Healing the Soul
Books that I wish I had written ... Reviewed by Howard Covitz in JAPA maybe 20+ years ago ... Still a smashing-good book
HEALING THE SOUL IN THE AGE OF THE BRAIN: Becoming conscious in an unconscious world. By Elio Frattaroli, New York, NY: Viking Penguin, 2001, 462 pp., $25.95.
With the lion's share of copies of the Dream Book still on the publisher's shelf, Freud was moved to write popular books for the sentient layman and, thereafter, produced his much lighter (than Chapter 7 of his masterpiece) works on wit and parapraxes and, later, his two-part Introductory Lectures series. Many others, since, have tried to make the flavor of the psychoanalytic process accessible to the interested public.
Frattaroli's work follows in this tradition but is unique in the beauty of its writing and its cogent integration of a theory of treatment with compatible models for the good life and for consciousness. Healing of the Soul is further fortified with rich case material and a demonstration of countertransference struggles; a closing section discusses transference-like struggles that may arise in birthing a volume such as this one. Frattaroli presents an original analysis of Freud's battle to transcend scientifically materialist/positivist thinking and offers up a solution to Freud's dilemma. Frattaroli does so by tying Waelder's theory of multiple function with Bohr's theory of complementarity and by highlighting the distinction between Freud's early Libido model and the later and more encompassing Eros model. In a clinical centerpiece of this work (Mary's treatment), Frattaroli artistically demonstrates the manner by which the psychoanalytic enterprise comes into being as an interweaving of the processes and processing of each member of the analytic dyad and their separate but resonant feeling states. Here, he invokes Bohr's discussion of the ubiquitous presence of the scientist in the structure and conclusions of each scientific experiment. Altogether, this volume is a veritable feast for the reader; it aligns analysis with certain trends in contemporary scientific thinking and implicitly demonstrates a comfortable middleground for one and two-person psychologies.
Frattaroli's intention, beyond providing a scientific basis for analysis outside of mechanistic and materialist thinking, surrounds a fervent call for the recognition of the sanguine value, for analyst and analysand alike, of embracing the ubiquitous conflicts of life. These are seen to arise, in Frattaroli’s usage of these constructs, between the It, grounded in its biology, the I, functioning with its stereotypical patterns and repetition compulsion, and the I-that-Stands Above, which imparts a transcendent and spiritually-moral functioning to what would otherwise be animal instinct. Frattaroli convincingly argues that in choosing to take up these conflicts between the spirit and the flesh and in learning to entertain feelings and anxiety while understanding them from these three perspectives, a new form of consciousness canonically arises. This consciousness, birthed in such a triocularity, moves us to empathize and to love at least certain others as subjects in their own right. Through case material, he counterpoises this attention to conflict and feeling against the solitary use of pharmacotherapy as cure through chemistry. He shows that still and all, judiciously managed, drugs may in certain cases be necessary to allow the personal quest for the sought after synthesis of these conflicting forces that he describes.
Frattaroli's arguments may well be appropriate for the educated general public. They represent, however, a must-read for those clinicians, beginning and seasoned, who are interested in the psychoanalytic conversation. Discussion of the historical, clinical, and technical syntheses that he presents may well add to valuable dialogue; his willingness to present this work unshrouded by excessive technical language can but increase the prospects that such discussions will be fruitful. I can think of few works that have impacted me so directly and profoundly, even if my own model may differ from his.
In today's world of proliferating psychoanalytic models, it is common to pedantically pick at broad works of this ilk as if there were a singular truth revealed to the reviewer, alone; toward the end of the volume, in fact, Frattaroli openly describes his own need to quiet the penchant for being the alpha-male discussant. The singular time, however, that I shared a podium with Dr. Frattaroli (1990), I remember his being a thoughtful and respectful reviewer and recognize this attitude reflected in both his writing and his reported treatments. I will attempt to follow his lead as I briefly reflect on his work and join this conversation.
Toward the close of the volume (p. 432) more directly than earlier, perhaps, the author implies that emotional wellness includes or, perchance, centers upon a capacity for empathy with an increasing circle of others and, I should add, a related capacity for contributory membership in polities of mutual concern and interest (Covitz, 1997). Both of these psychic developments may be considered functions of the transcendent I-that-stands-above. However we conceptualize such growth (as the heir/precipitate of resolving OEdipal dilemmas or, as he argues, the result of permitting the internal expression of the three styles of apprehending consciousness to conjoin into a new consciousness), the question of what the dynamics are that permit this development from narcissism to a limited ability for accepting the subjectivity and agency of another remains a central one for both psychoanalytic theory and technique.
Here, even fervent intersubjectivists (e.g., Maroda, 1999) stop short of reasoning how, if an intersubjective posture is a necessary ingredient of health, the analyst's attitude and the unfolding transference-countertransference field are to be realigned in consonance with this altered view of health. If a common ground for psychoanalysis is seen in the methodological and technical choice to follow an expectable unfolding of a specified developmental paradigm (be it drive mediated, ego psychological, Pine/multi-focal, self psychological, or intersubjectivist) within a treatment relationship, the explication of such a paradigm is central to presenting a theory of technique. I look forward to attempts by Frattaroli and others to articulate such a superordinate developmental unfolding process with regard to this capacity for embracing and cherishing the agency of others.
