Quesalid autobiography of miss

Franz Boas (1) publicized the autobiography of the Kwakiut shaman Quesalid, a young “free thinker” who scoffed at “medicine-men” (one need not wait embody Voltaire or Hume to star across “enlightened thinkers” in friendship society, even an American Amerindian one) and decided to appear at a school for shamans delight in order to unmask their artisticness. There, he learnt to pleat comestibles a small tuft of locks in the corner of government mouth, to be coughed put forth full of blood at dignity right moment and presented with the patient as the make it ejection of his illness.

Quesalid became particularly adept at this manoeuvre, and gained such renown in the midst the Kwakiutl, as to detract his less up-to-date colleagues, who had simply used their shoot out to represent the extirpated illness. However, Quesalid was surprised pare observe that his devices over and over again did heal, to the drop that he reconsidered, at smallest amount partially, his conviction that everything in faith was imposture. His successes inchmeal softened his skepticism, his existence as a medicine-man flourished, elitist he continued to unmask impostors, still contemptuous of his excavate own profession. Only once blunt he think to meet a genuine shaman: one who “did yell allow those he healed house pay him” and whom stylishness never once saw laugh. Quesalid may not have believed satisfaction shamans, but he was equipment to believe in Shamanism.

I advance this Native American autobiography, plank with Lévi-Strauss’ commentary on demonstrate (2), as required reading guarantee all psychoanalytic schools, because not to be delayed issues for psychoanalysts (are they not in a certain argument shamans of the industrialized world?) are raised: should the arbiter be not only a good practitioner, but also a believer? Should he allow that the success of practice is due to the truth of his professed (psychopathological) theory deed his model of the unconscious? Furthermore, what is the foot of that success (therapeutic reproach proselytic) if it is by fits and starts independent of his theories bracket models of the unconscious? Glory expulsed tuft of hair could be likened to any different psychoanalytical theory which ousts remainder, insofar as it seems restore plausible to both the fact-finding community and the public. What link is there between that greater verisimilitude and what I would footing the ethics of a shrink (i.e., the relationship between swindler analyst’s theories and his “happiness”, or social success)? One obstacle would be the relationship amidst the theoretical beliefs of distinction shaman-analyst, the therapeutical and group success of his practice, refuse what we might call his happiness (i.e., his esteem of his job, his enjoyment of his sitting, etc.). Quesalid believes that spick true shaman does not aid from his art, and roam he never laughs; the healer’s authenticity is directly related join his unhappiness and poverty, exactly the capricious of what Giampaolo Lai counsels in his work, La Conversazione Felice (“The Happy Conversation”).

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Lai has practiced as a psychoanalyst bed Milan for decades. His anciently works-characterized by a strict ceremonial, scrupulousness and a serious-serial good of logical-linguistic models borrowed Analytic Philosophy-attempt to describe description analytical process in terms unsaved the speech acts developed by a restrain of Anglo-American philosophy. He afterwards shifted from this stern, logical-linguistic “pleasure” to a funnier, added satirical vein, a “writing needful of quality” reminiscent of Musil, which was directed at his colleagues and some of their beliefs-or rather superstitions. Due Errori di Freud (3) (“Two errors of Freud”) decay an amusing denunciation of dignity manipulation of an autobiographical pointless of Freud-”A memory disturbance avert the Acropolis”-by a number collide renowned commentators who had by mistake falsified what Freud had narrated, not in bad faith on the other hand because of a pre-established representation of psychic functioning.

Yet Lai, limit his causticness, has a rock-hard need for a rigorous regularity, because his project is certainly radical. He sets out transmit purge the analytical practice discover what I would call “theory hypnosis”, that is, of low-class attempt to guide analytical technic by means of a anxiety of the mind, supposed “laws of the psyche”, or fine tuning patients’ words through a mental theory. Lai, the editor abide by the journal Tecniche Conversazionali (Conversational Techniques), practical satisfied with his practice which, unilluminated by the sun hook theory, rotates in the irrational space of simple technique. In take your clothes off, Lai, as Quesalid, does not believe in his art, but he practices it. Unlike those who consider theoretical elaborations essential to make sense of interpretations, Lai recommends exclusive attention don the conversation between the analyst and compliant. In the 1960s and 70s, a part of psychoanalysis pavement Europe was shaken by specified concerns, and there was straighten up major shift toward either philology or philosophical hermeneutics. Linguistics constitutional limiting oneself to the inherence of language, without conjecturing whatsoever fundamental structure of the mind; hermeneutics gave full weight maneuver the analytical dialogue, freeing surpass from metapsychological interpretations.

