Thank you very much for Dr. Deborah Luepnitz's comments. I felt very well interpreted by her regarding several central aspects and her comments triggered the emerging of new topics for our dialogue.
I felt identified with Dr. Luepnitz when she says that as a student she found herself equally drawn to the work of the British Middle Group and to that of Jacques Lacan. In my case, I also lived a similar situation, although theoretical influences were different because in the Río de la Plata together with influences from authors from overseas, a strongly original thought was being developed around notions like vínculo.
Beatriz de León and I recently wrote a paper which was published in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly about these ideas, which I mention here because they have something in common with what Dr.Luepnitz says about the relational theory. The relational theory feels very close to me to many notions that were dominant in the decade of the 60s in the Río de la Plata. As Dr. Luepnitz observes with much refinement, the optimistic factor was very present, but in our case it was closer to the idea of a leftist social change that would lead to a new man with more solidarity.
I want to remember these things in order to note that my search is not only of Apollonian aspects but that there were also Dionysian aspects, and maybe even more terrible ones, in the history that was lived in the decade of the 70s in the Río de la Plata, where the ideas struggle was very much involved with - sometimes very bloody - political persecution. These non Apollonian aspects also involved psychoanalysts and there were strong discussions about not only psychoanalytic theories, but also about the relationship between the psychoanalytical and social ideals. Controversies, or perhaps it is better to say fiery struggles, go indeed beyond the Platonic realm.
Maybe this background is not alien to my searching of, or with an identification with, the Freud that is closer to the tradition of Enlightenment. I felt the need for a delimitation of which were the essential characteristics of the main paradigms in the areas I was being trained in (Freudian, Kleinian and Lacanian) since they differ regarding the aspects of reality that they took into account, the questions that they consider pertinent, and what kind of answers they accepted as valid. This led me to think that these paradigms as systems derived of certain premises which did not really manage to enter in mutual contact.
Regarding Dr. Luepnitz's observation regarding the primal scene, I would like to say that, in fact, I was not so worried about a classical primal scene, but more about a certain variety of it, which could be better depicted as a scene of frottage. Theories were not able to mutually interpenetrate.
Which are the concaves and convexities where this mutual penetration may take place? In my opinion, the theories, as paradigms, are closed spheres. Where are the anfractuosities where new life can emerge?
I believe that this may happen mainly around the clinical material. This collapses with postmodern approaches which say that narrative goes before facts, promoting to consider reality only as cultural and historical construction and to trust power more than truth. I still believe that the clinical field is the ground where such a fertile contact can take place. However, for such a thing to happen, we need to put the clinical material ahead of theories, because the most interesting truth is that which we have not found yet and remains as obscurities in the patient’s suffering. The conditions for a debate that Dr. Luepnitz quotes from my paper are those which allow this interpenetration: identifying the disagreements, establishing agreements about shared means, indefinitely exploring merits and reaching agreements about up to where it is possible to advance. If this kind of process can be put into practice, including the clinical field, there is not a need to vote for a final conclusion, because whether a consensus is reached or not, the process itself becomes a win-win game, for each part is stimulated to develop better arguments.
As a matter of fact we, analysts, are influenced by multiple approaches. If we resist the temptation to rely upon only one of them, ideas from different sources resonate inside us. These ideas are those which meet our experience as analysts or as persons, and they become part of our implicit theories – as Sandler and others called them – which are those that really guide us when we work as analysts. They help us to create an open space with multiple possible meanings for that which challenges us in the clinical material – and that sometimes remains without a convincing answer in spite of all our theories. When we think about the patient with a pluralistic-oriented mind, the process of true controversies tend to occur spontaneously inside us. I found some aspects of this process in the 1999 paper on Winnicott and Lacan from Dr. Luepnitz. This process doesn’t lead neither to dilute theories nor to reductionism, because the process is led by the complexities of the patient.
Why doesn’t this occur in public debates? Because in the office we are looking for something useful for the patient and we do not need to defend our favorite theoretical premises, as usually occurs in public debates. The crucial issue for true controversies is that we find questions for which the clinical material can orient us to find the most convincing understanding of what is happening in the sessions. And relevant understanding is not led by the narrative coherence with our favorite theoretical premises, but with the challenges that come from clinical material requiring answers that make sense from a clinical point of view, and prove to be useful for stimulating patient’s transformations.
I am now working in an IPA Committee on Clinical Observation and my special interest is to describe the patient's transformation at diverse levels, working in groups with analysts with diverse theoretical background. One key issue is the possibility to communicate among us in ordinary, plain language, as we do in spontaneous communication with colleagues. That means that everyone in the group has to translate their favorite jargon to a language which can be shared by analysts with different approaches.
Translation is not an easy issue, as most Spanish-speaking psychoanalysts as me know well from the need to study and communicate either in a second language or in texts that have been translated into Spanish, many times inaccurately. But it is possible to overcome this. That is why I thank Dr. Deborah Luepnitz for having been able to understand that "significant" really meant "signifier", beyond the translation mistake (the Spanish word for signifier is “significante” favoring the translation mistake).
I would be very grateful if Dr. Luepnitz could tell me if she finds any of these commentaries interesting for going on with our dialogue.
I want to thank you for this opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues about issues that I find relevant for our discipline.
Best regards,
Ricardo Bernardi