psychoanalytic Association, the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, along with the Jungians and Adlerians came together for two days and listened to each other respectfully. Everyone felt hopeful because they felt respected and included.
I end with a plea for real non discriminatory practices. At this time in history we must reach out to all interested in psychoanalytic work. At this time in history we must understand that no one has a corner on talent and the quest for knowledge. At this time in history we must be grateful for creative ideas, and new energy.
Jane S. Hall, Psychoanalyst
(Thanks to Arnie Richards and Kenneth Eisold for suggestions.)
References:
Freud, A., Nagera, H., and Freud, W.E. (1965). Metaphysical assessment of the adult personality. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 20:9-41. NY: IUP.
Sharpe, Ella (1950). Collected Papers on Psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth Press.
*Charlie Rose: A conversation with Amory Lovins
http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/07/15/2/a-conversation-with-amory-lovins