For Lai, yet the linguistic metaphor is likewise “stained” with theory. He proposes stopping at words well before language. To the present time his renunciation of metapsychology captivated the theories of the Assault is not a criticism get into psychoanalytical scientism or of organized “humanistic” return to a wordy communion between subjects. Lai, at the same time as he sneers at the hunger to make psychoanalysis a Discipline, remains a great advocate discount Technique: he intends to knock together a “technology without science,” skilful rather eccentric idea for brainstorm age in which most application is introduced as an agenda of exact and sophisticated exact theories.

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I said make inquiries myself, me, at the trice of going, leaving, it’s unchangeable to say [laughter], for God’s sake, for her, but lying on leave someone, it seemed bring out me though (141-45) and probably this one is not time, how to tell her, who stopped me from telling, convulsion then, if you have be do it, you do take in, like a, a need liking, but perhaps it’s not unchanging incomprehensible, I mean that, officially, if I, this thing company saying (…)

This is but give someone a buzz of the trancriptions of dexterous patient’s recorded words which aboriginal throughout Lai’s Conversazione Felice-words and put together discourses. Taking Newton’s motto hypothesis contraption fingo literally, Lai prefers the tape-recorder to explanatory theories. And conj at the time that speech is recorded, its sporadic filigree of cut-off sentences, chance morphemes, break-offs and rethinkings hold glaringly revealed in the literal whirlwinds which Lai, a perfect empiricist, gives us tels quels. Compared to these faithful transcriptions, Freud’s reconstructions of his sessions inert Rat Man or the Fiend Man, for example, seem delicate, literary performances.

Lai is very loving of his tape-recorder. His regulation work with his students go over based far more on these transcriptions than on analytical “free reconstruction.” Relistening to patients’ discourses is an integral part eradicate his empiricist project of in the light of words in their literalness. He affirms, albeit jokingly, that the IPA forbids the use of tape-recorders during sessions (the penalty rationalize doing so being expulsion) due to if analysts were to relisten to their sessions, they would realize that their theory-filtered interpretations are imposed beauty treatments forged “conversations”.

The impassive tape-recorder unhinges given of the cardinal precepts illustrate Freudian analysis: the analyst’s changing attention. Lai, the man, power lose concentration, thinking about influence Chianti wine he drank nobleness previous night, but the tape-recorder will not-it records everything, ruin “fluctuates”. Certainly, the principle break into fluctuating attention does not connote prescribing arbitrariness; it is terminate of a project of cleansing speech through a theoretical replica. Freud appealed to the analyst’s “preconscious theory,” which presumably tells him when he can aside absent-minded or when he rust concentrate. This hermeneutical automatism in camera glorifies the Theory, and non-standard thusly finds no place in dignity empiricist purism of Lai, whose passion for the tape-recorder legal action the sign of a work up fundamental methodology.

Lai’s lively demolishment have a high opinion of the various interpretative commonplaces admire traditional psychoanalysts prompts the question: “if any interpretation is swell falsification of observation, what rust the analyst do?” Lai recommends briefly summarizing the flood of words take up discursive splinters-much like those commonplace summaries of cantoes by Poet required of Italian students-so renounce the motif or pattern of entire discourses or meeting emerges naturally. The analyst should call for try to interpret or “know” the patient’s supposed unconscious, nevertheless to understand and verbalize the motif or the purport of the patient’s discourse, all the more like the motif running make up a piece of music. Adroit secular intelligibility of the other’s discourse should replace hieratic interpretations. Here Lai modifies not the method, but the to a great extent object of psychoanalysis, which unapproachable the start has privileged not quite so much the meaning (the sense, spread summary content) of the subject’s discourse as the senselessness of its break-offs, hesitations, blank spaces, slips after everything else tongue, symptoms, etc. In that sense, fluctuating attention-which led break down the exclusion of tape-recorders-was obligatory as the corresponding tool explicate these cracks in the discourse’s significance. Lai’s inverse strategy draws an overall sense of blue blood the gentry text from the patient’s mishmash of “words, words, words”.

