Exploring the Moral Dimensions of the Psyche with Carveth

Review of Don Carveth’s Psychoanalytic Thinking: A Dialectical Critique of Contemporary Theory and Practice (New York, NY: Routledge, 2018), ISBN 978-1138560710, 292 pages, hardcover, $140.

In Psychoanalytic Thinking: A Dialectical Critique of Contemporary Theory and Practice, Donald L. Carveth argues psychoanalysis is irreducible to poetry, science, or technical craft, but more closely approximates the collaborative journey toward deeper self-knowledge and objective truth. His extensive and eloquent critique argues analytic schools exist too much as isolated “silos,” whereas more dialectical engagement is needed between institutes and integration of theory and practice as demanded by various clinical settings.

Carveth suggests one reason for the profession’s rigidified position in thought and training is the deference given to the founding mothers and fathers of psychoanalysis and the authoritarian spell these figures still exert. For psychoanalysis to transcend its

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own developmental history—its tendencies toward splitting and intradisciplinary power struggles—it must energize a dialectical framework distinct from one based in a single principle or dualistic approach. Dialectical thinking is a three-step process, as the author describes it, whereby “an initial monism gives way to a dualistic clash of opposites, which is then transcended… in a higher-order synthesis” (104). The move beyond authoritarianism also entails a more androgynous ideal in the minds of analytic professionals.

In a key chapter, the author critiques some assumptions of self-psychology and intersubjective theory, particularly the promotion of empathetic immersion into the subjectivity of the patient. Drawing clinical examples from George Atwood and Robert Stolorow’s depictions in Faces in a Cloud: Intersubjectivity in Personality Theory (1979), Carveth examines how objective reality in the mind of the analyst becomes associated with authoritarianism, a connection that obscures the democratic uses of objectivity and its potential for evolutionary thought. He calls for an interactive engagement that goes beyond sustained empathy and includes interpretations that enhanced the patient’s capacity to evaluate reality and develop urteilskraft or “judgment power” (the capacity to judge incisively). He situates analytic strains of thought within a rich sociological and philosophical context, tracing how the idea of a fundamental unitary truth was rejected for moral relativism in scholarly critique with the onset of identity politics as well as in the 1970s as part of post-structural and postmodern theory.

A central claim of the book is that too often a sense of morality is absent in therapeutic theory and practice. Yet it constitutes an important aspect of therapeutic action. This author usefully elaborates how the values underlying psychoanalytic theory and practice have been masked by medical terminology, the language of illness and health, and Freud’s own desire that his work be viewed as a science. Although too rarely acknowledged, psychoanalysis is, at its core, “an ethical enterprise, valuing life over death, love over hate, kindness over cruelty, gratitude over envy and consciousness over unconsciousness” (Carveth, 10). Psychotherapy, as well as psychoanalysis, is more than a description of what “is.” It more crucially elaborates what a person “ought” to do and be in given situations. An “ought” cannot be derived from any “is” or an empirical observation. Maturity and meaningful growth in the field aligns with the profession coming out more vigorously with a moral sensibility. As the author sees it, the clinical encounter engenders

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mutual trust and respect that allows the analyst to confront their analysand “in ways that are not experienced as moralistic reproaches, or that cause them to attack themselves, but instead quicken and enliven their conscience” (39).

To this end, Carveth revises Freud’s structural model, expanding the superego to include two elements that Freud subsumed under it: ego-ideal and, most importantly, conscience, rooted in the innate attachment systems of all primates. “In identifying conscience with the superego, Freud made it a social product, an embodiment of the normative,” Carveth observes (45). Yet the terrain of superego is often contaminated with cultural norms of sexism, belief in white supremacy, and presumptions of homophobia. Conscience grows from identification with the nurturer and is the moral center of the individual. It gives a voice that transcends the superego and is able to judge it. This capacity of feeling and perception is basic to the development of analyst’s position and purpose, and the most essential training requirement for candidates.

Carveth further elaborates the moral dimensions of the psyche with a neo-Kleinian understanding of guilt. He distinguishes two types of guilt: persecutory and reparative, reminding us that Freud conflated the two. We need less persecutory guilt, and more of the reparative kind. This author thankfully renames Klein’s depressive stance the “reparative position.” Why is it so hard for the individual to acknowledge the wrong-doing or historical injury one group has inflicted on another so that reparation and healing can occur? One of the finest points made in these pages is that persecutory guilt defends against reparation. It protects against the narcissistic hurt that comes with acknowledging fault in oneself and prevents the individual from seizing responsibility for one’s actions. Unable to hold onto some aspect of fundamental goodness, one reverts to a self-image as all bad and becomes trapped in a paranoid-schizoid dynamic. We must instead “become conscious of our guilt without totalizing it,” urges Carveth (234). Through his insightful amplification of these guilt dynamics we are given a window into pathological grief within the clinical setting and beyond into the purview of societal groups. This understanding sheds light, for instance, on the inability to mourn in the southern United States, where attachment to the iconography of flags and monuments speaks of a Confederate nostalgia. The author helps us understand the psychological barriers that contribute to thwarted mourning and play a pivotal role in our collective regressions.

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Carveth holds that democratic socialism is the much-needed sociopolitical expression of conscience. The future of psychoanalysis, he asserts, lies in psychosocial studies and the applications of analytic ideas and practices to psychodynamics of the public sphere.

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