The History of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in Latin America
(2009)
Reply
(1997)
Two clinical vignettes are described. I wish to show how much an open recognition of the social conditions of both participants in a treatment process may enrich the analyst's understanding of the transference-countertransference dynamics. I claim that although analysts intuitively integrate this aspect of the therapeutic relationship they commonly do it without a specific formulation. In an explicit and systematic manner, Fromm emphasized the social dimensions of human experience. His background knowledge of the social sciences framed his therapeutic practice. The clinical implications which derive from this perspective will be illustrated. The clinical material which I present shows how today's psychoanalytic attention to the dynamic interaction between analyst and patient while it enables us to deal with the complexity and different layers of the treatment process can also include the social dimension. The benefits and difficulties of developing our consciousness about our own social roles and our involvement in the social milieu deserve our careful and critical attention.
Sonia Gojman traces many contemporary innovations in psychoanalytic technique to Fromm's explicit humanistic approach to psychoanalysis. As Gojman notes, Fromm emphasized the need to know the patient from within (from >center to center<). This requires from the analyst an openness to use his own experience as a vehicle for understanding the patient. Fromm legitimized the patient's observer role in the analytic process, and he supported efforts to abandon a mythical neutrality in favor of adopting a role as an observant participant who affirms not only unconscious truths but also steps toward health. Gojman notes that these changes in technique--a term Fromm was reluctant to use since the stance he advocated was not simply a matter of the head but of the heart--are consistent with contemporary intersubjective approaches and with some of the positions advanced by Casement, Gill, and Mitchell, among others. Gojman also points out that in Fromm's discussion of technique in the Cuernavaca seminars, he repeatedly emphasized the analyst's unconventional attitude, his aliveness, his honesty, a profound interest in patients and their well-being. According to Fromm, these were all key ingredients to diminish the patient's resistance within the psychoanalytic process and increase the patient's confidence in the analyst. Gojman courageously looks into the realities of psychoanalytic institutes, where analysands are exposed to their therapist as teachers and colleagues in a variety of situations. This leaves training analysts in an extremely difficult position, >surrounded by analysands and former analysands as junior colleagues, creating situations of high-risk professional communication in groups ridden by all kinds of secrets and nonusable information.< Gojman proposes that rather than treat issues such as prestige and power in psychoanalytic institutes as nonexistent or useless sources of information, that the process be analyzed from the perspectives of the analyst and the analysand, each with different positions in the group structure. Needless to say, this effort is demanding for analyst and analysand alike, but may come as a relief >acknowledging our real participation and not struggling to conceal it.<