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Academy
for the Study of the
Psychoanalytic Arts
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How Will Bodies of Knowledge Speak the
Psychoanalyst in the 21st Century? by
Patrick B. Kavanaugh, Ph.D.
CONTEXTUAL NARRATIVE
(This paper was presented as the president's address at the IX annual interdisciplinary
conference of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education at Fordham
University, Lincoln Center in 1998 (NYC). The theme of the congress was How Will
the Body Speak in the 21st Century?)
Introduction: It was an early November morning some 30 to 35 years ago. I was on my
way to my first professional position at the county psychiatric center located out in the
country, far-removed from the city and urban-life. I could tell I was approaching the
institutional grounds as I found myself riding along-side the black, iron-spiked fence
that encircled the main buildings of this massive residential-treatment facility. After
about a mile or so, there was a break in the iron-spiked fence. I slowed, turned in at the
main entrance, and entered the grounds. With a nervous excitement, I slowly began the
long, winding drive up to the Victorian-styled Admissions building where I was to report. Bodies of Knowledges Speaking the Analyst of the 20th Century
In the history of people and ideas, psychoanalysis had its earliest of beginnings
within the socio-cultural context of the Industrial Age of the Modern Era. Birthed in a culture
of positivism, psychoanalysis was a child of the Westernized cultures; psychoanalytic
education was a product of its times. The classical epistemology prevalent in the latter
part of 19th century Germany structured certain basic assumptions and preconceptions
regarding the world, people, and life. In the world view prevalent of the times,
there was only one world. And, this world functioned independently of the observer,
according to the predetermined and preordained designs of nature. And people and society
were assumed to be part of this natural order and design. A philosophy of Naturalism
assumed a unified theory of nature, life and science. And this philosophy contextualized
the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking about the world and people. The world and people
functioned according to common principles and rational laws, as did all other natural
phenomenon in the physical world. A Cartesian Conception of Mind and Body In the Cartesian world, a self-evident and dichotomous metaphysics was foundational in thinking
and speaking about the world and people. Dichotomous distinctions between the
sacred and profane, the mind and body, and the outer objective and inner subjective were
developed in a system of binary logic, beliefs and values. Descartes distinguished the outer
physical world from the inner world of the mental and claimed to prove that the
physical has a separate existence from the mental. (Clarke, 1997) Thinking was the essence
of human nature. Identity and Being were found in thought and the rational mind. ... I
think, therefore I am... The Cartesian subject was constructed as fully conscious,
autonomous, coherent, self-knowable and as speaking without being spoken. (Sarup, 1993)
The subject of modernity was constituted as a rational subject with the body
subordinated to rational thought. The dualistic solution of an interaction between mind
and body privileged the mind over the body. In this dualism, the conceptual had primacy
over the physical. And cognition, thinking, and objectivity took primacy over passion,
intuition, and subjectivity. .... Does de-fence of this institutional(ized)
metaphysical Truth separate the sane from the insane? ... the rational Knowledge of
the mind from the contaminating passions of the body? ... and the sacred from the
profane? The Natural Sciences, Bodies of Knowledges, and Psychoanalysis Reflecting, perhaps, an
institutional(ized) form of desire and physics
envy, psychoanalysis positioned itself as a natural science of the mind. As mentioned by
Giroux (1997), the principles of rationality in the natural sciences were seen as vastly
superior to the hermeneutic principles underlying the more speculative social sciences.
And, psychoanalysis drew its major assumptions from the logic and method of inquiry of the
natural sciences. In a culture of positivism, Bodies of Knowledges are produced
and organized around the assumptions of a metaphysics of presence in which
"...something Real could be represented in thought, the Real was understood to be an
external or universal subject existing 'out there', and 'truth' was understood to be
correspondence to it." (Flax, 1990, p.34) And in the analytic culture, this metaphysics
of presence structured a linearized relationship to Language, Knowledge, Theory
... and, Truth. In the fixed, static, and linearized Newtonian world, Language
was object-based and Knowledge was understood to be objective, mirror-like
reflections of Reality discovered-as-it-is. The Word corresponded to the object
it represented and simply reflected the object or causal relationships as existing 'out
there.' Truth, understood to be discovered rational knowledge, transformed
Knowledge into a scientific thing-like object correspondent to the real world.
