D S P P  B U L L E T I N

May 2000

As we end DSPP's academic program year of "Authority and Desire in the Analytic Relationship," it seems prudent to review the rich contributions of our members and guest speakers. This final issue for the 1999-2000 program year offers brief highlights of the monthly meetings, the workshops, arts events, educational programs and members' professional activities outside of DSPP.

As someone who has been a relative newcomer in terms of participation within the DSPP organization, I personally found my experiences this year to be both rewarding and challenging.

I am deeply appreciative of the insights and hard work that Dr. Little and her program committee provided us in this year of better understanding the concepts of analytic and personal authority. I value the "behind the scenes" level of work, time investment, and dedication demonstrated within the individual committees and member contributions.

My own activities afforded me the opportunity to become better acquainted with individual members and certainly to recognize the incredible talent pool we have in our midst. The disappointment was in confronting my own idealized view of what the organization or "group" could accomplish and the reality of differing individual needs, interests and conflicts.

From my perspective, some of the smaller groups or committees have developed a sense of community and cohesiveness that enriches the underlying goal of exploring the psychoanalytic perspective. An issue that is rarely addressed publicly is how this does or does not get transferred into the larger DSPP community.

As we move to a new program theme of "Hope and Despair," my personal hope is that the same kind of enthusiasm and community will be found in the larger group, the DSPP membership as a whole. I also hope we can find a way to draw in new members, to share our own experiences of the difficult yet rewarding work of psychoanalytic therapy and what the psychoanalytic perspective offers each of us in our own development personally and professionally.

The broader psychoanalytic community is still reshaping, defining itself, and evolving after one hundred years. With our uniquely diverse membership, our smaller community, after 17 years, seems to still be developing its own identity as well.

I would like to invite members who are not actively involved to consider participating in one of the committees or some other aspect of the organization and join the rest of us in promoting the psychoanalytic perspective. DSPP is a volunteer organization and each individual contribution is welcome. Several members have committed to providing items to the Bulletin next year (thank you).

Let's each support Dr. Wood and her program committee in their efforts to provide another quality program as we explore the concepts of "Hope and Despair."

---Cheryl Martin, RN, LPC
DSPP Bulletin Editor
  editor@dspp.com

  REVIEW OF MAY MEETING

Desire to be an Authority

Dr. Gordon organized his presentation into three parts: a definition of the terms "desire" and "authority", a review of the readings by Don Spence (1994) and Roy Schafer (1983) with references to other assigned articles for the year (Mitchell and Kernberg), and a more personal and subjective hypothesis about the dynamics of authority within the therapeutic dyad.

The term "desire" rooted in the Latin noun desiderium, means longing or appetite; wishes and wants are synonymous. Gordon, using Webster's unabridged dictionary, chooses the definition, "an emotion directed to the attainment or possession of an object," because it suggests a primitive, even unconscious region of the psyche, one deriving its power, perhaps, from the "deeply buried neurons of the limbic system." In contrast to wishes and wants, which are more readily verbalized, desire is a more primitive psychic phenomenon challenging verbalization, understanding and control.

The term "authority," rooted in the Latin verb augere, means to increase or expand. Current definitions connote growth, right to command, act, enforce obedience...a power delegated (and) derived from opinion, respect, esteem..." Authority implies power and origination, that it can be delegated and is "somehow legitimate" (Kernberg, 1996).

The focus of the assigned readings is the analyst's authority. Its power is understood to derive largely from "opinion, respect and esteem." Legitimacy rests on the analyst's skill of application and knowledge of theory. The analyst's professional development, according to Schafer (1983), proceeds within a series of tensions, which impact and shape the analyst, who is "always a work in progress," and her or his authority.

Dr. Gordon elaborated those tensions at some length, the first occurring around conflicting views that "(begs) for the establishment of a discipline of comparative analysis." Such a discipline complicated by the structures of thought both in and between the schools, needs to seek answers to elemental questions: What do we know? How do we know we know? How to establish certainty?

Schafer's resolutions of these complexities, utilizing the distinctions made between fictions and myths (Kermode, 1966), builds on these fictions as "organized sets of beliefs and corresponding ways of defining facts." Such fictions, lacking any pejorative implication, are useful tools that evolve and change, and which are best processed by association to fact and a consensual validation between critically objective, yet heterogeneous colleagues. According to Dr. Gordon, theoretical assumptions are, after all, fictions---neither facts nor immutable truths.

