Preface

There is no doubt that psychoanalysis is in a crisis, and a serious one at that. Academia has expelled it from its curricula, the media have downsized it to a minor branch of Western philosophy, academic psychology mocks its model of the human mind, and medical institutions the world over contemptuously dismiss its therapeutic procedures. The empirical evidence that has been accumulating over the past 40 years, and that has lent a wide support to various psychoanalytically oriented treatments, is simply ignored by any esteemed public institution.

Unluckily, psychoanalytic institutions have generally appeared shy, even helpless in front of such an impressive army of critics and opponents. It would be easy to blame the opponents of psychoanalysis for its current disquieting status, to point to the decline of European culture, to the spreading of a simplistic and unsophisticated materialism through the whole range of social sciences, and to the enormous financial influence of the pharmaceutical corporations. All such circumstances are not news, but a focus on events outside the psychoanalytic community would be misleading. In a recent paper, Garza Guerrero [1] suggested that the current crisis cannot be properly understood without a due awareness of the inner weaknesses of the psychoanalytic movement.

In fact, born in 19th-century Wien, psychoanalysis has thrived on positivist epistemology and has valued an attitude of objective observation of the patient. However, within such framework, "[a]symmetry between the observing analyst and the objectified patient, between the impassible knowledge and the emotionally suffering blindness, between the power to heal and the inability to cope, ironically reflected the rigidity of oedipal configuration which psychoanalysts aimed to solve through interpretative work" [2].

Consistent with such perspective, we have suggested that psychoanalytic theory has so far failed to fully integrate the advancements promoted by the intersubjective model of the human mind within its theoretical and clinical framework. Such failure has brought about a number of substantial drawbacks.


lend repression an ontological status while investing the psychoanalyst's role with massive idealization mechanisms. A parallel devaluation of relationships and events outside the psychoanalytic situation has hindered an adequate understanding of the patient's object relationship system.

In order to formulate a comprehensive conceptualization of the current crisis of psychoanalysis, we need to take into account an additional dimension. We should never forget psychoanalysis is not only a theory of the human mind. It is also an intellectual movement. And sure, institutional group dynamics have fatefully fostered the previously mentioned idealization processes with the associated impact on clinical and theoretical developments.

Under this perspective, it is essential to point out that the structure and functioning of psychoanalytic institutes are heavily affected by a core component of admission procedures for candidate analysts: the training analysis. Training analysis, as currently understood, involves a structural overlap between needs for care and personal development on the one hand, and professional and social goals on the other. As repeatedly mentioned in the relevant literature, the training function of the treating psychoanalyst is bound to deeply infiltrate and potentially distort the treatment process [1].

An omnipotent phantasy is encouraged where the patient's compliance and Superego skills would win him the father's perpetual mercy and undisputed preference over inner and outer siblings. The coincidence of such phantasy with the external reality circumstances of the training institution is bound to perpetually withdraw it from the training psychoanalyst's interpretation activity. Accurate interpretations of negative and aggressive transference are then hindered, while separation anxieties involved in the termination of any clinically meaningful psychoanalytic treatment are eluded.

Psychoanalytic institutes are so bound to set up as psychoanalytic citadels, where competition and hate are split and projected onto the external world [3]. The stronghold is inhabited by an institutional family, where two generational layers can easily be identified. The phantasmal interaction between the training analysts' elite and the wider community of candidates and then junior analysts features enhanced idealization mechanisms. The high educational and ethical standards shared by the institution members, their undisputable interpersonal skills, and emotional sophistication promote the repression of stinky or hurting fecal introjects and allow their disposal into the external space of lower-level mental health professionals as well as of the general society.

The narcissistic quality of such an institutional community is obvious. Conformism with the training analysts' understanding of psychic reality is then enhanced, with the aim of keeping conflicts within the community to a minimum.

Within such a framework, any substantial growth of knowledge is impossible. Scientific content are produced with the main aim of reaffirming emotional and cognitive dependence on the institutional father's images. Original formulations of original clinical work are not welcomed.

Scientific exchange with diverse perspectives from concurring psychoanalytic communities is experienced as no less ominous. In fact, it cannot but undermine the defensive mechanisms that sustain the institution's precarious sense of self.

In essence, within the current institutional environment, any growth of knowledge is heavily hindered. It is no surprise, then, if the phantasmal body of our mother psychoanalysis is deeply wounded. Without the courage to consistently search for and make available to humankind the truth about the unconscious mind, psychoanalysis is and will stay in a dire crisis.

The present book gathers some original contributions that discuss the current crisis of psychoanalysis or suggest some intriguing new perspectives. The authors have tried to tackle the issue from various points of view. The book opens with an essay by Barnaby Barratt (Chapter 1), who focuses his attention on the very core of the psychoanalytic situation. Over decades of psychoanalytic practice and theoretical work, he has developed a model where free associations amount to the absolutely basic brick of the psychoanalytic endeavor and the sole driver of change processes. They would promote deeply regressive states, which Barratt even compares with the meditative states associated with ascetic traditions.

In her understanding of the current crisis of psychoanalysis, Valeska Kouzak (Chapter 2) points to an inappropriate compliance with hegemonic social and cultural forces and institutions. To the aim of keeping confrontation with competing Weltanschauungen to a minimum, psychoanalysts would have chosen to improperly dilute their original model of psychosexual development. This in turn would have stripped psychoanalysis of its revolutionary power and would have permanently quenched its potential contribution to human culture.

In Chapters 3 and 4 respectively, Andrei Novac and Gita Vaid tackle the challenging issue of the confrontation with contemporary biology and particularly with neural sciences. Novac audaciously explores the technique of free association from the points of view of cognitive psychology, neural networks, and system theory. Vaid's contribution shows how psychoanalytic theory can substantially contribute to our understanding of biological interventions on brain functioning. In her comprehensive discussion of the effects of psychedelic medications, she even formulates a genuinely psychoanalytic model of the altered states of mind produced by psychedelic compounds and of the psychotherapeutic processes that are so fostered. However, I must warn the reader that the addictive potential entailed in such therapeutic procedures has not been adequately studied, so far. In addition, the administration of a medication during a psychotherapeutic treatment is bound to establish a highly polarized transference relation where the dependence on the therapist will never be fully worked through. The reader should be aware that such elements clearly exclude psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy from the range of veritable psychoanalytically oriented treatments.

The chapters in the last section of the book give evidence of the essential contribution psychoanalysis can still offer to human sciences and to the understanding of social phenomena. My chapter (Chapter 5) on the unconscious roots of anticlericalism shows the reader how basic social confrontations can be adequately conceptualized only

through a proper reliance on psychoanalytic conceptualization of the unconscious mind. Alison Short (Chapter 6) takes advantage of a narratological investigative strategy in order to get a better understanding of the phantasies associated with pregnancy and motherhood. Finally, Chapters 7 and 8 explore the socially spread unconscious conflicts associated with two core issues in contemporary public debate: climatic change and identity politics.

> **Paolo Azzone** Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Program, ASST-Rhodense Hospital, Garbagnate (Milan), Italy

> > **VII**

[1] Garza-Guerrero C. 'The crisis in psychoanalysis': What crisis are we talking about? International Journal of

[2] Azzone P. Understanding the crisis: Five core issues in contemporary psychoanalysis. International Forum of

[3] Velykodna, M. So, a mass or society? Does a psychoanalytic association really have to become a church or an army? In [In Ukrainian] Life and death of psychoanalytic societies. Kyiv; 2021

Psychoanalysis. 2002;**83**:57-83

**References**

Psychoanalysis. 2016;**27**:255-265

[electronic book]
