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countertransference in the establishment of trust, the difference between
conscious and unconscious fantasy, and much more. Ultimately, they more
or less agreed that there is nothing therapeutic about recovering memory
without the occurence of psychic change, and that the activator for such
change is in the relationship. Not until patients find out what they know,
and why, and that they have choices, can there be las ting change. In major
traumas, patients want to know that it really happened, and that the analyst
believes in them. As Owen Renik put it, "our patients have to know that
fantasy is not reality, we have to help them feel better, release them from
distress, and allow for increased pleasure."
While straining to follow the complex distinctions between inner
(unconscious) reality and its outer (conscious) counterpart, I kept reflect–
ing that it's not surprising that analysts are misunderstood. To grasp what
they do is difficult-especially at a time when the culture is attuned to
sound bites, to dichotomous explanations, to a sort of fast food for the
mind. Even getting together, it seems to me, cannot overcome the reign of
the populists and the philistines, unless they somehow can get across that,
for instance, the recovery of memories of seduction (whether real or false)
alone cannot cure; that owning one's self is a not a statement but a process;
and that a little knowledge may even be dangerous. At the same time, I was
appalled to realize that few analysts-aside from those on the panels–
knew anything about the cultural history of their discipline. Even when
talking of politics, many psychoanalysts don't really distinguish between
the politics of the White House or of Iraq, and those of their organiza–
tions. This is more than understandable when we think that they spend
their days tuning in to the unconscious lives of their patients. Nevertheless,
the only way they might put the Freud bashers in their place would be to
recognize themselves within the larger, cultural context, not to adapt to it,
but to debate the issues-rather than to reduce politics to psychology.
p.s.:
At the psychoanalytic conference in Madrid, which I attended the fol–
lowing weekend, the mostly European participants kept moving seamlessly
from detailed historical data to theoretical and clinical issues, and to the
connections between them.
