Frank Braucci Professor Kowalski PSY101 BC3 November 10, 2011 Termination as Necessary Madness

The Reiteration

A NYU Postdoctoral Program was conducted by Dr. Sue Grand in Psychoanalysis. Revelations of this clinical study had shown Dr. Grand (2009) that an illness exists within the system of psychoanalysis. Dr. Grand found that the schizoid patients problems strongly resembled the perpetual sickness held within psychoanalysis. Intimacy, a necessity in the therapeutic process, is established, then, with termination on the horizon, it is disconnected. Dr. Grand (2009) proposed that this methodology may harbor a need-fear dilemma, an intense dependence on external objects as well as a deep dread of them, which revolves around the heart of psychoanalysis. During her therapy with David, a schizoid patient, there was a regular pattern to their appointments during the first 3 years; David was on-time with his appointments and payments. However, in the last 2 years of their 5 year therapy, David had shown something Dr. Grand (2009) called analysis interruptusa spin-off of the term coitus interruptusDavid would meet, then stop meeting for several months, and finally meet up again for a number of sessions. The patient, confounded by the analytic process, came to Dr. Grand for psychoanalysis in order to love full out. However, with psychoanalysis, loss is intrinsic with love. As Grand (2009)

stated, both she and David both aware of this paradox of analysis and David is mentioned as being perplexed by it. During the end of every session, Davids feelings of hope turn sour and end up in despair. To further demonstrate this, Grand explained (2009) that as each session was ending David would feel that I am evicting him from my mind, and my heart. David viewed this feeling of desertion as something that would determine a permanent termination of their relationship. Dr. Grand (2009) describes her treatment with David as enlivening the dead baby inside of him and threatening to kill it off as termination begins to pop its head out into the process. In other words, just when David is feeling alive, bearing the human qualities of emotion and contact, he is already in the process of being aborted of these human feelings. I believe Grand uses the term baby/infant self as an archetype of Davids way of handling human qualities, the dead infant self is, more-or-less, a sub-archetype of the infant self, Davids psychic mechanism of how he handles the negatives qualities of being human. For the first 3 years of therapy, Grand (2009) noted that David had strived for a breakthrough. He was desperate to feel and showed this by keeping her from her next patient and she noted a sense of anger brewing from David if she had taken a moment to use the bathroom. The infant self within him held feelings of pain and vengeance bubbling up for Grand. An interesting detail was when David would fight over taking his messy boots off when there was a storm. David was afraid that Dr. Grand would not love such a messy baby; it is because of this that he would not take off his dirty boots. On the surface, David thought Dr. Grand was just being rigid and stiff, but underlying this was deeper memories that stirred up sadistic fantasies.

Almost like a dog chasing its tail, David set himself up for failure. His defensive mechanisms are spectacular. He would selfishly, like a child screaming in a store for a toy, ask for affection and as soon as this affection was nearing he would completely shut down to avoid human contact. The potential for intimacy holds, in itself, the threatening punishment of loneliness. A problem that is absolute and without resolve, this is the problem with psychoanalysis. This is the paradox that puzzles David, and this is the conundrum that Dr. Grand says is the black hole that is in the heart of psychoanalysis. So how does David avoid loneliness and, subsequently, despair? He does this by severing off the precursor for loneliness, stopping the assembly line before it even starts to make anything. In her discussion of the necessity and paradox of termination, Grand (2009) had mentioned that the relationship between this dyad mirrored Davids conflicting archetype and also their patient-analyst relationship. Slochower (2006) stated that Intimacy is a hard-won and complicated achievement. When that intimacy is established, we end it. where else do we embark on closeness, knowing that closeness guarantees loss? I think the point Dr. Grand is trying to make is quite clear. Dr. Grand (2009) indulged in the idea that any skilled psychoanalyst would determine the therapeutic process, as well as its therapists, as having an attachment disorder. She even went as far as to suggest that if what we have in our practice is this disorder, isnt Davids schizoid problem a healthy defense mechanism? Why would anyone open up to intimacy knowing that it will just end up severing of the relationships umbilical cord? As Grand (2009) put it, It is a wonder that patients open themselves up at all. Dr. Grand stated (2009), For many reasons termination is both necessary and inevitable. Still, there is something crazy about the way we think about our ending. If closeness guarantees loss in psychoanalysis, we do we pathologize the

