Von der Couch zum Sessel
(2009)
Our profession is being challenged theoretically and by practical realities. Many of its basic premises are being questioned and a hostile managed care bureaucracy has been curtailing treatment opportunities. These challenges force a latent issue into full view: Is psychoanalytic wisdom tied to its dogma and technical rituals or can much of its wisdom be integrated into a more inclusive interdisciplinary perspective? Psychoanalysis has a history of resisting change. It defined too early what was and what was not to be considered psychoanalysis. Dogmatization made idols out of theories and the rituals of techniques. Theories are valuable tools only and not scientific truth. While in-stitutes and official sanctions have lacked in open-mindedness, the unofficial practicing psychoanalyst has been far more creative in adapting psychoanaly-sis to the patient's needs and embracing the freedom to develop his or her idio-syncratic ways, wisdom, and skills. We need to increase our therapeutic reper-toire beyond those that carry the label of psychoanalysis. I present some con-siderations that derive from my experience as a psychoanalytically trained dy-namic psychotherapist.
Our profession is being challenged theoretically and by practical realities. Many of its basic premises are being questioned and a hostile managed care bureaucracy has been curtailing treatment opportunities. These challenges force a latent issue into full view: Is psychoanalytic wisdom tied to its dogma and technical rituals or can much of its wisdom be integrated into a more inclusive interdisciplinary perspective? Psychoanalysis has a history of resisting change. It defined too early what was and what was not to be considered psychoanalysis. Dogmatization made idols out of theories and the rituals of techniques. Theories are valuable tools only and not scientific truth. While institutes and official sanctions have lacked in open-mindedness, the unofficial practicing psychoanalyst has been far more creative in adapting psychoanalysis to the patient's needs and embracing the freedom to develop his or her idiosyncratic ways, wisdom, and skills. We need to increase our therapeutic repertoire beyond those that carry the label of psychoanalysis. I present some considerations that derive from my experience as a psychoanalytically trained dynamic psychotherapist.
Marianne Horney Eckardt offers a thoughtful meditation on the issue of normative principles in development and the practice of psychotherapy. She discerns three possible positions. The classical position as articulated by Heinz Hartmann would advise the analyst to stay clear of any moral position and hope for the best. In the position taken by Karen Horney, the issue of ethics lies at the center of neurotic development. The analyst's role, to use a metaphor, is to be a good gardener who will restore healthy development by providing the right conditions for further growth. We should mention in passing, that the belief in a self-righting tendency is central to many contemporary views such as Lichtenberg and colleagues' (1992) and Weiss's (1993). A third position, taken by Fromm and Stephen Jay Gould, claims that nature does not provide us with answers to the problem of living. Quoting Gould (1977), Eckardt believes that the complexity of human existence requires >humanists of every stripe< (p. 146) to provide us with moral guidelines by which we can live. She interprets Fromm as believing that humans are not inherently good or evil, but that life presents us with choices that can incline us in one direction or another. The role of the analyst in this position is much like the old biblical prophet or a Greek chorus. As therapists we can describe the alternatives provided by life choices and can urge patients to consider the possible consequences of different paths, some of them dire, others promising and hopeful, but we cannot tell patients which road to take. Fromm's position was dialectical and incorporated elements of the second and third positions. Fromm thought that the main tendency in humans was toward goodness. The path to love and brotherliness also offered the best >solution< toward happiness. Evil was a second, ever-present potential, a capacity for cruelty and destructiveness that far exceeded anything observable in the animal kingdom. At its best, Fromm's approach to a humanistic ethics was historical. Any discussion of real possibilities – in a Hegelian sense – for good and evil had to be inserted within the context of a specific historical period and a particular life history. Without this contextualization, any discussion of ethics results in, by omission or by commission, simply supporting an ideology. Eckardt's distinctions are valuable and help frame some of the issues of a humanistic ethics. We think her discussion of Fromm's belief in a negative theology also has implications for our position as therapists. Just as we cannot know what God is, we are also unable to predict, nor should we prescribe, formulas that lead to the good life. And just as a negative theology is defined by what God is not, so we can and do know about negative consequences for development when favorable conditions are lacking. Furthermore, we should not hide our values as therapists. A central paradox of human development is that while development is lawful, it is not predictable on an individual basis.
Fromm's Concept of Biophilia
(1994)
Die Qualität der Hoffnung war für Fromm von zentraler Bedeutung. Hoffnung ist ein unerlässliches Element der Struktur des Lebens, der Dynamik des menschlichen Geistes. Aber so wie die Hoffnung immer zum Leben gehört, so gehören auch Enttäuschung und Verzweiflung, die Kehrseite der Hoffnung, dazu. Fromm beschreibt sehr treffend den Kampf zwischen Hoffnung und Verzweiflung, wie er in den biblischen Psalmen zum Ausdruck kommt. Das Ergebnis eines solchen Kampfes kann entweder eine vertiefte Bejahung des Lebens sein oder eine >Verhärtung des Herzens<, die zu Destruktivität und Gewalt führt.