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Poetics, pragmatics, schematics, andthe psychoanalysis-research dialogue(Rift)Golan Shahar a ba Department of Psychology , Ben-Gurion University of the Negev ,Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israelb Department of Psychiatry , Yale University School of Medicine ,New HavenPublished online: 24 Nov 2010.

To cite this article: Golan Shahar (2010) Poetics, pragmatics, schematics, and thepsychoanalysis-research dialogue (Rift), Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 24:4, 315-328, DOI:10.1080/02668734.2010.513544

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Poetics, pragmatics, schematics, and the psychoanalysis-research dialogue (Rift)

Golan Shahar*

Department of Psychology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105,Israel; Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven

In this paper I propose a conceptual platform for a constructive dialoguebetween psychoanalysis and empirical research, and away from the riftbetween the two. Predicated upon existential philosophy, psychology, andpsychoanalysis, this platform is based on a realization that any clinicalencounter is ‘spoken’ through three languages: Pragmatics, poetics, andschematics. Pragmatics pertains to the language of everyday occurrences in-the-world (‘I fought with my wife last night’). Poetics is used by the(psychoanalytic) therapeutic community, as well as by therapeutic dyads, tocapture, often metaphorically, the enormity of the human situation (‘he ragedagainst his wife’s refusal to serve as a selfobject’). Schematics refers to thelanguage of hypothesis testing, inductive and deductive reasoning, andempirical science (‘this marital dynamic activates the patient’s narcissisticvulnerability, leading to agitated depression and possibly to suicidality. Ishould assess risk’). All three languages are crucial to the clinical endeavour.Psychoanalysis, broadly defined, is the therapeutic school best suited forspeaking the three.

Keywords: pragmatics; poetics; schematics; psychoanalysis; research

Definitions

Pragmatics: ‘The theory of interpersonal relations lays great stress on the method of

participant observation, and relegates data obtained by other methods to, at most, a

secondary importance’ (Sullivan, 1953, p. 380).

Poetics: ‘A great deal of what goes on in an analysis that is “a going concern”

(to use Winnicott’s apt phrase) is in the form of analyst and analysand creatively

and unself-consciously playing a verbal squiggle game with spontaneously

invented or newly discovered metaphors’ (Ogden, 1997a, p. 723).

Schematics: ‘The therapeutic goal with both anaclitic and introjective

patients, thus, is essentially the same: to enable them to develop and integrate

increasingly mature levels of both interpersonal relatedness and self-definition.

Anaclitic and introjective patients, however, approach this goal from somewhat

different perspectives and directions, as expressed in divergent initial focal

concerns and differing types of transference and countertransference enactments

ISSN 0266-8734 print/ISSN 1474-9734 online

q 2010 The Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the NHS

DOI: 10.1080/02668734.2010.513544

http://www.informaworld.com

*Email: shaharg@bgu.ac.il

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Vol. 24, No. 4, December 2010, 315–328

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in the treatment process – enactments that derive from very different early life-

experiences’ (Blatt, 2008, pp. 279–280).

Introduction

About a year and a half ago I arranged for seven of my doctoral students to attend

a (considerably expensive) psychoanalytic conference on memory. Although I

could not attend, I was extremely curious about the students’ reactions. These

students were all engaged in intense, psychoanalytically-informed, clinical

psychology internships at the same time as they were struggling with highly

quantitative research dissertations in personality and psychopathology. The very

nature of the students’ training, echoing my own, had brought to the fore endless

discussions in my laboratory as to the complexity, fragility, and (im)possibility of

a dialogue between psychoanalysis and empirical research. I therefore surmised

that students’ reactions would be quite informative.

My hypothesis was confirmed. All students were happy to attend the

conference, were very impressed with the various presentations, and came back

exuberant with ideas, insights, and newly-formed interpersonal ties. Nevertheless,

they were baffled. With the exception of two research presentations, all panels and

talks were oblivious to research findings, including voluminous research on

memory, the focus of this conference. I felt validated by my students’ mixture of

fascination and attraction (seduction?) to this marvellous world of psychoanalytic

conceptions and ideas, alongside their alienation in the face of a total absence of

scientific discourse. One student, in particular, raised a poignant question. This

young woman was in an advanced stage of clinical internship working with

seriously disturbed young adults suffering from psychosis and borderline

personality disorder. ‘Attending the conference’, she said, ‘was like reading a very

long poem. It has been evocative and beautiful, but right now I am not sure how it

might help me deal with my patients’ everyday struggles’.

