Abstract

Despite clinical sensitivity when listening to patients, analysts have not fared well in hearing and talking to each other with respectful open-mindedness. Underlying factors are considered with particular focus on the interplay between self-aimed forces of narcissism and outward-aimed forces of curiosity. Included in examination of problems of collegial communication are limitations structurally inherent to the human mind (such as the need to abstract aspects of experience in order to focus attention plus the mind's tendency to categorical thinking), those derived from individual psychology (such as vulnerability of self-esteem), and those related to group dynamics (such as the problems attendant to new ideas and the allegiances they stir, parochialism and the development of radical schools, the competitiveness between schools). The contribution of cultural influences and the multiply determined uses of language are also highlighted. The core sense of smallness in the strangeness of the universe and in the presence of others is seen as a common thread. Keywords: collegial communication, curiosity, dualistic thinking, insularity, narcissism, reciprocal learning, open-minded, parochialism, problems of language, radical schools, scientific competition, strangeness of otherness Nothing creative should be excluded for the sake of any other conviction. (Clive James, 2007) Once more we gather from the wide reaches of the psychoanalytic world to meet in biennial congress and share what we have learned since last we met, to compare notes on our experiences and to see what together we can discover. It is a fitting task but it is also fitting to ask ourselves how well we actually proceed with that task. After a century of such convening, how well do we learn from each other, how well talk, and how well listen? We may have limited cause for pride of success in this collegial task. Too often, like characters in an Edward Hopper painting, we occupy the same space but do not connect. As clinicians we spend our lives struggling to hear our patients as they reluctantly open themselves. Clinically we learn to listen ever better, yet the contrast in our hearing one another is shocking. The task set for this Congress is to observe the patterns of our convergences and divergences and then, as is our introspective custom, also to explore and try to master those inner forces that interfere with growth. 1 This paper will be presented as a keynote lecture at the 46th Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association, Chicago, Happily, despite our difficulties, analytic thinking flourishes. New ideas bloom; our journals grow. However, even as some cross-fertilization takes place among us, we see diversity bring with it Balkanization, division into smaller and even hostile sects. New learning demands full discussion, a genuinely open debate we wish to both guard and facilitate. That we argue with passion is good, for our passion comes not merely from the vanity of vested interests but crucially from our caring deeply. Also we know that caution in approaching new contributions is particularly prudent because of a problem unique to our field, that is, that our central focus is on unconscious forces, forces that stir unremitting resistance. Aware of the subtlety with which defenses can mask themselves and knowing the sophisticated skill of our minds, we appreciate the extra care called for when new ideas challenge prior analytic knowledge. But caution and care are not the same as defensive distrust and dismissal of what is different, unfamiliar, or new. When we look at ourselves with candor, we see something beyond benevolent skepticism. Too often we see polemics and partisanship crowd out mutual respect, with ridicule even at times rearing its malignant specter. Tension is inevitable for the growth of a science, just as it is for that of an individual, and such growing pains are to be welcomed. Open-minded controversy does not require endings in which everyone agrees. Premature closure hides what is still unknown, while respectful acceptance of continuing differences protects the path to further knowledge. Ideas must stand and fall on their merits, not on the prestige or power of their proponents. While some new ideas will not stand up to close examination, we must leave room for and welcome those that do have merit -even if they discomfort us by contradicting more familiar meritorious views we favor. Full growth can only come from controversy that is both unobstructed and disciplined. 'Unobstructed' means genuinely open; and 'disciplined' demands rigor in conceptualization, regard for prior learning, and tolerance in the face of unyielding paradox. For years there were battles between analysts prioritizing drives and others prioritizing object relationships, with extremists on each side repudiating the other. Those extremists fought, as do extremists today, as if paradox meant an enemy were at hand rather than that a narrow theory was insufficient. When bias shapes conclusions, whether a bias favoring the new or the old, true growth is stunted. Problems arise in part from past success, with difficulties heightened by the vast range of new observations that we now speak of as Pluralism. Is there one psychoanalysis or many? Asked in another way, can we continue to grow and venture beyond the boundaries of our accustomed ideas and still, as I believe we must, keep central as common to all of us the core concern for unconscious forces, the orientation that distinguishes what is uniquely psychoanalytic from that which is broadly psychological? These questions will not be resolved