Psychoanalytic Vision, Frank Summers (2013)
One: Hermeneutic Analysis vs. Deductivism
Summers discusses two different psychoanalytic traditions, one which prioritizes patient experience and the other which prioritizes “abstract theoretical concepts.” Freud at different points in his writings advocated both traditions. In Studies on Hysteria, The Interpretation of Dreams, and his papers on technique, he favored a hermeneutic method, believing it was the analyst’s job to discover and interpret each patient’s individual unconscious experience. In other writings — e.g., The Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915), and An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1930) — he advanced what he believed were universal truths about human nature and psychopathology. For instance, he came to believe that all neuroses resulted from repressed Oedipal conflicts.
This first tradition (hermeneutic analysis) often conflicts with the second tradition (deductivism). As Summer writes, “An analytic stance that presumes repressed Oedipal conflicts are the core of all neurosis is in direct conflict with the open-ended technical strategy Freud was advocating as the essence of the analytic method. The telephone receiver attitude was the essential instrument of analytic technique, but it is difficult to see how the analyst can be open to all ‘transmissions’ while assuming that the Oedipal conflict was at the core of the neurosis.” This is not to say that those working in the first tradition completely disregard theory. Theory, for them, “is a heuristic, used to facilitate the understanding of the patient.”
Two: Learning from Phenomenology
Modern psychology has deprioritized subjective experience. Its reasoning for this can be stated as follows: (1) Only phenomena that can be measured objectively can be considered valid; (2) Subjective experience cannot be measured objectively; therefore, (3) Subjective experience cannot be considered valid. The terms “measure” and “objective” must be understood. A phenomenon is measured through one’s senses, i.e., through empirical observation. A measurement can be said to be objective if it is not based on subjective experience but rather on evidence that can be verified. Modern psychology holds that only human behavior can be measured objectively and so it focuses on human behavior.
Summers argues against the first premise because it’s self-refuting, as the statement “Only things that can be measured objectively are valid” cannot be measured objectively. He argues against the second premise by adopting a phenomenological position. Phenomenology holds that our empirical observations cannot be separated from our own subjective experience. Given this, it follows that whenever I make a statement about an external phenomenon, I am also necessarily making a statement about myself. And so it might be the case that subjective experience cannot be measured objectively, but it’s also the case that nothing can be measured objectively, as subjective experience is part of all empirical observations.
Three: Subjectivism and Morality
If there are no objective values, then, some might worry, there would be nothing to stop people from engaging in immoral behavior. This is not a problem in classical analysis, as Freud argued that the Oedipal conflict results in the establishment of the superego, which serves as “a counterforce to potentially uncivilized passions.” The job of analysts in this tradition is not to overthrow the superego but to make sure that it’s not too lax and not too harsh. This thinking can be stated as follows: (1) If an individual does not accept external values, she will become immoral; (2) The Freudian superego is composed of external values; therefore, (3) If an individual has a Freudian superego, she will not become immoral.
However, even without a Freudian superego, we need not worry. The reason for this is that “the child becomes a self only if seen as a subjective being by an other” (e.g,. Winnicott, Playing and Reality; Kohut, The Restoration of the Self; Beebe and Lachman, Infant Research and Adult Treatment; Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant). Additionally, as Amy Benjamin wrote, in order to become a self the child must see the mother as a subject (Like Subjects, Love Objects; “Beyond Doer and Done to: An Intersubjective View of Thirdness”). “For the baby to find herself in the mother’s gaze, she must see the mother as a subject of experience. It is, then, contact with the other’s subjectivity that brings the child alive as an experiencing subject.” This thinking can be stated as follows: (1) Morality is based on empathic understanding; (2) If someone fully develops as a person, she must necessarily develop empathic understanding (that is, she must learn to see her primary caregiver as a subjective other); therefore, (3) If someone develops as a person, she will necessarily be moral.
Summers explains why empathic understanding is essential for morality. First, he references Kohlberg’s work on moral reasoning. Kohlberg showed that “morality derives not from superego strictures directed against immoral impulses, but from the awareness of others as separate subjectivities and the impact of one’s behavior on other people and the wider society.” Summers also shows that it’s easy to justify harming others when we stop seeing them as subjective others but instead demonize them, seeing them as all bad.
