Categories: uncategorized
Date: 09 December 2007 15:09:16
I'm still thinking about psychoanalysis/therapy, more specifically about its obsession with the past and its insistance that it is the past which is the key determinant of present bahavioural and thought patterns. I have a problem with this, not just for the aetiological reasons explained in the previous post, but for other reasons too.
I'll never be able to accept the object-relations school of psychoanalytic theory based around Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, Hannah Segal, et al. Why? Several reasons. All of it's "causes" seem to be plucked out of thin air and rely totally on the interpretation of the observer (the psychotherapist/analyst) and are thus subject to the vagaries of interpretation. Because these "causes" are very usually in the pre-linguistic stage of childhood development there can be no conscious dialogue between the observer and the observed. The observer has two things to guide them: 1. their own memory of their own childhood and 2. what they are told to expect to see in the observed infant. In the first case it is highly questionable what correlation, if any, the memories of the observer have to their own personal historical and psychological reality. It is also assumed that these unverifiable memories have some value when interpreting the behaviour of another, i.e., "my memories of my experience has been ABC, therefore your experience is ABC." In the second case the whole body of knowledge that has built up around the object-relations school places a weight of expectation on the observer to see what they are told is right to see. A trainee psychoanalyst in the object-relations tradition who is doing their 2 year infant observation is not free to observe objectively (even from within the confines of their own subjective interpretative framework), they are looking for behaviours which seem to fit a previously learned interpretation of infant behaviour.
Perhaps the deepest reason why the object-relations school isn't one I'll be able to accept is that it doesn't appear to have voices speaking from within its own narrative which are able to generate a self-critique which would make it aware of the relationship to power which are embeded in its assumptions, presumptions, interpretations and methodologies.
Thus, it is my scepticism about our ability to know the inner world of the other and my suspicion of the motivations for seeking to know this inner world which is starting to take me more towards/back towards existentialist and humanistic perspectives: Eugene Gendlin, Victor Frankl, Rollo May, Carl Rogers, Paul Tillich.