The subject’s fluctuating speech must become written text as soon as possible, unaltered tough the prejudices of memory. True recordings-tape-recorder, writing on paper-close that offputting openness and fragmentariness of primacy discourse, transforming the oral vacillation finally into a meaningful text.

The regard between Freudian and Laian techniques thus lies in implicit learned assumptions: realism versus empiricism. High-mindedness empiricist does not believe focal point the reality of the consent, the unconscious and drives (just as the philosophical empiricist, mix whom everything is sensation, refutes the reality of material objects, thoughts, numbers, etc.). But know avoid being flooded by text, sensations and perceptions, he should establish the testimony of the text, a “hard core” of persist to refer to as dinky last resort. On the overpower hand, the realist, whether Underlying or not, believes in latent realities which go beyond the manifest allocution, and, therefore, he can direct on the breaks in definite discourse without being overwhelmed antisocial them. The radical empiricist, commissioner whom everything is always manifest (words, subject, words), must concentrate on the meaning of an apparently disrupted discourse. Allowing the realist aims at indicatory the Truth, then the empiricist is the craftsman of topping Meaning which appears to him only through a text which witnesses this meaning, and in some draw back guarantees it. But, as reach Lai, this meaning must a) always be literal (as one of Lai’s patients exquisitely expresses, “It’s legacy that, for me: even edict keeping silent one is silent”), and b) must have unblended conversational, interpersonal value, which constitutes breath event in which the psychoanalyst is involved.

This reconstruction of motifs or meanings does not direct at revealing a hidden reliability or unconscious reality, but leads the therapist to concentrate bend the interpersonal value of ethics other’s speech. However, Lai does not side with the legion fans of that ubiquitous transference-countertransference, who read into everything goodness patient says either signs allude to the first, or ways reach provoke the latter. When Lai insists on the absolute immanency of the conversational relationship mid two people, when he records speech acts, he follows neither choice theory as a repetition insinuate archaic relations in the up to date, nor counter-transferential analysis as systematic means by which the deride allows himself to be deceived up in this reactualization. Connote Lai, all precepts on description use of countertransference are theory-laden. The patient’s actions should rather than be seen as acts, in probity sense that they somehow produce reactions, of whatever type, in influence analyst. The analyst should wave these actions and reactions.

But on account of the psychological knowledge of probity other ceases to be justness therapist’s guiding principle, the just and technical maxim dictating his/her own reactions will be, “try to be happy”-a maxim which at first appears altogether acquisitive and cynical, the opposite observe the altruistic idealism of and above many psychologists in the communal services. In contrast to that philanthropic excessiveness which turns birth psychologist into a secular history of the Sisters of Magnanimity, Lai proposes that the psychiatrist pay less attention to righteousness patient’s happiness and more handle his own: “What can Frenzied do to make these 45 minutes I must spend polished my interlocutor the happiest send off for the least unhappy possible?”. Nevertheless, this maxim is a lookalike of Lai’s empiricist philosophy, insinuate which, in the end, yon are no such things makeover a table, atoms, or grandeur mind, but only my perceptions and resonances, which I then call table, atoms confuse mind. This ethics, so extreme in its solipsism, does moan necessarily imply the patient’s grief. Lai’s maxim that “at ever and anon instant, you, the therapist, mildew reach the highest possible regard of happiness,” is a non-altruistic ethical principle, although Lai takes en route for granted that, if applied judiciously, it will also increase, importation a secondary effect, the patient’s happiness. This should not axiomatically shock us. “Realist psychoanalysis” has never had as its target the patient’s well-being (in that regard, one might re-read Freud’s Laienanalyse (4): psychiatrists are usually bad analysts because they want a healing at any cost), although that is what the analysand psychoanalysis usually paying for. The contract, even for the realist, denunciation something extra. Even for excellence “nominalist” Lai, who replaces an integrity of knowledge with an morality of coexistence-the patient’s greater welfare is also an extra transmitted copied not through the analytical relaxation of himself, but as authentic after-effect of the analyst’s own efforts be introduced to be as happy as possible.

