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A diverse group of psychoanalysts of varying orientations came together in a rare gathering last month to test the hypothesis that "science and search engines can transcend" the organizational and theoretical divisions that often characterize the field, according to conference chair Arnold Richards, M.D.
Richards, who is the editor of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, said that the meeting, called the PEP CD-ROM Scientific Symposium (PEP is an acronym for Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing), was unique in that its genesis lay with editors of five psychoanalytic journals rather than with psychoanalytic organizations.
In addition to his journal, the sponsoring publications were Contemporary Psychoanalysis, edited by Jay Greenberg, M.D.; Psychoanalytic Quarterly, edited by Owen Renik, M.D.; the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, whose North American editor is Arnold Cooper, M.D.; and Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, edited by Albert Solnit, M.D. The conference was also sponsored by the American Psychoanalytic Association, the William Alanson White Institute, the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London, England, and Independent Psychoanalytic Societies.
The topic the organizers chose for the first symposium, held at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, was "The Seduction Hypothesis 100 Years Later: Trauma, Fantasy, and Reality Today."
Explaining the meeting's unique character in his opening remarks to the approximately 600 attendees, Richards pointed out that the journals that supplied the impetus and the individuals attending this conference "do not stand on common theoretical ground. We have Freudian, relational, interpersonal, and self psychological contributors," all of which share a common goal-"advancing psychoanalytic scholarship regardless of organizational or theoretical commitments."
The model on which the organizers agreed to search for "solid ground," he noted, was "the delineation of the historical development of core concepts" of the seduction theory.
Originating with Freud in 1896 as an explanation for hysteria symptoms, the seduction hypothesis maintains that many mentally disordered individuals are suffering the effects of childhood sexual abuse. Freud soon decided that this notion did not in fact merit the importance to which he had earlier imbued it, suggesting instead that sexual fantasies-part of patients' psychic rather than historic reality-were at the root of the symptoms his hysteric patients displayed. The hypothesis continues to exert some impact on contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice, and analysts are challenged to help patients divine fantasy from actual events in their past, particularly in treating patients who exhibit signs of having experienced traumatic events.
In synthesizing several presentations of analyses of severely traumatized patients, discussant Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., noted that through transference the analyst has to expect to become the target of the patient's trauma-related "aggression or rage." Whatever particular treatment approach the analyst chooses to help uncover the reality of a patient's trauma, he or she "must resist the temptation to form an alliance with the patient by directing all hatred and bitterness toward distant figures from the patient's past in the service of preserving the relationship with the analyst as an island of idealized and loving understanding."
Gabbard is director of the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis and a professor of psychoanalysis at the Menninger School of Psychiatry.
Other sessions delved into the current status of the seduction hypothesis in psychoanalysis and dynamic psychotherapy and explored different perspectives by analysts at work with patients whose lives are characterized by the traumas of everyday life.