Ira Moses, PhD, has authored an academic paper titled ‘Wrestling with Reductionism in Cultural and Racial Analytic Discourse‘ in the journal, Contemporary Psychoanalysis. In it he makes the case that the classic technique of interpersonal inquiry used in psychoanalysis might operate as a means of preventing the analyst from overprivileging the patient’s social/cultural context.
Moses’ paper is an important contribution at a time when the gate keepers guarding the academic publishing world block the publication of critiques of the political/social turn in therapy. The author’s paper with its considered appraisal of the value of traditional time-honoured methods reads like a breath of fresh air. Here at CTA, we can only hope that other papers will follow which place value on the cumulative wisdom, knowledge and expertise bequeathed by previous generations of clinicians.
Moses’ paper should be on the reading list for all trainee therapists – a neccesary corrective to the reductionism which currently plagues the field. See the abstract below.
Abstract
Developing a respectful inquiry with our patients will reveal that there is not a simple chain of causation between their race or culture and their personality problems or symptomatology. In addition to the patient’s lifelong experiences with racism and bigotry, factors such as parental milieu, education, economic security, and degree of religious adherence, are major determinative factors in psychic and personality development. Against the pressure of our current socio-political environment, which has awakened the influence of these often-overlooked variables, the analyst must strive to guard against any a priori assumptions based on the patient’s membership in any of these categories. Therapists who share a similar background or identity as their patient should be cautious about over-identifying or assuming they have an increased likelihood of understanding the patient. Such assumptions of similarity may be countertransference wishes that might interfere with analytic inquiry. The interpersonal technique of inquiry will be suggested as one path toward discovering the patient’s unique individuality as a counterpoint to the therapist’s tendency to generalize.
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