Summers believes that analysis should not just be about the uncovering of unconscious material but also about “the expansion of the subjective, the realization of dormant potential, in accordance with authentic experience.” This goal is similar to the Romantic Movement’s goal of realizing one’s potential. “The Romantic Movement was above all else a return to the experiencing subject in an effort to realize the unique potential of each individual.” Sometimes the patient has little hope, and so the analyst must see the possibilities that the patient cannot see.
Five: The Meaning of “Unconscious”
Lack of Evidence for “the Unconscious”
In Studies on Hysteria, Freud shared his method of following a patient’s associations from the conscious level to the unconscious level. His method was brilliant. However, he later erred by transforming “unconscious” from an adjective to a noun, positing an unconscious system or distinct component of the mind. He made two arguments for “the unconscious,” both of which Summers rebuts.
Argument #1: We regularly experience gaps in consciousness in the forms of memory slips, parapraxes, dreams, and “associative connections that appear as though from nowhere.” Rebuttal #1: This phenomenon in no way proves the existence of a separate part of the mind and can just as easily be explained by positing that the individual has disavowed “experience that is related to the patient’s conscious life.” Rebuttal #2: If the unconscious is a distinct part of the mind, it’s not clear how a psychic event can move between the unconscious and the conscious.
Argument #2: Unconscious material often disobeys the laws of logic. Rebuttal: Every analyst knows well that patients often have irrational beliefs, but this in no way proves the existence of an unconscious part of the mind. “It only means that the psyche is capable of producing its own rules, following its own procedures in defiance of logic and reality when the emotional need to do so is sufficiently intense.”
Associations
Definition. An association is a mental event (thought or feeling) connected to another mental event; this second mental event can be either conscious or unconscious. “These connections are typically analogies, connections between events or things made by the patient out of shared characteristics that may not be consciously identifiable.”
The Human Mind is an Association-Making Machine. Humans automatically categorize things and make associations between things. And so, for example, when we meet “a new person some aspect of their appearance or behavior may evoke the images of another person with a similar attribute.” Some of the connections we make “are highly creative, others much less so, but they all are creative in the most general sense of creating connections by putting together disparate events.”
Language Is Filled with Metaphors, and Metaphors Are Associative. Our everyday language is filled with metaphors, much more than we realize — e.g., “time is money,” “language is a conduit,” “I am up today,” “she is overflowing with joy,” “I am drained,” “she is a knockout,” “he had a look of extreme gravity.” When we use metaphors, we are making connections. When we say, for instance, that “argument is war,” we’re making connections between argument and war. The implication of all of this is that in our everyday speech we are not simply verbalizing our experience but are “routinely think[ing] of our immediate experience in terms of other events and experiences that share a similarity of meaning.”
The Problem with Speaking of “the Unconscious”
Many psychoanalysts speak of “the unconscious” as though it has a mind of its own — e.g., saying that the unconscious “does” strange things, that it “plays tricks” on us, that it “operates” on its own rules. Speaking in this manner is problematic because it is counter-therapeutic.
First, when we speak of some of a patient’s psychic events as being separate from her subjective experience, we’re unintentionally making it less likely that she will make them part of her subjective experience. Second, when we speak of the unconscious as being separate from the patient, we’re unintentionally fostering dissociation and might be exacerbating any dissociative tendencies she already has. Third, when we speak of the unconscious as being separate from the patient, we’re encouraging the patient to think of her experiences in this manner and thus discouraging her from having new experiences.
Summers' Method
We all have gaps in our associative connections, and these gaps are what Summers refers to when he talks about “unconscious.” Our job as analysts is to call attention to these gaps and encourage our patients to make sense of them. We should not assume that we know what exists in these gaps. Like Socrates, our task is to challenge the individual’s assumptions. Lear writes that Socratic questioning “does not make known something that has previously been unknown, but disrupts what is ‘known’ so that previously assumed knowledge now appears to be problematic. Socratic questioning disrupts the interlocutor’s certainty.”
