The Identity of Psychoananalysis and Psychoanalyts by Arnold Richards and Arthur Lynch
Friday, April 18th, 2008THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS
Of the Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Center
329 East 62nd Street, New York, NY 10065
212-838-8044 www.aipnyc.org
SCIENTIFIC MEETING
Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 8:00 PM
THE IDENTITY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
AND PSYCHOANALYSTS
Psychoanalysis has been in a constant uninterrupted debate about its identity as a discipline and as a social institution. This paper considers the place of science in psychoanalysis, on the one hand, and the hermeneutic nature of our discipline, on the other. The aim is to articulate a typology of psychoanalytic knowledge that characterizes psychoanalysis as a form of therapy, an intellectual movement, and a theoretical system. This typology considers psychoanalysis as a thought collective that influences its members by exchanging and maintaining ideas. To a well-rounded psychoanalytic thinker or practitioner one must be able to move easily among three realms of knowledge – the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences. Each realm has its own criteria of truth and the challenge is to know when to employ which criteria.