Adolescent Psychoanalysis

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”  (Gill Scott Heron)

Chapter 12

From There to Now (cont)

Addendum

Other details of this Traditional American/Kleinian fighting can be found in the paper, “The Fisher King,” written by Bernard Bail, M.D. (http://www.holisticpsychoanalysis.com/HP/psychoanalysis-and-fisher-king.htm) I cannot attest to the accuracy of the details of his writings regarding the dealings with the American, International and a number of the individuals cited by him, although I do have a number of reasons to believe they were true. That minor reservation being kept in mind, to read this paper, for those who are interested, is to gain a much more detailed account of this time, of this sad period at the now defunct Los Angeles Institute.

However, I can attest to hypocritical portions of this paper, illustrated by  this quote from the “Fisher King.”  Candidates were hardly treated as I outlined above, in spite of the ‘talk’ in this paper.

…..”Such behavior [of the Los Angeles Institute, American Psychoanalytic Association, and International Psychoanalytic Association] gives or ought to give analysts pause to consider what goes on in analysis around the world. Are the principles of truth, virtue, and honor followed? No bodies here, yet deep scarification of the personality will always ensue from such practices. And what of the candidates who were in constant dread for four years as to whether their work would be allowed? Any analyst would know that the marks of such anxiety will not easily disappear. ….”

This particular analyst, in spite of what he writes, was one of the key Analysts who violated, repeatedly, many of the ordinary principles of which he speaks…”Are the principles of truth, virtue, and honor followed” he asked rhetorically in ‘Fisher King’. In his case, with respect to Kleinian Candidates they clearly were not. The dangers of psychoanalysts, analytic schools, etc.,  who feel they bear the ‘ultimate truth’, cannot be overestimated. This was clearly the case with Dr. Bail. He clearly felt licensed to decide which actions meet the standards of being called moral, etc. In this case, the ends justified the means.

Such practices, in the analysis of adolescents, are even more onerous. We must not lead them to think like and carry the banners of us, but try to help them to know and be themselves. As analysts, we should have no doubts about this whatsoever.  They are much more and can all obviously be easily duped.

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”  (Gill Scott Heron)

Chapter 12

From There to Now (cont)

Part 5

Meanwhile, back in the land of sugar and honey, beaches, blondes, great weather and Disneyland….. There are spotty gaps in my memory of the end of the 70’s with respect the Los Angeles Institute, the Law Suit, the movement of the Kleinians out of the Los Angeles Institute and into Reiss-Davis, etc. I actually ‘really’ finished my training analysis slightly after the move to Reiss-Davis in 1977. ( My training analysis, although very different and full of impediments from a traditional point of view, surprisingly, was extremely helpful to me.  I’m not sure what to make of that.  Perhaps the best way to conduct analysis is to take what seem to be obvious principles and add in the reverse now and then. I doubt it.)

Reiss-Davis Child Study Center was and is a well known educational and care giving program.  Reiss-Davis began its long life as a home for Jewish orphans. Obviously, it had grown and evolved since that admirable beginning. There was and is a Child Psychotherapy Training Program, which became a focus of the Kleinians.

I was given a title of “Director of Post Graduate Education” at Reiss-Davis, qualifications for which I completely lacked.  I was just grandiose enough to accept the position, although not without some ‘encouragement’. While trying to decide whether to accept this post, I was directly encouraged/instructed to take this post by my analyst.  In an ‘analytic’ session, while discussing my ambivalence about this situation, I spoke of having talked to Dr. Margolin, the titular head of this project at Reiss-Davis, about taking this job.  I was ambivalent for a variety of reasons.  Hence, I discussed my ambivalence in analytic sessions. At two points, my analyst said, “But you didn’t say yes”.  The second time did it. So I said yes.  Forget any analysis of my ambivalence.

I tried hard at this task, was exceedingly boring, organized some seminars, and made at least one very good friend. Dr. Donald Melczer, a well-known British Kleinian analyst came to Los Angeles and Reiss-Davis to conduct a series of seminars and a large number of individual supervisions.  I was distantly involved in organizing supervisions conducted by Dr. Melczer and much more deeply involved in the seminar series as was Dr. Hayes with me and the seminars. One of the many aspects of Dr. Meltzer’s visit was that of there being money to fund an honorarium for his visit. It was my job to raise the money to fund the honorarium via sales of tickets to the seminar series. That part of the project worked.  Sales were brisk.