While I have no doubt that this conference, as well as many other

psychoanalytic conferences, can and will help this student to treat highly disturbed

individuals, I do believe that her comment went to the core of a very profound

problem marring psychoanalytic discourse, which I label the dissociation between

pragmatics, poetics, and schematics. Specifically, I see this student as voicing

frustration over the disconnect between (1) our inquiry into patients’ daily,

sometimes mundane, struggles in-the-world (‘pragmatics’), (2) our ability to make

sense, often metaphorically, for ourselves and our patients, of the enormity of the

human situation (‘poetics’), and (3) our readiness to utilize judiciously, in clinical

practice, findings emanating from empirical science (‘schematics’). Such

disconnect, I submit, is understandable, because the domains, or better yet,

languages, of pragmatics, poetics, and schematics are very different in tone.

However, I submit that they are all crucial to the delivery of effective mental health

services, and that psychoanalysis, as an intellectual corpus, is singularly well

suited for the synchronous use of all three languages.

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Pragmatics, poetics, and schematics: Languages spoken in three clinical

states

My point of departure is existential philosophy, which, as argued by many,

should serve as the overarching philosophical (metapsychological) umbrella of

psychoanalytic theory and practice (Kohut, 1985; May, 1958; Stolorow &

Atwood, 1992; Strenger, 1991, In press). Specifically, I am drawn to a central

existential tenet which highlights the ‘locomotive’, or goal-directed (teleological)

nature of the person. As in previous publications (Shahar, In press), I am quoting

from Cooper’s (1990) treatise on existentialism:

The same, you might say, is true of objects like acorns or clouds. But the differenceis supposed to be this: At any given point in an acorn’s career, it is possible to givean exhaustive description of it in terms of the properties – colour, molecularstructure, etc. – which belong to it at that moment. But no complete account can begiven of a human being without reference to what he is in the process of becoming –without reference, that is, to the projects and intentions which he is on the way torealizing, and in terms of which sense is made of his present condition. AsHeidegger puts it, the human being is always ‘ahead of himself’, always unterwegs(‘on the way’) (Cooper, 1990, p. 3; italics in the original).

Becoming entails projecting one’s possible self into the future, and pursuing it in

action (Shahar, 2004, In press; Shahar & Davidson, 2009). To use a Heiddegerian

term, becoming is expressed via being-in-the-world (Binswanger, 1958; May,

1958), namely via person-context exchanges (Cervone, Shadel, & Jencius, 2001),

which are postulated to serve as an essential characteristic of all living organisms

(Lewontin, 2000). For human beings in particular, whose brain is endowed with

pre-frontal executive functions enabling (propelling) planning and complex

decision-making (Adolphs, 2003; Amati & Shallice, 2007), such person-context

exchanges are both highly subjective (i.e. self-related), and intimately social

(Brothers, 1990; Dunbar, 1998). Hence, self-in-relation, a term which, in my

opinion, is philosophically tantamount to being-in-the-world, albeit psycholo-

gically more accessible, appears to be the basic unit of (psycho)analysis: People

become what they might within interpersonal matrices (Mitchell, 1995). Perhaps

Agent-In-Relationships (AIR) is an even better term, because it appreciates the

teleological, goal-directed nature of human subjectivity. As I argued elsewhere

(Shahar, 2004), to become what they might, people ‘use’ each other, in the

Winnicotian sense (Winnicott, 1971), both within and outside psychotherapy.