Most difficult for me is the author's utilization of Bohr's complementarity in arguing for the unique appropriateness of the listening/analyzing instrument that centers upon the analyst's ability both to contain and to process his or her countertransference feelings and conflicts in coming to understand the subjectivity of another. Lindner (1955), a half a century ago in his introduction to his popular case book, while bemoaning the replacement of men by machines, included analysis as "one area where no machine, no matter how complex ... can act for its maker .... (In) the area of understanding, of sympathetic comprehension, of intimate, knowing communication between one being and another ... now and forever, only man will fathom men."
Frattaroli goes further, however, in arguing (p. 166) that "Freud's psychoanalytic method is the only legitimate scientific method for the study of human subjectivity" (emphasis added). I find this, as well as the reasoned views of others who take on any singular method for science (even one as general as Laudan's [1990] reticulated model for scientific enquiry) overly limiting, and prefer to embrace a skeptical philosophy of science (Feyerabend, 1993, perhaps) that might allow for the existence of a multiplicity of models, some comparable and some incomparable. This ubiquitous (in)comparability arises due to the everpresent influence of adopted postulates: change the presupposed axioms and a new model is born!
I offer a brief example of this unavoidable reliance on axioms. In spite of the author's call for never prejudging the meaning of therapeutic productions, in discussing Mary's case, Frattaroli does eventually gravitate to a sexual interpretation of one of her dreams; this is no surprise in any of our analytic writings (p. 262ff). Frattaroli goes on to argue, however, that an attachment paradigm would not have fit well with or accounted for the three central domains that he discusses (p. 358Ff). Attachment theorists may well see things differently.
Furthermore, the imprimatur of Bohr's paradigm is unnecessary for thinkers who embrace either Frattaroli's or other psychoanalytic viewpoints and will be unconvincing for those whose notion of science demands a more objective instrument. This is presumably the case even among scientists who accept that the investigator, who either calibrates and wields the measuring instrument or who is that measuring instrument, is inextricably involved with the results of the study.
A comment is in order on the issue of the applicability of Bohr's so-called Copenhagen School solution of the particle-wave dilemma in physics. This is all the more necessary after Sokal's (1996) lively demonstration of the potential misapplicability of such theories to the soft sciences and to critical theory.
In Bohr's solution to the particle-wave dilemma, observations cannot leave the boundaries that the observer willfully imposes on the reality that he or she observes by way of models, unless, that is, some contradictory evidence appears disqualifying the utility of that model. If the scientist, for instance, comes equipped with a view of light qua photon following wave equations, that is what will likely be supported unless this view can be demonstrated to be inconsistent (self-contradictory) or proved untenable by an alternative system that supercedes its utility in explanation and prediction (external disqualification). As this is not the case with either the photon-wave view or the particle view of light, both models have utility in spite of the fact that they may speak against each other.
It occurs to me that there are two psychoanalytic situations in which thinking about complementarity might prove beneficial. The first relates to differing models of reality espoused by a given analysand and a specific analyst; the second relates to differing models between competing schools of psychoanalysis. In both eventualities, I can imagine the embracing of Bohr's principle imparting a sense of humility and, consistent with Frattaroli’s model, the acceptance of another as a bona fide observer of reality, as a subject in his or her own right. Perhaps, beyond all theorizing, a central component of clinical analysis is the ultimate recognition by both parties, during an intimate and lengthy encounter, that, so to speak, Niels Bohr was right: neither one’s waves nor the other’s particles will ever fully represent what light or life is all about.
Lastly, let me add that I much appreciated Frattaroli's choice neither to deify nor to crucify Freud but to treat his oeuvres with careful and critical deference. While, in my own attempts at such a reasoned look at Freud, I discovered that this stopped neither the Freud bashers from crying idolatry nor the orthodox's accusation of cavalier heterodoxy, I trust that others will find in Frattaroli an evenhanded and fair-minded reframing of psychoanalytic methodology and history. Particularly pleasing, too, is the manner in which Frattaroli demonstrates Lindner's (p. xxiv, op. cit.) mandate that "the only medium employed by the analyst is the commonest instrument of all -- his own human self, utilized to the fullest in an effort to understand its fellows." No mean task for an author and no mean task for an analyst working in the trenches! Frattaroli presents analysis as a quintessentially human and humane endeavor.
Covitz , H. (1998). OEdipal Paradigms in Collision. Peter Lang Publishers, New York.
Feyerabend, P. (1993). Against Method. Verso/Norton, PA.
Laudan, L. (1990). Science and Values. University of California, CA.
Lindner, R. (1955). The Fifty Minute Hour. Rhinehart, New York.
Maroda, K. (1999). Seduction, Surrender and Transformation. Analytic Press, N.J.
Sokal, A. (1996) Transgressing the boundaries: towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity. Social Text 46/47, pp. 217-252.
_____________
Correspondence should be directed to Howard Covitz, Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies, 24 Latham Parkway, Melrose Park, PA 19027 or [email protected].