Identity as a dialogic process
ECPP, Kiev, 09.2010 Charles Sasse
My dear Colleagues,
"To be or not to be?" is a rather simple question oppose to the identity question "who am I?".
Our own identity, the definition of ourselves, is a complex problem and complexity needs special tools in order to be defined.
The purpose of my
intervention today is to approach the identity of the psychoanalyst (a part of
our own total identity) in a holistic way, exploring the principles that guide
the ongoing construction of every identity. Identity is indeed a process
sustained by two opposite principles that constitute two extremes between which
a smooth, flexible and constant balancing is requested.
The word identity refers
to something being identical, a kind of permanency which gives us the feeling that
we can exist indefinitely through time, like a fixed marker, like an essence that
would constitutes and determines us forever as a unique human being.
On the contrary, Psychoanalysis teaches us that fixity and immobility are the victory of the Death instinct; that a fixed identity is like the words set on a gravestone!
As long as we are alive, our identity will change and evolve.
A fixed identity is
pathologic as the filiations' delirium shows when a psychotic patient cannot
bear the doubt that is necessarily linked to identity. This doubt allows the
permanent demolition and reconstruction of our identity; of course this doubt
can cause some pathologies too; neurosis is also a symptomatic attempt to solve
an identity question, the hysterical side being "am I a man or a woman?",
the obsessional side being "am I dead or alive?".
Identity is also made of
all kind of identifications and of multiple behavioral patterns that are
consciously and unconsciously at work; for example, young analysts tend to
identify and imitate their own analyst!
Our lives experiences are constantly modeling our personality and our identity. Experiences leave marks in our psychic apparatus by modifying synaptic connections. Prof. Eric Kandells' researches show that these marks are constantly being reorganized in new neuronal networks. Our memories are not permanently inscribed; they are changing and so is our identity. This brain plasticity is used in therapeutic treatment through the ability to modify, to re-associate, to link differently or to make conscious all those neuronal marks.
Plasticity explains why our brain never remains the same; why as adults we are not afraid anymore by the monsters of our childhood's nightmares; why we can adapt our behavior and act differently after an analytic treatment.
Every new experience
modifies us and our identity; and as psychoanalyst, each new session with a
patient modifies our professional identity as well.
Identity is thus resulting from an individual and dynamic process.
But we are not building our identity all by ourselves. Although our identity is felt as being intimate, inner, private, it is in fact composed, shaped, crossed from the outside by external factors.
The influence of interactions with other persons is an important factor and we know how devastating the motherly grip can be on the child's personality for instance. There are also interactions with virtual objects (like the moral principles of a dead grandfather internalized in the Superego) and of course all the socio cultural elements.
Symbolic third parties also constitute our identity.
Society gives us places
and boundaries by regulating professions, titles, marital status, or names and
the way names are transmitted from one generation to the other. And let us not
forget language and words that constitute the bricks used to build our
identity.
In short, identity is
determined by multiple factors and results from an evolving personal
integration of interpersonal experiences in a socio-cultural environment.
To handle such a complexity, rational dualism and binary logic are not useful. We must be able to take into consideration the various, changing and sometimes contradictory aspects of our identity.
The French philosopher Edgar Morin defines the dialogic as the aggregation of two or more logics in one complex entity where those logics are active in a complementary, competing and even contradictory ways.
Influenced by monotheist religions and Aristotelian's logic we are educated to separate things: the Good is separated from the Bad, if A is true, then non-A is not true, if a psychoanalyst is interested in Jung, then he cannot be Lacanian, and so on…
Chinese wisdom does not separate but rather integrate, like the Yin and the Yang principles are mixed and united, and yet opposite.
Dreams express multiple meanings and ignore the negative form. Arts can reunify opposites like in many surrealist paintings or in poetry when using oxymoron like a "black sun" or "festina lente" hurry slowly!
Freud insisted on the coexistence of Eros and Thanatos, the two opposite instincts always active together, or the coexistence of primary and secondary processes.
Dialogic applies to the
concept of identity.
It all starts with the ability of the child to differentiate himself from what is not himself and on a later stage to distinguish an external object. From that on, the human being is building an identity be trying either to be like the others or to be different.
He uses two logics; the
first is a logic of individuation where he can assert his subjectivity. It can
be by being in opposition with the wishes of others (like the baby refusing to
be fed by the mother); it can be by integrating with his own creativity and
singularity some aspects of some others. The Ego states "I exist and I am
different". The individual declares his uniqueness and singular identity,
and distinguishes himself from the others.
The second logic involved is a logic of integration. The individual is seeking a common identity within a group; the Ego states "We exist and I am like you".
This happens first in the dyadic relationship with the mother where the child wishes to be the object that his mother would wish. Then he seeks family reliance and later he searches for other groups to give him a group identity enabling him to feel protected, to be nurtured with narcissistic valorization, to receive clear answers to existential anxiety, to get means to satisfy his fantasies and many other group advantages.