This view of the person as fundamentally teleological, or ‘locomotive’, is

supported by recent personality research which focuses on goals, life tasks, and

personal projects (see Austin & Vancouver, 1996, for review). While this line of

enquiry does not pay enough respect to the unconscious, it is not incompatible with

it. Thus, in her treatise on the interface between Action Theory and psychoanalysis,

Adriana Harris argues that Action Theory, namely, the theoretical perspective

according to which individuals actively shape their social environment, ‘is a radical

and important shift in its insistence on seeing and describing a human subject who

passionately and persistently produces and coproduces his or her life experiences’

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(p. 197; for an extensive discussion of action theory, see Davidson & Shahar, 2007;

Shahar, 2001, 2004, 2006; Shahar & Davidson, 2009; Shahar, Cross, & Henrich,

2004). However, she also points out that ‘it is both ironic and moving to contemplate

the development of action theory in a contemporary climate in which people

experience a loss of control, a sense of cultural and political forces moving beyond

the intent and management of individuals’ (p. 197). Harris addresses this schism by

locating action (i.e. individuals’ impact on their environment) in the context of

multiple levels of consciousness, thereby arguing that it is both meaningful and

unconscious. Her clinical illustrations, which influenced my own work (Shahar,

2004; Shahar et al., 2004), attest to the impact of painful early experiences, forged in

the context of parent–child relationships, on life decisions and ‘personal projects’

(Little, 1999) formed later in life, leading to a rigid lifestyle that generates

interpersonal risk (Wachtel, 1994).

It therefore follows that an intense, psychotherapeutic enquiry into

individuals’ daily unfolding enables an appreciation of their conscious, and

more importantly unconscious, goals, projects, and their particular attempt to

create themselves (Shahar et al., 2004). From an interpersonal-psychoanalytic

point of view, such an enquiry allows the understanding of the answer to William

Alanson White’s question: ‘what is the patient trying to do?’ (Sullivan, 1924,

cited by Blechner, 1999). This interpersonal enquiry, described at lengths by

interpersonal psychoanalysts such as Levenson (1991), Buechler (2004, 2008),

and Blechner (1999), with its down-to-earth, close attention to daily unfolding,

pertains to what I label as the language of pragmatics.

My selection of the label ‘pragmatics’ to highlight the importance of

enquiring about daily unfolding is intended as a triple pun. As is well known,

pragmatics is also a subfield within linguistics which focuses on the social-

interpersonal context of linguistic communication, with a particular sensitivity

to speakers’ intention, and the political (power-related) underpinnings of the

interaction (J.L. Austin, 1975; Levinson, 1983; Mey, 1993). Moreover,

philosophical pragmatism, particularly the neo-classic version influenced by

William James and John Dewey (Dewey, 1929; James, 1908; see also Haack,

1993), focuses on the intentional underpinnings and practical consequences of

knowledge. Put simplistically, from a philosophically pragmatistic point of view,

a proposition or a theory is valid if it is useful, namely, if it solves problems in

the world. Thus, the convergence of pragmatics as a (1) psychotherapeutic

(interpersonal-psychoanalytic) enquiry into daily unfolding, (2) a subfield of

linguistics studying the intentional and contextual underpinnings of language,

and (3) a philosophical position highlighting the practical validity of propositions

and theories, elucidates the multifaceted nature of being pragmatic with patients

in-their-world.1

Being pragmatic, however, is not enough. While a detailed enquiry into

patients’ daily unfolding constitutes an avenue to the drama of their inner worlds,

it falls short of capturing their drama. Patients come to therapy in pain. Their

suffering is invariably, as well as intimately, tied to the enormity of the human

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situation, that is, to issues of life versus death, unity versus separation, freedom

versus destiny, and meaning-making versus emptiness (Bolas, 1989; Mann, 1973;

May, 1958; Strenger, 2004, In press; Stolorow & Atwood, 1992; Yalom, 1980).

It takes much more than making sense of daily unfolding to assist patients

in locating themselves within their-world. Patients need an overarching

conceptualization of their particular place within the human situation, their

stance in the face of throwness,2 their submission to, or rebellion against, the

vicissitudes of life, which are often traumatic, and are – more often than not –

implicated in their plight. Talking to patients about such enormity requires – not

only a broad-based, philosophically-minded understanding – but also a soul. It

necessitates a language that, in addition to being wise, is also evocative and

emotive. It requires poetics.