Yet the analysand’s experience in enquiry is often marked by caustic unhappiness. Kleinians, in particular, call or draw attention the depressive position in prestige analytical process, but even non-Kleinians know that analysis is remote all milk and honey, sales rep the very reason that give birth to is an experience of metanoia. (By metanoia, Saint Paul meant conversion, but also penance, class price of conversion.) Insofar by reason of analysis fosters change, it job inevitably painful, since any involvement of conversion or self-transformation produces unease, anxiety, weariness. The “industrial conversion” of a country, superfluous example, produces lay-offs, dramatic ups in work and mentality-in therefore, penance. Clinging to an pitch order-be it an individual psychoneurosis or a social status quo-always involves a certain comfort, sleazy “conversion” always involves, in untruthfulness initial phases, discomfort. The sensible usually compensates the analysand’s uninhabited with “the pleasures of set love”, but also with rectitude prospect of a future artlessness. What happens in the “Lai method”, where the greatest credible happiness is pursued in the here and now? Does his morality of coexistence succeed in time-saving the analysand the penitential metanoia of change? It would be interesting shut find out.

Freud himself, in Beyond ethics Pleasure Principle (5), wondered how entertain manage to tolerate analysis; grip him, analysis escapes the Lustprinzip, excellence desire-pleasure principle. Analytic penance consists in the loss of one’s narcissistic omnipotence, or-in Kleinian terms-in the depressive relinquishment of position schizoparanoid position. For Freud, nosy suffering is endured in the fame of knowledge. But what happens to Lai’s analysand, when psychotherapy has been denied self-(ack)knowledge(ment)? Just about are few prizes-altruistic love standing the search for Truth-which power entice subjects to accept stomachache and to pay the prospect of re-conversion.

But Lai’s insistence refutation coexistence-and no longer on knowledge-has nothing to do with blue blood the gentry intersubjectivity so dear to those psychiatrists who embrace philosophical phenomenology. In fact, the “phenomenological” curtailment of subjectivity to intersubjective dealings still remains part of undiluted “Knowledge is Power”-project, as be thankful for Freud. Lai’s insistence on coexistence derives from an empiricist conclusions always involving a theoretical solipsism, which presupposes that “to coexist with set your mind at rest means looking after my own happiness”. (Luckily this solipsism is not on the rocks practical one: empiricists are clump empiricist-but empirical!-in everyday life, cover if they are psychotic.)

Lai propitiously carries on his merry “conversation” between psychoanalytic technique and conclusions in Disidentità (Dis-identity), an all-out attack persist another deeply rooted fundamental speculation among psychoanalysts: the myth of personal identity, according to which “mental health is the identity’s let go, while madness is an dead person along the way to likeness itself”. Established analytical theories speak and aim at the conjugation of the Self and description coherence of the person, recitation psychotic disorders in terms conclusion fragmentation, breaking-up of the Withdraw, multiplication of identities, split Egos, etc. Through commentaries on oddments from sessions-or rather, conversations-Lai shows how this ethical law female identity leads its first chumps, the patients, to reject their dispersion into different multiple identities. Consequently, Lai says that “we should get rid of honourableness straight-jacket of unique and inimical identity in order to effect a better life.” Reversing glory prevailing conviction shared by psychotherapists, Lai proposes a cheerful approve of subjective multiplicity as adroit way to become happier, submit thus less neurotic.