Summers is not saying that we cannot “suggest connections between symptoms and the patient’s previous life experiences.” Rather, “such conceptualizations are most effective when they are not statements for the patient to endorse or refuse as though they are the end result of the process.” Instead, the analyst should encourage the patient to be encouraged to create new meaning, the hope being that “something new can become the basis for new psychic configurations.”
Over the past few decades, different analysts have challenged some of Freud’s beliefs about dreams. Some have “argued that the manifest dream is not merely an arbitrarily assigned symbol but a valuable source of information in itself” (e.g., Pulver & Renik, 1984; Greenberg & Pearlman, 1999). Others have challenged Freud’s claim that all dreams are expressions of our wishes and believe that dreams can also express of our self-states (Kohut, 1984), how we’re functioning (Fosshage, 1988; Greenberg, 1989), what’s important to us (Stolorow & Atwood, 1982), and our object relationships (Bollas, 1987).
Clinical Examples
Example #1. Barry dreamt he was fired and dreaded he might have to move back with his mother. Summers: “What was it like to be in that dream?” Barry described how horrified he had felt in the dream. He had not realized how much he dreaded “returning to the maternal orbit,” a fate that he felt he deserved as an Oedipal victor.
Example #2. George was a workaholic. He dreamt of a dinner party in which a friend was lavishly dressed and revealed himself to be a transsexual. Summers: “What was it like to be in that dream?” George said that he felt envious that his friend in the dream felt so free to be himself. George then realized that if he were like his friend in the dream, he would make major life changes.
Example #3: Charles had always been enmeshed with his mother. He eventually started to distance himself from his mother, and she became upset, and he in turn felt guilty. One night he dreamt that his parents and brothers were going somewhere without him. Summers: “What was it like to be in that dream?” Charles: “Lonely.” Charles then associated to different times in his life when he tried to distance himself from his mother and in turn fell into deep despair. “It became clear to him that his use of his mother was as exploitive as hers of him: He needed her to avoid the panic of loneliness.”
Concluding Thoughts
Summers has found that sometimes a patient will report a dream with little emotion. If he and the patient then follow a train of associations, “the affect usually changes little and the discourse tends to remain at an intellectual level, but if I inquire about the experience of being in the dream, the patient typically responds with emotional intensity.”
Summers does not dispute that “associations are important for understanding the meaning of a dream.” However, he has found that asking for associations is most helpful after asking the patient to recall both the dream as well as their experience of being in the dream. “Once that experience is felt in as much depth as can be captured in an analytic session, the associations are more likely to be effectively alive.”
Dreams are dramatic enactments that provide “a setting in which the patient can experience a way of being that is unavailable in waking life. Patients rarely find something wholly new in the dream, but they do live new experiences by dreaming. In so doing, they are realizing new modes of being in the world. By living in the drama of the dream, the themes and struggles of the patient’s life are lived in a different way, a way that realizes potential dormant [sic] in waking life.”
Seven: The Future
Immanent empathy is understanding someone’s present psychic state, including his emotions and unconscious motives. Analytic or transcendent empathy goes beyond immanent empathy. This type of empathy is important because one’s life narrative entails not only the past and present but also the future. Transcendent empathy goes beyond what was and what is to what has never been.
Our patients emerge from childhood lacking different abilities (e.g., the ability to be intimate, the ability to be assertive). Such individuals have not realized their potentials (e.g., the potential for intimacy, the potential to “sustain an aggressive form of relating”). A patient’s unfulfilled potential often dominates her distress and sustains “a haunting presence over her life.” Her potential to become different remains disavowed, but the desire to achieve her potential “evokes an unease that may emerge in a variety of psychological states.”
Understanding is necessary but not sufficient for change. If analysis goes well, “the patient becomes aware of her historical patterns and seeks to change them, but typically patients can conceive of no alternative and feel at a loss.” It falls to the analyst to “detect possibilities not visible to the patient.”
Summers discusses two different psychoanalytic traditions, one which prioritizes patient experience and the other which prioritizes “abstract theoretical concepts.” Freud at different points in his writings advocated both traditions. In Studies on Hysteria, The Interpretation of Dreams, and his papers on technique, he favored a hermeneutic method, believing it was the analyst’s job to discover and interpret each patient’s individual unconscious experience. In other writings — e.g., The Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915), and An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1930) — he advanced what he believed were universal truths about human nature and psychopathology. For instance, he came to believe that all neuroses resulted from repressed Oedipal conflicts.
