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Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal

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Commentary by Egl Laufer (London)

a

Egl Laufer
a

48 Abbey Gardens, London NW8 9AT, United Kingdom

Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Egl Laufer (2000) Commentary by Egl Laufer (London), Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary
Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 2:2, 232-234, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2000.10773312
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232

Webster, R. (1995), Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science,

and Psychoanalysis. London: HarperCollins.
Westen, D. (1991), Social cognition and object relations.
Psycholog. Bull., 109:429-455.
Wittgenstein, L. (1969), The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wolff, P. H. (1996), The irrelevance of infant observations
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44:369-392.
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York: Pergamon.

Egle Laufer
Young, J. E. (1990), Cognitive Therapy for Personality Disorders: A Schema-Focused Approach. Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Exchange.
Peter Fonagy, Ph.D., FBA
Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology
University College London
Grower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Tel.: 00 44 171 391 1791
Fax: 00 44 171 916 1989
e-mail: p.fonagy@ucl.ac.uk

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Commentary by Egle Laufer (London)

I am grateful to Paul Whittle for opening up a discussion about experimental psychology and psychoanalysis that makes it possible to discuss the gulf which he
says has developed between the two disciplines during
the past century. I found the analogy he draws, of the
differences between the two disciplines as being like
that between two totally different cultures, completely
convincing and I admire his ability to move with such
ease between the two. But I am much less happy with
his idea that this gulf has come about to allow for a
division of labor between the two where both are
thriving in their own domain. Because, according to
Whittle's views, this implies that both disciplines
agree to privilege experimental psychology with the
knowledge about the functioning of the mind that is
scientifically proven and thus not open to challenge,
while leaving psychoanalysis the task of "increasing
personal insight" or addressing "human nature," and
where its ideas and concepts belong to the' 'religious"
as opposed to the' 'irreligious" of experimental psychology. That is not how I would view psychoanalysis.
I welcome what seems to be a wish and hope on
his part that this gulf can begin to be bridged in the
twenty-first century. He seems to be basing this wish
on his own experience of his awareness of needing to
enrich his own thinking in order to get beyond the
constraints imposed on his thinking by experimental
psychology. Isolated as I am in my own culture, I
had not appreciated the extent to which experimental
psychology in identifying itself as an experimental science, has felt constrained to limit its field of observation purely to the psychological phenomena which can
be made predictable in the laboratory. In having to
stay in that confined area, I thought that Whittle is

also saying how it has taken him away from a sense

of being involved in how people function in their inner
lives, something he calls human nature, and as if he
has to look for somewhere other than experimental
psychology in order to feel free to use his imagination
and his own experiences to know something about
human experience.
The casting out of psychoanalysis from the irreligious back into the religious cultural domain seems to
relate to the accusations made against psychoanalysis
that its concepts are based on belief and not on predictable and verifiable discoveries. In 1895 Freud
wrote "A Project for a Scientific Psychology" in
which he attempts to state the psychological findings
regarding motivated behavior, affects, and conscious
and unconscious mental functioning, which he had arrived at through his clinical work, in purely neurological terms. For Freud the scientist, the setting of the
analytic consulting room with the couch and the observer sitting behind the subject replaced the laboratory situation to which he was used. In this laboratory,
he introduced a revolutionary concept as a result of
his observations of the patient's response to his role
as the doctor who was trying to help alleviate suffering-that of conceptualizing the relationship of the
patient to the doctor as governed by transference that
changed the reality of the situation into one colored
by the patient's past and repressed memories. In doing
this, he both provided a microscope for the investigation of the relation between past experiences and the
present experience of relationships but also made the
relationship between the observer and the patient into
the central tool, thus bringing into the laboratory situation the effect of the observer on that which is being

Downloaded by [Gazi University] at 07:56 19 August 2014

Ongoing Discussion: Paul Whittle

observed, and the importance of the subjective nature
of perception in relation to the perception of external
reality. It brings up the whole question of the limitations imposed on the results of the observations when
the tool used by the observer, the mind, is the same
as that which is being observed and in interaction with
it. Although this taught us how to take into account
the relative nature of our observations due to our own
unconscious or repressed fantasies, that does not make
them any less scientific or valid as a base for conceptualization and construction of theory.
I was interested that Whittle describes psychology as situated "in an overlap of cognitive science,
neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and social sciences." Maybe here is the beginning of the bridge for
which he is looking. Because psychoanalytic psychology, that is, a psychology that includes the neurological activities of dreaming, thinking, repression, and
unconscious memory, in having been created by Freud
the neurologist was heavily influenced by his detailed
knowledge of the neurological underpinning of the
functioning of the mind. Psychoanalytic theory from
its earliest days was also heavily reliant on observations taken from sociology, from everyday observation
of human experience and behavior in Western or other
cultures, as well as knowledge coming from clinical
work with mentally ill patients. Evolutionary biology
was also certainly a science on which Freud and other
psychoanalysts have relied. Thus when Whittle refers
to psychoanalysis as a practice which aims to "fill in
the gaps of self-awareness" he is referring only to
psychoanalysis as a clinical practice and not to the
theoretical structure that Freud created out of that experience. The psychoanalyst has a whole theory of
psychic functioning informed by the links with other
branches of knowledge with which to understand and
make sense of his observations and to try to give
meaning to the patient's verbal communication.
It seems to me that where we run into difficulties
with experimental psychology is that although we too
can use our clinical practice to create a laboratory
setting out of our clinical wor k, what we are able to
observe cannot be verified by the clinical success of
the process. What I mean is that you cannot measure
the correctness of concepts like mechanisms of projection or repression by the clinical outcome of "cure."
We learn from observing the results of our interventions, but that is not the same as curing the patient.
But we are able to predict for instance that a certain
quality of anxiety will lead to a predictable response
by the patient using a particular mechanism. Through
observing its many repetitions over time we can widen

