Might Freud's legacy lie beyond the couch?

Abstract

The paper advances the view that Freud's main legacy will be the application of psychoanalysis to community and social problems and issues, rather than in contributions to the treatment of mental illness. The history of applied psychoanalysis is outlined with suggestions for the training and validation of Community Psychoanalysis as a discrete field. How Community Psychoanalysis differs from Clinical Psychoanalysis is reviewed.The paper finishes with a sketch of typical modern applications to rearing of children and prevention of emotional disorders in children, contributions to understanding large social groups including racial and ethnic strife, school violence, terrorism, prejudice and conflict.One might term the 21st century, the century of the social brain, an opportunity for rapprochement with the neurosciences. It is unfortunate that the later part of the last century involved a great deal of Freud bashing, spearheaded by E. Fuller Torrey, philosophers such as Crews and Grunbaum, and a vast array of hangers-on guided by personal and job related territorial battles with psychoanalysis, especially in academia. Freud seems to have been a necessary scapegoat for the relative ineffectiveness of psychiatric care in the United States, which for several decades had been dominated by psychoanalytic thought constrained by physician domination of psychoanalysis. Freud might well have been troubled by the way his ideas were employed toward personal and political ends rather than the quest for knowledge and the improvement of the lot of the human race, as always had been Freud's somewhat idealistic aim. America was known to not be one of his favorite countries in spite of a wider acceptance of his ideas here than anywhere else. He no doubt would have embraced the neurosciences, given his conviction that psychoanalytic theorizing would one day be confirmed by neuro-scientific findings.He was a scientist and a far-seeing visionary. Although it seems he disliked philosophy, he created modes of thought with rules and laws that suggested a philosophy of mind; he coined the term "metapsychology," modeled on the term "metaphysics," his look at philosophy. Clearly, he created his own language and paradigms to approach knowledge (note that the idea of overdetermination is an original contribution to the philosophy of logic), to create a general psychology.Examining his legacy 150 years after his birth, one tends to look at evidence of his contributions to the treatment of the mentally ill. Rather, we are going to look at some implications of Freud's work for the future of psychoanalysis, and for what we know to be exciting new directions.Freud was born the year Darwin published The Origin of the Species; he grew up in one of the most exciting times in human history, when the basis of modern science was being laid down by early psychophysicalists like Helmholtz, Billroth, and Brucke (Sulloway, 1979).Freud was a generalist in the best sense of the word, taking many years longer than necessary to get through medical school; he see...

Introduction to special issue on psychoanalysis, trauma and community: Expanding our analytic identity: The inclusion of a larger social perspective

“…Thus, the third person would lead us to attend to the analytic significance of disaster, terrorism or the traumatic and chronic conditions of poverty, unemployment, illness, and immigration relevant to the context. It may be, as Freud (1971) and Twemlow and Parens (2006) have suggested, that training institutes should offer training specifically geared to working in the community. The range of work covered in this issue, and the unique challenges each analyst faced in reaching outside the office frame, is meant to contribute to building an educational base in this area.…”

“…He also wanted to see psychoanalysis applied to education and the rearing of the next generation, as he mentioned in "Explanations, applications and orientations" (Freud, 1933(Freud, , 1964. In pointing to the current wide-ranging applications of psychoanalysis, from the rearing of children and cases of school violence to the understanding of large social group phenomena such as racial and ethnic strife, responses to natural disasters and acts of terrorism, Twemlow and Parens (2006) have advanced the view that Freud's main legacy might lie beyond the couch and actually involve the role of psychoanalysis in community and social problems.…”

“…As Twemlow and Parens (2006) point out in their review of the relevant literature, analysts need to be flexible and humble in their engagement. They must be prepared to give up, at times, a position of neutrality and abstinence, to use transference for purposes of influence rather than interpretation, and to accept a more limited role than they are accustomed to, meaning being a team member rather than a leader.…”

Social Work and Child Psychoanalysis: Where the Twain Shall Meet

“…She and her colleagues deliberately and creatively brought psychoanalytic theory to bear on families with ''grave disintegrative problems'' (p. 87), generally considered unworkable in psychotherapy, and demonstrated how effectively these two traditions could be integrated. More recently, Twemlow and Parens (2006) and others have delineated a modality of intervention they call community psychoanalysis in which psychoanalysts address community and social problems, directing their interventions to social groups with the goal of changing ''how the group functions rather than interpret its underlying dynamics'' (p. 434). Community psychoanalysts can work to resolve problems, like school violence, or aim for preventive education with, for example, parents or educators.…”

The Art of Regulation: Therapeutic Action in the Shared Implicit Relationship

“…Recent studies demonstrate that even as the aggressors are suffering, both socially and academically, their victims too can suffer profound damage from their treatment at the hands of schoolyard bullies (Twemlow and Parens, 2006). Both parties carry their scars into adulthood, where their emotionally violent experiences are frequently reflected in their mental health, relationships, and a range of antisocial behaviors.…”