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On Difference and the “Beyond Psychotherapy” of Psychoanalytic Method: The Pivotal Issue of Free-associative Discourse as De-repressive Praxis

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Abstract

It is argued that, in the course of the history of psychoanalysis since 1914 or thereabouts, the clinical and theoretical interests of psychotherapy have occluded our comprehension of the radicality of the free-associative method that is special to psychoanalysis. Setting aside the entirety of the range of endeavors that we might call “psychotherapy,” this essay defines critically the practices of “psychoanalytically-informed therapies” and distinguishes them from Sigmund Freud’s “analysis” that is tied to the unique method by which he discovered the inherent repressiveness of self-consciousness. This thesis implies that the human psyche can neither be properly understood nor healed by theory-driven techniques that prioritize epistemological considerations. Rather the liberatory potential of psychoanalytic praxis must be grasped as an “onto-ethical discipline,” by which the ideological commitments of therapy might be subverted.

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Acknowledgement

Dr. Barratt would like to thank Erik Gann and Julia June von Trebitsch for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper and to express his appreciation for conversations he had on these topics with Jill Gentile, Anton Kris and Dominique Scarfone at the 2020 Annual Conference of the American Psychoanalytic Association, where some of these ideas were presented.

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    Barnaby B. Barratt

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Barnaby B. Barratt, PhD, DHS ABPP, Senior Researcher, WITS Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Witwatersrand; Full-time psychoanalytic practice, Johannesburg. He was previously a Training Analyst with the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and now serves as a Training Analyst with the South African Psychoanalytic Association as well as a Supervising Analyst with the Indian Psychoanalytic Society. Director of Studies at the Parkmore Institute, where he oversees the Doctorate in Psychoanalytic Studies.

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Barratt, B.B. On Difference and the “Beyond Psychotherapy” of Psychoanalytic Method: The Pivotal Issue of Free-associative Discourse as De-repressive Praxis. Am J Psychoanal 81, 27–50 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s11231-021-09283-1

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