Amongst the subjects of these seminars were to be the work of Dr. Wilfred Bion. However, as the actual presentations of these seminars by Dr. Melczer proceeded, Bion had yet to appear as a subject  well into the last seminar, much to my chagrin. Toward the end of that seminar, an attendee, having more guts than I, raised the obvious question:  “I thought you were supposed to talk about Bion?”  Melczer, in response to the questioner, then gave his ‘talk’ on Bion.  It was, charitably put, brief.  “Ah, the alpha and beta elements.” he said. That was the entire Melczer talk on Bion.  The attendees, except for me, seemed satisfied with this statement of no meaning/no content “speech”. I was horrified. If that was a ‘talk’ on or about Dr. Bion, I’d hate to hear a brief comment.

Shortly after the Melczer seminars, I was sitting at a Board meeting of the Child Psychotherapy Training Program at Reiss-Davis. This meeting turned out to be last straw.

The subject of that last, for me at least, Board meeting at Reiss-Davis was the graduation of students from the Child Psychotherapy Training Program.  For the most part, that meeting was to be perfunctory, students who had successfully completed all the courses, teaching, supervision and psychotherapy requirements were to be confirmed as graduates. And that is what happened. Well, that is until the name of student John Doe was raised.  The rapid conclusion of Dr. Isaacs’, followed very rapidly by all other Board members, but for Jane Hays and myself, was that John Doe should not graduate.  “He wasn’t suited to be a child psychotherapist”, said Dr. Isaacs.

I then set the stage for a battle royal, without conscious intent, although I was reasonably certain what would happen. I asked “why?” The answer— “his personality wasn’t satisfactory”. I continued asking questions. (I suppose by raising any questions, the absolute authority required by the senior members of this Reiss Davis group was challenged.  I had fallen outside the acceptable range of questioning, if a range for questioning even existed.)  I continued, asking about each element of this student’s training.  Had this student completed successfully all the required classes, supervisions, required psychotherapy, etc?  “Yes” I was told.  Had there been any conversations with this student about his suitability as a child therapist or about his personality and possible defects that required changes or special help. “No”, I was told.  Did he ever receive any special help in this area?  Once again the answer was “no”. This all struck me as the heighth of grandiosity, omnipotence, and unfairness.  And I made that clear to the now incensed other Board Members who were present.  Therefore, in that closed system, I was no longer a skeptic, but a heretic.  I had to go.

Shortly following the meeting I described above (literally a few days later), I telephoned my office at Reiss-Davis.  My then secretary and friend, soon to be ex-secretary, told me that the Department of Post Graduate Education had been closed the day before.  The Department no longer existed. Gone. Therefore, I was no longer Director.  There was nothing to direct.  Department and Director gone.  Then, very soon, literally a few days later, my ex-secretary and good friend, called to tell me that the Department had re-opened with a new director.  I didn’t even get the chance to be fired.  So much for the infidel.

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”  (Gill Scott Heron)

Chapter 12

From There to Now (cont)

Part 4

(Extensively Revised 2/22/09)

In the midst of the fighting, The American Psychoanalytic Association concluded that the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute needed help.  Who could argue.  Remember, however, the American Psychoanalytic was characterized to us Kleinian Candidates by Senior Kleinians, as a powerful enemy of Klein—which some or many Traditional American members certainly were. Obviously some weren’t.

The American requested that a contingent of Senior Faculty and Candidates from the Los Angeles Institute visit the Denver Institute for some help.   Somehow I was included in this group by the administration of the LA Institute, who were stridently Anti-Kleinian and fervently Pro-Traditional American.  All that being true, I shouldn’t have been picked. Nevertheless, at least one candidate (me) or more (I’m not sure), as well as a number of Senior Training Analysts, mostly Traditional Americans and a few Kleinians, traveled to the Denver Institute, ostensibly to receive help.

That meeting had a profound effect on me in spite of its beginning. At the outset of the meeting, with all of the Los Angeles contingent plus members and candidates of the Denver Institute present, was a talk by Joan Flemming, M.D., the Director of the Denver institute and esteemed member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and at that time either the sitting or past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association.  In this talk, she spoke about the fighting in the LA Institute.  She utilized her fists, banging together, as a model of the fighting in Los Angeles, how destructive it was, and how it must stop. Her fists banged together! I was chagrined.  Denver?  For this? I could bang my own fists in Los Angeles.  Those moments, however, were the end of my disappointment with the Denver meeting.

