Alongside: Regarding the otherness of Warren Poland

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Notes

1 In a previous draft, one reviewer wondered if I were following in Poland’s footsteps; another wondered why I was not more critical. This surprised, even amused me, because, coming from different trainings, backgrounds and institutes, we seemed to find one another’s work – and for this I am grateful: sameness and difference, a foundational theme. Because regional clinical-theoretical variations may be unfamiliar to a non-US reader, here is my gloss to give context to the terroir of background influences. Poland’s generation had a strong grounding in medicine and psychiatry in the treatment of very ill patients, and this surely gave him an appreciation of the intensity and manifold forms of human suffering in relation to complex unconscious processes. Further, the creative extension of the range of treatments is in the air of the Washington–Baltimore area – Poland’s institute setting – with its strong, distinctive history of analytic institutes and departments of psychiatry. Adolph Meyer’s powerhouse Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins approached patients with a comprehensive, exhaustive gathering of data from all domains of life – the “psychiatric anamnesis” – which eschewed facile reductionism and exposed the sheer contingency of any life in its multiple spheres. This fertile environment shaped Harry Stack Sullivan, the profoundly original American analyst of the interpersonal dimensions of human interaction who emphasized the clinician as a participant-observer always-already entwined within the unconscious force field of the patient, along with his deep humanizing of the suffering of psychosis and especially paranoia: we are all more human than not. One thinks, too, of the renowned Chestnut Lodge, fostering the innovative treatment of severe illness and producing many luminaries who greatly expanded the scope of psychoanalytic treatments. And, of course, Sullivan helped found the William Alanson White Institute, pushing the exploration of the interpersonal field into psychoanalysis, and deeply changing American understandings. Always these influences were in dialectic tension with other American regional voices, especially with the predominant New York “classical”, ego-psychological sphere of influence. From his writings, Poland’s analytic foundation is in more classical traditions, where he expressly finds grounding and affinity with Jacob Arlow. But let me be clear about not wishing to over-privilege these diverse, ambient influences: Poland’s way is to be “independent”, aiming for a balance among clinical-theoretical forces. I think of this psychoanalytic “attitude” as a kind of equipoise – and one that I also aspire to. As a reviewer here I focus on Poland’s published work, where I encounter his presence. My inclination is to keep our own overlap simpler: we encountered one another at various times at national meetings, recognized our interests and differences, surprising one another in both. And, full disclosure, it further surprised me that Poland asked me to discuss his 1997 American Psychoanalytic Plenary (Poland 2000) – and it pleased me later to ask him to discuss my own (Margulies 2014).

2 From Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Poland 1996, epigraph to book).