The future of psychoanalytic institutes.

Abstract

Both conceptual and institutional problems permeate psychoanalytic institutes. Although institutional problems are historically based, they also derive from confusions around ill-defined concepts that lead to arbitrariness, authoritarianism, and the stifling of creativity. Psychoanalysis is a humanistic discipline that is touted as a science but is organized as a religion. Problems surrounding the right to train pervade psychoanalytic schisms, and transmission comes through processes of anointment. Institutional "false expertise" invokes the aura of anointment where training analysts pass down received truth through an esoteric pipeline depending on genealogy instead of function. Quasireligious thinking and politics rush in to fill the gap between the level of claimed knowledge that affords qualification and the far lower level of real knowledge. Institutes should rely on evidence of candidates' performance and engage in open-ended inquiry. Psychoanalysis has fallen on hard times. Analytic practice has declined worldwide with the advances in other psychodynamic psychotherapies, behavioral, cognitive, and biological treatments together with the inroads of managed care and other health insurers. As an intellectual discipline, there is relatively little productivity in psychoanalysis, especially as compared

Free and open‐source therapy: Towards a revolution in the politics of psychotherapy

“…Kirsner argued that hierarchy‐driven psychoanalysts' training should be abolished, thus removing a structural flaw that maintains power based on top‐down patronage and anointment. In addition, he called for open questioning of all concepts and teachings, including those most dear to the profession – even the concept of what is psychoanalysis (Kirsner, 2001). Lippmann (2009) further claimed that the psychoanalytic institutions need to include aspects of warm interrelationships, alongside freedom to explore, play and dissent.…”

“…A FOST model may resolve most of the issues regarding the hierarchical power/knowledge structure of therapy today: professionalisation that radically separates ‘experts’ from ‘clients’, as well as the tendency to pathologise the latter; the tendency to include mostly hegemonic members in the profession and thereby reproduce hegemonic values; and internal hierarchies and power relations in training and development. Instead, FOST will reflect many of the desirable features described by political therapists as necessary for the future of therapy: the construction of social practice that includes ongoing dialogue, genuine reciprocity and horizontal relationships (McClure & Russo, 1996); warm interrelationships between members, along with the freedom to explore and play (Lippmann, 2009); and open questioning of issues (Kirsner, 2001). In addition, the FOST model lacks financial limitations and will, therefore, be open to diverse populations and challenge social power relations.…”

Commentary on Kernberg’s “Suicide Prevention for Psychoanalytic Institutes and Societies”

“…As Keiser (1972) and Kirsner (2001) have noted, these criteria vary from institute to institute. 1 Only one criterion seems to be shared by all: Orgel (1982), in summarizing the results of his investigation of twentyfive institutes in the U.S. and five in Canada, comments that in "virtually all institutes .…”

Heart and spirit: Research with psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists about spirituality

“…Problems in how spiritual interests are treated seem somewhat related to problems concerning positivistic beliefs inherent in its scientifi c origins, and institutional structures which perpetuate conservatism and orthodoxy. McDougall (1995), Kernberg (1996Kernberg ( , 2000 and Kirsner (2000Kirsner ( , 2001, for example, have detailed how psychoanalytic institutes continue to have diffi culty in dealing constructively with dissenting points of view. Maintaining the analytic frame (thoughtfully preserving the integrity of the analytic space) and narrowing the frame by disallowing questioning and thought about aspects of traditional psychoanalytic technique or understanding, have perhaps at times become confused.…”