A Short Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Giuseppe Civitarese, Antonino Ferro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000028201
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychoanalysis
• Index: Psychology

The science of psychoanalysis is now more than a century old. During this period, it has been established as the instrument offering the most profound understanding of the human mind, and as the most effective tool for treating psychic suffering we have at our disposal. A Short Introduction to Psychoanalysis offers readers an introduction to this extraordinarily interesting discipline.

In this short volume, Giuseppe Civitarese and Antonino Ferro explore psychoanalysis, which is at the same time a theory of unconscious psychic processes, a technique for investigating these, and a method for curing various forms of psychic suffering, by explaining some of its main themes and ideas. As the only introductory text to the increasingly popular post-Bionian theory of the analytic field, A Short Introduction to Psychoanalysis examines the theory of dreams, the concept of the unconscious, the psychoanalytic clinic, the analysis of children and adolescents, and the history of psychoanalysis.

In seeking to give a broad idea of what psychoanalysis is, what it has become, and the direction it may take in the future, this book will appeal to all those curious about this fascinating discipline, and is particularly aimed at students of psychology, the humanities, and of psychoanalytic institutes, as well as qualified psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.

1

What is psychoanalysis?

Psychoanalysis is the most effective tool for treating psychic suffering we have at our disposal. Initially, its field of operation was rather limited, so much so that it was necessary to “test” whether the patient met the criteria of “analysability”, that is, whether he/she was suitable for the “talking cure”, as Freud called it. Since then, definitions of what can be treated by psychoanalysis have greatly expanded to include ever more serious pathologies that were initially excluded, such as borderline, psychotic, psychosomatic patients, and so on. In these cases, therapy is accompanied by psycho-pharmacological treatment, preferably prescribed by someone other than the analyst. The strength of psychoanalysis, as well as its prime instrument, lies in what is also its limitation, namely, the analyst’s mind in contact with that of the patient.

In the early years of the history of psychoanalysis the analyst was required to be utterly neutral, that is, he was supposed to listen in an active but detached way. Gradually, however, the value and importance of his mental functioning and the relationship that is established with the patient in the analytic situation came to be acknowledged.

As we know, we owe the discovery, or perhaps we should say the invention, of psychoanalysis to Freud’s genius. It was he who identified its three pillars that remain valid to this day: the concept of the unconscious, the role of sexuality in psychic development, and the dream as a means of access to the inner world of the individual.

Initially, the unconscious was described as the place inhabited by the drives, by magmatic proto-emotional states, by everything that was not accessible to consciousness. To explain the psyche, Freud then elaborated the concepts of ego, id, and super-ego. For a modern metaphor we might turn to the television series Wayward Pines. The main characters live in a town, bearing the name Wayward Pines, that could represent the ego, protected by an electrified grid that keeps out primitive monsters. If these primitive monsters could get in, they would destroy the town. These primitive monsters could be broadly equated with the id, while the super-ego would be the seat of moral instincts.

Old and new languages

Currently, psychoanalysis finds itself midway between old and new languages. Many are trying hard to understand and reveal the relationships between them, asking the question, for example, “What are the differences between ego and alpha function?” In our view, however, this is a futile and perhaps even damaging exercise. No one today, talking about metapsychology* (the study of how the mind is structured independently of the phenomena that consciousness experiences), is thinking only of Freudian theory because the theories of Klein, Bion, and the theory of the psychoanalytic field etc., have become an integral part of psychoanalysis.

The lexicon of early psychoanalysis was more militaristic in origin: defences, resistances, drives, mechanisms were put in place by the patient for protection and to keep the analyst at bay, who was regarded as a neutral mirror, a sort of archaeologist whose task it was to reconstruct the patient’s history, especially as a child. This is, for example, what we see in the Alfred Hitchcock’s (1945) film Spellbound, where the discovery of a childhood trauma frees the main character from his anguish and fears. Subsequently, as more importance became attached to the relationship between analyst and patient, and what happens unconsciously between the two, new expressions were introduced, such as attacks on linking, projective identification* and unconscious fantasy. Now we have reached totally different languages, much less saturated, less definite, and with a wider-range of shades of meaning: alpha function* (something we know little about, a function of the mind that is capable of transforming primitive feelings and emotions into pictograms or mental images), alpha elements (more advanced stages of pictograms), beta elements* (sensoriality itself), negative capability (the ability to be in doubt without being overwhelmed by a sense of persecution and the preference for involuntary over voluntary memory), and selected fact (the element chosen to give meaning to a given event in analysis after a sufficient period spent in a state of negative capability). These new formulations have gradually given rise to a new theory of the mind in which tools for thinking count more than the past, childhood, the historical reconstruction of the patient’s biography, the systematic exploration of sexuality, and the identification of the trauma. Now, work tends to be done less on content and more on the functioning of the various apparatuses and tools used for thinking. It’s just like someone in a kitchen moving away from an interest in what is in the refrigerator or in various shopping bags, to making sure that all the cooking utensils work well: from the pots and pans to the vegetable mill, from the food processor to the gas rings, also including everything that is needed to transform raw food (proto-emotions and proto-thoughts) into actual dishes (emotions and thoughts capable of containing and expressing emotions and complex mental states).

