The Limits of Dialogue
In the rockfall of criticism that has fallen about my head in recent weeks, few critics have been keen to establish dialogue. Proclamations have been issued from afar, outrage expressed as if it brooks no disagreement, and peremptory demands made to me and my colleagues. Since many of the complainants were psychoanalysts I can only assume that, like Freud, they understand that dialogue can be vastly overrated.
I arrived at the same conclusion myself, many years ago, after reading a socio-linguistic analysis of 'conversation'. Apparantly there are rules: 'Rule 1. One person speaks at a time. Rule 2. The participants to the conversation take turns'. This was certainly not the case in my house, where everyone shouted at the same time and you had to develop the technique of listening to about three different arguments at once. Such early training has no doubt held me in good stead in the past few weeks.
In the context of the 'Arab-Israeli conflict' controversy, the rules themselves become the problem. One person says one thing and then the next person says something else. One says 'Arafat did X' and the other person says 'Sharon did Y' - so the participants in 'dialogue' go round and round vying for the luxury of who's suffered more. In that way the dialogue repeats in symbolic form the tit-for-tat cycle of killing and revenge that has so far proved an unpromising path to peace. Better than real killing but perhaps equally pointless.
The next stage in dialogue might be that each participant undertakes to be self reflexive. That is what some of my correspondents were asking me to do - search my soul for underlying feelings of anti-semitism, for instance, that may have fuelled my writing. In this way one is supposed to arrive at a more rational viewpoint. Through searching the soul one can eliminate the chaff of emotional bias and be left with the wheat of rational argument. This indeed complicates and enriches the dialogic form; now there is an internal dialogue that acts as a counterweight to the combative interpersonal dialogue. At the very least one would expect a more flexible attitude and ability to compromise. Yet introspection has limits, and our capacity for self deception seems limitless. As Freud put it: "It has not been possible to demonstrate ... that the human intellect has a particularly fine flair for the truth or that the human mind shows any special inclination for recognizing the truth." ('Moses and Monotheism" 1939)
The third stage might be what we could call an 'interpenetration of minds', putting yourself in the other person's shoes. I suppose the simple word is 'empathy', but that doesn't quite get to it. Many of my interlocuters, in their 'identification with the victim' (see 'Moral Outrage') described the plight of the Jewish people in graphic terms. Few recognised that their descriptions might have applied, without change, to the Palestinians. In other words, they know how the Palestinians feel, but were unable to use this knowledge to enrich their understanding. 'Empathy' enriches dialogue, but also has limitations. Seeing things from another person's restricted and often self-serving point of view might only give an illusion of greater understanding.
It has sometimes been said that psychoanalysis itself should be based on 'dialogue', and even as a 'dialogue between equals'.
Freud would not agree with this. There is a rule to analysis that defines it - say everything that comes into your head. The attempt at free association undermines dialogue and 'relationship' in the ordinary sense, and the patient is no more equal to the therapist than he is to his despised infantile self that comes to haunt him when the rule is adhered to. The plea for equality misunderstands the radical nature of Freud's discovery.
In contrast to this view, Christopher Bollas in his brilliant new book 'Free Association' (published by Icon books) argues for a strictly Freudian model. In free association, one might say, the structure of dialogue reaches its zenith.
He writes:
"Although he did not 'discover' free association, Freud's invention of the psychoanalytical session gave this ordinary way of thinking a highly privileged and utilitarian space. Most importantly, by asking the person to think out loud, he referred the monologic nature of solitary inner speech to the dialogic structure of a two-person relation, a partnership we might term the Freudian Pair."
This form of dialogue generates unconscious communication. "It is a very remarkable thing" wrote Freud in 1915, "that the Ucs of one human being can react upon that of another without passing through the Cs". Each person in such a potential dialogue becomes a different person to himself, through the other. Each submits to the other and yet takes responsibility for his side of the equation. This is the way we can have a dialogue with Freud, or with the memory of a dead parent - and why it can be so powerfully transforming for us. This, I suppose, is how a religious person has a dialogue with God.
Whether we can use Freud's remarkable discovery in order to talk to each other, only time will tell.
Freud Today | Education Page