For this he is willing to neglect partially or reject totally his individual identity, depending also on how much differences are tolerated by the group. Studies of Bion or René Kaës in France show that a group's cohesion is endangered by too much individuality; the more the group feels threatened and anxious, the more it will empower the group's identity and become intolerant by rejecting all what is different; just like fundamentalist groups do, or fanatic groups, or even some psychoanalytic groups...
Identity as a dialogic process means that both logics (individuation and integration) are active and that the person balances psychically from a individual identity to a group identity (and vice a versa) in a smooth and flexible way.
Therefore it implies that a person must be able to endure separation and loneliness on one hand and on the other hand endure to be swallowed up by a group.
This requires a sufficiently strong Ego capable of accepting to represent nothing for the others, to stop existing for the others, and capable to stand alone and assert his own wishes; that is what a child must sometimes do towards his parents; that is what we must help our patients to do towards us at the end of the treatment so that they can become their own therapist in the future.
The Ego must have sufficient strong boundaries not to be diluted into a group like some children may be diluted in a too close relation with the mother.
And, on the contrary,
the same Ego must be able to seek relationships with many others in many groups
(even to experience in a safe way moments of fusion in a group) and by this enlarge,
enrich and make more complex the identity.
So we all do sustain our
identity with this constant balancing between "I am myself"
(individuation logic) and "I am like the others" (integration logic).
Then what about our identity as a psychoanalyst?
While practicing, we
understand that we must sometimes be radically different to emphasize the
patient's subjectivity process, and some other times be able to mirror the
patient, be like the patient (for instance in supportive therapy with
traumatized patient or in narcissistic transferences with border-line patients).
But practice is not our matter for today. Let us focus on our own identity as
psychoanalysts.
When, why and how, can someone call himself or herself a psychoanalyst?
Jacques Lacan was quite
familiar with shocking
expressions. In 1967 he said that "the analyst gets the authorization only
from himself"!
What was the meaning of Lacan? That no title, no diploma, nobody can ever guarantee that a person is able to perform a psychoanalytical act!
"To authorize yourself" means that becoming a psychoanalyst is a decision that nobody else but you are responsible for. When you act as a psychoanalyst (for instance while giving an interpretation) no-one else but you can guarantee it is done in a proper analytical way. You are here alone facing the individuation logic and having to find your own professional style and way of practicing, and by the way you should feel free to do so.
But it is not everybody that can authorize himself!
Becoming psychoanalyst needs a full personal commitment; for instance it would unthinkable to give an ECPP certificate to someone who does not clearly ask for it…
This commitment is also a well informed commitment. "Only from himself" means indeed that the authorization can only be given by the "himself" that has been discovered after undergoing a full psychoanalytic treatment. It means that if you wish to call yourself a "psychoanalyst", you must have gone through a training analysis that enables you to be aware of who you are, and what kind of wishes and fantasies are at stake when you act as a psychoanalyst.
It is from the awareness
gained through our training analysis that we learn what psychoanalysis is and
how the Unconscious is functioning. That is why it is the essential core of the
psychoanalytic education.
This individual aspect of being a psychoanalyst must somehow always be linked to a collectivity. The integration logic must never be absent.
Seven years later Lacan explained that if the analyst gets an authorization only from himself, "it does not mean that he is the only one to decide"! Lacan added further that the authorization is given by "some others".
Who are these "some
others" Lacan was referring to?
First he was referring
to a kind of assessment procedure he invented, where a candidate analyst
expresses his wish to become analyst to two other candidates who afterwards
report to a jury of practitioners. Let me just mention that this system never
worked well, showing that the question of the wish to practice psychoanalysis
is rather tricky!
In line with the integration logic, the "some others" that Lacan was referring to, means that a psychoanalyst has to take upon himself what is called the symbolic castration which is to accept our human condition and our limitations and to enter the social world of language and exchanges.
Only a delirious person
can decide on his identity all by himself…
The "some others" involved in the authorization refers also to analytic associations, to peer reviews and naturally to supervisors (another essential part of the training).
It refers to well known theoreticians of psychoanalysis and to well established and commonly shared theories and concepts, on which we base our practice.
"Some others"
makes us aware of the socio cultural dimension of psychoanalysis and the social
role we are fulfilling. The social status of the psychoanalysts that varies not
only from one country to another, but also in time, is an important given part
of every psychoanalyst's identity.
"Symbolic
others" determine also our professional identity. It may be the legislation
applicable for practicing psychoanalysis in your country, but it is also the
analytic rules and the analytic setting which structure and regulate our
interventions and relations with our patients.
And last but not least we
should not forget that we are a psychoanalyst only when we have a patient who
strongly believes that we are indeed a psychoanalyst!
To conclude we are constantly
building our psychoanalyst's identity, balancing between the assertion of our
singularity and the sharing of our resemblances; always in an ongoing process;
always refusing to get locked in a closed definition of ourselves, and always learning
together with other colleagues how to improve our individual practice.
Dear Colleagues, as you can understand and feel, there is no simple or unique identity for a psychoanalyst; it is a rather complex matter; but complexity is not a problem, it is only a huge opportunity.
Thank you very much for
your kind attention.
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