Any school of analytic thought is actually a loosely integrated and dynamic body of fictions. If this is forgotten, a myth system can form, not unlike a primitive religious belief in its claim to universal truth and power. Such myth usually proves to be negative, rigid and stultifying. Dr. Gordon would distinguish fiction from myth by posing the questions: a) is the basic assumption consciously understood and accepted as being non-fact? and, b) Does it foster positive growth and dynamism rather than intolerance and rigidity? He cautions that myths can result directly from the powerful and charismatic figures in any school, and likewise, from a rigid defensiveness against prospects of change and challenges to presumed authority.

Schafer points to another tension that originates in early analytical training. Probably a rather universal occurrence both within and without training institutes, a sort of "imprinting" takes place, one nurtured by identifications, gratitude, idealizations and transference. These bind the novice analyst to a particular tradition of school of thought. In time, positive collegial bondings are felt as confining and are then questioned as are the ambiguities and theoretical gaps of the school. A system once perceived as being unitary is now understood as heterogeneous. Gordon believes that without this crucial questioning a retreat eventuates-one into myth and the seductive immersion in the body of thought/practice/school.

In noting the other lesser tensions described in the article, Dr. Gordon infers that on his reading of Schafer it is the analyst's self-discipline in handling the tensions and conundrums inherent in treatment, which is the prime source of her/his authority. Schafer does not address the source of the desire, but does imply the origin to be in the mastery of challenging tasks and the acquisition of a deeper understanding of human development and relationships.

Spence, in Theories of the Mind: Fact or Fiction (1994), addresses how analysts and therapists, claiming authority as experts of the human mind, evaluate and tend carefully shaping influences because so much of their authority flows from the theory.

Spence contends that the psyche, being such "an enigmatic target" for understanding, is particularly susceptible to many such shaping influences. Thus, he states that, "what was conceived as a model of the mind has become…the…explanation of how the mind works." Some of the influences accounting for this include culture, the personal history of the theorist and an appeal to contemporary root metaphor.

Culture or the zeitgeist: Archeology and its wide popularity shaped Freud's model of the mind. Archeology was possibly the perfect metaphor because it provided a concrete analogy representing the discovering, uncovering, reconstructing and ultimately the understanding of something unknown. The identification of psychoanalysis with archeology vested the new theory with a high degree of "authority." Dr. Gordon notes that we contemplate the legitimacy of the power or authority residing in new theories by the power of the language and structure of popular and/or established concepts.

Personal influences. This influence on theorizing is significant enough, but Spence concludes that the biography-theory linkage (in agreement with Stolorow & Atwood, 1979), while plausible, is more speculative than generally assumed:

A specific private event may sensitize a theorist to certain aspects of experience and place him in a better position to make sense out of certain life events. It may also bring with it a certain feeling of inevitability that is translated into theoretical rigidity (Spence, p.172)

Such events can generate both authority and authoritarianism--"the more ambiguous the material theorized upon, it seems, the more likely subjective experience and bias are brought into play-for better or for worse".

Underlying root metaphors: Theories of the mind are often shaped by colorful images and figures of speech which, according to Spence, carry meanings beyond the psychological data. Two root metaphors used by Mahler (1975) to describe early childhood development demonstrate this activity. The myth of the young hero and that of the New World discoverer engagingly chart separations, returns and home-base refuelings. But in this over-extension of meaning there is a mischief. Dr. Gordon states, "such a narrative resonates, but how much of the authority it imparts to the theory (can be) legitimately attributed to the tenets of the theory and how much to its narrative appeal."

These influences--culture, personal history and root metaphors-- operate to sustain theories of the mind and to cause a mutation of the theory from a "useful fiction" into rigid "myth." To guard against this petrifaction, Spence calls for a process of consensual validation, a perspective cross-checking of cases "to confront theory...from a wide variety of different sources." William Gordon asks, "Does the analyst's professional authority depend overmuch on such familiar and eloquent rhetoric in a way that negates the promise of more enduring formulations?"

