Hershberg also serves as Associate Editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychology and is a Consulting Editor for Psychoanalytic Investigations. 11 Development of the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: The birth of the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As a result, our knowledge, respect and love for each other have deepened, which has enhanced our friendship and partnership in this project. And as two psychoanalysts coming from different perspectives, we learned a lot from each other.
PROLOGUE
The idea for this project arose during Joe's 85th year (at the 2010 Psychoanalytical Inquiry Board meeting), when Linda Gunsberg and I spontaneously expressed to each other what an important role Joe played in the development of our psychoanalytic careers. Joe's handwritten index cards are packed with information and are incredibly readable despite the small size of his print.
PART I
INTRODUCTION TO INTERVIEWS WITH JOE
Just give me a sense of what time of day - and it might be different every day - at what point you write. How about spending the summer with me?” “But I don't know if his father will allow that.” He said the same thing to my dad and we got the green light. I said to Lewis, "Did you really want me to come back?" And he said, “Of course, very much.
Why did you ask me, what a strange question?” I said, "I know you referred a lot of patients to a resident who left over the course of the year when I did that and you never referred one to me," and he said, "He took them needed." The maître'd would come to my grandfather and say, “Well, there's a table…” and my grandmother would say, “I don't want that table. And you wouldn't have had this day." And the tears streamed down both of our faces.
It has to be dealt with.” And she said, "I'd rather die." I said, “If you can make that choice, it's your choice.” And she did. We don't want to spend the money on this” and Charlotte gives all the reasons why not. A patient can say, “I'm where I want to be,” and the analyst says, “What about this and this?”.
And someone asked this doctor, "Why do you put up with it?" And he said, "If there's anything to learn from the devil, I'll do away with the devil.
PART II
SIXTY PLUS YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP AND STILL GOING STRONG
Joseph Lichtenberg that is difficult to define precisely, but easy to describe in terms of interpersonal experience. During this dialogue, one's acceptance of one's self increases in strength and self-esteem, but, just as importantly, one feels that the same also increases Joe's awareness of himself. Let me close by saying that I feel very fortunate to be a friend of Joseph Lichtenberg.
JOSEPH LICHTENBERG
Since Larry also served aboard a destroyer, we heard many “South Pacific Stories” while sitting at the dissecting table. He had worked at Los Alamos on the effects of radiation during the development of the atomic bomb. Joe's educational interests culminated in the creation of the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy, along with a small group of founding members.
I became one of the founding members of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy where I was also on the faculty and chair of the Candidates Advancement Committee. A few months later, Joe called me and invited me to sit on the Editorial Board of the newly founded journal, Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Joe listened attentively to my first drafts of the prologue and epilogue and made some suggestions.
PART III
CREATIVITY SEMINAR
I gave an early, not very well-thought-out presentation on Ibsen and soon realized that the demands of the presentation would be more urgent, the level much higher, than I was used to. Certainly no later than 1975, I became a regular member of the group when we began a three-year study of the major works and biography of Henry James by Leon Edel. Being a member of this seminar on creativity and psychoanalysis turned out to be one of the most important, formative experiences of my entire professional life and career.
This work had two poles: on the one hand were the creative works, the creative minds of the authors, the interweaving of life and work, and the psychoanalytic study of the interaction between childhood, development, society and culture. Don Quixote, should focus on the aesthetic transformation of the creative act rather than its relationship to any specific psychoanalytic theory or pathological formation (Lichtenberg, 2010. This spirit of free inquiry proved, of course, heuristically of immense value in the synthesis Joe's insights from early development with new clinical experience and traditional theory.
DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOANALYTIC INQUIRY
In 1978, when changes in the insularity of classical psychoanalysis were just beginning, I first read one of Joe's early articles, “The Testing of Reality from the Standpoint of the Body Self.” In this article, Joe focused on several ideas that were new at the time. Six months later he presented “The Development of the Sense of the Object” to my colleagues in Michigan. We needed an editor-in-chief, someone whose talents would match the magazine's mission; to open up a diversity of ideas with the intention of adding to the operational knowledge within psychoanalysis.
