“I Never Felt I Should Think About Freud”: From Authority to Liberation in Psychoanalytic Work

Abstract

Freud’s project of personal liberation, the endeavor to free the individual mind, saturates his work. His very definition of adulthood is about “detachment from parental authority.” Indeed, in the session reported in this issue, the patient insists that her single meeting with Freud set her free, and that it lasted a lifetime. Yet it would seem that Freud’s use of authority as reported in this session contradicts this notion. This brief paper examines the paradox of reconciling Freud’s powerful way of working and the use of his authority with the patient’s experience of coming to matter as a person for the first time. The paper suggests that maintaining this paradox enables a place in which both therapist and patient are to be able to have their say.

Keywords:

• authority
• suggestion
• agency
• Sigmund Freud

Acknowledgments

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the Spring Meeting of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39), American Psychological Association, San Francisco, April 2015; the annual conference of the Mental Health Services of the Israel Defence Forces, Givat Olga, Israel, December 2015; the meeting of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Rome, 2016; and the Counseling Services, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, July 2016. I am especially grateful to Miki Rahmani, MA, who has contributed immeasurably to this work.

Notes

¹ Translation of Dohler quotes by Ursula Mangoubi, Boston University.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan H. Slavin

Jonathan H. Slavin, PhD, ABPP, is Clinical Instructor in Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; Adjunct Clinical Professor, Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, New York University; founding director, Tufts University Counseling Center (1970–2006); former president of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39), American Psychological Association; and founding president, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. Dr. Slavin’s published work has focused on fundamental experiential elements in the psychoanalytic relationship including love, sexuality, desire, truthfulness, and personal agency, and their role in the repair of the mind. He is in private practice, in Newton, MA.