And Knowledge took on the appearance of being objective, bounded, and context free, far
removed from the individual, political, and cultural traditions that structure its
meaning. This relationship to the World and Reality,-- and,-- the Word
and Knowledge made psychoanalysis teachable and learnable. And education was
to be an education of the mind as the body was not considered to be a source of knowing,
thinking, or knowledge. (Hooks, 1994; Maher & Tetraux, 1994; Capra, 1982).
The Bodies of Knowledges speaking the analyst in this country became
more certain, predictive, and explanatory. And psychoanalytic Theory became linked to a
search for the Truth at the .001 level of confidence. Theory could stand for the
nomothetic laws, concepts, and principles scientifically discovered. A Theoretical Reality
corresponding to objective reality could be constructed and handed from one person to
another. Bodies of Knowledges consisted of pre-thought thoughts, prepackaged theoretical
formularies, and predetermined ways by which others ought to be. Knowledge about
people could be objectively recorded in the sacred text of Truth-Discovered. And these
Knowledges could be inscribed in standardized curriculum. Derived from an empirical analytic
discourse, these Knowledges were presented as factual axiomatic givens and, paradoxically,
discouraged reflective thinking. And the science of teaching -or, Pedagogy- entered the
hallways of the Institute. As a derivation from the Greek paidos meaning boy and
agogos meaning guide, Pedagogy literally translates as: to guide the boy. And
the candidate was to be guided through these Bodies of Knowledges of Self and Other
learned through the tripartite educational model. Psychoanalytic education was organized
around the image of the analyst as the knowing subject who knew and understood the natural
development of personality and the etiology of symptoms in various pathological
conditions. Such a relationship to Knowledge placed the analyst in a privileged
relationship to the Truth of and for the Other. Mastery of these core Bodies
of Knowledges about Self and Other spoke the analyst as the Knower of the Master Discourse
of Psychoanalysis. In the analytic community, the legacy of Freud has been described as a dialectic in
which every psychoanalytic proposition blends science with humanism (Bornstein,
1985), a legacy that perpetuates the medical mythology that Knowledges produced by a
science of the mind are separate from and unmediated by theories,
assumptions, and values. Developed around normative standards, these Bodies of Knowledges
create the illusion that Knowledge is universal and exists independently of human beings
and the historical context in which it was produced. And this legacy of science and
humanism has figured prominently in the identity formation of the analyst. The
principles, standards, and criterion of positivism have stood like an iron-spiked fence
around the perimeter of the analytic community producing the Bodies of Knowledges that
were to speak the analyst as a health care professional possessing the necessary
technical knowledge and skills for the treatment and cure of psychopathology; as a
social research scientist dispassionately involved in psychic exploration discovering
curative factors without contaminating data as it was discovered; and, as a social
engineer making contributions to the culture through various analytically informed
social policies. .... Does de-fence of the
institutional(ized) Truth of a medicalized
education and ways of thinking separate the real Analyst from the non-medical analyst?
A little while ago, some 95 to 100 years or so, a second conceptual
revolution took place in philosophy, a revolution of no less significance and consequence
than the Cartesian break from the Greek classical tradition. Philosophy took a linguistic
turn. Language, itself, was to become the privileged object of thought. And a problem
arose with those Bodies of Knowledges premised on classical epistemology. Namely, our
modes of understanding the world, others, and self depend on language, itself
understood as an organized system of signs. Language, itself, is a mode of representation.
