《精神分析遭遇中的死亡与错误

如果我可以投票选出我最喜欢的21世纪精神分析的新书，艾伦·平斯基的《精神分析遭遇中的死亡与不可靠性:凡人的礼物》(劳特利奇，2017)可能是这样;然而需要明确的是，这实际上是一组文章，而不是精神分析文章的集合。我很高兴地向你们报告，它很有风格。平斯基着手探索这个领域在两个看似无关的话题上的整体沉默:分析师的死亡和咨询室里的性侵犯。将这些主题捆绑在一起背后的策略是作者问的，在其他问题中，当分析因死亡或违反框架而突然结束时，患者会发生什么?该领域对这两个概念上相互关联的“事件”视而不见，根源在于拒绝与分析工作的要求和分析师的人性易犯错误作斗争。(我可以说，这本书在很大程度上也是一本关于该领域男性的书，但那将是另一篇文章。一定不要错过她对欧文·瑞尼克(Owen Renik)关于什么是分析工作的描述!)这本书也是一封写给禁欲和中立的情书，我想说，我从来没有遇到过如此热烈的关于禁欲和中立的争论。平斯基提醒我们，理想情况下，我们的咨询室是移情温室。 Analytic silence arouses feelings of love, hate and eros and analytic neutrality invites those feelings to be spoken. But the analyst is importantly human: how does the analyst survive the rigors of a setting that demand he listen, feel and absorb myriad transferences, without acting? What, if any, possible preparation can safeguard analysts and analytic treatments from potential demise? How does the analyst endure not mattering day in and day out without retaliating, because if we are honest, we know the transference is not about us? Pinsky examines the literature on what constitutes analytic work and wonders whether we have fallen prey to a narrative that sees the analyst as God-like, immortal and Olympian, so as to protect the analyst from the truth of his human imperfectability, and to compensate for his deprivations? On finishing this dramatic and beautiful book, which is also a book about psychoanalytic ethics, I wondered if the field’s interest in the analyst’s subjectivity functions as an expression of its (understandable) hatred of analytic work? The analyst’s subjectivity, and the field’s embrace of it, can stand in the way of cultivating neutrality and abstinence, (the argument on behalf of the analyst’s ineluctable subjective presence usually goes, and I summarize wildly: “it is impossible to hide who we are, so why put up the façade of neutrality?). Leading with our subjectivity can run the risk of sullying the conditions for the growth of the ever-volatile transference. Pinsky wryly suggests that analyst’s are charged with engaging in a perverse process wherein we must feel intensely yet refuse to act. How can we practice abstinence and neutrality and accept our mortality and fallibility? Pinsky reminds us that psychoanalytic ethics are embedded in technique. I suspect she is not so sure that enactments and the focus on the analyst’s subjectivity reflect the best of psychoanalytic ethics. That said, what the analyst offers has value precisely because it is limited by the constraints of our humanity. We die and we fail. How to make good use of our imperfection? It can be argued that the literature on analytic subjectivity and enactments is making an attempt to grapple with precisely this question. To find an answer Pinsky would, I think, encourage us to take a closer look at the popular eschewal of abstinence and neutrality, and at abstinence and neutrality themselves as we seek to resolve the dilemma of being human while sitting in the analyst’s chair.

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特雷西·摩根是《精神分析新书》的创始编辑，也是一名精神分析学家，在纽约和意大利罗马工作。她的电话号码是tracedoris@gmail.com。