233

it to include some of the many variables that are operative in these situations and how they are interwoven
in the mind of the patient in the form of memory and
different levels of functioning. Thus, what we are able
to study is the dynamic, ever shifting process that is
taking place and try to define the sources and forces,
the nature of the affects, that are operative within that
process and try to catch the outcome of this dynamic
interplay at any given moment in time. I think this
may be what Whittle designated by "filling in the gaps
in self-awareness." We have to be aware that what
we study is the outcome of psychological dynamic
processes in interaction with all the different sources
of impingement on the mind in order to take into account the total living organism of which our mind is
a part.
I think that the psychoanalytic method of investigation allows not only for the partial nature of the
observations that derive from the clinical situation,
but is one that includes a time dimension into the observational process. It does this by including the notion
that what was valid at any given moment either in
the analyst's communication or the patient's, is in a
continuous process of change because of the dynamic
nature of the processes that determine behavior and
the functioning of a living mind. In order to arrive
at some scientific validity we can use the element of
repetition over time as having the same scientific validity on which to base a formulation as one that is
arrived at through predicted outcomes in statistically
significant samples. In any given case, we are always
basing our interpretations either on past experience of
the patient or on our prediction of where they might
be headed. And if you look at the work of analysts
who have followed Freud in the twentieth century and
whom you regard as unorthodox, what they are doing
is simply adding to or amending the theory as it then
existed in order to find ways of including their new
observations. These can then be tested out by other
analysts through their clinical experience allowing for
a general consensus to be established in regard to similar cases.
You may think these arguments are just an easy
way out of the untestability of Freudian concepts, like
Freud's statement that the causation of mental events
is overdetermined; that is, since we may never be in
a position to be able to bring together all the different
elements that have come together from all parts of the
mind, memory of past experiences, individual capacity
for perception, somatic processes, the relationship to
the observer, and so on, which make up the matrix
within which anyone thought or action takes place,

Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber

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234

we do not have to prove anything but should rely on

belief. But I do not think we are in a very different
position from medicine, which can show the cause or
mechanism of an illness and yet is unable to predict
who will become ill and who will be cured, except by
making statistical statements. But that does not invalidate their observations, and the theories evolved
from them.
Of course I agree that scientific work must allow
itself to speculate, there can be no new discoveries if
we are tied to the truth of what we know. But I do
not think this can be equated to play except insofar as
play provides an early model of creative functioning.
Children all play, but only at special moments does
the play become truly creative rather than repetitive,
and the capacity to play in a creative way varies from
child to child. The same can be said of our wor k. Most
of the time we rely on the truth of what we know, and
can enjoy "playing with it," but sometimes and only
for some, is it possible to have a creative idea or speculation that can then be elaborated more systematically.
But I believe that the setting of the psychoanalytic
situation provides an optimal space for just such acts
of creativity, both by the patient as well as by the
psychoanalyst, through the removal of limitations on
thought and verbal expression. By contrast, having to
create a setting that is always limited by the demand
to be reproducible and verifiable, although affording
more certainly, sets a limit on speculative creative
thought or any sense of risk of uncertainty.
I have been involved in research projects using
the data collected from individual analyses by a group
of psychoanalysts treating patients suffering from a
common symptom-in one study, adolescents who
had made a suicide attempt. By elaborating a systematic methodology by which we could study the data
of the analytic process, we were able to arrive at some

unexpected conclusions that were able to contribute,

amongst other findings, to an understanding of the effect on the adolescent of having experienced him- or
herself in a mental state where death seemed desirable
and to achieve it the only answer. We learned that the
events prior to and leading up to the actual event had
largely been repressed after the failed attempt, and that
it was only during the course of the analysis, through
different elements becoming repeated in the adolescent's life, that he or she was able to remember via
the similarity of the present affective experience, the
relevant detail related to the need to find an answer
in death. What was unexpected, was the extent to
which the affective experience and the events had become repressed and the clinical importance of being
able to recover them within the safety of the analytic
situation. Nowadays this finding is a commonplace
understanding of the importance of working through
a traumatic event-the posttraumatic stress syndrome.
I give this as an example of how the clinical situation
can be used as an experimental laboratory situation,
if we separate clinical outcome from systematic investigation and thus much nearer to experimental psychology. But I also give this example in order to show
that the gulf described by Whittle exists only if we
limit psychoanalysis to a clinical practice to be judged
by its outcome, and do not take seriously its use as an
investigative tool.

Reference
Freud, S. (1895), Project for a Scientific Psychology. Standard Edition, 1:281-391. London: Hogarth Press, 1966.
Egle Laufer

48 Abbey Gardens
London NW8 9AT
United Kingdom

The Gap between Two Creative Traditions: Experimental Psychology and Psychoanalysis
Commentary by Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber (Frankfurt)

It was a pleasure for me as a psychoanalyst to read

Paul Whittle's paper. Here is an experimental psychologist asking himself why psychoanalysis and his
branch of psychology are ignoring each other, more
or less, constituting a gap between the two disciplines.
His interest in psychoanalysis is especially unusual,

against the background of the present zeitgeist which

Jonathan Lear (1995), professor of philosophy at Yale,
characterized as "Freud bashing." Whittle, in opposition to this zeitgeist, wants to analyze some of the
reasons for the lack of scientific exchange between
the two disciplines. He shows very convincingly that