(Dickens and Fontana, 1994) Saussure in Europe and Charles Sanders Peirce in this country
introduced the discipline of semiotics. This linguistic turn in philosophy reflected a
ruptured break with modernistic philosophers, their problems and questions, and their
seeking universal Truths in their philosophic inquiry. (Clarke, 1997) Semiotics is
concerned with the study and analysis of language, systems of signification, and the
structures of thought and experiences. And as a mode of knowledge, it understands the
world as a system of interconnections and interrelations. Semiotics studies the nature of representation
and provides a perspective by which we might conceive of human reality as a
construction, as a product of signifying activities which are both culturally
specific and generally unconscious. (Sarup, 1993) Indeed, the subject of current times is
understood as a historical subject spoken by language, history, and the specific
discourses of the culture and constituted by its interrrelations and interconnections. As
a philosophy of language, semiotics raises such questions as: Does language simply reflect
reality as it exists out there in the real world as assumed by classical
epistemology? Or, Does language create and structure Reality as suggested by
this linguistic turn in philosophy? Or, does the dichotomous structuring of this very
question in an either ... or
form, dissolve into a different question:
Does language speak reality, the world, and us as we speak language?.... ... How will The Body speak in the 21st century? Is there to be but one body speaking in this World of Differences? Is the body not signified differently in different cultures? and, differently in different discourses of the same culture? Does not the very phrasing of the question speak from the tradition of a unified and universal conception of The Body? and, reduces the complex issues of Body to a unitary Master narrative that minimizes the subject's individuality, historical context, and contingency? Is the body not signified differently by each and every subject of the culture? There is a World of Differences between and within different cultures and people. And these differences contextualize different and multiple Truths regarding the construction and meaning of the Body... and, How the Body might speak in the 21st century. The current crises of reason and representation in the humanities and the social sciences have led to a rethinking of the sources, aims, and goals of knowledges. (Grosz, 1995; Marcus & Fischer, 1986; Gergen, 1994) And, in the analytic culture that which constitutes Bodies of Knowledges and our relationship to those Knowledges have been changing --and, radically so,-- as different ways of thinking as suggested by theoretical physics, chaos theory, and the Asian and Eastern philosophies have entered the analytic community. As the analyst has been speaking these Bodies of Knowledges in the analytic discourse, How might these Bodies of Knowledges speak the analyst in the 21st century? A philosophy of differences contextualizes a World of Differences for analysis as discourse and education in the 21st century. Re-situated in philosophy, the humanities, and the cultural sciences, psychoanalysis
derives from philosophy, rests on a different way of thinking about people, and
develops from the study of the psychoanalytic arts. The psychoanalytic arts refer to the Arts
of Communication such as language, literature, prose, poetry, music, and
semiotics; the Arts of Continuity such as history, mythology,
religion, science, theatre, film, dance, folklore, and those traditions of the culture
that link a phenomenal past with an anticipated future; and, the Arts of Critical
Thinking such as philosophy and philosophic inquiry. (Kavanaugh, 1998b) The
psychoanalytic arts consist of Bodies of Knowledges produced from a different philosophic
premise, e.g., a radicalized Subjectivism, and appreciate that there are no facts except
as construed within the mind of each person. There is no perception independent of one's
perception. And Truth as to the question of essence is to be found in the values of
the subject. It is the subject who has the privileged relationship to Truth; it is the
privilege of the action of the analysis to attempt to understand that Truth. The
conceptual premise and understandings of such a psychoanalysis are to be found in the
realm of human experiences. (Kavanaugh, 1996a) Some Thoughts on the Arts of Psychoanalytic Education The Arts of Communication... The analytic discourse is understood to be a semiotic discourse and is to be understood as one would understand a poetic text. As a semiotic discourse, analysis is, much like poetry, one of the most complex forms of human discourse wherein which all thinking is radically metaphoric. More specifically, people and the external world are constructed and constituted by language, texts, codes, and images. And an inexplicable something more... This perspective raises a number of difficult and complex questions for the analyst and analytic educator. Is all reality psychic reality? Is everything in the universe a sign of itself and something else? For C. S. Peirce, semiosis was a process of infinite regression in which meaning is always known and is always deferred ...at the same time. Meaning is always in a state of becoming. (Gottdiener, 1994) Further, each and every aspect