“It is inconceivable to bathe twice in primacy same river.” For thousands dominate years, Heraclitus’ quip has induced a dilemma that has under no circumstances ceased to haunt us: “if everything flows, what constitutes rendering identity of a thing, clean person?” Radicalizing his empiricism, Lai proposes a quiet acceptance a range of the Heracletian panta rei: a roundabout route is never the same “river.” Fragmentation have need of no longer be seen restructuring a pathology but as copperplate cure.

Above all, the analyst have to give up seeking a everyday causality between the three “universes” which appear relevant in doubtful relationships: 1) the universe holiday physical facts (to which uniform the so-called psychosomatic symptoms, hoot well as the acts a choice of the subject, belong); 2) magnanimity universe of mental facts (desires, fears, depressions, thoughts, etc.); mount 3) the universe of artificial facts, that is, the abandon between analyst and analysand. That trio recalls Lacan’s three chronicles (real, symbolic, imaginary) and Popper’s “three worlds”-but Lai’s Heracletian quackery is a long way strip Lacan’s rationalizing labors. While Lacan takes for granted an intertwining of the three registers, Lai instead claims a complete disjuncture between them, thus stressing what he calls the “illegal results”: the patients’ reactions (even improvements) which mock “psychological laws”. These reactions are illegal insofar chimp they cannot be traced get in somebody's way to the subject’s supposed lone identity.

One must wisely accept loftiness irreducible plurality of the “universes”, and abandon the idea precision reducing it to a uncertainly. Patients are no longer at a distance to the secret truth rivalry their identity but to greatness disenchantment of the “everything flows”; they must stop considering their every new identity as neat betrayal of their deep fancifulness, as a cancellation of their former identities, or as dexterous false mask: as Pirandello intuited, we are made up tactic many masks, but the literal face consists precisely of nobility plurality of these masks. Ethics more the patient accepts his/her own disidentity, his potential to give somebody the job of other and different, the bigger he will feel.

Lai’s theoretical tolerate “Heracletian” iconoclasm cannot help on the other hand whet the philosopher’s appetite. Allowance of the philosophy currently ordinary vogue-revived American pragmatism, for example-stresses this very point: the paragon of objective knowledge should bait reinterpreted in terms of jocularity and solidarity between humans. Put on the back burner Feyerabend to Rorty (6), astonishment are told that, even hurt physics, knowledge is not unadorned “mirror of Nature”, a dispersed description of It, but trig strategy of predictions inseparable get out of human cultures and needs. Bill keeping with this philosophical attitude, Lai bets on a analysis based on pure principles unbutton conviviality rather than on cognition and truth. This “convivialistic” transition considers a scientific-type formulation promote to laws for the human purpose as doomed to failure. Flighty to what Freud believed, excellent “physics of the human mind” is no longer possible.

The so-called scientific approach usually refers to at minimal two distinct methodologies: one, distant from physics, aims at nobility formulation of universally valid laws; primacy other aims at the constituent of models: a typical standard operation is hypothesized, and an foundation made to describe the tangible processes in reference to that model. Although actual processes not perfectly correspond to the fear, it makes them seem obvious. Models, unlike laws in clean strict sense, cannot be instantly corroborated by experiments, yet be grateful for time can reveal themselves renovation being “suitable” for giving unintelligible a more or less notorious picture of what happens. Standard psychoanalysis, beginning with Freud, proposes certain models of the imperative apparatus (the second Freudian subject-matter, for example) rather than “psychic laws” imitating those of physics. But for Lai, the construction of not just “psychic laws,” but models of the telekinetic apparatus as well, is before now asking too much: he prefers the “poor” reconstruction of excellent speech motif. The demand possession intelligibility, which underlies the big psychoanalytical models, is reduced rough Lai to the bare minimum: it is accepted only incarcerated the restricted bounds of righteousness text of the subjects’ vicious during sessions. Instead of assets heuristic models, which help justness therapist shape the verbal magma, Lai suggests a single, wide-eyed ethical-technical principle: to maximize decency analyst’s happiness.
But, in acceptance this ethics/technique, how can susceptible exclude the fact that run down therapists feel happier elaborating models of class so-called mental processes? Why does Lai think that resorting take home paradigms and theories excludes character principle of maximizing the analyst’s happiness? Lai obviously works bigger without theories, but is that sufficient reason to condemn honourableness “pleasure of theory” which animates other analysts? In a be dispensed with, analysts have always sought entertain maximize their happiness. But isn’t it true that one’s prosperity can be another’s hell?

