If anyone else had called psychoanalysis a scam, he would
have felt the full fury of the Freudian horde.
Coming from Jacques Lacan, the most influential Freudian
since Freud, the judgment was not so easily dismissed.
Unfortunately for those who still hold fast to the Freudian
faith, Lacan added that analysts’ words, their interpretations were bullshit.
And he predicted that the practice to which he had devoted his life would soon
become an historical relic.
Lacan made these remarks in Belgium in 1977. They should
have been noted and debated. They were not, not even by Lacan’s most fawning
followers. They were ignored.
By 1977, Lacan had amassed a significant cult following in
Europe and Latin America. Many of them worshiped him as a god and took his word
as holy writ. They were convinced that theirs was the truth faith. It had to be, since so many of them were thriving. How could they accept that they were scamming
their patients?
At the time, very few Parisian analysts even knew what Lacan
had said. It’s ironic, but many of them had mastered the art of repression.
When the statement appeared in the French press in 1980,
analysts continued to ignore it. Some told themselves that Lacan did not mean what he said.
Or better, that if he meant what he said he did not know what he was saying.
The net effect was that most of Lacan’s followers did not
even know that he had accused them (and presumably himself) of scamming their
patients.
In 1977, I was in Paris studying with the man himself. I was
attending Lacan’s seminars faithfully. I was teaching psychoanalysis at the
University of Paris VIII. As a member in good standing of the Lacanian
community, I was privy to most of the relevant and irrelevant local gossip.
In 1980 I was practicing psychoanalysis in New York. I was
in continuous, close contact with the world of French psychoanalysis.
Yet, I did not hear that Lacan had compared psychoanalysis
to a criminal enterprise until 2011. By that time I had long since abandoned
psychoanalytic practice.
Of course, American analysts knew nothing about it. Having
dismissed Lacan as a heretic they paid no attention to his theoretical
lucubrations.
By now, however, Lacan’s name has become so prominent in the
world of international psychoanalysis that his words demand attention. If American analysts want to continue to call
themselves psychoanalysts, they will be obliged to respond to a charge issued
by a man who is recognized around the world as Freud’s most important intellectual
heir.
But, what did the notoriously confounding Frenchman mean
when he called psychoanalysis a scam?
Evidently, he was saying that psychoanalysts had no business
pretending to be mental health professionals conducting a clinical practice.
Lacan had recognized that psychoanalysis could neither treat nor cure mental
illness. If analysts continued to pretend that they could, they were receiving
payment and fostering hope for a payoff they
could not deliver. Thus, they were scamming the public.
But, how could it be? Most psychoanalysts are licensed
healers. It is true in France and it is true around most of the world. In America, especially, they have never been shy about showing off
their credentials. Many of them even believe that theirs is a scientific
discipline.
Obviously, a psychoanalyst who still thinks he is a
scientist needs more help than any therapy can provide.
When it came to question of clinical effectiveness, most
psychoanalysts have tried to have it both ways.
On the one hand, they tout their medical or paramedical
credentials. On the other, they insist that they are only offering knowledge
and understanding, insight and awareness.
They will say, as Lacan once did, that if a patient in
psychoanalysis gets better, it is a fortunate accident. Insight is nice, but it
neither treats nor cures.
Of course, Lacan was not telling his followers to toss their
Freud books in the poubelle. He wanted psychoanalysis to fulfill its
destiny by becoming an instrument of cultural revolution and thought reform. He
wanted to lead psychoanalysis out of the clinic and into the cultural arena.
If psychoanalysis could not cure depression or anxiety, it
would find a higher calling by curing civilization (Ger. Kultur) of its discontents. Taking up arms in the culture war was
surely better than competing against medication and cognitive therapy.
A cynic might well imagine, more or less correctly, that
Freudians needed to blame someone or something for their record of clinical
failures. Wasn’t “civilization” a convenient target?
If Freudian psychoanalysis does not teach you how to shift
the blame it has taught you nothing.
To make psychoanalysis a player in the culture wars, Lacan
started talking about “the Freudian cause.” Rallying people to an ideological
cause was surely safer than risking the future of Freudian theory on its
ability to treat or cure mental illness.
Better yet, how do you adjudge the success or failure of
civilizational transformation? We have a fairly clear idea of what a successful
treatment produces; we have a far murkier idea of how to assess a cultural
transformation.
His boundless hubris notwithstanding, Freud did not really
believe that he could cure civilization of its discontents. It did not stop his most devoted disciples
from trying accomplish a task that Freud believed to be futile. They believed
that they were being more Freudian than Freud.
Freud saw the history of civilization as a dramatic conflict between libidinous urges that were seeking to express themselves
and repressive forces that were trying to stifle them.
He saw no way to resolve the conflict. Believing negotiated
compromise impossible, Freud concluded that human beings could never get along.
If mental health involved emotional tranquility, spiritual serenity or
harmonious social relations, neither Freud nor his most serious followers
believed that it could ever be achieved.
Believing that life was a tragedy—a Greek tragedy, in
particular—true Freudians believed that the optimistic, can-do spirit that we
often identify as mentally healthy was an illusion. They preferred to see
people wallow in the Freudian truth, the better to turn—in Freud’s words--
misery into common unhappiness.
But then, how can you live the Freudian truth?
By Lacan’s lights, you needed first to become a
true-believing Freudian, a totally convinced cult follower.
Theyn you should live the civilizational drama between
libido and repression by turning your life into a perpetual psychodrama.
It will not solve your problems, but it will show that you
have truly understood Freud.
[Adopted from The Last Psychoanalyst.]
2 comments:
The problem is not in the question, if psychoanalysis is a scam. The problem is, what on the world is not a scam. Maybe free will. Or market rules..
All Freud needed to do was to eat a wafer from the Catholic Church.
Post a Comment