Psychoanalysis Today

Throughout its history, psychoanalysis has successfully embraced an amalgam of what Govrin has defined and termed fascinated and troubled communities. A fascinated community is a group that embraces a psychoanalytic theory (such as Bion's, Klein's, Winnicott's) as one embraces truth. A troubled community is one that is not satisfied with the state of psychoanalytic knowledge and seeks to generate a fundamental change that does not square with existing traditions (such as new psychoanalytic schools, scientifically troubled communities and the relational approach). In this lecture Govrin will discuss change by troubled analysts within fascinated communities. Over time, all psychoanalytic communities undergo change. But what is it within each community that dictates the pace of change and the extent of loyalty to the school's original conceptualizations? When is the change linked to the theory's assumptions and worldview, and when is it simply limited to the therapeutic technique being used? Which are the therapeutic and theoretical constituent parts in any given school that can be said to be “firm” and immune to change, and which are the “soft” and bendable components that members of the community seek vary? Govrin will outline four factors that are to an extent interrelated and that he believes play a significant role in shaping the dialectic between fascination and change – firm and soft components , images of knowledge, well-defined ideas and the character of the community. He will then attempt to characterize the dialectics of several of the key communities that are currently dominant. In each community, he will select psychoanalysts whose writings represent a change within a school of thought: Robert Stolorow and his work on self psychology; Betty Joseph in relation to Kleinian theory, Antonino Ferro and Michael Eigen in relation to Bion's theory . The description of the changes introduced by these analysts will be illustrated with clinical material.