A Subjective hypothesis, even radical speculation: Dr. Gordon closed his presentation contending that a desire for self-authority is a basic human drive more powerful and pervasive even than wants and appetites. First, he recalls an axiom from Mitchell, "human beings require systems of meaning including a sense of personal history and motivation to knit their world together." Gordon then asserted that the drive to self-authorization is toward a personal system of understanding, serving like an instruction manual for the automobile. There are degrees or levels of this self-authority. The drive plays a crucial role in the therapist-patient dyad, particularly for the latter. However, since a patient in acute distress rarely laments a deficient sense of "self-authority," how does Dr. Gordon trace the lineaments of this desire over a course of therapy?

Drawing on various marks of "authority" (titles, affiliations, degrees, etc.) of the analyst, a patient gives his/her therapist an illegitimate authority. But as initial fantasies shift, as transference and countertransference phenomena deepen, and as a working alliance is forged, the desire for authority changes. Why? Each member in the dyad delegates to the other a leadership function--authority gets delegated in a collaborative process. Dr. Gordon, drawing on but unlike Kernberg at this point, understands this to be an unconscious development. The key or mechanism here is projective identification.

The patient gradually begins to utilize the therapist as the object of projective identification in which parts of the patient's sense of self-authority are projected into the therapist. The patient remains identified with these projected elements and an empathic reception is fostered in the therapist. The patient depends up qualities of the therapist to both hold and mould these elements, maintaining the hope that at a future point the patient can reclaim these, the elements having been modified for the better though the process."

Dr Gordon supported his hypothesis as being a useful fiction, one well described by Ogden--the projective identification. Gordon's "speculation" has the quality, the gentle precision, of fine music. The process he outlined is a major element in successful treatment and involves positive change in a patient's sense of self-authority. It is a productive, yet unconscious, process; not being an impediment to progress, it can remain unanalyzed. It requires a therapist of sufficient authority to handle the nuances of the identification--aware of her authority based in her/his professional acumen and in his/her own non-professional self, his own personal instruction manual.

 DSPP LOOKING FORWARD

DSPP members can anticipate another exciting program next year as we move into a theme of "Hope and Despair." Patricia Wood, Ph.D., our new President, and her Program Committee have put together an agenda that is sure to elicit member interest. We are looking forward to intriguing workshops with distinguished guest speakers Steven H. Cooper, Ph.D. (Fall) and Drew Westin, Ph.D. (Spring). The Arts Committee plans a Fall Film Forum with discussion panel and several planned events during the year in addition to the monthly film groups. The Education Committee has designed a focused study group format with Jane Walvoord, LMSW-ACP leading a discussion of contemporary classical psychoanalytic practice in the fall, and Myrna Little, Ph.D. offering her expertise in the area of Kleinian concepts in the spring. The Community Relations Committee plans to finalize two informational brochures and is working on a project to address school violence. In addition, the DSPP web site will make available online registration and payment options for membership, educational programs and workshops.

Program details and the 2000-2001 academic year calendar will be available in a few weeks on the web site and distributed in the summer mailing.

DSPP ARTS EVENT

On Sunday, May 7, at the 5001 Columbia Art Center, the Arts Committee presented "Night Journey," a gallery talk by Susan kae Grant. The talk covered Grant's photographic installation of her own dream imagery, reproduced in shadowy projections printed on chiffon panels hung from the gallery ceiling, through which the audience was invited to walk. DSPP past-president and Arts Committee member, John Herman, introduced Ms. Grant, head of the Photography and Book Arts program at T.W.U. and who also teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York. Dr. Herman's sleep laboratory was used to conduct research through awakenings and taped dream image interviews of Ms. Grant by specially trained technicians. She and Dr. Herman will be teaching a joint workshop this summer at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado.

Ms. Grant's dream recall accounts, in whispered recordings, were included in her gallery installation, as one walked among her dream images, which swayed in the breeze created by one's movements. Ms. Grant, in her talk, described her seven-year exploration of her own unconscious processes and their translation into photographic forms, as well as her successful search for grants to support her laboratory research. She related the psychological roots of her interest in visual imagery, photography, book making, and dream-imagery through her highly personal talk and discussion with the audience.

