EDITH KURZWEIL
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from without, and mounting psychic tension, with the fear of psychic
helplessness from within." For Isidoro Berenstein of Buenos Aires, psy–
chic reality is "a set of experiences, emotions and unconscious represen–
tations, personified as objects, which the ego feels to be internal and
real." Simply put, it is an individual's way of experiencing the world -
based on early personal history, apprehensions and adaptations - and
which the psychoanalyst helps him or her learn to look at more objec–
tively. As speaker after speaker analyzed and reported on cases, and drew
theoretical conclusions, it became ever clearer that it is infinitely easier to
help a patient than it is to derive larger conclusions that would explain
the workings of the human mind - not only for psychoanalysts but for
philosophers, psychologists, and
all
other social scientists.
Psychoanalysis is in crisis not only because it has not been able to
penetrate to the innermost psyche in order to explain what makes us
tick, or because we do not have a definitive model of the mind, but be–
cause Freud's implied promise to fully uncover the unconscious, the
"true psychical reality," has not been kept. Nevertheless, more and more
therapists corning from a variety of backgrounds, and trained by different
types of analysts, are aspiring to take up its pursuit.
As the days went by, it became ever clearer that whereas psychic real–
ity was the topic of the congress, material reality was on the minds of
the participants.
In
fact, it never strayed far from their professional con–
sciousness. For the unpleasant presidential election campaign they just had
concluded had been rife with the sort of disinforrnation and ad hominem
mudslinging we have become accustomed to in recent national and local
elections. To heal the rifts, speakers at the opening session appealed to
the need for multicultural, multilingual, and multitheoretical tolerance.
However, these clarion calls sounded somewhat cliched in view of the
underlying disagreements which on the one hand are reenactments of
dilemmas built into psychoanalytic theory and practice since the incep–
tion of the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1908 - which
Freud so clearly outlined when he wrote "On the Question of Lay
Analysis" - and on the other hand represent careerist and financial mo–
tives.
Freud then had warned his American disciples against turning psy–
choanalysis into a medical specialty. They did not heed him, and the
subsequent split between medically and non-medically trained Freudians,
which had been fermenting in subterranean waters until the Hamburg
Congress in 1985, was brought to the surface by the lawsuit of American
psychologists - for loss of income due to lack of access. Now, those
who had been marginal were elated at finally having gained entree to
the "centers of power." Consequently, at the business meeting the dais