of an individual's world is representational of Self. And that which we see in the world is the unbroken flesh of images of Self spoken through these living and breathing systems of signification. We see who we are; we are who we see. As a unique psychological discourse, psychoanalysis ventures into the poetic communications found in the prose of everyday life. In this discourse every word, thought, and behavior is conceptualized as having a communicative function and constituting a multi-level and multi-dimensional statement which has for the subject both rhyme and reason -and- meaning and purpose, the meaning of which derives from the context in which it makes its appearance. The quest of analysis is to be found in the collaborative effort between individuals attempting to understand the subject's construction of reality and their interpretive design and theory of the world. And, further, to symbolize in words the unsymbolized; elaborate further in words concealed dimensions of experiences not yet known, revealed, or recognized; and, explain certain discontinuities in the person's experiences from their world of significance, meaning, purpose, and adaptation. (Kavanaugh, 1995b) These purposes of analysis are inextricably linked to the study of the Arts of Communication such as semiotics, language, prose, poetry, music, and the linguistics of the body. In this psychological discourse, the listener must be with the words, and in the words, and be the words, yet, at the same time, go beyond the literal signification of the words. The listener must be in the dimension of literal signification of words and, at the same time, be in a different dimension beyond words and speakers. Perhaps under---standing involves standing under the words in the contextual field of the subject that structures the words and speakers in meaningful ways. (Mueller & Richardson, 1994) The analyst listens, understands, and responds through a blending of literal meaning with this contextual meaning and --inter.. prets-- speaks from somewhere in the space in between. And, in so doing makes a leap, a discovery, and a creative solution that is something more than what could be represented in any other way. Perhaps, it is in the inter .. pret that one speaks to the something more of the psyche, the mind, the soul, ...the inexplicable something more of the mystery, magic, and muscle of the subject to which linearized words, logic, and reasoning cannot go. (Kavanaugh, 1995b) The Arts of Continuity... Bodies of Knowledges in the psychoanalytic arts are but different perspectives and points of view regarding the world(s), people, and life. And a philosophy of differences leads to a different understanding of those traditions of the culture that link a phenomenal past with an anticipated future, e.g.,the Arts of Continuity. For example, nineteenth century assumptions of narrative history writing as factual and objective accounts about real events have been reconsidered. This view of history as a unitary, unified and unifying Truth has been reexamined and the question of History has been recast in the following form: To which discursive context does this historical recounting belong? What are the historical, political, and economic discourses that produced this Body of Knowledge? and, What was the historical-contextual field that produced and structured its meaning? This perspective of history does not so much constitute a loss of belief in a significant external reality as a loss of faith in our ability to know that reality and represent it as a unitary Truth. This recognition of the multiple perspectives and Truths of history speaks to a rethinking of history as a series of historiographic metafictions (Hutcheon, 1992). In the analytic culture, Bodies of Knowledges are historically contingent on economic, political, and social forces. And this contingency links the discourses of Knowledge production and acquisition with the discourses of power and ethics. Wrapped in the mythology of medicine and science as value free, Bodies of analytic Knowledges have positioned themselves as somehow existing outside of a particular historical moment, independent of cultural context and perspective, and immune to various socio-political forces. A positivist view of knowledge has obscured this relationship between the production of Bodies of Knowledges valued by various medical groups in the analytic culture and the questions of Power and Ethics. (Giroux, 1997) How has the psychoanalytic culture constituted and signified the meaning of the body through its Bodies of Knowledges? What is the constellation of economic, political, legal, and social interests that such Bodies of Knowledges support in the analytic culture? and, What institutional structures and pedagogical paradigms do such Knowledges justify and perpetuate? An educational process that recognizes Bodies of Knowledges as historically produced and contingent perspectives might study the histories of analytic concepts, the context in which they were produced, and their meanings in the various psychologies of psychoanalysis. And, further, might consider how the Other has been constructed in our binary systems of logic, e.g., students? analysands? patients? the body? the unconscious? Consideration might be given to various historical constructions of the Body, their organizing philosophic assumptions, and their influences