by proclamations of open-mindedness if at the same time our dialogues degenerate into parallel monologues. Walls separating our enclaves will not fall before the trumpeting of good intentions. My charge is to help define our behavioral battles so that with recognition we can proceed to explore their roots analytically rather than continue to enact them. Therefore I will sketch an overview of the patterns of our interactions. The aim of my doing so is that we then can expose and explore their underlying dynamics. As I sketch problems evident when we come together in groups, it is useful to keep in mind the underlying vicissitudes of demands for self-satisfaction and desires for exploring outward. Behind our convergences and divergences lies the restless marriage between narcissism and scientific curiosity. When our narcissism is secure or, even better, mature, we are free to venture farthest in our inquiries. When our narcissism is threatened, open-minded, outward-looking inquiry deteriorates into a politics of identity. In closing, I will return to this crucial issue, but let us now look at those conflicts that cloud collegiality. Human structural limits To do so, it is prudent to start by acknowledging limitations beyond our control that add to our dissatisfaction with others and, which we are less quick to admit, with ourselves. We strive for answers that always extend beyond our reach, for we are after all only human. We accept that we are not omnipotent, but we act as if we could -and indeed should -be omniscient, as if we could ever know all there is to be known, as if our theories could ever be unitary and sufficient. Our knowledge and our theories are remarkably good, but they always fall short, always constrained by the limits of our capacities. For the world and its phenomena are too large, too varied, and too complex ever to be fully contained by individual human minds. We have no reason to believe we are the end of evolution. When we deny the constraints of our mental hardware, we forget that even when stealing the fire of the gods, still we are not gods. Our vanity is easily offended. We face the complexities of the universe by cutting them down to size, creating conceptual categories that then lead us into paradoxes that are artifacts caused by the categorical nature of our human logic. To study the world we tease fragments out of their natural context and focus study on them. Our minds dichotomize, endlessly subdividing the categories we create. As a result, in developing science, our human way of organizing knowledge, we create maps that have artificial boundaries. Hazards ensue. While focused attention is essential and fruitful, artificial fragmentation brings misleading side effects. In dissecting out that which we study, we isolate those excerpted pieces and thus create borders that do not exist in nature. Every time we turn our eyes toward something, we turn them away from something else. As a result, the question 'What have we left out?' must never be far from our minds. We may be able to think of only one approach or some few approaches at a time, but not to keep open alternative views collapses full inquiry into the parochialism of partial interests. With no choice but to think of a piece at a time, we should be wary about taking possessive pride in personal positions, keeping ''a lively appreciation of how people get stuck with a view because it has become their identity'' (James, 2007, p. 601 On guard against single views, so must we also be wary of the seduction of simplistic Hegelian dialectics, the idea that there is always a rising pattern in which a synthesis will grow from every thesis and antithesis. Contradictions are not merely to be tolerated. They merit appreciation. They must be protected, discomforting though they be. Furthermore, knowledge is power, a reassuring antidote to the feeling of helplessness. When confused and overwhelmed, when our knowledge feels insufficient, we fend off the horror of helplessness by calling the world Chaos. However, the world is the world, and 'chaos' is not a description of the world but of our frightened failure to conceptualize it in a way congenial to our minds. The sense of chaos cannot be dispelled either by a favored single theory or by a promiscuity of interpretations with all taken to have equal value. Such is a perversion of the principle of multiple determination: evidence must always be weighed (Hanly, personal communication). Openminded does not mean empty-headed: evidence must always be weighed. Respectful attention to the contrary ideas of others provides our greatest opportunity to correct the built-in limitations of our minds. That, however, demands a love of learning based on a solidity of self beyond the child's wish to be the favorite one. Human frailties Now, what of frailties that are amenable to mastery? How could we start with other than the issue most immediately apparent -competitiveness? Beginning with an analytic quest held in common, we soon act not as if we share the goal of extending knowledge but as if we are competitors in a battle to outpace each other. Questions of theory or technique are then felt not as useful but as attacks on personal status. Vanity, thy name is everyone. Who among us would not be the conquistador the young Freud was? With maturity, the narcissistic center holds and the vanity of childhood dreams of glory gives way to the satisfaction of achieving real goals. Also, as we mature, so does our scientific field. While psychoanalysis continues to grow, new growth no longer has the wondrous revolutionary grandeur brought forth by our early pioneers. That