Re-Form: Can Psychoanalysis Take It?
A continuing dialogue by Richard Gottlieb.
Dr. Gottlieb sparks us to think with Dr. Makari about the fundamentals of our profession, our dedication to inner life and how to teach this discipline. Gottlieb also asks us to attend closely to our language so that we are clear with ourselves and others what we mean. This respectfully critical dialogue advances thinking in a professional community.
Click Here to Read: Reforming Psychoanalysis Again: The question for us now is to redraw those lines by George Makari, M.D. on his Revolution in Mind blog on the Psychology Today blogs on this website.
Click Here to Read: “We Have Nothing to Fear, But . . .Makari on the Anxieties in Today’s NYTimes on this website
N. Szajnberg, MD, Managing Editor
A REACTION TO GEORGE MAKARI:
George Makari’s March 1st 2012 blog entry (in Psychology Today) recaps his elegantly supported argument that for psychoanalysis as a discipline the need for patient protection, in-group coherence, rational rules, clear inclusion and exclusion criteria, and widening distribution of authority have had both salutary and suffocating effects. In today’s environment the suffocating effects have rendered our field badly “in need of reinvigoration.”
“We need infusions of new ideas from new people. The cost of becoming an analyst needs to go down, literally and metaphorically. With our past in mind, there should be ways to protect our patients while loosening some of the rules that suffocate psychoanalysis today.” There should be. But what might these be? Among his suggestions Makari suggests that we “lower the bar for those who seek admission.” Makari’s unfortunate language here suggests that some old prejudices still cast their shadows. Lowering the bar should not be our aim.
Rather, widening the gateways for admission would go a long way toward
the needed reinvigoration. I know of many cases in which potential highly accomplished applicants from literature, the arts, and other non-clinical fields have been preemptively denied admission to study at our institutes.
Makari is correct that we need to redraw the lines defining who is in and who is out. Our shrinking influence and splendid isolation is due in large measure to our own behavior.