110: Critical Thinking I
Instructors
April 8 – April 29, 2024
Mondays, 7:00 – 8:25 pm
Course Description
This is the first in a series of courses designed to encourage inquiry and critical thinking. The emphasis will be upon methodology, or how one’s method of inquiry delimits what one observes and the theory required to conceptualize the resulting observations, i.e. thinking through the consequences of our modes of inquiry. Both psychoanalytic and extra-analytic methods will serve as vehicles for discussion.
Course Introduction
In this course, you will be introduced to the concept of critical thinking in psychoanalysis, which involves asking the following questions: What do we know; how do we know it; and how do we know we know it? Please be aware that students who have not studied philosophy or critical thinking often find this topic bewildering when they first encounter it. Nonetheless, these questions are of vital importance for our field. We have multiple competing theories and no evidence has emerged thus far that one approach is more effective than another. There are significant practical, theoretical, and institutional barriers preventing attempts to study this question experimentally. In addition, most analysts have not been interested in this subject. Many do not realize that the way they treat patients is shaped by the implicit positions they have unwillingly taken on the questions enumerated above.
Educational Objectives
Upon completion of this course, participants should be able to:
1. Think more critically about knowledge.
2. Consider how methods delimit the data and theory obtained by their application.
3. Consider why conclusions can only be understood in the context of the method by which they are obtained.
Teaching Method
Instructor encourages class discussion, inquiry, and answers questions and lectures as needed. Class participants are expected to have studied the required readings in advance. Study questions are provided both as a guide to the readings and as a springboard for class discussion.
Evaluation Method
Each student’s participation in class discussion and his or her demonstration of understanding of the course objectives and reading material is assessed in a written evaluation by the instructor(s).
These articles are protected under relevant copyright regulations. They are available in the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute Electronic Reserve for your convenience, and for your personal use.
READINGS ARE CONFIRMED.
I. How to Read a Psychoanalytic Paper Critically
CLASS 1: April 8, 2024
In this class, we change our focus to the problem of how clinical material is presented and used in analytic papers as evidence for or demonstrations of theoretical positions. Dale Boesky is a modern conflict theorist known for his work on the therapeutic use of enactments. In this article, he describes how the omission of what he considers crucial clinical data in a series of articles and books by Casement about a frequently discussed clinical moment was ignored by almost all of the many analysts who discussed the papers about the case. (At least 25 analysts have published such discussions.) In addition, he opines that an unanalyzed enactment was also disregarded when it was inadvertently revealed in a publication 18 years after the original case material was presented. Boesky defines “contextualizing criteria” and attempts to demonstrate that the concept is useful when evaluating how different analysts conceptualize psychoanalytic data and evidence.
Questions:
- What is Boesky’s position on whether psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic or empirical discipline?
- In what ways does he feel that the clinical material provided in most psychoanalytic papers is lacking?
- What does he mean by contextualizing criteria?
REQUIRED READINGS
Boesky, D. (2005). Psychoanalytic Controversies Contextualized. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 53(3):835-863.
SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS
Bell, D. & Leite, A. (2016). Experiential Self-Understanding. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 97:305-332.
Casement, P. (1982). Some pressures on the analyst for physical contact during the re-living of early trauma. Int Rev.
Psychoanal. 9:279-286.
Casement, P. (1985). Learning from the Patient. Part I. London: Tavistock Publications.
Casement, P. (1990.) Further Learning from the Patient. Part II. London: Routledge.
Casement, P. (2003). Learning from our Mistakes: Beyond Dogma in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. New York: Guilford Press.
Hoffman, I.Z. (1983). The Patient as Interpreter of the Analyst’s Experience. Contemp. Psychoanal., 19:389-422.
Kaluzeviciute, G. and Willemsen, J. (2020). Scientific thinking Sstyles: The different ways of thinking in psychoanalytic case studies. Int. J. Psychoanal., 101:900-922.
II. The (Implicit) Dialectically Constructed Freudian Subject
CLASS 2: April 15, 2024
Thomas Ogden examines the way Freud conceptualized human subjectivity and concludes that his implicit model was dialectically constituted and decentered. We will examine what these terms mean and the clinical implications of understanding Freud’s thought in this way. If you don’t know them, please look up the following terms when you are reading so you can understand the paper:
Dialectic
Phenomenology
Positivistic (Positivism)
Hermeneutics
Ogden’s paper throws into question the view of Freud as entirely positivistic. The debate about whether psychoanalysis is a positivist or hermeneutic discipline underlies many controversies in psychoanalysis.
Please note that you can skip the penultimate section “A Postscript on Lacan” unless you have some knowledge of his work.
Questions:
- Why does Ogden call the experience of a unity of subjective experience an illusion?
- How can an idea or image be both accepted and repressed?
- Which of Ogden’s interventions in the clinical case surprising to you? How do you understand how he formulated his interpretations?
REQUIRED READINGS
Ogden, T. H. (1992). The Dialectically Constituted/decentred Subject of Psychoanalysis. I. the Freudian Subject. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 73:517-526.
SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS
Dunn, J. (1995). Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis: A Critical Review. Int. J. Psychoanal., (76):7723-738.
Ogden, T. (1992). The dialectically constituted/decentered subject of psychoanalysis. II. The contributions of Klein and Winnicott. Int. J. Psychoanal., (73):613-626.
Ogden, T. (1994). The Analytic Third: working with intersubjective clinical facts. Int. J. Psychoanal., (75):3-19.
Picchi, V. (2021). The Analytic Third. Psychoanalysts in Session: Clinical Glossary Of Contemporary Psychoanalysis 105:312-314.
III. Social Construction and Postmodernism
CLASS 3: April 29, 2024
Altman posits that “there is a pervasive if not universal human need to cope with difference and similarity by constructing in-groups and out-groups”. He specifically links racism with efforts to dominate and control which emerged from the European Enlightenment. He highlights the importance of becoming aware of one’s own inevitable racism which manifests itself in countertransference and subsequent enactment in the clinical situation.
Questions:
- Do you agree with his thesis?
- Do you see any internal tension in his argument.
- He states that no one can completely rid themselves of racism. Do you think that you personally retain any racist views?
REQUIRED READINGS
Altman, N. (2000). Black and White Thinking: A Psychoanalyst Reconsiders Race. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 10:589-605.
SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS
Bell, D. (2009). Is Truth an Illusion? Psychoanalysis and Postmodernism. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 90(2):331-345.
Portuges, S.H. (2022). Psychoanalytic Neutrality, Race, and Racism. JAPA, 70:323-334.