grandeur may be part of what first attracted us to this field, but now our field is different in both quality and quantity. Freud opened to us a new ocean. Neither we nor our work is diminished by our exploring the multiple rivers that lead from that common sea. When threatened competitively, our mastery of early narcissism regresses and too quickly we return to the hunger for pride of place. Every editor has painfully learned that even most senior contributors can quickly become childishly graceless when something in a manuscript is questioned. Also I remind us of Wheelis's (1956, p. 172) observation that analysts ''frequently describe one or another of their colleagues as rigid, dogmatic, and authoritarian; yet no analyst ever so describes himself. The inescapable inference is that some of us have taken refuge in dogma without knowing we have done so''. The painfully familiar 'narcissism of minor differences' is so apparent and so everlasting that Of course, curiosity not fed by personal investment and desire for success would be a weak mover indeed. Personal ambition cannot be denied or willed away. Instead narcissistic intensity needs taming, vanity needs to mature, if ambition is to contribute to progress. Mature love for the other, even for knowledge as an ideal other outside oneself, implies a maturity of narcissism, not its absence. The task of exploring the sometimes converging and sometimes diverging pulls of inward vanity and outward curiosity is complicated by the unusual nature of our occupation. Even as clinical work is profoundly intimate, it is also profoundly lonely. At work we must limit our self-gratification as with each analysand in the privacy of sessions we are immersed in all emotions from apathy to ardor, moving from quiet gray to blood-red and to black as we pass from session to session, from hour to hour, from day to day. Major adjustment is needed for us to move from these intensely private moments at work back to the world at large. Just as our eyes have difficulty adjusting from dark to light, our sense of ourselves has similar difficulty adjusting to the shift from being in-the-office to being in-the-broad-world. It is easy to forget to leave behind the asymmetry of the analytic partnership when we move from behind the couch, easy to fall back to that clinical asymmetry of the office when we feel challenged outside the office. In dialogues with our colleagues, discussions best held on level ground, we retreat too readily to the sense of superiority that can attach itself to an interpretive position. Perhaps unaware how often he, too, fell short of this ideal, Freud (1914, p. 49) warned: ''Analysis is not suited … for polemical use; it presupposes the consent of the person who is being analysed and a situation in which there is a superior and a subordinate. Anyone, therefore, who undertakes an analysis for polemical purposes must expect the person analysed to use analysis against him in turn, so that the discussion will reach a state which entirely excludes the possibility of convincing any third person''. The air of superiority spreads broadly. It is evident in collegial consultations when a supervisory tone replaces mutual respect (Gabbard, personal , and it appears in our literature when a writer's own thinking, presented in its greatest strength, is contrasted with contrary views presented in their weakest light. Our debates are rife with such straw men. Unsure of ourselves, we demean the other. When thus defensively selfserving, we serve neither our science nor ourselves well. Problems related to group dynamics Acknowledgement of these, our individual foibles, leads us to look at their effects in our interpersonal realms. The movements of narcissistic selfsatisfaction and of curious reaching out reflect the conflict between desires for individual self-distinction and those wanting acceptance and union. Each person wants to be uniquely separate and at the same time longs to belong, to have an identity known and recognized in connection with others. Inevitably, we face the problems of group dynamics. Before narrowing attention onto psychoanalytic groups, it is necessary to acknowledge how our analytic groups are themselves influenced by the broad cultures from which they arise. As just one illustration, the colonial past has left a legacy of confidence of power and an air of moral superiority on the side of the former colonial powers and a legacy of defiant resentment of imposed power on the side of those whose worlds had been subordinated. This inescapably carries through to difficulties analysts from differing national cultures have in addressing each other with true equality. With such an historical background, an exchange of ideas can come to feel like a power struggle and an agreement can feel like a submission. Sadly, both prejudice and narcissistic wounds have very long half-lives. Acknowledging this, let us turn to dynamics within the analytic universe. Ideas may be born in splendid isolation, but they need to be tested by others if they are to grow as more than private fantasies. To deepen our studies, we narrow attention to particular areas of interest, consequently removing ourselves from the open marketplace. Later taking our thinking back into the public arena, we find we have to explain how our thinking developed. It is then, unfortunately, easy to feel that being questioned is being attacked, to feel unappreciated and become guarded, finally too easy to retreat to personal provinces detached from common contact. Still thrilled by the excitement of discovery and appreciative of advances not yet broadly accepted, narcissism