Interpersonal psychoanalysis and the enigma of consciousness

345 Pages·2018·10.725 MB·English

by  Levenson, Edgar A., Slomowitz, Alan.

Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and the Enigma of Consciousness will be
highly engaging and readable; Levenson’s witty essayist style and original
pers pective will make it greatly appealing and accessible to undergraduate
and post graduate students of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psycho -
therapy, as well as practitioners in these fields.
Edgar A. Levenson, M.D., is Fellow Emeritus, Training, Supervisory
Analyst and Faculty at the William Alanson White Institute. He is Adjunct
Clinical Professor of Psychology at the NYU Graduate Studies Division,
Honorary Fellow at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, Honorary
Member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Life Fellow of
the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, and Distinguished Life Fellow
of the American Psychiatric Association. Winner of the 2006 Mary S.
Sigourney Award, he is author of over 110 publications, including Fallacy
of Under standing (1972), The Ambiguity of Change (1983) and The
Purloined Self (2016).
Alan Slomowitz, Ph.D., is a graduate of the William Alanson White
Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology. He is a Supervisor
of Psychotherapy at the White Institute, on the Editorial Board of
Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and the Internet Editor of the Contemporary
Psychoanalysis in Action blog. Dr. Slomowitz edited the new release of
The Purloined Self(2016) with Dr. Levenson. Dr. Slomowitz is in private
practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in New York City.
Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and
the Enigma of Consciousness
Edgar A. Levenson is a key figure in the development of interpersonal
psychoanalysis whose ideas remain influential. Interpersonal Psychoanaly-
sis and the Enigma of Consciousness builds on his previously published
work in his key areas of expertise such as interpersonal psychoanalysis,
transference and countertransference, and the philosophy of psychoanaly-
sis, and sets his ideas into contemporary context. Combining a selection
of Levenson’s own writings with extensive discussion and analysis of his
work by Stern and Slomowitz, it provides an invaluable guide to how his
most recent, mature ideas may be understood and applied by contemporary
psychoanalysts in their own practice.
This book explores how the rational algorithm of psychoanalytic
engagement and the mysterious flows of consciousness interact; this has
traditionally been thought of as dialectical, an unresolvable duality in psy -
cho analytic practice. Analysts move back and forth between the two
perspectives, rather like a gestalt leap, finding themselves listening either
to the “interpersonal” or to the “intrapsychic” in what feels like a self-state
leap. But the interpersonal is not in dialectical opposition to the intra psychic;
rather a manifestation of it, a subset. The chapters pick up from the themes
explored in The Purloined Self,shifting the emphasis from the interpersonal
field to the exploration of the enigma of the flow of con sciousness that
underlies the therapeutic process. This is not the Freudian Unconscious nor
the consciousness of awareness, but the mysterio us Jamesian matrix of
being. Any effort at influence provokes resistance and refusal by the patient.
Permitted a “working space,” the patient ultimately cures herself. How that
happens is a mystery wrapped up in the greater mys tery of unconscious
process, which in turn is wrapped into the greate st philosophical and
neurological enigma of all—the nature of consciousness.
“Much like the subject matter of this wonderful book, Edgar Levenson is an
enigma. Even though he has published for over fifty years, his work is continuously
contemporary. Even though he is the most well-known and subtle theorist of inter -
personal psychoanalysis, he is a decisive critic of theory and theorizing. Levenson
has made a truly original contribution to our understanding of psychoanalytic
process, but at the same time, he has repeatedly warned against codifying this
understanding into a specific technique of method or treatment. He has always
been our foremost student and authority on process, and much like analytic process
itself, Levenson eludes capture. He describes the ineffable nature of our work in
a way that continues to change, to evolve, never settling onto a single set of con-
cepts that might be elevated to a new orthodoxy. He challenges us to think anew,
to experience with a fresh awareness never reduced to our conceptualizations.
In this new book, we see Levenson’s work at a new level of maturity, leap-
frogging over the pervasive conundrums of our field today. Psychoanalysis across
the world is finally coming to terms with concerns raised by Levenson since the
beginning of his work. Current international interest in intersubjectivity, mutual
influence, field phenomena, the limits of understanding and the importance of
negative capacity have been continued interests for Levenson, raised in response
to the fixity of a psychoanalytic theorizing that has not taken into account the
effects of theory in process itself. This is Levenson’s purview. But in his recent
