Beyond Tolerance in Psychoanalytic Communities: Reflexive Skepticism and Critical Pluralism

Abstract

Recent developments in the philosophy of science suggest that scientific knowledge grows not by accumulating supporting evidence but by subjecting our beliefs to the staunchest criticism we can gather. This paper argues for approaching contemporary psychoanalytic multiplicity with an attitude of “reflexive skepticism” and “critical pluralism.” We can gain the most from the diversity of psychoanalytic theories by moving beyond mutual respect and tolerance toward a genuine appreciation of others, for the critical perspective that they can offer to us and that we can offer to them. The other, the other school, viewpoint, or orientation, can provide a function that we cannot do for ourselves nor they for themselves. In this view, the criticism of the other can become a unique gift, mutually exchanged among schools.

Keywords:

• critical pluralism
• criticism
• critique
• Menachem Fisch
• reflexive skepticism

Notes

¹ Menachem Fisch is a prolific author, and a good select bibliography of his work may be found in Tirosh-Samuelson and Hughes (2016), which also includes several representative articles, an editorial overview, and an intellectual overview. I am not a historian or philosopher of science and have no expert competence in evaluating Fisch’s professional contributions. I have been influenced by his work, but the responsibility for any misuse or misunderstanding of his theory is mine alone. Other books of his that I have studied are included in the reference section: (Fisch, 1997; Fisch & Benbaji, 2011). Special thanks to Daniel Marom for introducing me to the philosophical writings of M. Fisch. Marom is responsible for curricular and pedagogical development at the Mandel School for Educational Leadership in Jerusalem, where we have been collaborating in an ongoing study of psychoanalytic education.

² Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a published reference to his using this phrase to describe his own form of theorizing, but there are several times when he did speak against “uncritical eclecticism” or “muddled eclecticism,” and this usage does support my memory that he considered his own approach a form of “critical eclecticism.”

³ It is significant that Greenberg and Mitchell’s (1983) book coincided with the first annual meetings of Division 39, and that the establishment of the Relational Orientation at NYU’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in 1988, and the establishment of Psychoanalytic Dialogues in 1990, immediately followed the lawsuit against the American and International Psychoanalytic Associations, which was settled in November 1988 with the institutes promising not to discriminate against psychologists or other “nonmedical candidates” (see Wallerstein, 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lewis Aron

Lewis Aron, PhD, is the Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He has served as president of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association; founding president of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; founding president of the Division of Psychologist-Psychoanalysts of the New York State Psychological Association. He is the cofounder and cochair of the Sándor Ferenczi Center at the New School for Social Research; Professor, School of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel. He was one of the founders, and is an Associate Editor, of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and is the series coeditor of the Relational Perspectives Book Series (Routledge). He is the editor and author of numerous clinical and scholarly journal articles and books and is widely known for his study/reading groups.