One hundred years of psychotherapy and fifty years of clinical practice: Reflections of a psychotherapist and questions for psychoanalysis

Abstract

Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy have evolved deeply over the past half century. This paper shows some the changes I have witnessed in them, and the challenges we face in this change of era, at the edge of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Some the challenges are examined: knowing how to transmit in our daily practice the essential relationality of the human being; the relational essence of the process of change through psychotherapy; and a review of our contribution to our institutions being genuinely relational, that is, that we take more care of the space that the Other can inhabit than of preserving our own. We need hope: the hope to change and (again) be people, in connection with others, regaining confidence and being able to be ourself (to be ourselves with others). That is the meaning of our activity, what it is to be a psychoanalyst/psychotherapist today.

Key words:

• contemporary psychoanalysis
• challenges
• future
• relationality

Notes

1 Presented at the Meeting of the IFPS 60th Anniversary Congress “Psychoanalytic Theories and Techniques: Dialogue, Difficulties and Future” held at the College of Physicians of Madrid, October 20, 2022. This was based partially on an unpublished text with the title “My evolution through relational thinking: Issues and questions” delivered by videoconference for the Diploma of Introduction to Relational Psychoanalysis organized by IARPP Mexico Contemporary and AMPPR, on September 10, 2022.

2 An approximation can be seen in the work of F. Fabris (see Ávila Espada, 2008).

3 The presentation of this text coincides with the exhibition dedicated to this figure at the Centro de Arte – Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, previously exhibited at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA).

4 See an overview of the echoes of that time and the contribution to it by Nicolás Caparrós, one of my teachers in the period 1974–1984: https://www.psicoterapiarelacional.es/Portals/0/eJournalCeIR/V15N1_2021/18_In-Memoriam_Nicolas-Caparros_1941-2021_CeIR_V15N1.pdf (date of access: 03/10/2023).

5 A gloss of the perspective and ideological context of this outstanding author was published in Ávila Espada (1987).

6 See the review by Ávila Espada and Cabello (1999).

7 An interest shared with my partner from the studies of the higher baccalaureate, Luis Enrique Esteban Barahona, who later made relevant contributions to the history of peasants’ and workers’ demands in Guadalajara (Spain) in the 1920s and 30s. De Sender, then alive and exiled (Mexico, the USA) had impressed us with his works, for example Requiem for a Spanish peasant, Seven red Sundays, and Mr. Witt in the Canton. We gathered an important literary and historiographical documentation, which we finally yielded to a colleague for his doctoral thesis.

8 A prominent figure of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism (a political movement between utopic socialism and trade union movements in Spain in the first quarter of twentieth century).

9 I did my doctoral thesis on Henry A. Murray’s thematic perception test, a topic I began working on at the same time that my academic career began, from 1974 and until at least 1982.

10 Los Goliardos and Castañuela 70, among others.

11 Nicolás Caparrós, Antonio García de la Hoz.

12 Ignacio Gárate, José Miguel Marinas.

13 See more information at https://www.psicoterapiarelacional.es/Documentacion/GRITA. This group of debate and thought, founded in 1996, has completed its first twenty-five years and is still active.

14 We convened and held a series of conferences on psychoanalysis at the University between 1991 and 2000, with periodic meetings held in university areas, in Malaga, Salamanca, Girona, Las Navas del Marqués, Jarandilla de la Vera, Donosti, Barcelona, and Lleida. Numerous publications, research projects, and working groups were derived from these meetings.

15 Clinicians and researchers such as Ricardo Bernardi, Denise Defey (Uruguay), Ramon Flourenzano, Guillermo de la Parra, Mariane Krause (Chile), Andres Roussos, Adela Duarte (Argentina), Antonio Vasco (Portugal), Juan Vives (Mexico), Vittorio Lingiardi, Antonio Semerari (Italy), Erhard Mergenthaler, Cornelia Albani, Manfred Cierpka (Germany), Rainer Krause (Austria), M. Helge Rønnestad (Norway), Bo Vinnars (Sweden), Dan Pokorny (Czech Republic), Uwe Hentschel (the Netherlands), Franz Caspar (Switzerland), and Jacques Barber, Hartwig Dahl, Wilma Bucci, George Silberschatz, David Orlinsky, Rebecca Curtis, Paul Crits-Christoph, and Jeremy Safran (USA), in addition to my Spanish colleagues Joaquim Poch, Merçe Mitjavila, Miguel Ángel Gonzalez Torres, and Isabel Caro, among many others.

16 A recent paper (Retolaza, 2022) sums up well this approach to necessity and transcendence.

17 Human and social science from the subjective experience of people, groups, and social institutions, and not reducible to the requirements of the natural sciences.

18 I have re-covered facets of the history of relational thinking in our context on different occasions. See also the published in 2018.

19 Not all the contributions and formulations of these authors can be considered relational, but all those mentioned have contributed outstanding contributions from the 1990s to the present. The list of contributors should be much longer, but I have included only those who have published more continuously.

20 See our editorial collection at https://www.psicoterapiarelacional.es/publicaciones.

21 See Rodríguez Sutil (2021).

22 See my work: Ávila Espada (2020).

23 See Rodríguez Sutil (2014).

24 The reflections that I do on this topic they are influenced by the excellent work of the philosopher Ana Carrasco-Conde (2021). I found it very enriching to read the work of this philosopher, and I encourage readers to do the same.

25 Extracted from the interview/conversation made with Luis García Montero by Jesús Ruiz Mantilla, and published in El País semanal number 2497 on September 4, 2022.

26 These reflections are influenced by a reading of the work of José Carlos Ruiz 2021).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alejandro Ávila Espada

Alejandro Ávila Espada was born in Madrid (1950), where he developed most of his career. He has been a full professor of personality, evaluation and psychological treatment (psychotherapy) at the University of Salamanca (1991–2004) and Complutense University (2004–2020), currently retired, and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist (individual and group). He was the founder and first president (2005–2015) of IARPP Spain (the Spanish Section of the International Association for Psychotherapy and Relational Psychoanalysis) and a member of the IARPP Board between 2011 and 2018. He is also the founder (2006) and honorary president of the Institute of Relational Psychotherapy. In addition, he is an advisor as honorary clinical and training director to the entity Ágora Relacional, dedicated to clinical care and continuous training in mental health in the relational perspective. Among his works are The interpersonal tradition (Relational Agora) and Relational horizons (IPBooks), and a compilation of his selected writings (1985–2022) is in preparation.