Salon Meetings at The Contemporary Freudian Society
Hosted by the 27 Rue de fleurus Committee
Co-Chairs, Debra Gill, LCSW and
Nancy Cromer- Grayson, LCSW
Meetings Coordinated by Susan Finkelstein, LCSW
Psychoanalysis and Suggestion: Is the Divorce Final ? Robert Caper, MD, Time: 8:00 PM, Date: Wed., Sept 19th
Since the time of Freud, psychoanalysis has insisted on the differences between itself as a “non-directive therapy”, and suggestive or directive forms of psychotherapy. In “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego”, Freud wrote of the “tyranny” of Bernheim’s method of suggestion, comparing its practitioners to the terrifying and dominant father of the Primal Horde. Today, we insist on the differences between, say, cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is a form of suggestion, and insight-oriented therapy, which is, as its name indicates, based on the patient’s insight into herself, not on a therapist’s suggestions.
Nonetheless, this picture is not as simple as it may seem at first glance. In “The Dynamics of Transference”, Freud freely admits that his practice is based on suggestion, and could not be otherwise. This contradiction in Freud is more apparent than real, however. The type of suggestion that Freud condemned was based on that patent’s fear of the therapist, whereas the kind he advocated was based on the patient’s love of the analyst. (The famous dictum that psychoanalysis is a cure through love refers not the analyst’s love of the patient, but the patient’s love of the analyst.) As we know, love is not only just as good a vehicle for suggestion as fear, it is better. (As Francis Bacon said of Henry VII, ‘Of the three affections which naturally tie the hearts of subjects to their sovereigns, love, fear and reverence … he had so little of the first that he was beholden to the other two.’) Whatever its basis, suggestion is still suggestion, and its use in psychoanalysis undermines our claim to be different from the various directive therapies.
This seminar will address three questions: has psychoanalysis progressed since Freud’s time beyond the use of suggestion? How can we tell if it has? And is psychoanalysis without suggestion really possible?
Suggested readings are Freud’s “The Dynamics of Transference” (SE XII pp. 97 ff) and Bion’s “Second Thoughts” pp. 149 − 152.
Robert Caper, MD, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, and has lectured in psychoanalytic institutes in the U.S., Britain, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and Australia. He is the author of over 25 psychoanalytic articles and three books: Immaterial Facts (Aronson, 1988 and Routledge 2000), A Mind of One’s Own (Routledge 2000) and Building Out into the Dark (Routledge 2009). He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, the IPA Committee on Psychoanalytic Education and the IPA Committee on Inter-Regional Conferences. He has worked with a number of British analysts, including Wilfred Bion, Donald Meltzer, Hanna Segal, Betty Joseph, Herbert Rosenfeld and Edna O’Shaughnessey. He is currently teaching and practicing psychoanalysis in New York City, where he has recently moved from California.
RSVP: Nancy Cromer Grayson at cromergrayson@gmail.com. Upper West Side location will be disclosed to participants.