After that the attendees were given a tour of the Hospital used both as a psychiatric hospital and as the base of the Denver Institute.  I can’t remember the name of the man who took me on a tour.  He was a senior candidate.

(As a side note, one of the big issues in Los Angeles was who was and who wasn’t analyzable. The Kleinians’ view was that many more patients were analyzable than thought to be so by the Traditional group.  This issue was one of the many between the Kleinians and ‘Traditional Americans’. Therefore, as stated above, as a Kleinian, it became necessary to hide both the “very ill” patients and the Kleinian treatment they received, from the ‘Traditional Americans.’ Discovery of such by them was thought to lead to dire consequences.  This particular thought was probably true.)

On my tour in Denver I passed by a hospital room, peered in through a window in the door, and saw a patient in a locked, padded room.   This patient, additionally, was in a straight jacket and lying on the floor.  There was no furniture.  The Candidate volunteered that this was his patient.

I asked my escort what sort of treatment this patient was receiving.  Psycho-analysis was the answer. I was shocked.  “Do you have to hide this patient?”, I asked, although the physical arrangement of the hospital/institute would have made such ‘hiding’ impossible.  What did other analysts think of this case?  What about Dr. Flemming?  What did she think? He said that all of the analysts there were very supportive of him and his psycho-analytic treatment of this patient, as was his supervisor.  In Denver, they were analyzing patients that would make the “too ill” patients, according to the Traditional Americans being treated by Kleinians in Los Angeles, look like pictures of incredible mental health.

This issue of what we were arguing over in Los Angeles, analyzability, by comparison to Denver, was a joke.  Further, this woman was not the only very ill patient who was being analyzed at the Denver Institute.  “Did you have to lie to the American?” I asked.  “Would they agree that such an ill patient could be deemed analyzable?”  His answers were that “no”, he didn’t have to lie and “yes” the American had no trouble with this case.

I was both amazed and saddened.  The members and candidates didn’t fight, didn’t seem to be bothered by formulations of analyzability, or the formulations of different theoreticians in psycho-analysis.  To this day, I don’t know if they were simply victims of a loss of common sense, or that they understood more thoroughly than we in Los Angeles what analyzability meant.   The evidence pointed obviously to the latter. Most importantly, they worked together.  No “hidden” patients. No hidden treatments or interpretations.  Although I had long lamented the failure of the groups in the LA Institute to share their considerable knowledge and work together, here such a situation existed.  Apparently no lying about cases for starters.

(I should add that such a union was attempted in the 40’s by Anna Freud and Melanie Klein.  There was to be an Institute which had three parts: Freudian, Kleinian and Middle Group.  This never came to pass, apparently because both sides felt that they were so far apart that such a union would be useless. And, of course, there was the ongoing debate between Anna Freud and Melanie Klein over who was really the most Freudian. I find a great irony in this in that much of Klein’s work, although sometimes, in my view, put in a unique and difficult language, was both similar to and a clear development of the work of S. Freud. “Mourning and Melancholia” and the proceeding paper on Narcissism (Freud Standard Edition vol. X1V ) are examples. Klein’s contributions defining very early primitive defenses, the paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position were seminal. Her development of the concept of projective identification was crucial.  Although there were undoubtedly many more influences on Klein, it is difficult not to imagine her being heavily influenced by Freud, part of this influence being the above mentioned papers.  The analysis of adolescents must use the con-tributions of Freud, Klein and later Bion couldn’t be more relevant.  I should remind the reader that what I mean by the latter statement, is the appropriate use of the work of these great thinkers)

The last great benefit from this meeting for me was that I became a fast friend of Dr. Flemming.  During this Denver meeting I made an appointment with her to discuss what I had seen.  How could what I had seen exist?  And what about the American?  It was clear immediately that I could talk to her about each of these questions and I asked a great deal more.  We talked of the American, their standards, the fighting in Los Angeles, the apparent absence of fighting in Denver, etc.  She was a great person.

We wrote back to each other fairly frequently and talked on the phone occasionally.  I could talk to her about issues. I think one of the things that attracted me to her so much was that she was a revered member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and could and would talk about most anything and wasn’t constricted at all by the “isms” that littered the landscape.   If she were an example of the American, it clearly was different and better than I had believed.  I don’t know if she was.  Sadly, she died some years ago.