This first tradition (hermeneutic analysis) often conflicts with the second tradition (deductivism). As Summer writes, “An analytic stance that presumes repressed Oedipal conflicts are the core of all neurosis is in direct conflict with the open-ended technical strategy Freud was advocating as the essence of the analytic method. The telephone receiver attitude was the essential instrument of analytic technique, but it is difficult to see how the analyst can be open to all ‘transmissions’ while assuming that the Oedipal conflict was at the core of the neurosis.” This is not to say that those working in the first tradition completely disregard theory. Theory, for them, “is a heuristic, used to facilitate the understanding of the patient.”
Two: Learning from Phenomenology
Modern psychology has deprioritized subjective experience. Its reasoning for this can be stated as follows: (1) Only phenomena that can be measured objectively can be considered valid; (2) Subjective experience cannot be measured objectively; therefore, (3) Subjective experience cannot be considered valid. The terms “measure” and “objective” must be understood. A phenomenon is measured through one’s senses, i.e., through empirical observation. A measurement can be said to be objective if it is not based on subjective experience but rather on evidence that can be verified. Modern psychology holds that only human behavior can be measured objectively and so it focuses on human behavior.
Summers argues against the first premise because it’s self-refuting, as the statement “Only things that can be measured objectively are valid” cannot be measured objectively. He argues against the second premise by adopting a phenomenological position. Phenomenology holds that our empirical observations cannot be separated from our own subjective experience. Given this, it follows that whenever I make a statement about an external phenomenon, I am also necessarily making a statement about myself. And so it might be the case that subjective experience cannot be measured objectively, but it’s also the case that nothing can be measured objectively, as subjective experience is part of all empirical observations.
Three: Subjectivism and Morality
If there are no objective values, then, some might worry, there would be nothing to stop people from engaging in immoral behavior. This is not a problem in classical analysis, as Freud argued that the Oedipal conflict results in the establishment of the superego, which serves as “a counterforce to potentially uncivilized passions.” The job of analysts in this tradition is not to overthrow the superego but to make sure that it’s not too lax and not too harsh. This thinking can be stated as follows: (1) If an individual does not accept external values, she will become immoral; (2) The Freudian superego is composed of external values; therefore, (3) If an individual has a Freudian superego, she will not become immoral.
However, even without a Freudian superego, we need not worry. The reason for this is that “the child becomes a self only if seen as a subjective being by an other” (e.g,. Winnicott, Playing and Reality; Kohut, The Restoration of the Self; Beebe and Lachman, Infant Research and Adult Treatment; Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant). Additionally, as Amy Benjamin wrote, in order to become a self the child must see the mother as a subject (Like Subjects, Love Objects; “Beyond Doer and Done to: An Intersubjective View of Thirdness”). “For the baby to find herself in the mother’s gaze, she must see the mother as a subject of experience. It is, then, contact with the other’s subjectivity that brings the child alive as an experiencing subject.” This thinking can be stated as follows: (1) Morality is based on empathic understanding; (2) If someone fully develops as a person, she must necessarily develop empathic understanding (that is, she must learn to see her primary caregiver as a subjective other); therefore, (3) If someone develops as a person, she will necessarily be moral.
Summers explains why empathic understanding is essential for morality. First, he references Kohlberg’s work on moral reasoning. Kohlberg showed that “morality derives not from superego strictures directed against immoral impulses, but from the awareness of others as separate subjectivities and the impact of one’s behavior on other people and the wider society.” Summers also shows that it’s easy to justify harming others when we stop seeing them as subjective others but instead demonize them, seeing them as all bad.
Four: More than Just Uncovering
Summers believes that analysis should not just be about the uncovering of unconscious material but also about “the expansion of the subjective, the realization of dormant potential, in accordance with authentic experience.” This goal is similar to the Romantic Movement’s goal of realizing one’s potential. “The Romantic Movement was above all else a return to the experiencing subject in an effort to realize the unique potential of each individual.” Sometimes the patient has little hope, and so the analyst must see the possibilities that the patient cannot see.