A wine and cheese reception for the artist accompanied her gallery talk and walk.

DSPP MEMBER ACTIVITIES

DSPP is blessed with a dedicated group of individuals who are steeped in committee work within our organization as well as functions in the broader psychoanalytic community. In addition to the activities listed elsewhere in this publication, we are pleased to include news of members' activities.

The American Psychoanalytic Association recently certified Joan Berger, Ph.D. in adult psychoanalysis. Congratulations!

Congratulations to Kenneth Farr, Ph.D. (DSPP's Membership Chair) for the recent publication of "Psychodynamic Guide for Essential Treatment Planning," which has appeared in Psychoanalytic Psychology Vol 17, No 2. Dr. Farr co-authored the paper with Frank Trimboli, Ph.D. The abstract is available online at www.dspp.com.

James Harris, Ph.D. has been involved with the eating disorder program at Presbyterian Hospital. He assisted with a workshop in February for 225 professionals. Dr. Harris presented "Multifamily Therapy in the Treatment of Eating Disorders" in which findings of his ongoing outcome study were provided.

John Herman, Ph.D., our resident sleep disorders specialist, has been publishing in newsletters, presenting at conferences and appearing on television nationally and locally. He is on the faculty at the School of Sleep Medicine in Palo Alto, CA, affiliated with Stanford University, and site visitor for accreditation of sleep disorders centers around the country

Laurel Bass Wagner, Ph.D. assumed Presidency of the Division of Psychoanalysis in January. She represented the Division of Psychoanalysis at the Division Leadership Conference of the American Psychological Association and at the meetings of the Psychoanalytic Consortium in NYC. Dr. Wagner presented her paper "The Adoptive Journey: Identity Changes in the Analytic Therapist" as part of a symposium entitled: "Dreaming and Being: When Analytic Therapists Become Adoptive Parents" at the Annual Spring Meeting of Division of Psychoanalysis. In April she chaired the President's Invited Roundtable of the Psychoanalytic Consortium entitled: "The Future of Psychoanalytic Education: Can we all work together?"

Jane Walvoord, LMSW-ACP is President of the American Psychoanalytic Associations Affiliate Council (APsaA candidates in training).

DSPP was privileged this year to explore a program rich with analytic insights. We are grateful to those who gave of their time to present papers and to those who provided written reviews. Brief samplings of reviews follows.

MONTHLY MEETINGS

September 1999--

Topic: Convergence of Desire and Authority
Presenter: Charles Ragan, II, M.D.
Reviewed by: Scott Nelson

Dr. Ragan thoughtfully and clearly threshed out the writings of various analysts on analytic aims, and their implications in the context of authority and desire. Using clinical examples, Dr. Ragan illustrated examples of his own struggles with authority and desire.

October 1999--

Topic: The Analyst's Authority
Presenter: Monty Evans, Ph.D.
Reviewed by: Dale Lang Roskos, Ph.D.

In essence, we have moved from viewing the analyst as the ultimate in authority and knowledge, to a different understanding in which the analyst and the patient both have authority and knowledge.

January 2000--

Topic: Passion: Wellspring of the Mind
Presenter: Myrna Little, Ph.D.
Reviewed by: Robert Aberg, Ph.D.

Dr. Little summed up what she felt regarding the transforming qualities of this sort of "lived" knowledge by quoting from Mary Oliver’s poem, "When Death Comes:"

When it’s over, I want to be able to say
All my life I was a bride, married to amazement.

February 2000--

Topic: Intimate and Autonomous: Negotiating Relationships
Presenter: Myron Lazar, Ph.D.
Reviewed by: Melissa Black, Ph.D.

Another interesting question regarded the advantage of regarding gridlock as movement between paranoid/schizoid and depressive positions versus viewing it as a sadomasochistic dynamic.

March 2000--

Topic: Gender and Language
Presenter: Beth Newman, Ph.D.
Reviewed by: Scott Nelson

Most controversial and provocative of the speakers questions—"why do women allow themselves to be dominated" in language, culture and sexual relations?

May 2000 --

Topic: The Desire to be an Authority
Presenter: William Gordon, III, Ph.D.
Reviewed by: James Murphree, M.Div.

