PANY Scientific Meeting: Summary

39th Freud Anniversary Lecture
Monday, May 17, 2004, 8:30 pm
Lecture Hall B, NYU Medical Center, 530 First Avenue, NYC

What Is Psychoanalysis?

Lawrence Friedman, MD
Adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine
Faculty, NYU Psychoanalytic Institute

Introduction by Marianne Goldberger, MD

Summary

Peculiarities in the original form of psychoanalytic treatment set it apart from other endeavors. These unnatural features were bound to be “naturalized” over time. I describe four overlapping versions of these peculiarities, contrasting them with the natural practices they grew out of, and with the natural practices they have grown into.

Early psychoanalysis fused together the medical triad of examination, diagnosis and treatment, but later there was a tendency to split this up again and highlight either a program of diagnostic examination (i.e., understanding) or a literal treatment (e.g., manipulation of mental processes). Early psychoanalysis also viewed patients equivocally as causal organisms and as responsible persons, but later analysts often viewed patients as either pure meaning-makers or as organisms habituated by early experiences. Early psychoanalysts were asked to suspend purpose and remain personally ambiguous, but later trends fostered straightforwardness in mission and relationship. Finally, early psychoanalysis insisted on mixing present and past together, while later models tend to feature present effects of a vanished past.

I suggest that the unnaturalness of early psychoanalysis was designed to disrupt wishes along with cognitions. But analysts who think and behave more naturally can naturally find no earthly reason except vain pretentiousness for the earlier, unnatural behavior.