Five: The Meaning of “Unconscious”
Lack of Evidence for “the Unconscious”
In Studies on Hysteria, Freud shared his method of following a patient’s associations from the conscious level to the unconscious level. His method was brilliant. However, he later erred by transforming “unconscious” from an adjective to a noun, positing an unconscious system or distinct component of the mind. He made two arguments for “the unconscious,” both of which Summers rebuts.
Argument #1: We regularly experience gaps in consciousness in the forms of memory slips, parapraxes, dreams, and “associative connections that appear as though from nowhere.” Rebuttal #1: This phenomenon in no way proves the existence of a separate part of the mind and can just as easily be explained by positing that the individual has disavowed “experience that is related to the patient’s conscious life.” Rebuttal #2: If the unconscious is a distinct part of the mind, it’s not clear how a psychic event can move between the unconscious and the conscious.
Argument #2: Unconscious material often disobeys the laws of logic. Rebuttal: Every analyst knows well that patients often have irrational beliefs, but this in no way proves the existence of an unconscious part of the mind. “It only means that the psyche is capable of producing its own rules, following its own procedures in defiance of logic and reality when the emotional need to do so is sufficiently intense.”
Associations
Definition. An association is a mental event (thought or feeling) connected to another mental event; this second mental event can be either conscious or unconscious. “These connections are typically analogies, connections between events or things made by the patient out of shared characteristics that may not be consciously identifiable.”
The Human Mind is an Association-Making Machine. Humans automatically categorize things and make associations between things. And so, for example, when we meet “a new person some aspect of their appearance or behavior may evoke the images of another person with a similar attribute.” Some of the connections we make “are highly creative, others much less so, but they all are creative in the most general sense of creating connections by putting together disparate events.”
Language Is Filled with Metaphors, and Metaphors Are Associative. Our everyday language is filled with metaphors, much more than we realize — e.g., “time is money,” “language is a conduit,” “I am up today,” “she is overflowing with joy,” “I am drained,” “she is a knockout,” “he had a look of extreme gravity.” When we use metaphors, we are making connections. When we say, for instance, that “argument is war,” we’re making connections between argument and war. The implication of all of this is that in our everyday speech we are not simply verbalizing our experience but are “routinely think[ing] of our immediate experience in terms of other events and experiences that share a similarity of meaning.”
The Problem with Speaking of “the Unconscious”
Many psychoanalysts speak of “the unconscious” as though it has a mind of its own — e.g., saying that the unconscious “does” strange things, that it “plays tricks” on us, that it “operates” on its own rules. Speaking in this manner is problematic because it is counter-therapeutic.
First, when we speak of some of a patient’s psychic events as being separate from her subjective experience, we’re unintentionally making it less likely that she will make them part of her subjective experience. Second, when we speak of the unconscious as being separate from the patient, we’re unintentionally fostering dissociation and might be exacerbating any dissociative tendencies she already has. Third, when we speak of the unconscious as being separate from the patient, we’re encouraging the patient to think of her experiences in this manner and thus discouraging her from having new experiences.
Summers' Method
We all have gaps in our associative connections, and these gaps are what Summers refers to when he talks about “unconscious.” Our job as analysts is to call attention to these gaps and encourage our patients to make sense of them. We should not assume that we know what exists in these gaps. Like Socrates, our task is to challenge the individual’s assumptions. Lear writes that Socratic questioning “does not make known something that has previously been unknown, but disrupts what is ‘known’ so that previously assumed knowledge now appears to be problematic. Socratic questioning disrupts the interlocutor’s certainty.”
Summers is not saying that we cannot “suggest connections between symptoms and the patient’s previous life experiences.” Rather, “such conceptualizations are most effective when they are not statements for the patient to endorse or refuse as though they are the end result of the process.” Instead, the analyst should encourage the patient to be encouraged to create new meaning, the hope being that “something new can become the basis for new psychic configurations.”
