Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2006, Page 99
Vol. 2. NIH Pub. No.94-3723. Rockville, MD: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse
and Alcoholism, 1995.
Project Match Research Group. (1997). Matching alcoholism treatments to client
heterogeneity: Project MATCH Posttreatment drinking outcomes. Journal of Studies
on Alcohol, 58(1), 7-29.
Steve K. D. Eichel, Ph.D., ABPP
Madness and Evil—A Review of The Sullivanian Institute/Fourth Wall
Community: The Relationship of Radical Individualism and
Authoritarianism
Amy B. Siskind, Praeger: Westport, Connecticut, 2003. 170 pages. $62.95
I recently played, for a psychoanalytic study group of which I am a member, a comedy
sketch, recorded ages ago, in which Elaine May and Mike Nichols portray a psychoanalyst
and her patient. Having had a good laugh each of the numerous times I have listened to
this sketch over the years, I gleefully, and as I now know naively, imagined my typically
serious and scholarly group uncharacteristically doubled over, wiping tears of laughter from
their eyes, enjoying a good joke on us all. In the sketch, the patient (Nichols) informs May,
his analyst, that in the following week he will have to miss the last of his five sessions per
week, since it is Christmas Eve and he plans to be with his family that day. Instantly
shattered by the news of her patient‘s plan to desert her, May attempts to maintain her
analytic stance and mask her spiraling self-fragmentation by demanding that her patient
explore, be curious about, reflect on and associate to his need to miss his session. In the
face of his insistence that he just wants to be with his family on Christmas Eve, the analyst
begins to weep quietly, then to sob in despair, then to scream with rage. Unable to help her
recompensate, the patient quietly retreats, wishing her a Merry Christmas, as the analyst
continues to unravel. When I turned off the recording, I faced a silent group, with some
members finally confessing to a sense of excruciating anxiety while listening. There was
little further discussion. We moved on quickly to the material we had planned to discuss. In
showbiz parlance, I had bombed. Though unable to articulate at the time why the sketch
repeatedly cracks me up, I can now say that for me, it helps to laugh about the ever
present, always not fully analyzed narcissism of the psychoanalyst—that is, to laugh at it,
but not to laugh it off.
Narcissism is a problem for our patients, but it is just as much a problem for the profession
of psychoanalysis and for every psychoanalyst. It is a problem that has shadowed our
profession from the beginning, and it is a problem that our profession still struggles to
address adequately. Freud formulated his conceptualization of narcissism in 1914, and
proceeded to enact some of its more problematic aspects: he deemed himself the only
analyst not in need of an analysis by another analyst he set up a book of rules for the
analytic process, which he exempted himself from following and he marginalized innovative
followers and favored those whom he could more easily control. Authoritarian control and
suppression of dissent may have seemed, at the time, like necessary means to the crucial
end of establishing psychoanalysis as a profession, but in the long run these methods have
not proven effective. To the contrary, Balint‘s (1968) portrayal of the banishment of
Ferenczi from the analytic community as a trauma to the profession remains relevant still,
decades after he made it. Although it is increasingly more likely in our professional
publications and conferences to see rival psychoanalytic schools seeking common ground,
years of rampant factionalism and internecine power struggles, along with authoritarian,
incestuous training systems (see Levine and Reed, 2004), have substantially contributed, I
believe, to the embarrassing fact that the majority of the public no longer has a clue as to
what we mean when we say ―psychoanalysis.‖
Vol. 2. NIH Pub. No.94-3723. Rockville, MD: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse
and Alcoholism, 1995.
Project Match Research Group. (1997). Matching alcoholism treatments to client
heterogeneity: Project MATCH Posttreatment drinking outcomes. Journal of Studies
on Alcohol, 58(1), 7-29.
Steve K. D. Eichel, Ph.D., ABPP
Madness and Evil—A Review of The Sullivanian Institute/Fourth Wall
Community: The Relationship of Radical Individualism and
Authoritarianism
Amy B. Siskind, Praeger: Westport, Connecticut, 2003. 170 pages. $62.95
I recently played, for a psychoanalytic study group of which I am a member, a comedy
sketch, recorded ages ago, in which Elaine May and Mike Nichols portray a psychoanalyst
and her patient. Having had a good laugh each of the numerous times I have listened to
this sketch over the years, I gleefully, and as I now know naively, imagined my typically
serious and scholarly group uncharacteristically doubled over, wiping tears of laughter from
their eyes, enjoying a good joke on us all. In the sketch, the patient (Nichols) informs May,
his analyst, that in the following week he will have to miss the last of his five sessions per
week, since it is Christmas Eve and he plans to be with his family that day. Instantly
shattered by the news of her patient‘s plan to desert her, May attempts to maintain her
analytic stance and mask her spiraling self-fragmentation by demanding that her patient
explore, be curious about, reflect on and associate to his need to miss his session. In the
face of his insistence that he just wants to be with his family on Christmas Eve, the analyst
begins to weep quietly, then to sob in despair, then to scream with rage. Unable to help her
recompensate, the patient quietly retreats, wishing her a Merry Christmas, as the analyst
continues to unravel. When I turned off the recording, I faced a silent group, with some
members finally confessing to a sense of excruciating anxiety while listening. There was
little further discussion. We moved on quickly to the material we had planned to discuss. In
showbiz parlance, I had bombed. Though unable to articulate at the time why the sketch
repeatedly cracks me up, I can now say that for me, it helps to laugh about the ever
present, always not fully analyzed narcissism of the psychoanalyst—that is, to laugh at it,
but not to laugh it off.
Narcissism is a problem for our patients, but it is just as much a problem for the profession
of psychoanalysis and for every psychoanalyst. It is a problem that has shadowed our
profession from the beginning, and it is a problem that our profession still struggles to
address adequately. Freud formulated his conceptualization of narcissism in 1914, and
proceeded to enact some of its more problematic aspects: he deemed himself the only
analyst not in need of an analysis by another analyst he set up a book of rules for the
analytic process, which he exempted himself from following and he marginalized innovative
followers and favored those whom he could more easily control. Authoritarian control and
suppression of dissent may have seemed, at the time, like necessary means to the crucial
end of establishing psychoanalysis as a profession, but in the long run these methods have
not proven effective. To the contrary, Balint‘s (1968) portrayal of the banishment of
Ferenczi from the analytic community as a trauma to the profession remains relevant still,
decades after he made it. Although it is increasingly more likely in our professional
publications and conferences to see rival psychoanalytic schools seeking common ground,
years of rampant factionalism and internecine power struggles, along with authoritarian,
incestuous training systems (see Levine and Reed, 2004), have substantially contributed, I
believe, to the embarrassing fact that the majority of the public no longer has a clue as to
what we mean when we say ―psychoanalysis.‖