The aim of analysis is to precisely develop these utensils and a psychic “container”: the ability, that is, to give meaning and form to rawer emotions and feelings; the ability to amplify the oscillations between the paranoid-schizoid position* and the depressive position* (expressed in the jargon as PS↔PD), in other words, between disordered primitive creativity and the ability to integrate.

This inevitably sends us in the direction of a bi-personal (or rather group) metapsychology. In practice, the analyst no longer regards himself as neutral but rather as fully involved in the analytic relationship. Analysis becomes a sort of shared staging – precisely what is expressed by the concept of enactment. In modern psychoanalysis it is accepted that the analyst can sometimes say something about himself (so-called self-disclosure). These new ways of thinking about psychoanalysis emphasize the importance of the relationship, the use of daydreaming to intuit what is happening between analyst and patient on a deep emotional plane and the joint construction of meaning. Equally, however, other factors are also important, such as the number of hours the analyst has slept and the quality of his mental functioning.

Inevitably, all this flows into a radically intersubjective view of analysis and into the ineluctable concept of “analytic field”, that is used to describe this type of interpersonal functioning. From the field perspective, the two-person “relationship” is expanded to include all of the characters, all of the different types of atmosphere, all of the shadows that spring to life in the consulting room. Progressively, a process of selection takes place: the casting of the characters best suited to indirectly recount the emotions that are ignited in the emotional field. They can be characters from the human, animal, vegetable or mineral world, but also abstract concepts, etc. It is therefore crucial for the analyst to develop his capacity for dream thought in the session.

A fragment of biography, a realistic story, a film seen, a lived experience, a childhood memory, an event – these all lose their status as reality and become “characters” within a virtual reality that coincides with the intersubjective dream field.

Compared to the past, this field is much less something to decipher and decode and far more the locus of possible narratives and transformations that constantly enlarge the field itself. In this case, “field” refers to the amplitude and depth of personal meanings that can be attributed to a lived experience. The split-off parts of personality, the not yet thinkable – or only potential – identities come to life and become “narratives” in the consulting room. What becomes important is the development of tools to contain, think, and feel; equally important though, are the transformations that cannot be narrated to those that can be depicted and then put into words. To put it another way, the “stone” of dehydrated and compacted emotions exposed to the oneiric lithotripter (the instrument that crushes gallstones) is broken up and rendered narratable in its newly found emotional components.

Also, sexual discourse is “listened to” as an unconscious and allegorical way of talking about relations between minds or between minds and emotions. There is no communication that, in principle, cannot be heard in terms of its overall value, as unconscious and belonging to the field – in other words, as intersubjective.

The modern conception of psychoanalysis attaches great importance to the patient’s right not to be confronted with interpretations that sound bizarre or intrusive. He should have the right to see his story accepted and shared, while at the same time the analyst should remain aware that the field (to repeat: at one and the same time the dynamic magnetic resonance imaging of the emotional forces in play and a structure that generates meaning) “evolves” all the more the less we disturb it.

Thus, there is a shift in interest from the journeys which are typical of the classical model of psychoanalysis within the worlds of Oedipus, the primary scene, primary destructiveness, libido, and castration anxiety, towards the new open spaces represented by the field of analysis up to “nurseries”, where not only the most primitive nuclei of the mind (typical of psychosis, borderline or disturbed personalities, and psychosomatic disorders) become narratable but also scantily treated traits, such as autism or Asperger’s, whose characteristic quality is precisely the inability to tolerate change.

At this point in our zigzag course through time, we once again run into the unconscious, which now becomes the metabolized version of facts, of the real – that is to say, dreamed reality is rendered unconscious, producing an unconscious that is seen as extremely vital and in transformation. In the current conception, the unconscious is continually formed from beta elements (sensoriality) after they have been transformed into alpha elements (pictograms). The direction taken by the analysis is no longer from the unconscious to the conscious, but from the conscious to the unconscious. In other words, it is no longer a question of translating and explicating the unconscious dynamics of the patient but rather of ensuring that his ability to give the fullest possible meaning to experience becomes direct and automatic.

This is what happens when you learn to ride a bike, to play an instrument, or to use a keyboard: after a while, you stop thinking about it, you can do it with your eyes closed, automatically.

​​There is another difference in and between the two languages ​​of psychoanalysis (classical and contemporary, at least the contemporary version that we feel is most alive and effective): the former tends to celebrate what is already known and suggests the existence of broad, organized knowledge; the latter presents itself as provisional, fragmentary, and (mildly) sceptical. Also, it is there to constantly give the measure of what we do not know, pointing more towards the exploration of the unknown.

Does psychoanalysis heal?

The sole and final purpose of psychoanalysis is to heal. It makes no sense to think of psychoanalysis as if it were some kind of mystical, esoteric, or cognitive path towards enlightenment. Basically, the “miracle” it performs is the relief of psychic suffering. Symptoms, “re-dreamt” by patient and analyst, in other words rendered ­significant in some way, are transformed into images, narratives, and dreams that make for a less troubled and more harmonious mental life.

