Offerings by Date Offerings by Location Offerings by Type NCSPP Faculty Registration & Payment CE Credits Scholarship Fund Policies			Moments from an Interview with Lew Aron, Ph.D. The following excerpts are taken from an in-depth interview with Lew Aron done by Beth Dorfman, LCSW (Dorfman, B. (2005) Psychoanalytic Perspectives: A Journal of Integration and Innovation, 2(2).) Some excerpts were abbreviated for editing purposes by Drew Tillotson and Cate Corcoran, with permission by the editors of Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Beth: At different times you have spoken about how one's choice of theory reflects who one is as a person. How do you see your theory as a reflection of yourself? But first I should probably ask, how would you define your analytic orientation? Lew: Well, how would I define my orientation? I would be glad to spell out all kinds of things about my analytic orientation, but I don't like doing is labeling it, because I find that labels like "Freudian," "relational," "interpersonal," tend to be like diagnostic labels. You can't categorize people without losing a tremendous amount of the complexity. I think that's why I'm very interested in comparative psychoanalysis, but I don't think that categorization or comparing across schools is the best way to do it. So I wouldn't want to pigeonhole myself in that way, though obviously I'm known as a relational thinker. But that doesn't really answer a whole lot, because relational thinkers are so different from each other. Beth: That's very true. Would you describe something about the way you think? Lew: Well, I would just refer people to the things I have written. But if I had to pick some of the highlights, I think that the organizing scheme that I used for my book had to do with an emphasis on mutuality but also asymmetry, and I think I would still use that as a central thread in my thinking: looking at what common links are, the commonalities between patient and analyst, without losing sight of their differences in roles and responsibilities. Beth: So we're talking about A Meeting of Minds. At least in how it spoke to me, the other thing that stands out as being very significant in your book - and your book being such a major work - is the notion authenticity. I loved the questions you raised in terms of our ability to know how authentic we can be, given the fact that we all have unconsciouses. Does authenticity still feel key for you? Lew: Yes, it does. I mean, it's a very complicated philosophical idea but I think that what psychoanalysis brings to the discussion of authenticity is what you're mentioning, which is the whole notion of the unconscious. And the way it links to what I'm talking about with mutuality and asymmetry is that you can't think about the patient's or the analyst's authenticity without recognizing that they both have unconscious aspects of their functioning, and that one of the mutual links between patient and analyst is that they both have unconsciouses, or - without reifying the idea that much of their functioning has unconscious aspects - that the analyst shares this with the patient. It's not as if we believe that just because the analyst has been analyzed, they therefore can reflect on their countertransferences as if they were transparent to themselves. They continue to have unconscious conflicts and defenses and dynamics that operate throughout an analysis. That's part of the mutual transferences, mutual resistances. Nevertheless, what the analyst does with that in not exactly the same as what the patient does with it. They have different jobs, different roles, different functions, different responsibilities . . . Beth: . . . what do you believe are the most significant theoretical issues being discussed in psychoanalysis today, and what makes these issues so pivotal in terms of theory and their impact on clinical practice? Lew: It's a difficult question, of course, because I could cover a whole range of theory, but what I'm most excited to talk about myself, to highlight one thing - I would talk about our understanding of intersubjectivity and what intersubjectivity means. There are so many different approaches to intersubjectivity, but currently I think that Jessica Benjamin's work on the Third, intersubjectivity theory, and the work I've done with her on that, is what I find the most exciting theoretical framework for new developments. Part of the work I've been recently doing is writing about the clinical implications of intersubjectivity theory, and especially, conceptualizing the Third. My work with Jessica dovetails nicely with Fonagy's work on mentalization, findings of infancy researchers, and dynamic-systems theorists. My work with Jessica is also deeply connected to what Jody Davies calls "therapeutic dissociation" and to what Bromberg calls "standing in the spaces." And the clinical implications are clear, directly applicable, and powerful. That's what I'm most stimulated by and trying to write about more. Beth: Would you elaborate on your work with Jessica on the Third? Lew: Briefly, we are trying to work out a better understanding of how dyads get stuck in complementarity where each person takes opposite sides of a conflict and then they each get bogged down, unable to free themselves from their positions or simply reversing sides but keeping the same basic structure. How do we get so locked into these positions and find ourselves unable to think our way to more flexible resolutions? This is at the heart of clinical work, impasses, stalemates, or what Ben Wolstein long ago called transference-countertransference interlocks. We are talking about how to work toward a third vortex that frees your thinking from either of the two polar-opposite perspectives. Beth: The last thing I want to ask is where you think we are going from here? What do you think is in the future for psychoanalysis, and what factors will have an impact on our profession? Lew: The recent New York Times Book Review titled one article "Psychoanalysis: Is It Science or Is It Toast?" That's the important question: Are we toast? I think not. With all of the criticisms and problems, managed care, psychopharmacology, supposed lack of empirical evidence, economic difficulties - with all of that, the bottom line is that patients want to, need to be listened to. They want a therapist that can listen to them in depth . . . that is what psychoanalysis is, that is what we offer; we listen to people in depth, over an extended period of time and with great intensity. We listen to what they say and to what they don't say; to what they say in words and to what they say through their bodies and enactments. And we listen to them by listening to ourselves, to our minds, to our reveries, and to our own bodily reactions. We listen to their life stories and to the story they live with us in the room; their past, their present, and future. We listen to what they can already know or can see about themselves, and we listen to what they can't see in themselves. Psychoanalysis is a depth psychology, which means that we listen in depth and teach our students to listen. Whatever managed care says, and whatever drugs they are given, people still want to be listened to in depth and always will. That's why there will always be people who want an analytic approach.
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