work, Levenson moves further, situating internal private experience in relation to
the intersubjective, proposing a nuanced reflection on the role of perception in
psychoanalytic process, offering as always a perspective that subtends dichotomies,
but that here also finds new integrations without ever simply settling for making
sense.
One finds a unique pleasure in the encounter with Levenson. More than any
other psychoanalyst, we read what Levenson writes, and we have an incarnation
of his presence. Reading becomes an experience with him, a process in itself. We
find ourselves shifted, in spite of ourselves, out of our familiar stance of knowing
into an experience of being, into an encounter with the ineffable, always tilted
from familiar moorings in a way that leads us to consider, and more importantly,
to experience our work afresh. This is the Levenson idiom, one that offers a rare
opportunity to play with him as he pursues psychoanalytic process and the
enigmatic nature of experience.”
—Jack Foehl, Ph.D., ABPP, Training & Supervising Analyst, Boston Psycho-
analytic Society and Institute, Supervisor and Faculty, Massachusetts Institute for
Psychoanalysis and Harvard Medical School, Associate Professor (Adjunct) NYU
Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Edgar A. Levenson
The right of Edgar A. Levenson to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Levenson, Edgar A., author. | Slomowitz, Alan., author.
Title: Interpersonal psychoanalysis and the enigma of consciousness /
Edgar A. Levenson ; edited by Alan Slomowitz.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. |
Series: Psychoanalysis in a new key book series ; 38 | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017005805| ISBN 9781138692404 (hardback : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9781138692411 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315532394
(epub) | ISBN 9781315532387 (mobipocket/kindle)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychoanalysis. | Interpersonal psychotherapy. |
Consciousness.
Classification: LCC RC504 .L483 2018 | DDC 616.89/17—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005805
ISBN: 978-1-138-69240-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-69241-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-53241-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
PSYCHOANALYSIS IN A NEW KEY BOOK SERIES
DONNEL STERN
Series Editor
When music is played in a new key, the melody does not change, but the notes that make
up the composition do: change in the context of continuity, continuity that perseveres
through change. Psychoanalysis in a New Key publishes books that share the aims psycho-
analysts have always had, but that approach them differently. The books in the series are
not expected to advance any particular theoretical agenda, although to this date most have
been written by analysts from the Interpersonal and Relational orientations.
The most important contribution of a psychoanalytic book is the communication of
something that nudges the reader’s grasp of clinical theory and practice in an unexpected
direction. Psychoanalysis in a New Key creates a deliberate focus on innovative and
unsettling clinical thinking. Because that kind of thinking is encouraged by exploration of
the sometimes surprising contributions to psychoanalysis of ideas and findings from other
fields, Psychoanalysis in a New Key particularly encourages interdisciplinary studies. Books
in the series have married psychoanalysis with dissociation, trauma theory, sociology, and
criminology. The series is open to the consideration of studies examining the relationship
between psychoanalysis and any other field—for instance, biology, literary and art criti -
cism, philosophy, systems theory, anthropology, and political theory.
But innovation also takes place within the boundaries of psychoanalysis, and
Psychoanalysis in a New Key therefore also presents work that reformulates thought and
practice without leaving the precincts of the field. Books in the series focus, for example,
on the significance of personal values in psychoanalytic practice, on the complex
interrelationship between the analyst’s clinical work and personal life, on the consequences
for the clinical situation when patient and analyst are from different cultures, and on the
need for psychoanalysts to accept the degree to which they knowingly satisfy their own
wishes during treatment hours, often to the patient’s detriment.
For a full list of all the titles in the Psychoanalysis in a New Key series, please visit the
Routledge website.
Recent titles in this series:
Vol. 39 The Voice of the Analyst: Narratives on Developing a Psychoanalytic Identity
Edited by Linda Hillman and Therese Rosenblatt
Vol. 38 Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and the Enigma of Consciousness Edgar A.
Levenson and Edited by Alan Slomowitz
Vol. 37 The Organizational Life of Psychoanalysis: Conflicts, Dilemmas, and the Future
of the ProfessionKenneth Eisold
Vol. 36 Nonlinear Psychoanalysis: Notes from Forty Years of Chaos and Complexity Theory
Robert M. Galatzer-Levy
Vol. 35 A Beholder’s Share: Essays on Winnicott and the Psychoanalytic ImaginationDodi
Goldman
Interpersonal
Psychoanalysis and the
Enigma of Consciousness
Edgar A. Levenson
Edited by Alan Slomowitz
I dedicate this book
to my father, Sacha ,
and to my mother, Celeste