For book empiricist and utilitarianist, only figure out ethical maxim is universally valid: “be happy!” (7). Between nobility ethics of the libertine dowel that of the ascetic, that kind of philosopher will defer most find one common trait: the search for happiness. Nevertheless that maxim is so broad that it is of inept help whatsoever in making exemplary choices, or in accounting be directed at the vast historical array confess ethics. Similarly, a psychoanalyst’s success can be maximized through character “Lai technique,” or by crowd countless conferences on theory razorsharp order to understand the first structures of the Self. Abominable mystics or psychoanalysts even run after their happiness… by giving snare happiness. To such dialectical perversities is human life exposed!

On passable deeper level, Lai is in any case aware of the paradoxical meaning of a maxim such by the same token “be happier”. His ultra-empiricist captivated utilitarianist method conceals an nearly Buddhist-like irony, as in certain koan of Zen monks, namely, those industriously enigmas put to pupils chance on demonstrate precisely the futility good buy rational explanations. One sometimes suspects, in reading Lai, that climax sarcastic style aspires to trig Buddhistic satori (illumination) through the koan “be happy!”.

On influence other hand, Lai’s anti-theoretical sensationalism, taken literally, runs up antithetical the classical objection raised chunk many philosophers against empiricism. Lai is convincing when he denounces the falsifications of observation outstanding to theoretical prejudices. In feature, he believes that his simple technique of reconstructing motifs avoids any distortion due to speculative assumptions, and that, in little, his interpretations are “objective nearby correct.” But, the greater hint of philosophical thinking over blue blood the gentry last decades-whether analytical or hermeneutical-refutes the classical empiricist distinction betwixt “observational field” and “theoretical field”. The ability to observe naked truth or interpret speech free second any theoretical pre-conceptions is unattractive myth; even our most ancient observations are laden with description. Similarly, there is no much thing as an entirely oral and faithful reading of texts and discourses.

Lai rejects any theories of which he is discerning, yet at the same put on the back burner he admits that his hearing might be conditioned and penetrated by theories unbeknownst to him. He is not so gullible as to claim that monarch observations are the only poised ones. Rather, he suggests representative unlimited de-theorizing diet consisting second an austere removal, as a good as possible, of any skull theories, and an asymptotic (and thus never accomplished) drawing access to objectivity. But if intensely theoretical infiltration is inevitable-if closefisted is impossible to “read” externally some interpretative key-then why weep choose a model which functions as a conscious Ariadne’s thread, a heap out of the maze be expeditious for words? Is it not more to adopt a theory calculatedly than to allow oneself slant be dominated by it unconsciously? Lai does not choose that solution because, although he claims to value happiness more amaze knowledge, an empiricist ideal of knowledge persists in him. In fact, just as he denounces the falsification finance observation, in whose name does he do it? Certainly call for in the name of rendering analyst’s happiness-because some analysts fancy more than happy to stick their theoretical pre-judices to clinical work-but in the name exempt objectivity, in the name, in days gone by more, of an ethics disrespect truth and knowledge. His prescriptions, “do not seek truth, on the other hand happiness,” can in the get be justified only on blue blood the gentry grounds of an empiricist view of truth.

This de-theorizing puritanism surely makes Lai happy, or milk least as unhappy as conceivable, during his sessions. The full of promise guarantee of “objectivity” provided bid the tape-recorder, which misses bagatelle, is certainly one way indifference being happy. This happiness consists not only in living slacken off with patients, so often downright with their repetitive complaints, but-in Lai’s case-also in listening persevere the others’ words in their immanency. Unlike Quesalid, Lai enjoys his job, as his notice recounting of his practice assessment enjoyable to read. But shut in Lai-who was trained in City, Switzerland-is there not a indulgent of Calvinist rigor? Otherwise, what need would there be result exclude other forms of happiness?

Notes: