On Foresight

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Notes

Emde (1995) notes, “It is only very recently that our contemporary behavioral sciences have become aware that a future orientation in our psychology has been grossly neglected in the twentieth century. A multitude of studies have been done concerning the influence of present and past events on behavior, but we have neglected the influence of the future.”.

Robert Gardner’s phrase suggests psychic events that one may easily attend to or not. This often depends on delicate circumstances of the moment, such as the state of the therapeutic alliance or the tactfulness of the analyst’s wonderings.

Bennett Simon, M.D., has made such an event the subject of an interesting article in Psychoanalytic Inquiry. See Bibliography.

Pinchas Noy has written about the need to concretize in order to carry affect. The intellectualization of the obsessional bores us because of its distance from the moment of real experience.

Such problems envelop us today, as science and technology grow in power, controlled by an economic system that feeds on the demand for constant growth and ever increasing private profit, with little consideration of long range consequences to a finite and fragile world. So we see the problems of global warming, environmental destruction, genetic engineering, rapid transmission of world diseases, enormous inequality of wealth, loss of species, changes in family structure brought on by economic forces, all with little effective consideration of risks until they appear as crises.

Science has been so triumphant that we may have lost perspective about its limitations, some of which lie particularly in the difficulty of applying the scientific method to highly complex interdependent systems in which small changes may have massive but often slowly developing effects. Yet in idealizing science we have also given up much of our reliance upon expert experience, and upon the foresight of wisdom. Thus we run great dangers with calmness.

James Engell, in a beautiful scholarly book The Creative Imagination, writes: “Coleridge deals with one of the most curious and fascinating properties of the imagination: it is even more powerful as an idea when described in its own terms.” If the imagination is a higher power than reason (as the Romantics said), and every higher power includes the lower power, then reason cannot express its comprehension of the imaginative power. He quotes Coleridge, “They and they only can acquire the philosophic imagination, the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol, that the wings of the air-sylph are forming within the skin of the caterpillar: those only who feel in their own spirits the same instinct which impel the chrysalis of the horned-fly to leave room in its involucrum for antennae yet to come. They know and feel, that the potential works in them, even as the actual works on them.” (Engell 1981, pp. 346-47).

The Yale Shakespeare Edition of The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, edited by Robert T. Petersson, explains that prodigy as used here means “monster.”.

American analysis has a long history of concern with what is referred to as “wild analysis,” and the ready association of “foresight” with unscientific modes of thought may have contributed to the lack of attention to this subject.

Often the conscious insight comes as the patient is leaving. How often have I wished to call a patient back when the meaning of an hour suddenly crystallizes. I saw this as a failure of my listening, now I see it more as a change in the state of the “analyzing instrument.” There is much evidence to suggest that creative insights often come during a transitional state between involvement and detachment. We analysts have “wax in the third ear” much of the time.

A friend has observed that the roads in Van Gogh’s painting, which I saw as leading nowhere, could also be seen as leading anywhere and everywhere. We need always to weigh the subjectivity of our judgments in such matters.

If one considers the essence of science not only as it is embodies in the scientific method, but in the scientific conscience, with the ideal of putting aside wishes, fears, and pride in the search for truth, psychoanalysts systematically cultivate this scientific ideal, with more or less effect, in the analysis of counter-transference.

A valuable study of the limitations of words in grasping reality, in reflecting our inner thought processes, and in communicating with others, is found in the book by Ben-Ami Scharfstein (1993).

This debate and its resolution are admirably described in Image and Brain, S. Kosslyn.

It no longer seems beyond possibility that some day an external observer will be able to view another’s dreams.

This immediacy of insight may have contributed to the belief that some people of genius seem to work effortlessly. In fact, while talent is needed, hard work and much preparation are essential preparation for creative work.

The concept of analyst as assistant-analyst to the patient originated with Robert Gardner.

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Notes on contributors

Cornelis Heijn

Clinical Professor Emeritus, Tufts University School of Medicine.