PANY Scientific Meeting Summary

The Third C. Philip Wilson, MD, Memorial Lecture
Monday, September 19, 2005, 8:15 pm
Einhorn Auditorium, Lenox Hill Hospital
131 East 76th Street, New York, NY

Unlearning and Learning Psychoanalysis

Anton O. Kris, MD (by invitation)
Training and Supervising Analyst, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA

Introduction by Shelley Orgel, MD

Summary

Learning creates an inevitable tension between what we have known or believed we have known and what we are coming to know. This applies equally to students of psychoanalysis, to established practitioners, and to those who attempt to advance the field. When I was a candidate, the prevailing view held that Freud had established the foundations of the cathedral of psychoanalysis and that those who followed were slowly building the superstructure. This view is unsustainable. The foundations consisted and consist of the praxis of the free association method, the systematic delineation of unconscious contents, and a theory. The changes in theory over the 40 years of Freud’s lifetime as a psychoanalyst, and the changes in the subsequent 65 years refute any idea that the foundations are static. The continuing changes require unlearning as part of new learning.

Examples will be given in the lecture. Issues considered include the transition from civilian to psychoanalyst, the generational changes in the proclivities of candidates, some historical examples of difficult transitions in unlearning-learning, the excessive unlearning that may accompany significant innovation -- an error of Sigmund Freud’s, and the problems associated with the relatively recent changes in what is understood to constitute neutrality.