The general value of psychoanalysis was not recognized, because of the insularity that pervaded the entire field. It is based on the unique experience of the shared perception of transfers being formed, analyzed and resolved. Differences were handled by a willingness to find a creative way to integrate both of our points of view, which was an application of the strengths of psychoanalysis.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOTHERAPY
My first paper was presented to a creative group that was part of the Washington School of Psychiatry. Since Joe was very much a part of the Self Psychology community, we were able to invite those people who were part of Kohut's inner circle to speak. This discussion would not be complete without exploring the educational arm of the institute.
The result of the meeting was that we wanted to establish a psychoanalytic training program in addition to the psychotherapy training. The disruption caused by the change in the institute is probably mostly healed, but I think some hard feelings remain. With the addition of a psychoanalytic training program, we faced the need to change the name of the organization.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF A
PSYCHOANALYTIC TRAINING PROGRAM
I will examine these three criticisms of the assessment process in more detail and then propose an alternative. The constant testing of an analyst maintains a hierarchical structure among analysts that can subtly undermine the analyst's accomplishments and confidence. For the most part, institutes under the American Psychoanalytic umbrella continued to emphasize Freudian and ego psychological models in education.
Finding a psychoanalytic home that values and encourages the developmental progression of the psychoanalyst (and analyst-in-training). The motivation of the group of founding analysts at ICP was rooted in our shared desire to build a psychoanalytic training program that was different from the kinds of experiences we each encountered as candidates and later in more traditional institutes. Those in the first few classes moved fairly quickly into positions of teaching and supervisory responsibility during the institute's rapid expansion.
SUPERVISION
On the other hand, Joe also taught me that when something I do or say activates a disturbance in Aaron's state, my participation must be acknowledged. In the supervision sessions, Joe had a gift for describing Aaron's experience in emotionally rich, evocative language that expanded my understanding of my patient. An example of this relates to the earlier vignette of Aaron's experience with his mother as she stroked and ignored him and he tried to connect with her.
Joe warned me to be aware of Aaron's tendency to panic and accept Aaron's way of connecting with me. Also, Joe felt that Aaron's love for his dog was an important indicator of his ability to love and be loved. When Aaron's dog died shortly after, he was able to express his true grief to me.
PART IV
To get to the exhibition space, we had to go through several halls of the museum. Of course, when we got to the Spanish art, Annette and I sheepishly considered borrowing the audio guide, but opted instead for Joe's lively erudite commentary. This is the same Joe who presides over our creative team's quadrennial meetings at his home in Bethesda.
Then Joey, never having listened to the paper, provides an excellent no-nonsense synthesis, critique and discussion of the paper leading up to the group discussion. It's the same Joe who has come up with - so far - four book ideas that he, Jim Fosshage and I have co-authored. It's not easy, but it's fun, it's exciting, and if it takes my breath away, I wouldn't have it any other way.
THE LICHTENBERGS AS ART COLLECTORS
Right where I am is at the intersection of many activities in the art world. But this is not often easily seen at the most intimate level, but is sometimes seen in general. For the most part, people buy it because they "like it," and that's a reflection of their personality, but it's often a skewed relationship.
I try to be as helpful as possible to the Phillips and this is a wonderful place to do so. And it's great for the Lichtenberg collection to go to a museum that has some photographs in its collection, but nothing on the scale that Joe and Charlotte are donating to the Phillips. What Joe does, what Joe and Charlotte have, is as rare as being an artist, it's the ability to see differently.
PART V
FROM LICHTENBERG: THREE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE
Broad admonitions to attend to affect or to focus on defense are of little help in identifying the essence of the patient's intention. Even more specific formulas such as reading the patient's meaning from the analyst's reaction (countertransference or enactment) do not say how the analyst's reaction itself should be read. But Lichtenberg is one of the few analysts who offers explicit clues to what might be called a direct teleology of the patient's current movement.
While these are more or less stable "parts" of a single mind, each "part" has a fraction of the same purposefulness that we ascribe to the whole mind. Overwhelmed by this galaxy of systems, Freud's account of a single pathway of the mind can be considered at best a creation myth and at worst a cautionary tale or an epiphyseal theory of the soul. What is discarded is a developmental line that spins a diverse mental world out of the smallest possible number of constituent variables.
