Editorial – Special Edition: Psychoanalytic Theories and Therapies

Abstract

This edition of PACJA promises an eclectic and exciting collection of articles under the broad theme of psychoanalytic theories and therapies. What characterizes these different articles -the first three in particular -is an analysis of analysis or, in Jon Mills' terms, an internal critique of psychoanalytic theories and therapies. This critique from within is important; it is part of the process of scholarly and clinical reflection and revision and yet, as Mills describes, it is so often fraught. While critique from outside psychoanalysis is predictably dismissive, faulting psychoanalytic concepts such as the unconscious on their lack of empirical evidence or theories such as infantile sexuality on their apparently preposterous and fantastical qualities, critique from within tends to be fractious and lead to splits within and across schools.The first three papers share a theme of critique from the inside. Leading the charge is John Mills whose article "Fine-Tuning Problems in Relational Psychoanalysis: New Directions in Theory and Praxis" urges a rethink on the key tenets of relational psychoanalysis, the prevailing orthodoxy in North American psychoanalysis, especially the emphasis on relationships at the expense of drives. For Mills this is philosophically untenable, committing us to logical fallacies. In particular, the idea that you can separate relationships from drives "… is unfathomable and ultimately indefensible because you cannot have relationships without a body". Synthesising these two positions, Mills urges for a more integrated understanding that makes use of both classical drive theory -in particular Freud's idea of the unconscious as an opaque yet influential force -and its more recent relational revisions. In terms of therapy, however, Mills falls decidedly on the relational side, although here again we see a synthesis, this time of philosophy and psychoanalysis, in his articulation of therapy as "a way of being" and indeed a "liberation struggle". For Mills, "[k]now thyself! the Delphic decree is the psychoanalytic motto." This means that we can only take the patient as far as we ourselves have gone committing us as therapists to the pursuit of (self) knowledge and growth. By implication, we cannot treat with techniques alone but rather with a developed, dynamic, reflective, attuned self. For Mills, the self is the tool par excellence of therapy. Dianna Kenny's article "A brief history of psychoanalysis: From Freud to fantasy to folly" furnishes us with another insider critique -hers concerns the obfuscating language (and concepts) of some contemporary psychoanalytic theorising and, together with it, the 2/5