The Organizational Life of Psychoanalysis: Conflicts, Dilemmas, and the Future of the Profession

279 Pages·2017·6.287 MB·English

by  Kenneth Eisold

i
The Organizational Life of

Psychoanalysis
The Organizational Life of Psychoanalysis is a wide- ranging explora-
tion and examination of the organizational conflicts and dilemmas that
have troubled psychoanalysis since its inception. Kenneth Eisold pro-
vides a unique, detailed, and closely reasoned account of the systems
needed to carry out the tasks of training, quality control, community
building, and relationships with the larger professional community. He
explores how the freedom to innovate and explore can be sustained in
a context where the culture has insisted on certain standards being set
and enforced, standards that have little to do with providing effective
pathways to cure.
Each chapter in this collection addresses a specific dilemma faced by
the profession, including:
• Who is to be in charge of training and who will determine those
who succeed the existing leadership?
• Which theories and practices are to be approved and which pro-
scribed and censored?
• How is the competition with alternative methods, including psy-
chotherapy informed by psychoanalysis, to be managed?
Several chapters are devoted to exploring the reciprocal influence of
Freudian psychoanalysis and Jungian analytical psychology. Others
explore the specific dilemmas and difficulties affecting the field cur-
rently, stemming from the massive restructuring of the health care
industry and the changes affecting all professions, as they are reshaped
into massive organizations no longer marked by personal relationships
and individual control.
ii
The Organizational Life of Psychoanalysis will be essential read-
ing for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and anyone
interested in the future of psychoanalysis as a profession. It will appeal
greatly to anyone who has assumed full or partial responsibility for the
management of a psychoanalytic institute or association.
Kenneth Eisold is a practicing psychoanalyst, as well as an organiza-
tional consultant, who has written extensively on the psychodynamics
of large systems as well as on the organizational dimension of psycho-
analysis and continues to advise and coach. He is Past President of the
International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations as
well as former Director of the Organizational Program at The William
Alanson White Institute, where he trained consultants in working psy-
chodynamically with organizations. He is a Fellow of the A. K. Rice
Institute.
iii
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 psychoanalysts
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 clini-
cal thinking. Because that kind of thinking is encouraged by explo-
ration 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, sociol-
ogy, and criminology. The series is open to the consideration of stud-
ies examining the relationship between psychoanalysis and any other
field – for instance, biology, literary and art criticism, philosophy, sys-
tems theory, anthropology, and political theory.
But innovation also takes place within the boundaries of psycho-
analysis, and Psychoanalysis in a New Key therefore also presents
work that reformulates thought and practice without leaving the pre-
cincts of the field. Books in the series focus, for example, on the signifi-
cance of personal values in psychoanalytic practice, on the complex
iv
interrelationship between the analyst’s clinical work and personal life,
on the consequences for the clinical situation when patient and ana-
lyst 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. 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 Profession Kenneth 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
Imagination Dodi Goldman
Vol. 34 The Interpersonal Perspective in Psychoanalysis, 1960s– 1990s:
Rethinking Transference and Countertransference Edited by Donnel B. Stern
and Irwin Hirsch
v
The Organizational Life

of Psychoanalysis
Conflicts, Dilemmas, and the Future
of the Profession
Kenneth Eisold
vi
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 Kenneth Eisold
The right of Kenneth Eisold 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: Eisold, Kenneth, author.
Title: The organizational life of psychoanalysis : conflicts, dilemmas,
and the future of the profession / Kenneth Eisold.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; NewYork, NY : Routledge, [2018] |
Series: Psychoanalysis in a new key book series ; 37 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017003079 | ISBN 9781138229198 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781138229204 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315390062 (epub) |
ISBN 9781315390055 (mobipocket/kindle)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychoanalysis–History. | Psychiatry–History. |
Psychotherapy–History.
Classification: LCC BF173.E549 2018 | DDC 150.19/5–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003079
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 22919- 8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 22920- 4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 315- 39008- 6 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Out of House Publishing
vii
Contents

Foreword by Jay Greenberg ix
Acknowledgments xiv
Introduction 1

PART ONE
Psychoanalytic History 3

1 Freud as Leader: The Early Years of the Viennese Society 5

2 The Splitting of the New York Psychoanalytic Society
and the Construction of Psychoanalytic Authority 32

3 Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: A Long and
Troubled Relationship 55

PART TWO
Organizational Analysis 83

4 The Intolerance of Diversity in Psychoanalytic Institutes 85

5 Psychoanalytic Training: The “Faculty System” 111

6 Institutional Conflicts in Jungian Analysis 130

7 Jung, Jungians, and Psychoanalysis 152
viii
viii Contents
PART THREE
Problems of Professionalization 179

8 Psychoanalysis as a Profession: Past Failures and
Future Possibilities 181

9 The Erosion of Our Profession 210

10 Succeeding at Succession: The Myth of Orestes 225

11 Psychoanalytic Training: Then and Now, The Heroic
Age, and the Domestic Era 241

Index 258
ix
Foreword

Jay Greenberg

The conceptual structure of every intellectual discipline is shaped
by the organizational structures within which ideas emerge, develop,
and find either acceptance or rejection. This is perhaps even more
true of psychoanalysis than of other disciplines, because psycho-
analysis began – explosively – with the work of one man who sought
to cure illness by challenging the most cherished beliefs of the culture
that was in large part responsible for creating illness in the first place.
From the very beginning of his clinical work and of the theory- build-
ing that emerged from it, Freud was aware of both the power and
the fragility of what he was creating; if his work was to have endur-
ing influence it would have to be protected from the many dangers
that threatened it. And he was also aware that this was beyond the
reach of any one leader, no matter how brilliant or charismatic. If
his insights were to survive, others would have to be recruited to the
cause and organizations would have to be built that would advance
its purposes.
As a field of study, psychoanalysis is well equipped to explore the
relationships among the ideas that define a discipline, the people who
commit their professional lives to the development of those ideas, the
organizations that authorize, reward, and punish those practitioners,
all within the larger culture within which all this is embedded. The
essential goal of psychoanalysis, after all, is to dissect the desires and
the fears that shape our behavior and experience and the structures –
personal and social – that we create to deal with them. However, there
are not many psychoanalysts who have the expertise that is needed to
implement this project, or the breadth and depth of understanding