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THE NEW YORK PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETY & INSTITUTE:
WORKS IN PROGRESS
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Wednesday
March 2, 2011
8:30 p.m.
How Do We Best Explain “The Classical School of Psychoanalysis?”*
Richard Gottlieb, M.D.
The origins, evolution, and more recent developments of the so-called classical school of psychoanalysis are subjects taught at many institutes. Most analysts feel they understand classical psychoanalysis so well that definition is unnecessary. Recently I was asked to provide an 8000 word essay on the classical school to serve as the chapter on the subject in The Textbook of Psychoanalysis (2nd Edition, American Psychiatric Press). I interpreted the request as for an essay that would not only enable students to distinguish the classical from other schools, but would familiarize them with its unique history, important tenets, major contributors, and central theories and clinical techniques. I found this a hugely difficult task, both because of and despite my having spent my career in, as it were, the belly of the beast. In bringing my efforts so far to the Works in Progress meeting I am hoping for discussion, controversy, enlightenment, and perhaps a better framework for examining the problem than I have been able to come to so far on my own. The task can be like making a study of the air we breathe, all around us and invisible. I believe this is also a serious yet overlooked issue for many institutes’ pedagogy: we may at times be tempted to teach the elements of classicism from a perspective sometimes blindingly close.
Dr. Gottlieb is on the Faculty of NYPSI, a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute and Associate Clinical Professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He is also Associate Editor for Clinical Studies for the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
*The paper is available from info@nypsa.org
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