Who is analysis for?

The common factor that unites all those who seek analysis is a certain degree of mental suffering. In certain situations this is made explicit: a person asks for an analysis because they find themselves in a clearly depressed state or in a situation of discomfort in their family or because they are prompted to do so by obvious symptoms such as panic attacks, phobias, obsessive rituals, all-consuming anxiety, etc. Others are not able to enter so directly into contact with the changing and at times masked expression of their suffering and use some kind of ploy. For example, analysts hear people say, “I want to do analysis because I am a psychologist, because I am a psychiatrist, etc.” They too are bearers of suffering, but they hide it behind a request for treatment on cultural or professional grounds.

A problem that often faces those who want to enter into analysis is the cost of therapy, because today, and we believe still in the near future, in Italy, psychoanalytic therapy is almost exclusively available to private patients, meaning that the individual has to bear the costs. It is true that many analysts now offer analysis at affordable rates – there is no comparison with how things were years ago – but the fact remains that the cost is high. This problem is also connected to geographical region. The situation is different in Nordic countries, and in Germany and Switzerland, where, for a certain number of years, psychoanalysis is paid for, at least in part, by the national health system. In other cases, when analysis is prescribed as the chosen therapy for a given disorder, the cost is borne entirely by the State.

After all, in the face of significant levels of psychic suffering, what alternatives do we have? We can take the route of psycho-drugs, for example, in the case of depression following a traumatic event, or in panic situations, which are also connected to life events. However, psycho-pharmaceuticals are often also prescribed alongside analysis. In the past, this problem was debated together with the famous question of the criteria of analyzability that established whether a particular patient with a particular pathology could be treated using analysis. The idea was that neuroses* were the elected object of therapy and it was essential that patients should be of a certain “intellectual” and cultural level. Today, the “pathologies that can be analyzed” may also include borderline and psychotic disorders which involve productive symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions as well as psychosomatic pathologies.

In short, rather than posing ourselves a nosographic-diagnostic problem, what we now do is simplify the type of problem as far as possible.

At most, we try to distinguish between:

• suffering involving a level of sensoriality that goes beyond what can be metabolized using normally developed mental functions;
• suffering where the containing functions of the mind are lacking;
• suffering where there is an excess of sensoriality which cannot be contained or transformed and is therefore evacuated (hallucinations and delusions) into the body (psychosomatic disorders) or affects intelligence (learning defects);
• suffering from severe or very severe deficiency of the weaving and metabolic functions of the mind (autistic spectrum).

It should be noted that this gradient also implies significant differences in analytic technique.

Often, psychic suffering is manifested through the multiple pathological defence mechanisms to which the subject* resorts unconsciously.

We possess an almost infinite number of such mechanisms. To give some examples of this type of situation:

• the projection* of one’s own needy parts onto an “other” (who accepts this) and the forced caring for this “other”. In this sense the “other” is that which is not recognized as a part of oneself (for example, H. cannot separate from F. with whom he does not seem to have much in common because he thinks that F. would not be able to survive “alone”, but then later declares himself astonished when F. says she will find a job somewhere far away if they separate);
• or negation through the erotic excitement guaranteed by a young lover who often becomes a card people play in certain depressive situations, because it allows them to go back a number of squares in the existential game of snakes and ladders. Compared to one’s companion in a life that often bears all the hallmarks of harsh reality, the young lover acts as a drug, a stimulant and a painkiller. Often this is another suffering person and looking after them serves many purposes at the same time.

An example might be the character Italia, wonderfully played by Penélope Cruz in the film Don’t Move, based on the novel of the same title by Margaret Mazzantini (2004).

A patient, Stefano, turns sixty, a point in his life that coincides with a change in his work situation. So far he has only been interested in his family – he is married with four children – but then he falls in love with a young girl who brings out in him feelings of mad jealousy that take up the whole of his mental space and deflect him from his depressive pain. It’s like going off on holiday to another galaxy of existence where you are no longer recognized, but by doing so you step away from time and pain.

Sometimes, though, there is a sudden and harsh awakening – “Where am I and what am I doing?” – which is accompanied by a feeling of total estrangement and the urgent need to return to one’s own reality, however painful it may be. Other times, however, a person feels captured inside a bubble whose walls are lined with film images, like a kind of Truman Show, where awakening is a long, slow, progressive process which involves a constant coming and going between these para-hallucinatory bubbles and reality. In other cases, again, it is seeing or perceiving something inconsistent in this para-reality that prompts suspicions as to “where” one has ended up and why.

For Stefano, for example, seeing the friends who surrounded the person who, for him, had become a sort of idolized Rita Hayworth prompted a progressive awakening. A den of thieves made up of friends of both sexes who turned him into an observer of how different his dream was from reality. In fact, to be exact, the first cracks in his film with Rita Hayworth were the lies that began to create rifts in this highly idealized ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1. What is psychoanalysis?
• 2. The invention of the unconscious
• 3. Dreams and the emotional field
• 4. The tools of treatment
• 5. The analysis of children and adolescents
• 6. One psychoanalysis or many?
• Glossary
• Suggested readings
• References
• Index