Six: Dreams
Over the past few decades, different analysts have challenged some of Freud’s beliefs about dreams. Some have “argued that the manifest dream is not merely an arbitrarily assigned symbol but a valuable source of information in itself” (e.g., Pulver & Renik, 1984; Greenberg & Pearlman, 1999). Others have challenged Freud’s claim that all dreams are expressions of our wishes and believe that dreams can also express of our self-states (Kohut, 1984), how we’re functioning (Fosshage, 1988; Greenberg, 1989), what’s important to us (Stolorow & Atwood, 1982), and our object relationships (Bollas, 1987).
Summers advocates an approach to dreaming that both encourages experiencing the dream and understanding its deeper meaning. If we encourage the patient to engage “the dreaming experience as it is experienced in the dream, seemingly ‘bizarre’ occurrences in the dream can be fully lived and their depth experienced as a reality of the patient’s psychic life. The novelty of the vivid portrayal in the dream will then be revealed. The dreamer finds the power and meaning of the dream in the affective environment in which she is immersed as protagonist in the dream.” And so the analyst should not just ask the patient, “What does that bring up?” but also, “What was it like to be in the dream?” “The experience of being in the dream, if it can be relived in some degree in the analysis, offers the new experience that can shed light on the psychic life and often add to it by revealing new potentialities.”
Clinical Examples
Example #1. Barry dreamt he was fired and dreaded he might have to move back with his mother. Summers: “What was it like to be in that dream?” Barry described how horrified he had felt in the dream. He had not realized how much he dreaded “returning to the maternal orbit,” a fate that he felt he deserved as an Oedipal victor.
Example #2. George was a workaholic. He dreamt of a dinner party in which a friend was lavishly dressed and revealed himself to be a transsexual. Summers: “What was it like to be in that dream?” George said that he felt envious that his friend in the dream felt so free to be himself. George then realized that if he were like his friend in the dream, he would make major life changes.
Example #3: Charles had always been enmeshed with his mother. He eventually started to distance himself from his mother, and she became upset, and he in turn felt guilty. One night he dreamt that his parents and brothers were going somewhere without him. Summers: “What was it like to be in that dream?” Charles: “Lonely.” Charles then associated to different times in his life when he tried to distance himself from his mother and in turn fell into deep despair. “It became clear to him that his use of his mother was as exploitive as hers of him: He needed her to avoid the panic of loneliness.”
Concluding Thoughts
Summers has found that sometimes a patient will report a dream with little emotion. If he and the patient then follow a train of associations, “the affect usually changes little and the discourse tends to remain at an intellectual level, but if I inquire about the experience of being in the dream, the patient typically responds with emotional intensity.”
Summers does not dispute that “associations are important for understanding the meaning of a dream.” However, he has found that asking for associations is most helpful after asking the patient to recall both the dream as well as their experience of being in the dream. “Once that experience is felt in as much depth as can be captured in an analytic session, the associations are more likely to be effectively alive.”
Dreams are dramatic enactments that provide “a setting in which the patient can experience a way of being that is unavailable in waking life. Patients rarely find something wholly new in the dream, but they do live new experiences by dreaming. In so doing, they are realizing new modes of being in the world. By living in the drama of the dream, the themes and struggles of the patient’s life are lived in a different way, a way that realizes potential dormant [sic] in waking life.”
Seven: The Future
Immanent empathy is understanding someone’s present psychic state, including his emotions and unconscious motives. Analytic or transcendent empathy goes beyond immanent empathy. This type of empathy is important because one’s life narrative entails not only the past and present but also the future. Transcendent empathy goes beyond what was and what is to what has never been.
Our patients emerge from childhood lacking different abilities (e.g., the ability to be intimate, the ability to be assertive). Such individuals have not realized their potentials (e.g., the potential for intimacy, the potential to “sustain an aggressive form of relating”). A patient’s unfulfilled potential often dominates her distress and sustains “a haunting presence over her life.” Her potential to become different remains disavowed, but the desire to achieve her potential “evokes an unease that may emerge in a variety of psychological states.”
Understanding is necessary but not sufficient for change. If analysis goes well, “the patient becomes aware of her historical patterns and seeks to change them, but typically patients can conceive of no alternative and feel at a loss.” It falls to the analyst to “detect possibilities not visible to the patient.”
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