Abstract
This slim volume is in two parts. The first reproduces a debate between André Green and Robert Wallerstein, which initially appeared in print elsewhere, while the second is the proceedings of a second debate between the same André Green and Daniel Stern, which took place (was staged?) in London in September 1999.
Reading this book put me in mind of the times when tribes at war sent out their champions in single-handed combat, with the victor claiming victory for the entire tribe – and the vanquished, of course, conceding on behalf of the other tribe.
André Green is an undoubted champion of psychoanalysis in pure culture – the psychoanalysis of desire and sexuality. Robert Wallerstein has championed psychoanalytic research in its many forms for many decades, while Daniel Stern represents modern day infant research of the developmental kind – albeit claiming a firm psychoanalytic perspective.
Wallerstein, in this book, is meant to soften up the heavy-weight champion Green, prior to the main bout with Stern – and then, in the discussion, a few other combatants climb into the ring to try to land a few blows for themselves. Although I use this pugilistic metaphor, it is evident that Green and Wallerstein respect one another and both are extremely gentlemanly in their approach to the other's contributions. Green and Stern are polite (and it is well-known that Green does not regard this as essential in defending his beloved psychoanalysis) but their views are so far apart that any attempt at mutual respect would be a sham.
The bouts are introduced by a balanced contribution, outlining the history of the differences represented by Green and Stern, from the historian of psychoanalysis, Riccardo Steiner.
What are they fighting about or for? Green defends the psychoanalytic method of enquiry defined by him as ‘the specific mental state that inhabits the psychoanalyst during his or her work and thinking’. Those who know what he means by this will agree with most of his arguments. Green even fears that some (many?) trained psychoanalysts do not have an adequate feel for what he means and has a swipe at some members of his own tribe by dubbing these as having had ‘screen trainings’ – as in ‘screen memories’. But then, he would not want them in his tribe anyway.
Green claims that empirical research as represented by Wallerstein is barely in the same domain of human experience and endeavour as ‘pure’ psychoanalysis. Even more scathing is his attack on anyone failing to distinguish ‘the infantile’ from ‘the infant’. He sees Stern's research and the tribe which he represents as important enough in its own right, but of no relevance to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.
Green is a well known explicator of Freud's notion of nachträglichkeit which in French is rendered as après coup. This involves the reworking of memories in the light of later experience and the influence of desire in revising the nature of experienced experience. Desire is, for Green, to be distinguished from motivation and intention. Because of nachträglichkeit and desire more than anything else, present day memory cannot be taken to accurately represent the real events of the past. Green insists that psychoanalysis concerns itself with the infantile in the adult and that this only indirectly – if at all – connects with the actual experience of the infant.
There is a serious confusion of terms at places throughout the book, for example, ‘infant observation’ in the psychoanalytic tradition as taught by Esther Bick and now an integral part of psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic training in many centres around the world is not the same as observational studies of infants as undertaken by infant researchers. Sometimes one gets the feeling that all observations of infants are under attack from Green, yet only the kind where the analytic observing state-of-mind is absent is what he deplores as incomplete and inadequate in appreciating the infant's mental states.
Further, ‘research’ is a term which covers a number of different kinds of endeavour. Surely, the fruits of Freud's efforts themselves qualify as fruits of research, in that new knowledge and understandings were accrued. Empirical studies which set out to assess outcomes and processes are also research, as are experimental studies which seek to confirm or disconfirm certain psychoanalytic concepts (e.g. the existence or otherwise of unconscious processes).
Green has little time for any of these, asserting – with Freud – that all the evidence one could need to be convinced about psychoanalysis and its tenets is there for anyone who wants (or perhaps, is able) to see or feel.
On these grounds, the title of the book Clinical and observational psychoanalytic research might perhaps more accurately have been Clinical
To be fair, Stern accepts Green's insistence that observational research can only be of indirect relevance to psychoanalysis. Stern emphasizes that his intention in his research is to foster attempts to imagine the internal representational world of infants while conducting his researches according to accepted scientific rules. Stern in fact concludes by offering a rapprochement and even a cooperative effort between the two tribes. Green wants nothing of it.
Those who enjoy the intellectual cut-and-thrust of this kind of debate will probably enjoy this book, despite its variability in rigour at times. Green is the more spectacular and aggressive pugilist, while Stern weaves and parries in his attempts to defend his position. Neither lands any knockout blows, but, even though I am a firm supporter of research both in and around psychoanalysis and of infant research as it can inform psychoanalytic thinking, I would consider that Green narrowly wins this debate on points.