10
DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYTIC
A second example involves the following: for almost a half a century after Freud introduced his libido theory, classical analysts were devoted to penis envy to explain female development and psychopathology. Today, we understand that penis envy is a response to a fantasy that does have a place in analytic understanding, but certainly is not central to female develop- ment and psychopathology. Unfortunately, many analysts rigidly adhered to this limited explanation, while female patients frequently felt cowed and overpowered at the persistent interpretations from their analysts. These ana- lysts conveyed they understood more about their female patients’ experience than they actually did, and were not able to consider that their patients’
frustration could be caused by anything else, including the lack of under- standing of their analysts.
In 1978 when changes in the insularity of classical psychoanalysis had just started, I fi rst read one of Joe’s early papers, “The Testing of Reality from the Standpoint of the Body Self.” In this paper, Joe focused on several ideas that were new for those days. He wrote about the patient’s experience, which was before the onset of interest in subjectivity. He wrote about the importance of the Self, when Kohut was just beginning to publish his ideas on Self Psychology, and he wrote about the application of infant develop- ment in understanding clinical material which was beginning to take hold in the minds of psychoanalysts. Listening to Joe was like breathing fresh air because of his capacity to integrate a variety of ideas into the matrix of psychoanalysis.
I immediately invited him to present a paper for the Michigan Psychoanalytic Society to show my colleagues who I had discovered. Six months later he presented “The Development of the Sense of the Object” to my colleagues in Michigan. In the paper he focused on ideas that were evolv- ing, from the budding interest within classical psychoanalysis, on Object Relations Theory and the Self, while considering how they could be inte- grated with the fundamentals of instinct theory and ego psychology.
During my fi rst few experiences with him, I felt like energy and freedom were being released from the depth of my mind as we discussed the rele- vancy of discoveries of infant researchers like Daniel Stern (1977), Louis Sander ( 1975 ), and Robert Emde ( 1981 ) and their missions to illuminate clinical psychoanalysis.
Several weeks after he delivered his paper in Michigan, Donald Silver and I discussed the need in psychoanalysis for a journal that could be more integrating of a variety of analytic ideas with ego psychology. I then said, “If we had any guts we would do it.” Don replied, “So, let’s do it!” The nexus of Psychoanalytic Inquiry was born. Keep in mind that neither of us had any experience with publishing a journal.
Yet, I knew that there was fundamental truth and value in psychoanaly- sis that enabled the transformation of suffering into joy and creativity even though I had grown to believe that ego psychologists had made a wrong
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turn. A journal that could explore how ideas could be integrated into the body of psychoanalytic theory and technique to enable psychoanalysis to advance could be valuable and successful.
We needed an editor-in-chief, someone whose talents would fi t with the mission of the journal; to open a diversity of ideas with the intent to add to the operating body of knowledge within psychoanalysis. In this way, any idea would be fair game, if it could be made to work with what was already useful. Of course, I knew the person who could fi t this bill.
Actually, unconsciously the idea of a journal with Joe as the editor devel- oped in my initial conversations with him, but I did not know that at the time.
Late one evening, after a psychoanalytic meeting, I called him and told him of our plans for a new journal. I asked him to be the editor-in-chief.
For the only time ever, he answered me with a, “Well I don’t know, there are expenses, fi nding writers, journals are not doing that well and there will be diffi culties in fi nding a publisher who would work with us.” My reply was none of these are problems that cannot be solved; we have a gold mine in psychoanalysis. The general value of psychoanalysis has not been recognized, because of the insularity that has pervaded the entire fi eld.
This will be a journal directed to change that everyone will eventually, I emphasized eventually, be enriched because of it. He said, “I will think about it.” The next morning he called me and said he was thinking and after speaking to me, he would do it. I said that we have several people in Michigan who would like to create a journal, with you as editor-in-chief.
We met, and after a lengthy discussion, we decided that the journal would be topical. There were no psychoanalytic journals devoted to one topic for each issue. We would invite contributors to write on a topic with dif- ferent viewpoints. The journal would begin with a prologue, end with an epilogue, and serve the purpose of discovering creative approaches to integrating a diversity of points of view. The synergistic effect on its writers and readers was its principal value. We needed to develop an edi- torial board that would help us select topics, locate writers, and edit and organize journal issues. Within days, we had our editorial board, since virtually everyone we asked was enthusiastic about our project. At the time, many good writers could not get their papers published in analytic journals because their approach did not refl ect the current application of ego psychology.
Without any experience, we entered into a contractual arrangement with our fi rst publisher which was entirely to the publisher’s advantage. We were naive, but entirely delighted that the publisher was interested in publishing our new journal. We were thrilled with the arrangement that we probably would have settled for any terms within reason.
We launched Psychoanalytic Inquiry , and the fi rst issue began with our credo. We stated:
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We believe this to be a promising era of diversity and creative ferment in psychoanalysis. The legacy of Freud and of those who along with him pioneered the psychoanalytic exploration of the mind provides a solid base for the evaluation and integration of current divergent views. A common acceptance of psychic determinism, unconscious mo- tivation, intrapsychic confl ict, genetic and experiential infl uences on maturation and development, and the signifi cance of the child-parent interaction in shaping individuality unites an extensive group of mental health professionals. These mental health professionals follow Freud in one or more of the three interrelated fi elds that he established: the clinical practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically based psy- chotherapy, a far-reaching method of research into all areas of human development and productivity, and the formulation of a theory of men- tal functioning and of human individuality and interrelatedness. This journal, by taking up in each issue a topic chosen from the broad areas of practice, research, and theory, can offer the reader an appreciation of the diversity of views and the problems and potentials for synthesis.
We believe that the mode of observation central to psychoanalysis is that which occurs in the formal clinical setting of analyst and analys- and. It is based on the unique experience of the shared perception of transferences being formed, analyzed, and resolved. From this source, especially with its expanding scope, comes a continuous fl ow of data – much confi rmatory of Freud’s basic proposals, much new and challen- ging. In addition, the expanding scope of research into neonate and child development, neurophysiology, and cognitive development, and studies of creativity applied to science and the arts have produced a healthy abundance of augmenting information.
Through the presentation of original contributions on a topic in each issue, we plan to contribute to the transmission and comprehen- sion of the exciting profession of clinical and extra-clinical knowledge.
We hope in this way to contribute to and participate in the open-ended discourse that we believe constitutes the essence of a broad, encom- passing, psychoanalytic inquiry.
And there you have it, a journal that promoted integration and pluralism leading to further development and sophistication, beginning with Freud’s basic theoretical and clinical ideas. Joe and I shared a conviction that when we got down to basics psychoanalysis was about the human capacity to bring coherence and meaning out of fragmentation, confusion, and chaos promoted by relatedness and intimacy.
Joe and I were energized and immersed in an array of psychoanalytic ideas. In our work together it seemed that we were always on the same page.
I felt that no one had the capacity to bring coherence from diversity like Joe.
I think my reaction to what he said just resonated with my emotions. I felt
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motivated to use his ideas to move my thinking along. This was not neces- sarily the direction of his thinking, but it felt like we had a semblance of a healthy twinship relationship, i.e., separate, but very similar. Disagreements were handled by a willingness to fi nd a creative way of integrating both our viewpoints which was an application of the strengths of psychoanalysis.
We needed an engaging topic and writers for our fi rst issue. At that time it was rare, except at national meetings, to have an all-day symposium on a psychoanalytic topic. Locally, many of the clinical analytic meetings were closed to the public. Marvin Margolis, another psychoanalyst, and I fl ew to Philadelphia to attend the Margaret Mahler Symposium which was the only large clinical psychoanalytic symposium open to the public that we knew about. I recall being so impressed that there was a lunch served, and the presentations with enthusiastic participation from the audience ended in a dinner. We thought that this format was just what psychoanalysis in Michigan needed for our outreach activities.
Regression in psychoanalysis was selected as the fi rst topic for our second annual symposium and became the basis of the fi rst issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry , by elaborating on the symposium, with invitations extended to several additional analytic writers with a variety of perspectives: Nathaniel London, Paul Ornstein, Howard Bacall, Joe Lichtenberg, and Floyd Galler.
I wrote the prologue and epilogue. A common theme in all the papers was that the pejorative meaning of regression commonly used in psychoanalysis does not suffi ciently address its value in human development and psycho- analytic therapy.
As a complement to Psychoanalytic Inquiry , we arranged for the estab- lishment of a Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series that fostered our credo.
Joe and I fought many battles in promoting the credo for Psychoanalytic Inquiry . There is rarely a conversation that I have had with him during the last 30 years without his telling me of some new integrative and cre- ative idea that he has for Psychoanalytic Inquiry , which I then devote the next week integrating with my thoughts and coming back with a creative, implementing plan.
Joe’s boundless energy has resulted in a continual fl ow of publications which he has traveled the world to present, and has been Psychoanalytic Inquiry ’s wonderful development and advertising ambassador. He is my most unforgettable character because he is the credo of psychoanalytic inquiry.
Bibliography
Emde , R.N. ( 1981 ). Changing Models of Infancy and the Nature of Development . J.
Amer. Psychoanal. Assn. , 29 : 179 – 219 .
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Lichtenberg , J. ( 1978 ). The Testing of Reality From the Standpoint of the Body Self . Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association , 26 : 357 – 385 .
Lichtenberg , J. ( 1979 ). The Development of the Sense of the Object. Paper Presented to the Michigan Psychoanalytic Society, January 13, 1979, Southfi eld, MI.
Sander , L. ( 1975 ). Infant and Correcting Environment . In Exploration in Child Psychiatry , ed. J. Anthony . New York : Plenum .
Stern , D. ( 1977 ). The First Relationship: Infant and Mother . Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press .