Illusions of a Future: Psychoanalysis and the Biopolitics of Desire

286 Pages·2014·1.147 MB·English

by  Kate Schechter

ILLUSIONS OF A FUTURE
Experimental Futures:
Technological Lives,
Scientific Arts,
Anthropological Voices
A series edited by Michael M. J. Fischer
and Joseph Dumit
ILLUSIONS
FUTURE
A

F
O
psychoanalysis and the
biopolitics of desire
kate schechter
duke university press Durham & London 2014
© 2014 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States
of America on acid- free paper ∞
Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan
Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro by
Westchester Book Group
Library of Congress Cataloging-
in- Publication Data
Schechter, Kate
Illusions of a future : psychoanalysis
and the biopolitics of desire / Kate Schechter.
pages cm—(Experimental futures : technological
lives, scientifi c arts, anthropological voices)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8223-5708-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-5721-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Psychoanalysis—United States—History—
20th century. 2. Psychoanalysts—
United States. 3. Institute for
Psychoanalysis. I. Title.
II. Series: Experimental futures.
bf 173.s3279 2014
616.89'170973—dc23
2014000766
Cover art: Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Settee, 2010.
Fabric, glazed ceramic, settee, 27 × 46 × 19 inches.
Courtesy of the artist.
CONTENTS
.
Ac know ledg ments vii
.
Introduction 1
Part I. THE SLIPPERY OBJECT AND THE STICKY LIBIDO
.
1. An Imaginary of Th reat and Crisis 19
.
2. Analysis Deferred (or, the Talking Cure Talks Back) 51
Part II. THE PROBLEM OF PSYCHOANALYTIC AUTHORITY
3. Instituting Psychoanalysis in Chicago:
.
Two Pedagogies of Desire 73
4. Professionalization and Its Discontents:
.
Th e Th eory of Obedience and the Drama of “Never Splitting” 95
Part III. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE DECLENSIONS
OF VERISIMILITUDE
5. Th e Plenty of Scarcity:
.
On Crisis and Transience in the Fift y- First Ward 123
6. On Narcissism:
.
“Our Own Developmental Line” 161
. . .
Notes 189 References 221 Index 267

AC KNOW LEDG MENTS
Th ere are far too many people to thank individually, so I will have to rest
content that you each know how profoundly grateful I am for our con-
versations over the years. From the University of Chicago Department of
Anthropology, Ray Fogelson, Judy Farquhar, and Michael Silverstein have
been fi rst- rate interlocutors, providing immea sur able support, stimulation,
guidance, brilliance, and humor all along the way. Jean Comaroff , Marshall
Sahlins, Sharon Stephens, Marilyn Ivy, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, George
Stocking, Jim Fernandez, Elizabeth Povinelli, Tanya Luhrmann, Jonathan
Lear, Sarah Gehlert, and Irene Elkin have all taught me so much. Anne
Ch’ien has been a steady, silent presence throughout my writing pro cess;
thank you, Anne, for your per sis tent and searching questions about psycho-
analysis in Chicago. My colleagues from the International Psychoanalytical
Studies Or gan iz a tion, particularly Robin Deutsch, Francesco Castellet y
Ballara, and Glen Gabbard, have been superb in helping widen my per-
spective on psychoanalysis. I am grateful to Douglas Kirsner for sharing
his Chicago oral histories with me and to Paul Mosher for sharing his ex-
tensive knowledge of the American Psychoanalytic Association. My dear
friends Catherine Brennan, Lori Daane, Andy Harlem, Caitrin Lynch,
Th eresa Mah, Jane McCormack, Julia Pryce, Erika Schmidt, Laurel Spin-
del, Mary Weismantel, and Sharif Youssef have intervened in any number
of creative emergencies, buoying me up with their acuity and enthusiasm
to the very end. For the most exhilarating “book- level” conversations of
all I must of course thank my editor extraordinaire, Laura Helper- Ferris;
our collaboration has been utterly instrumental and intensely fun. Th ank
you, Ken Wissoker, both for introducing me to Laura and for your abid-
ing confi dence in this project. Finally, I am deeply beholden to my family,
without whom there would have been neither motivation nor ability to
tell this story.
My most sincere thanks go to everyone in the Chicago psychoanalytic
community who put up with my nosiness, my per sis tence, and my pe-
culiar anthropological bent over the years. I have learned so much from
each of you, and from my immersion in this community; please know
that any misunderstandings or mistakes h ere are mine alone. I will never
forget how one of the most se nior “classical” psychoanalysts I interviewed
told me (psychoanalyzing the anthropologist, to be sure!) that eventually I
would have to choose between psychoanalysis and anthropology. If that is
the case, I have not yet reached that point. Th is book exemplifi es my pas-
sion for each of these imm ensely challenging, unsettling, deeply rewarding
disciplinary enterprises, and my continuing eff ort to pose— and oppose—
them in fruitful conversation.
viii Ac know ledg ments
INTRODUCTION
“Where does she get her analytic patients?” Th e plaintiveness of Paul’s
question startled me. Paul is a respected sen ior psychoanalyst, and h ere he
was anxiously wondering aloud how his colleague was managing to sustain
a properly psychoanalytic practice in the quick- fi x, medication- centered
world of managed behavioral health that envelops them both. But it was
not the question itself that struck me—i t is one that is on everyone’s mind
in his world—s o much as the pointed anxiety that surrounded his idea,
perhaps his fantasy, that there was some “where,” some source, some place
where the patients came from, and the implication that she knew some-
thing he didn’t, she had access to something he didn’t. “She’s never sent
me a single patient in all these years,” he trailed off , implying that his col-
league was hoarding the goods. “She has a full analytic practice, you know.”
A pall fell over our discussion, one that enveloped me time and again as I
interviewed psychoanalysts about their discipline, their work, their com-
munity, and as they told me, time and again, that their profession was in
crisis—“though not for the relational people.” Whoever they were, their
situation was said to be diff erent somehow. I remembered my interview
with Paul’s “relational” colleague now, how she had told me “everything I
do—i t’s not about technique, it’s all about the relationship, the real relation-
ship. Th e analysis basically is the relationship.” Th is fi gure of the relation-
ship, the real relationship, loomed large in my interviews with psychoana-
lysts, an image of warmth and plenitude surrounded by pathos, saturated
by fear of failure and by envy of the other’s fortune. How might we under-
stand the communal elaboration of a state of precarity and crisis so steadily
attended by a pregnant sense of the plenty and presence embodied in this
idea of the real relationship?1