patients fear of intimacy, instead of hailing it as a healthy defense? Which one of us is mad? (p. 726) Grand has suggested (2009) that contemporary psychoanalysis has given more focus on symptomatic treatment (attachment, trauma, dissociation, etc.) and diminished emphasis on oedipal wishes, defenses, and gratifications. Grand states (2009) that in every theoretical instance, we acknowledge the relationship between the patient and analyst. Psychoanalysts put an emphasis on the fact that we, in essence, do not differentiate a real relationship from transference. Psychoanalysts look at this dyad through a multitude of self-systems and yet fail to observe it from a more honest and blunt perspective. If we stop muddying the waters and see the patient-analyst relationship in a more simplistic manner, can we really tell the difference between that of transference and a real relationship? Grand asks (2009) that we view the contradictions of the institution of psychoanalysis and perhaps, just maybe, admit our own attachment problems. It may seem as though Dr. Grand is demonizing psychoanalysis, but we can see her illuminating its positive qualities while also demonstrating a unique approach to assessing its structure. Grand states (2009) The analytic situation was a brilliant invention. It is an idyll of experience, which stands apart from all human relationships. It has remarkable healing power. She goes on further to suggest we analyze psychoanalysis as if it were a patients dream. Grand states When we analyze dreams, we honor the plasticity and the inventiveness, of the unconscious. Since the mind can invent anything while it is asleep, we allow ourselves to ask why the mind has constructed this particular set of images, here, now. Lets try turning the same methodology on ourselves. (p. 727) Grand says that the human mind had invented analysis the way it is, now of all the infinite possibilities we could come up with, why this shape? Why have

we created this specific type of analysis? Now we are viewing the structure of analysis as a dream, we can ask these questions. Grand wondered (2009) if, instead of pathologizing resistance to termination, why not embrace it as a healthy fabrication. Grand wants us to indulge in this process of thinking, to open up the possibility of the progressive and defensive functions of termination, not only to show its intra-psychic and intra-personal functions, but also its social functions. In order to ask yourself this, Grand says (2009) that we must notice the obvious. In creating psychoanalysis, we have constructed a road paved with intimacy which is cracked by fractured bonding at its foundation. We have created institutions that promote the process of ending while the training of the institutions themselves never end. We have also instilled this idea that termination is necessary to create ourselves as better people, and critiquing ourselves when failing to abide by such intimate laws. Running back to the schizoid patient, we have attained a universally unspoken achievement that the structure of psychoanalysis has attained. In the early days of psychoanalysis, we had repressed our schizoid nature as professionals, as Grand would put it (2009), we had put it in cold storage. Through our own enactments, we reveal a problem and try to repair it, all while allowing it to enter our professional consciousness. While Grand claims oedipal theory to be of extreme curative power, she also mentions it as being a fantastic Trojan horse; it conceals the practice of inviting and undoing intimacy. It shows one type of conflict while enabling and enacting another. As mentioned before, Grand had suggested that any good therapist would say we have a problem with intimacy; a longing for dependence, and the dread of dependence. Thus, here lies the need-fear dilemma. As Grand states (2009), like our patients we cherish and want hard-won adult relationships in the institution of therapy. Yet we also dread and devalue dependency as if it were

a curse, thus equating independence as maturity, stability, strength, and mastery. (Layton, 2004) Grand (2009) suggests that we should re-evaluate our views on what healthy inter-dependence is. To put it plainly, we have been made ill by this over-emphasis of independence, we have developed a schizoids need-fear dilemma. Grand cherishes the idea of extra- and post-analytic relationships. She boldly states that if it had not been for Freud having his post-analytic relationships hed have no colleagues, no pupils, no future of psychotherapy would exist as it does today. Grand (2009) also exemplifies the fact that psychotherapys forebears may have been acting out on their own attachment disorders, but they also had an understanding of the conflicting nature of that we need each other, as patient to analyst and as person to person. Grand (2009) leaves this section of thought with a lasting question, what do we do with our love from the analytic relationship, where does it go when its finished? We are left wondering what it takes to resolve this need-fear dilemma that has manifested within psychoanalysis. Should we do what Grand is implying and take Freuds approach and embrace post- and extra-analytic relationships for both personal and professional growth? Should we stagnant within our own psychological turmoil that underlies all therapists, only to exacerbate the schizoid problem we delude ourselves into believing does not exist? Maybe the truth of it all is theres no sickness and Dr. Grand is merely trying to enliven a dead baby inside all of us.

References Grand, Sue (2009) Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 19:723-733, 2009 Slochower, J. (2006) Psychoanalytic collisions. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Books. Layton, L. (2004) Whos that girl? Whos that boy? Clinical practice meets postmodern gender theory. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.