in contemporary Knowledges. And to the role that gender differences have played in the production, evaluation, and teaching of these Bodies of Knowledges. And their influences in the analytic discourse. (Irigaray, 1985, Cixous, 1993, 1986; Grosz, 1995; Kavanaugh, 1997) The Arts of Critical Thinking The arts of psychoanalytic education make the question(ing) of Ethics, Identity and Purpose as an analyst foundational aspects of the educational process. These questions are the questions of self definition in everyday life as an analyst and, as such, are organizing of the educational discourse, a major goal of which is the development of the ability to see the world(s) from multiple perspectives. Philosophic inquiry provides a basic, necessary and vital kind of freedom to place into question that which has been considered to be the foundational essence of the traditional What Is (ontology) and the logic of the Why of the What is (epistemology) . (Rajschman, 1985) This Freedom to Question is central to an analytic discourse premised in a philosophy of differences, the humanities, and the cultural sciences. The Arts of Critical Thinking refer to the study of philosophy and philosophic inquiry in the service of developing this critical capacity to question that which has been assumed to be natural and self-evident in our Knowledges, moral pieties, and identities as analysts. Such questioning includes the freedom to question the structures of our educational institutions, the assumptions of our received Bodies of Knowledges and sciences, and the constituted experience of the culture, the subject, and, ourselves as analysts and analysands. Conclusion: How will the Body speak in the 2]st century? It all depends... It depends on the Bodies of Knowledges that inform how one might listen to the Knowledges spoken by the Body in the analytic moment. How might these Bodies of Knowledges speak the analyst of the 21st century?... From this perspective, these Bodies of Knowledges speak the analyst as a Philosopher-Semiotician venturing into the subject's very personal, private, and unique construction of the world(s); ... as an Historian of historiographic metafictions listening to the enduring and fixed traditions of the subject's phenomenal past as coexistent, co-occuring, and codeterminant with present wishes, desires and longings, and future purposes and goals. ... And, as an Artist, translating the ideographic symbolizations of bodymindspeak, speaking with the voices of the dead in this, the present moment of the past. And, in so doing, registering and monumentalizing the subject's passage in time. (Kavanaugh, 1996a) A major question remains to be addressed: How might this image of the analyst speak the analytic educator of the 21st century? As a community, we must bring into question the underlying assumptions of our educational traditions lest we unquestioningly speak the analyst of the 21st century as written on the pages of a 19th century historical text. (Kavanaugh, 1996b) In so doing, we might inadvertently form our own communal version of the Lobo Brigade and become living and breathing monuments of an historical time and ways of thinking long since past. The project of rethinking psychoanalysis and its Bodies of Knowledges includes rethinking the conditions of acquisiton of those Knowledges. And this includes bringing into question our traditional educational structures and institutions, the underlying assumptions of our educational philosophy and tripartite model, and the image of the analyst around which analytic education has been organized during the 20th century. I believe there will be many different educational models in the 21st century....... a World of Differences in educational philosophies and models, and educational practices and objectives. (Kavanaugh, 1995a) As de-fence of the institutional(ized) Truth is removed and multiple Truths continue to develop in the analytic community, how else could it be?.....
References Bornstein, M. (1985). Freud's legacy: Science and humanism. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 5 (3), NJ. Bell, S. (1995). Reading, writing, and rewriting the prostitute's body. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Capra, F. (1982). 7he turning point: science, society and the rising culture. Simon & Schuster, N.Y. Cixous, H., (1993). 7hree steps on the ladder of waiting. (S. Cornell & S. Sellers Transl.). New York: Columbia University Press. Cixous, H. & Clement, C. (1986) The newly born woman. (B. Wing Transl.), University of Minnesota Press. (original work published 1975) Clarke, D.S. (1 997). Philosophy's second revolution: Early and recent analytic philosophy. Chicago: Open Court. Cohen, A. & Dascal, M. (1989). The institution of philosophy: a discipline in crisis? NY: Open Court Publishing. Dickens, D.R. & Fontanna A.(Eds.). (1994). Postmodernism and social inquiry. NY: Guilford Press. Eco, U. (1984). Semiotics and the philosophy of language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fisch, M. (1978). Pierce's general theory of signs. in T. Sebeok (Ed.) Sight, sound, and sense. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Flax, J. (1990). Thinking fragments: Psychoanalysis, feminism, & postmodernism in the contemporary West. L.A.: University of California Press. Freud, S. (1895). Studies on hysteria. S.E., vol. II, London: Hogarth Press, 1953.