I use (Winnicottianly) the term poetics to denote a language spoken by patient,

therapist, and the therapeutic dyad, in an attempt to capture, emotively and

evocatively, the enormity of the human situation and its particular uniqueness for

the patient. Poetics, in both literature and psychotherapy, is based on music and

metaphors, sound and song. It not only tells. It does. More than lecturing about life, it

creates a life of its own, which then has the capacity to transform experience.

Many notable psychoanalytic constructs are essentially poetic. Take, for

instance, the following very well-known terms: Projective identification (Ogden,

1982), transitional space (Winnicott, 1971), and selfobject (Kohut & Wolf, 1978).

The first, projective identification, captures the fact that mental pain is so great, that it

cannot be contained (another poetic term, Bion, 1970) by a single person, and has to

involve at least another person’s sharing and absorbing this pain. One might, of

course, replace projective identification with a more neutral, perhaps scientific, term

such as ‘interpersonal distress regulation’. This might even be advisable. However,

there is something in the music of the term ‘projective identification’ that carries

within it the ferocity of injecting one’s pain into significant others, and this enables us

therapists to feel the process, in addition to understanding it. The term selfobject

poetically conveys the impossibility of being alone. By virtue of our being infants,

we all need to subjugate another person to our needs, so as to enable us to become.

Kohut’s wonderfully un-hyphenated term not only lectures about such needs, but

also creates awareness to these needs through the sound and tone of this expression.

Finally, ‘transitional space’ is a powerful metaphor enabling the experience of the

tension between reality and fantasy, as well as the importance of bearing – rather

than resolving – such a tension.

Of course, we do not say to our patients ‘projective identification’, ‘selfobject’,

or ‘transitional space’. We sing these terms to ourselves. They help us to make

sense of our patients’ plight, as it is enacted, powerfully, outside, but also within,

the therapeutic relationship. To illustrate, by thinking in terms of projective

identification about my patient’s attempt to evoke my frustration and rage, I am

able to experience his/her own frustration and rage, and to bear in mind, bear

witness (Ullman, 2006), to the circumstances leading him/her to become

hopelessly frustrated and full of rage. I am then able, perhaps with a little bit of help

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from my friends, to tolerate the patient. Put differently, poems help us to tolerate

reality.

Moreover, poems voice subjects and subjectivities. Ogden’s ingenious work

elucidates the way in which a poetic reading of analysand-analyst exchanges,

including analysts’ reveries, enables a deeper appreciation of what it is like to be

this patient, in this particular time, with this analyst (Ogden, 1997a, 1997b, 1998,

1999; see also Amir, 2008, for a discussion of the lyrical nature of the mind).

He writes

Analysts and analysands largely rely on indirect (symbolic) methods ofcommunicating (primarily through the use of language) to convey something ofwhat they are feeling to the other. In attempting to use words in this way, the patientis not so much telling the analyst what he feels as showing him and telling himthrough his use of language what he feels like and what he imagines the analyst feelslike (Ogden, 1997a, p. 721, italics in the original).

Also,

I believe that there is an important interesting overlap between the question ‘what isit like to read this poem?’ and the question ‘what is it like to be with this patient?’(Ogden, 1997b, pp. 3–4).

Elsewhere

In reading a poem, there are two voices acting upon one another, the voice of thespeaker in the poem and the voice of the reader experiencing and saying the poem. . . No two readers of a poem will create the same voice.

Similarly, in an analytic setting, analyst and analysand together generate conditionsin which each speaks with a voice arising from the unconscious conjunction of thetwo individuals (Ogden, 1998, p. 443).

And finally (for now)

I believe that the unspoken and the unspeakable are present (sometimes in theirabsence) in the language that is spoken, in the manner in which it is spoken, in thesounds of the words and sentences, in the feelings elicited in the listener, and (in theanalytic setting) in the behavior and bodily sensations that accompany what is beingsaid (Ogden, 1999, p. 989).

This Ogdanian view of the therapeutic power of poetics and metaphor is

surprisingly (or not) tallied to recent neuropsychological research using advanced

technologies such as Functional MRI and Event Related Potential (ERP). Such

research indicates that metaphors are cognitively processed in distinct brain areas

and involve distinct patterns of connectivity (Arzouan, Goldstein, & Faust, 2007a,

2007b; Mashal, Faust, & Handler, 2005), particularly in the right homologue of

the Wernicke’s area (Mashal et al., 2005), suggesting that metaphorical language

fulfills a distinct cognitive-emotional, but also communicative, function.