can overtake curiosity. In the name of the new but too often in the service of the self, we develop allegiances to our narrow views. Problem of radical schools I begin with the extreme of radical schools, where vanity overpowers openminded curiosity. New learning modifies prior understanding as it is incorporated into the collective body of analytic knowledge, and a multiplicity of understandings replaces the clarity of an individual voice with the rich counterpoints of a choral symphony. Yet alongside new voices integrated into the common chorus are others who insist on standing apart, adamant that their solos stand supreme and displace the rest. At times new ideas are truly revolutionary, resulting from radical new ways of looking and of thinking. As members of one of the great revolutionary movements of history, analysts have reason to value and to protect the possibility of the drastically different. But history repeatedly reveals revolutionary causes perverted for personal gain. It is specifically that to which I refer when speaking of radical schools. By radical schools I do not refer to new or unusual ways of thinking but instead to those enthusiasts discontented with even close compatriots felt to compromise the exclusive supremacy of their new ideas. These are impassioned ideologues who insist that their views supersede all other analytic learning. Calling such groups 'radical' does not disparage what they add but rather refers to the demand that such contributions replace other understandings. Even as contributions are enriching, demands for exclusivity are destructive. Old understandings are of course changed when new discoveries are brought to them, but 'radical' refers to insistence on primacy. I offer illustrations as examples, sample specimens of a ubiquitous problem. For instance, ego psychology adds much to our understanding of the ways the unconscious is processed. 'Radical ego psychology' would have clinicians always cling solely to the surface, attending only to how a patient's mind observes itself and never venturing to the depths. For instance, self psychology adds much to our understanding of the ways a person handles essential need for recognition and regulation of esteem. 'Radical self psychology' would focus so totally on issues of attunement as never to attend to unconscious conflicts. For instance, attention to the here and now of transference interpretation greatly advances our clinical skills. What might be called 'radical concern for the present' would repudiate concern for the past as damaging to our field. The list goes on. Splendid isolation can intensify a focus of attention to make possible ever deeper explorations and understandings. However, insularity, the failure to reconnect with broader knowledge, results in a non-splendid hermetic isolation that turns schools into radical schools and turns radical schools into cults. At such times self-satisfaction smothers true curiosity. When narcissistic rigidity replaces open-mindedness, such analysts become like the French revolutionaries of whom it was said that they built their prisons from the stones of the Bastille. Freud Problems among schools Still it is natural and helpful that we join together and form schools. Uncertain in the loneliness of creativity and vulnerable to the reactions of others, we turn to like-minded colleagues for support. Searching for help in developing our perspectives, we are susceptible to the criticism of extremists on one side and to the inspirational seduction of charismatic figures on the other. We need others to be trustworthy, respectfully honest, if they are to help our self-critical capacity grow, just as we are obliged to be respectful when questioning what we newly hear. Even when schools are not radical, they necessarily take differing and at times opposing positions. Contradictions are neither to be denied nor forcibly integrated. Rather than accept that contrary viewpoints can validly stand alongside one's own, one is tempted to retreat to the safety of a private orthodoxy. Then partisan fights ensue, battles akin to those of chemists disputing whether it is hydrogen or oxygen that gives water its taste. This too-familiar difficulty was explored by Gabbard's (2007) incisive critique of ideology as a retreat from the demands of the principle of over-determination. Since no single point of view can suffice for full understanding, forgetting that favored views are themselves abstracted from the wholeness of experience is a retreat from respect for multiple determination. Gabbard recognized the place of theory as metaphor in organizing thinking, but he also pointed out the limits of metaphors, making clear how their derivative theories inevitably break down. Defensive retreat to orthodoxy is rooted in the universal temptation to protect feelings of certainty and the personal identity dependent on that certainty. Our history is heavy with theories hypertrophied from concepts based on experience into proud pronouncements of identity. We see it when a theory is presented as a flag to distinguish one group from another, when debate over observations is replaced by a politics of identity. For groups as well as for individuals, it is not the narcissism of identity that is destructive, but it is its immature form, where vulnerability of self-definition retreats from the capacity to love a shared ideal. Development of separate schools can lead to difficulties that result (a) from parochialism, (b) from group dynamics and the structure of organizations, and (c) from the impact of new ideas and new groups on language. I will say just a few words about each.