“Being myself as the analyst I have become:” An interview with Jay B. Frankel

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Notes

1 This refers to Greenberg and Mitchell (1983).

2 In 1982, Mitchell was 36 years old.

3 Ferenczi’s Clinical diary, originally written in 1932, was first published in the French translation in 1985 and then in English in 1988.

4 The lawsuit actually started in March 1985 but it lasted for 3.5 years (see Wallerstein, 1988).

5 The 1986 journal article was included as Chapter 7 in Mitchell’s book Relational concepts in psychoanalysis. An integration (1988).

6 After this interview was conducted, I became aware of Marco Conci’s (2019) recent critique of relational psychoanalysis, which in important ways dovetails with my own comments here, but also goes in other directions. First, Conci underlines the personal and political elements that color how analysts develop their theories – Mitchell’s in particular. He goes on to point out how the training model and membership standards of the American Psychoanalytic Association were designed to further the business purposes of that organization rather than remaining true to psychoanalytic principles, and how its training model was designed to make sure that candidates developed a commitment to its preferred theoretical perspective before being exposed to any competing ideas. Against that background, Mitchell had to “get rid of Freud” (p. 268) in order for him, and others like him, to be able to fully play the “game” of psychoanalysis – i.e., to engage in its intellectual discourse on an equal footing with classical analysts (pp. 264 and 266–267); Mitchell had to do this, Conci proposes, even though Mitchell did not place himself in opposition to much of what Freud actually wrote to the extent that Mitchell’s writings might suggest.

Conci goes on, more directly, to accuse relational psychoanalysis of walking away from a systematic study of Freud in its own training model, to the detriment of the development of psychoanalytic theory. In fact, Mitchell trained in psychoanalysis, and studied Freud’s theories, at the White Institute, an institution grounded in interpersonal psychoanalysis and critical of classical psychoanalysis. Mitchell’s attitude toward Freud may have been colored by his training there.

And Conci takes his critique in another direction: “the institutionalization of relational psychoanalysis, with its one-sided emphasis on the clinical dimension of our work and identity, would represent a form of perversion of the original intellectual richness of the comparative psychoanalytic perspective proposed by Greenberg and Mitchell in 1983” (p. 268). Ironically, the loss of an ongoing dialogue between psychoanalytic theory and practice may deprive analytic practice, itself, of some of its richness.

But I wonder if a focus on the clinical side of the equation, rather than on an elaborate metapsychology about the intricacies of intrapsychic experience, has not been necessary for relational psychoanalysis. Classical technique is intimately tied to a theoretical perspective that relational psychoanalysis in many ways rejects, based, as it is, on the foundation that inner fantasy life is, to a significant extent, predetermined and relatively impervious to new experiences. The task of relational theory has been to establish the role of intersubjective factors, resulting in a somewhat more conceptual, experience-distant description of development, compared with classical descriptions; indeed, in order to establish itself, it may have needed to keep its focus on intersubjective events rather than on a highly elaborated elucidation of the child’s developmentally determined subjective misperceptions.

Also, regrettably, new ideas in psychoanalysis may have a greater impact (not to mention more effectively increasing their originators’ visibility) when these progenitors blatantly reject the established view and found a new “school,” rather than more selectively critiquing and otherwise attempting to integrate their ideas into the mainstream.

Along somewhat similar lines, Conci criticizes what might be seen as the excesses of a relational clinical perspective. He approvingly quotes Eagle and his colleagues: “Adopting a position of humble realism obviates the temptation to dichotomize between the therapeutic process goals of uncovering and discovering, on the one hand, and of developing new meaning systems and alternative perspectives on the other. One recognizes that the two go hand in hand. If we are not concerned with whether our meaning systems, perspectives, interpretations, and narratives correspond in some way to what is going on in the patent’s mind, we are left with an endeavor not essentially different from any form of suggestion, persuasion or conversion” (Conci, 2019, p. 269) – J.F.

7 Thompson is hidden under the code Dm. (see Brennan, 2018, pp. 87–88).

8 This refers to Harry Guntrip’s paper “My experience of analysis with Fairbairn and Winnicott” (1975).

9 Ferenczi's family was named Fraenkel until 1879.

10 Since this interview was conducted, I have become more aware of what may be a deeper source of the sense of defect that follows when a child is forced to identify with the aggressor: awareness, on some level, of an actual defect in oneself, not just a defensively created sense of defect that concretizes the child’s internalized sense of badness. The actual defect consists of a lack of an adequately developed inner integration and a strong enough limiting boundary around oneself, as well as some degree of rupture in one’s direct contact with one’s own inner experience – compare Winnicott’s (1945) paper on “Primitive emotional development.” In some real sense, there’s not enough “glue” to hold together the pieces of the child’s developing personality; and following this, not enough of a foundation for either an authentic sense of being the subject or agent within one’s complex and contradictory subjective experience – what Ben Wolstein (e.g. 1981) called the “psychic center of the self,” the sense of living in the “first person, singular, active, and [being] fundamentally original” – or for feeling securely separate from other people without resort to defining one’s boundaries through extreme, i.e., paranoid-schizoid, defenses; the latter goes beyond not feeling entitled to be separate. As I see it at this point, this defect results from the lack of the caregiver’s consistent genuine empathic connection to the actual rather than the fantasied child, the lack of adequate holding, and the relentless impingement by the caregiving environment – all of which force the child to keep their complete focus on potential threats that may suddenly come at them out of the blue, at any moment; the child must keep themself on constant alert, always in a state of identifying with the aggressor, depriving the child of being able to “be alone in the presence of the other” (Winnicott, 1958), a condition necessary for the development of self. – J.F.

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Aleksandar Dimitrijević

Aleksandar Dimitrijević, PhD, is clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. He works as a lecturer at the International Psychoanalytic University and in private practice in Berlin, Germany. He has given lectures, seminars, university courses, and conference presentations throughout Europe and in the USA. He is author of many conceptual and empirical papers about attachment theory and research, psychoanalytic education, and psychoanalysis and the arts, some of which have been translated into German, Hungarian, Italian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Turkish. He has also edited or coedited 12 books or special journal issues, the most recent of which, Silence and silencing in psychoanalysis (co-edited with Michael B. Buchholz, 2021), was shortlisted for the Gradiva award. His current project is From the abyss of loneliness to the bliss of solitude (coedited with Michael B. Buchholz; Phoenix, 2022).