Collaboration is currently underway between these research groups and others

(including my own) in an attempt to examine the links between this pattern of

cognitive processing on the one hand, and key processes in psychopathology and

psychotherapy on the other hand.

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What I wish to emphasize at this point is that a detailed interpersonal enquiry

into patients’ daily unfolding, spoken through the language of

pragmatics, is complementary to, or augmenting of, the use of a poetic language

in psychotherapy. I am learning this throughout my work with dangerously

depressed adolescents and young adults, with whom I am labouring to make

sense of suicidal, self-mutilating, and violent behaviour.

Upon coming back from a one-week visit abroad, I learned that an extremely

suicidal patient of mine had made a deep cut to her knee. Such information,

revealed during the session following my return, led the patient to express serious

suicidal impulses, in turn propelling us to go to the emergency room together.

Subsequently, we spent session after session enquiring in detail about the

interpersonal antecedents of her cutting behaviour. Only after many sessions did

we realize that her cutting emanated in the context of hours of surfing the internet,

endlessly ruminating over the prospect of emailing me and telling me about her

depression.

My reveries, transpiring after this detailed interpersonal inquiry, went to the

multiple meanings of the Hebrew phrase ‘To cut’ (Lachtoch). In contemporary

Hebrew slang, Lachtoch is used to denote a bravado-like form of interpersonal

disengagement, a heroic statement of one’s self-reliance. Its use is frequently

accompanied by an energetic, Mediterranean waving of one’s hand in a way that

cannot be expressed in print. ‘Lachtoch’ is often tied to making tough decisions

about interpersonal traps. ‘Ata tzarich lachtoch’ (‘you need to cut’) someone

might say to a friend, in an attempt to convince him or her to end a problematic

relationship. My reveries further took me to the dialectics involving such bravado

on the one hand, and the dependency it conceals on the other hand (‘cutting the

umbilical cord’). Such reveries, in turn, have led to appreciation of my own

anxieties about cutting the umbilical cord with this patient; my attempts to

increase the frequency of the sessions, my apprehension about going abroad

again; my efforts to involve her family as a holding environment – for both the

patient and myself – in the face of depressive bouts. What I find remarkable

about all this is how the Hebrew word Lachtoch amalgamates the dialectics

between, on the one hand, strong dependency needs and anxieties, and, on the

other hand, the drastic defensive measures resurrected against these longings, and

how this dialectics is tied to societal norms and myths (e.g. the Israeli myth of

power and independence). Sometimes a knife is more than just a knife.

With my dangerously depressed patient, I am also learning to take schematics

very seriously. What is schematics? I construe it as the language pertaining to

clinical empirical science, particularly to those findings which are comprehensive

(as opposed to rudimentary), clinically relevant (in contrast to those tangential),

and robust and replicable (as opposed to transient). In my work, I make a

concentrated effort to locate patients’ depressive presentation within extant

depression research. Intimately tied to the above clinical illustration is my use of

Blatt’s theory and research focusing on anaclitic and introjective depression

(Blatt, 2004, 2008). As shown by Blatt and his colleagues, the depression of

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anaclitic, dependent patients evolves around feelings of loneliness and object

loss (such as that of the patient mentioned above), whereas that of introjective

patients centres around feelings of guilt and self-criticism. The two types of

patients appear to benefit from different therapeutic modalities, with introjective

patients needing more time and patience, possibly because they have a hard time

trusting their therapist (Shahar, 2001). These are also the kind of patients most

prone to suicidality (Fazza, 2003), necessitating the need for an evidence-based

suicide risk assessment (Joiner, Walker, Rudd, & Jobes, 1999). Cognizant of

findings as to introjective patients’ tendency to derail interpersonal relationships

both within and outside treatment (Shahar, 2006; Shahar, Blatt, Zuroff, Krupnick,

& Sotsky, 2004), I expect a tumultuous therapeutic course with these individuals,

and am on the lookout for strong counter-transferential reactions (Shahar, 2004).