Gergen, K.J. (1994). Exploring the postmodern: perils or potentials? American Psychologist 49 (5), 417-427. Giroux, H.A. (1997). Pedagogy and the politics of hope: Theory, culture, and schooling. NY: Westview Press.
Gottdiener, M. (I 994). Semiotics and postmodernism. in D.R. Dickens & A. Fontanna (Eds.). Postmodernism and social inquiry. NY: Guilford Press. Grosz, E. (1995). Space, time, and perversion. NY: Routledge. Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. NY: Routledge. Hunter, G. (1998, November 1). Forgotten cemetery blocks development. The Detroit News, pp. 1-2. Hutcheon, L. (1992). A poetics of postmodernism: history, theory, fiction. NY: Routledge Irigaray, L. (1993). je, tu, nous: toward a culture of difference. (A. Martin Transl.) NY: Routledge.
Kavanaugh, P. B. (1999). An ethic of free association: Questioning a uniform and coercive code of ethics. The Psychoanalytic Review. 86(4) NY.
Kristeva, J. (1989). Language: the unknown. (A. M. Menke Transl.) NY: Columbia University Press Maher, F.A. & Tetreault, M.K. (1994). The feminist classroom. NY: Basic Books. Meisels, M. & Shapiro, E.R. (1990). Tradition and innovation in psychoanalytic education. N.J.: Erlbaum. Nietzsche, F. (1967). The will to power. (W. Kaufmann & R.J. Hollingsdale (Trans.) NY: Random House. (original work published 1901) Marcus, G. & Fischer, M. (1986). Anthropology as cultural critique: an experimenta moment in the human sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Muller, J.P. & Richardson, W.J. (1994). Lacan and language: A reader's guide to Ecrits. New York: International Universities Press. Rajchman, J. (1991). Truth and eros: Foucault, Lacan, and the question of ethics. New York: Routledge, Chapman, and Hall.
Rajchman, J. & West, C. (1985). (Eds.). Post-analytic philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press. Sarup, M. (1993). An introductory guide to post-structuralism and postmodernism (2nd ed). Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Dr. Kavanaugh received his doctorate in philosophy (psychology) from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. Since the completion of his doctoral studies, he has been active in the academic, organizational, and practice areas of the psychoanalytic-psychological community. In the academic area, he has served as Director of Clinical Training and member of the core teaching and supervisory faculty in the doctoral program in psychoanalytic psychology at the University of Detroit; as a member of the teaching and supervisory faculty in the Program for Advanced Studies in Psychoanalysis in Wyandotte, Michigan, an interdisciplinary program for the study of the analytic discourse; and, as a member of the teaching and supervisory faculty in the pre-and post doctoral educational programs at the Detroit Psychiatric Institute, the Wyandotte General Hospital, and the V.A. Medical Center in Detroit. In the organizational area, he is the founding and current president of the Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts; past president of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education; the Michigan Psychological Association, and the Michigan Society of Clinical Psychologists. In the practice area, many of his professional interests during the past 35 years are directly related to experiences in the discourses of various residential treatment facilities. Dr. Kavanaugh is a recipient of The Distinguished Psychologist Award from the Michigan Psychological Association and the Master Lecturer Award from the doctoral students at the University of Detroit. Currently Dr. Kavanaugh is in the private practice of psychoanalysis in Farmington Hills, Michigan: Office: 31805
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