The Relevance of Psychodynamic Theory and Therapy In Our Times
From its beginnings, psychoanalysis and psycho-dynamic approaches have been criticized as unscientific, and their imminent demise predicted. Yet they have persisted...
From its beginnings, psychoanalysis and psycho-dynamic approaches have been criticized as unscientific, and their imminent demise predicted.
Psychoanalysis has persisted and discoveries in biology and the neurosciences have supported a number of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic concepts. The persistent criticism suggests a conflict in ideological components of the respective epistemologies, as elaborated below:
We know that in mammals the brain is lateralized, with usually the left hemisphere specializing in routine tasks (including language), while the right hemisphere specializes in non-routine information processing. Our society and educational system are heavily biased towards the left hemisphere, probably through our Greek intellectual heritage. It is illustrative, that the idea of “panta rhei” (all things are in flux – Heraclitus), although correct, never became a leading Greek philosophy. Psychological “Functionalism”, which also modelled change in an interesting way, met a similar fate.
Change is hard to model, although brains developed to track movement, which is a form of change. Humans have been referred to as the “the Swiss-army knife of movement”, so tracking movement and change, not just for ourselves but also our social environment, becomes a daunting task. With our affects, we and other mammals have developed sophisticated systems to interpret, resonate with, and synchronize change within and around us. The study of affects (Tomkins) has fascinated me, because they illustrate that emotions have an underlying cognitive/mathematical/economic element, which we experience as aesthetics. It is one of the great contributions of affect theory that it gives us a basis for explaining the function and importance of art: it helps us model movement and change, and derivatives such as balance (or lack thereof – an important risk signal). For instance, the aesthetic concept of “elegance” is really a measure for an economy of means, or lack of friction in a system.
I was years into my psychoanalytic practice until it dawned on me, that what I was helping my clients to do, was to make sound psychological investments (previously hampered by scars from traumata). There's the occasional mention of artistic skills being related to scientific discovery, but it is not a mainstream topic, because it is incompatible with “hard science” which focuses on technological control. psychodynamic theory has kept elements from its origins in phenomenology and is, therefore, closer to dialectic theory, which I believe is a superior model to classical logic to track changes in living systems.
Psychodynamic theories, therefore, can provide a counterbalance to our linear “mainstream” epistemology. (Here is an example of a “mainstream blind-spot” which illustrates the underlying ideology: Subconscious communication, or “experimenter bias”, is one of the most massively documented phenomena in the experimental psychological literature, but our individualistic ideology has blinded us to the significance of the phenomenon, which we try to eliminate. Psychoanalysis, which acknowledges its existence, is declared as “unscientific”).
In my experience, psychodynamic theory, because it is a science of reflection, is a great way to model the evolution of thinking and awareness, influenced by our (recent) history and assorted motivations. With object relations and attachment theory, it is also a constant reminder of the profound influence and importance of our social environment and context. Talking in itself is therapeutic, and we know that even people who talk to themselves by keeping a diary, experience benefits in managing excessively triggered emotions, clarification of, and development of new ideas, similar to talk therapy sessions, although they do not have the benefit of working through and resolving transferences.
Creating a narrative from experiences is beneficial, as we can also see in dreams, which help with memory consolidation by filtering out “noise”. Talk therapy builds on these mechanisms, intensified by encouraging, studying and working through old interpersonal biases which we call “transference”. Again, the process has an “aesthetic” element, which I will describe by analogy: we all can tell a well-cast bell by its undisturbed resonance; the practical application of this principle is mechanics who could tell by listening to the resonance of a crankshaft if it was sound or had a hidden flaw, which distorted the resonance. Similarly, people scarred from trauma usually have a disturbed resonance in their physical speech (inhibition of breath) as well as in their mind (distortion of resonance, easy passage over all areas of affect and thought).
Talk therapy undoes these inhibitions/scars, and it grounds us that way and restores our associative potential for creativity. I just finished teaching a class and was again impressed with how the process of discussion between the students and their readings and amongst each other led to new paths of investigation and understanding. It was like listening to a piece of music in which the starting tone scale gets modulated unpredictably, despite following rules, creating new “paths” for the melody.
We need the disciplined freedom of psychodynamic thinking desperately in a time where we have let ourselves be driven by our ideology into a suicidal situation (being unwilling to address climate change adequately). One of the functions of affect was to tell living from non-living systems, but by our idealization of technology, we have trained ourselves out of that sensitivity, which makes it harder to keep a sense of proportion. That blinds us to damage as we are doing it to our life-support systems. We need the radical creativity of psychodynamic models to get out of our rut while we can.
Dorothea Leicher is a 66-year-old married woman of German descent, certified as a psychoanalyst by NAAP. She trained as Modern Psychoanalyst and worked both in private practice treating mental illness and addictions. Additionally, she also worked as administrator of the clinic of the training institute and was able to credential the clinic to participate in a managed care model, a unique case in the US. The clinic had a great reputation as effective and humane. Since Modern Psychoanalysis addresses conflicts around aggression which are seen as basic to psychopathology, she became interested in economic issues, which led her to an interest in psycho-history. This is the community where she has presented most often. More recently she has become especially interested in affects as one of the roots of art, which she considers a proto-language, and between what is usually considered language and mathematics. Dorothea Leicher is retired from clinical practice but is still active in teaching and writing.
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