I use such schematics as an external envelope of the therapeutic exchange,

directing my attention to questions and considerations, enabling me to enter the

exchange ‘with memory and desire’, but hopefully without rigidity. For me,

schematics is another voice, perhaps an ‘analytic fourth’, which I spend time

listening to, not in lieu, but in addition to, a pragmatic enquiry and a poetic

sensitivity. What I am trying to say is this: Consulting research, particularly when

working with severe psychopathology, is necessary. It is far from being sufficient.

Recent discussions I have had with psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic

psychotherapists have taught me a great deal about their reluctance to speak

schematics, and, by extension, on the rift between psychoanalysis and empirical

research. Sordidly, psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists are

neither trained in empirical research nor versed in its cumulative findings. In

principle this is easy to rectify. A more serious problem, however, is the fact that

psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists are reluctant to speak

science (schematics), because such a language is experienced by them as

incompatible with pragmatics and poetics.

Put differently, it is possible that many of the objections voiced by the

psychoanalytic community to the possible impact of empirical research on their

practice is a refusal to speak a language that is not only considered to be foreign,

but is also suspected in attempting to silence other, well spoken languages. This is

how I read objections such as ‘science is reductionist, it does not capture the

complexity of the human situation’, or ‘findings from empirical research pertain

to an abstraction, but I have to deal with this particular patient’, or ‘some things

cannot, nor should they be, quantified’.

The problem with such objections is that they are right. Science is indeed

reductionist and cannot capture the complexity of the human situation. Empirical

findings, particularly those emanating from experimental and developmental

psychopathology, and from psychotherapy research, do indeed deal with

abstractions, or groups of people (‘depressed patients’). It is indeed very difficult,

perhaps temporarily impossible, to define and measure all key psychodynamic

constructs, such as transitional space. Nevertheless, these objections focus on

science’s limitations, instead of its potential benefits. Does it really matter that

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evidence-based suicide risk assessment is reductionist and deals with abstractions

and groups of people if it might help me to prevent the death of this particular

patient? Similarly, findings attesting to the poor response of introjective, self-

critical, depressed patients to brief forms of treatment, including Cognitive

Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT, e.g. Blatt &

Zuroff, 2005), might not fit the nth self-critical patient, who might benefit from

CBT or IPT. Nevertheless, the accumulation of evidence regarding ‘such patient’

justifies a research-based decision to wait, take a deep breath, and offer an open-

ended, exploratory treatment (Layne, Porcerelli, & Shahar, 2006; Shahar, 2001,

2004).

From these aforementioned discussions with analysts and psychoanalytic

psychotherapists, I am learning that, once they are convinced that schematics is

not out to take over, but rather offers itself as but one language out of several,

their receptiveness to empirical science increases and their curiosity evokes.

Thinking of science as a language might help. It speaks to the fact that (1) clinical

situations are complex, (2) the clinical encounter is multi-voiced, and (3) speaking

with different voices requires numerous languages.

Why is psychoanalysis most suitable for the integration of pragmatics,

poetics, and schematics? Implications to the psychoanalysis-research rift

Far from being an intellectual historian, I answer the above question as follows:

Psychoanalysis is most suitable for the integration of pragmatics, poetics, and

schematics because it has always spoken these languages. As suggested by

Govrin (2004), Freud, and his followers, have always sought to bridge scientific

empiricism and positivism (schematics) with a deep and comprehensive view of

the human situation, informed by disciplines such as mythology, philosophy,

history, and anthropology (poetics). In my view, psychoanalysis has done so

because it is singularly ambitious: It seeks to understand the total person as she is

wrapped by historical, cultural, developmental, narrative, and biological forces.

At the same time, psychoanalysis, from its outset, has always sought to be

clinically relevant, namely, to alleviate people’s psychopathology. It has

therefore always attempted to be pragmatic.