Dr. Gordon closed his presentation contending that a desire for self-authority is a basic human drive more powerful and pervasive even than wants and appetites.

WORKSHOPS

(Fall) You've Got to Suffer if You Want to Sing the Blues: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Self-pity, Guilt, and Romance
Guest Speaker: Stephen Mitchell, Ph.D.
Reviewed by: Melissa Black, Ph.D.

Dr. Mitchell’s wealth of expertise nicely augmented DSPP’s topic for the year, "Authority and Desire in the Analytic Relationship"….Dr. Mitchell explored in depth his perspective of relational psychoanalysis, which he described as a mixture of object relations and interpersonal theory. Two basic ideas were presented during the morning workshop and were woven into his topic, "The Degradation of Romance." First he discussed the sociocultural constructs of romantic love, which were then followed with his reflections on self-pity and guilt.

The afternoon concluded with a case presentation by Dr. Bob Bennett, a Dallas psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and founding member of the Dallas Group Analytic Practice. The case selected by Dr. Bennett provided the audience with an opportunity to work with the principles Dr. Mitchell had put forth in the morning session.

(Spring) Beyond Either / Or: Gender, Intersubjectivity and the Post-Oedipal
Guest Speaker: Jessica Benjamin, Ph.D.
Reviewed by: Myrna Little, Ph.D.

Dr. Jessica Benjamin…presented…an alternative to the "Either/Or" of masculinity and femininity as originally articulated by Freud, and held by psychoanalytic theory ever since. Without reading her material, Benjamin walked her audience through evolution of the radical notion of the seventies – that the infant actively constructs his own life when/because the mother is there to be recognized – and concluded with a revision of Freud’s ideas concerning gender and identity. This included a consideration of "the active-passive didactic," several case examples, and interaction with the audience. In the afternoon three respondents provided a lively discussion of the relation of Benjamin’s concepts to anthropology, to Women’s Studies, and to a clinical case.

As Bion has said, in our work what matters more than love or hate is knowledge, knowledge of the other’s subjectivity, that is, the L, H, and K of intersubjectivity.

Judith Samson and the DSPP Arts Committee are to be commended for their hard work and excellent arts program offered this year. In addition to the provocative monthly film meetings, the Arts Committee sponsored several community events.

In the fall we were invited to the home studio of Bill Komodore, noted Dallas artist and professor, for a tour. "The November 6, 1999, evening with Bill Komodore generated great interest and more guests than could be accommodated in his home. Mr. Komodore interpreted several of his works within the context of his creative process and technique. He answered questions and shared with us details of his life."

On February 12, at the Dallas Museum of Art DSPP Arts Committee and the DMA cosponsored a talk and slide program by DSPP member, Salomon Grimberg, M.D., noted psychiatrist, art critic and art broker, in the DMA's Horchow Auditorium. Dr. Grimberg presented his "Mexico Reflected on Andre Breton's Mirror", a study of Breton's legacy in Mexico, and its effect in the developing New York School of Painting that was forming during the decade of the Forties.

In May, we were treated with a gallery talk given by Susan kae Grant (details in this issue).

The Community Relations Committee is dedicated to promoting the psychoanalytic perspective within the broader community, actively supports the Arts program and sponsors the DSPP/Fairhill Scholarship Competition. With the support of the Executive Committee, the CRC recently established a permanent mailing address and voice mail system for DSPP. Cheryl Martin RN, LPC has stepped into the role of CRC Chair as William Gordon, Ph.D. resigned due to time constraints and outside commitments. Dr. Gordon has been instrumental in the development of the CRC and has graciously agreed to continue to participate as a consultant.

The DSPP web site is supported by the Community Relations Committee and continues to develop as a resource for members and the broader psychoanalytic community. This year we saw an expansion of the available content with the addition of online papers, program news, Division 39 news, an Arts section, workshop details, a private members section and a DSPP electronic mailing list.

John Herman, Ph.D. has continued to draw on the expertise of DSPP Members by providing us with another year of graduate level courses designed to explore special topics in psychodynamic psychotherapy. We are grateful to Dr. Herman for his dedication and to those who offered participants the benefit of their unique level of psychoanalytic acumen.

1999-2000 Course Instructors:

Wishing all a pleasant summer.
See you in the fall!