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A Room for One's Own
(1993)
The hermeneutic turn in psychoanalysis may be less a move toward soft science than an attempt to address certain failures in the classical tradition. The latter has failed to convert Freud's many metaphors into anything like responsible science it has been unable to give up its fascination with Freud and move on to other thinkers and other points of view it has been unable to find an answer to the problem of secrecy and privileged access to clinical data under the heavy hand of theory, it has all but eliminated research from the psychoanalytic enterprise and finally, it has been unable to find a home for the Roshomon effect and the fact that almost everything worth looking at has at least two sides. Above all, psychoanalysis needs to recognize that our theory is often the projection of either our Zeitgeist or our personal history. Until we can make room for the problem of subjectivity in our theory-building, we will never be able to separate the singer from the song.
This paper considers, from a psychoanalytic point of view, work with urban poor patients. A previous attempt, from an ego psychological perspective, to adapt psychoanalytic theory and technique for work with such patients is reviewed. An attempt is then made to elaborate an object relations perspective, based largely on the work of Fairbairn. The two approaches are compared and contrasted, especially with respect to common problems that arise in work with this group of people, such as missed appointments, crises, and requests for >concrete< help. Finally, there is a review of how the structure and policies of the public clinics in which most poor patients are seen impact on analytically oriented work.