I know of no other psychological approach which is so comprehensive. So it

is of little wonder that psychoanalysis produced work impacting detailed clinical

practice (Sullivan, 1953), philosophy, poetry, and cultural studies (Chodorow,

1989; Schaffer, 1976), as well as empirical clinical psychology and neuroscience

(Blatt, 2004; Emde, 1988; Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002), including

work aimed at bridging hermeneutics and empirical science (Luyten, Blatt, &

Corveleyn, 2006). In this sense, because it has always attempted to speak the

three languages, psychoanalysis is – in my very biased opinion – the

psychological approach most suitable for dealing with suffering individuals.

There is, however, a very serious problem of proportion. Too little schematics

is spoken in psychoanalytic training, theory, and clinical practice. This problem,

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which always existed in our midst, is now taking a very pernicious shape due to

numerous socio-cultural eventualities impacting international health care. I will

not repeat a poignant analysis of the problem which has already been made by

some of our finest forces (Fonagy, 2010, also as interviewed by Jurist, 2010;

Kernberg, 2006), but will only note that these eventualities are occurring at a

rapid pace, and are here to stay. Our pace of accommodating to the problem has

been fatally lacking. Nevertheless, I am optimistic, partly because of the

emergence of a scientific force within psychoanalysis, to which this Special Issue

now gives a special voice. My aim here is to conclude by noting several possible

implications of a successful incorporation of schematics into the psychoanalytic

discourse.

If schematics is successfully implemented, then:

. Psychoanalytic training will include mandatory classes focusing – not on

‘psychoanalytic research’ – but on neuroscience, research methodology,

developmental and experimental psychopathology, and evidence-based

psychotherapy, including its limitations (see Blechner, 2009, for a step in

this direction).

. Psychoanalytic institutes and programmes will be linked with academia,

not only with the humanities, but also with departments of psychology and

medical schools (for an illustration that this is already taking place, see the

link between the Anna Freud Centre and University College London, or the

ties between the Yale Child Study Center and the Western-New-England

Psychoanalytic Institute).

. Interns and trainees will be encouraged to tie their clinical work to extant

theory in philosophy and cultural studies, as well as in neuroscience and

psychological science, and their graduating exams and papers will reflect

such integration.

. Psychotherapy research teams will include practising psychoanalytic

clinicians, who will make sure that an extensive use of pragmatics and

poetics impacts schematics.

. Psychoanalytic conferences will include individuals from schematic

disciplines such as neuroscience, molecular biology, developmental and

social psychology, etc., as well as representatives of the cognitive-

behavioural and family-systems worlds.

These, and other possible developments, will reflect an articulate, self-

confident, psychoanalysis which speaks with three voices (pragmatics, poetics,

and schematics), bridges across people and disciplines, and benevolently

enlightens the mental health field.

I recently had a telephone conversation with a psychoanalytic writer I admire.

He said, in pain: ‘Its over. Psychoanalysis is dying’. I replied ‘It will be over five

minutes after the human soul dies, namely, never’. To survive, however, the

human soul’s three languages must be heard and replied to.

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Acknowledgements

Parts of this paper were presented on March 7, 2009 at the Joseph Sandler ResearchConference of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA; Geothe University ofFrankfurt, Germany), sponsored by the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt.

I would like to thank Guina Cohen for her editorial comments, as well as the followingpeople for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript (in alphabetical order):Dana Amir, Emanuel Berman, Shachaf Bitan, Sid Blatt, Sandra Buechler, Alan Flashman,Aner Govrin, Orr Spivak, Carlo Strenger, and Chana Ullman. Special thanks to Sid Blattfor teaching me to speak schematics.

Notes

1. Some readers might question my linking philosophical existentialism on the one hand,with interpersonal psychoanalysis and philosophical pragmatism on the other hand. Iam aware that this is an unusual integration (Buechler, personal communication,27/12/2009), but I am sticking to it, because I deem the Heiddegerian notion of in-the-world as a profoundly pragmatist notion. Although an elaborated defence of myposition lies outside the scope of this paper, see Shahar (In press) for a similar positionused to interpret Harry Stack Sullivan’s interpersonal-psychoanalytic theory.

2. Throwness (Geworfenheit) is a powerful term coined by Heiddeger to denote the factthat human beings arrive into the world with neither prior experience/knowledge, norwith innate means to master the biological, historical, social, and cultural conditions towhich they are born, and which are going to make a formidable impact on their lives.

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