Critical review
by
Olivier Charnoz
Psychoanalysis as an evolutionary process
Phase transition, self-organization and self-observation
Complexity, wholeness and agency
Stanley R. Palombo has written an impressive
monograph that proposes a convincing reformulation of psychoanalytic theory as
a branch of natural science which, as such, has to "advance along with the
rest of the scientific world". Palombo's basic aim is to update psychoanalytic
thinking with some of the latest and most heuristic concepts that are currently
giving birth to a new scientific paradigm - largely informed by complexity and
modern evolutionary theories.
Among the crucial questions that Palombo takes up
through his ambitious approach, are the following. What do the patient and the
analyst actually do in an
analysis ? How can we account for the 'vicissitudes' of the analytic
process itself, with its sudden advances following long periods of apparent
stasis ? What is the analyst role in this ?
We will highlight the concepts Palombo borrows from
the various bodies of modern knowledge and try to stress their clinical
significance.
Modern evolutionary theory has put to the fore the
idea of self-organization in the lives of individuals and species.
Self-organization is thought of as an adaptive response to a change in the
environment. On this basis, evolutionary theory has expanded from its
biological base to become the science of change in complex adaptive
systems(CASs). In this view, all living individuals are CASs. The Universe
itself is an evolving self-organized system engaged in an open-ended process of
complexification.
Common properties of complex systems are similar at
all scale.
It is this crucial belief that pushes Palombo to look at the psychoanalytic
treatment as an evolutionary process involving two CASs, namely the patient and
the analyst. It is important to see that the therapeutic relationship is a
system itself, or better said, an ecosystem formed by tow CASs.
Palombo's central claim is that adaptive changes in the patient, which is the
goal of the psychoanalytic process, result from the coevolution of the
therapeutic dyad. In other words, the interaction between patient and analyst
promotes self-organization of the patient's psyche by providing a unique
environment to which the latter has to adapt.
Modern evolutionary theory equates increased level
of adaptation of a given system with a higher and more complex inner
organization. Consequently Palombo claims that improvements in the functioning
of the patient emerge when his ego moves to a higher level of organization.
Palombo stresses the self organizing properties of
ideas and feelings that make up the content of the patient's mind. The
psychoanalytic process does not, ex
nihilo, inject order into the latter, but fosters and stimulates its
self-organizing properties. The reaching of a higher level of organization in
the patient ego happens in a hierarchical series of phase transitions.
Small aggregates become organized first and are then organized in larger and
larger units and patterns. This occurs in an asynchronous fashion that gives
rise to non-linear changes.
Non linear properties of CASs have been stressed
upon by modern evolutionary theory, which has largely left aside the
traditional Darwinian 'gradualism' as the overriding principle of evolution.
For instance the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium (Eldredge and Gould, 1972) suggests
that specie evolution swings from short period of rapid change to much longer
periods of stasis. Similarly, Palombo stresses that a long accumulation of
small unremarkable changes within the patient's psyche interact within him to
suddenly produce a large and obvious change in his adaptation. This non
linear hierarchical process works, as Palombo rightly emphasizes, "from
the bottom up" - by sand-like aggregation of micro reorganizations
that eventually entail a macro one.
Evolution of the patient can thus be likened to a
succession of phase transitions involving jumps from lower to higher
degrees of organization. The patient is a slightly different person after each
phase transitional reorganization. Analytic treatment is a process of unfolding
inner change driven by the mutual adaptation of the patient and the analyst.
In Palombo's view, self-organization and spontaneous
order within the patient's mind have been the most significant "missing
ingredients" in psychoanalytic theory. The role of the analyst in this
ecosystem is to modify the patient's mental environment by bringing in new
ideas that are selected on the basis of their associative power. New ideas
foster inner and spontaneous reorganization of mental processes. As Palombo
puts it, the activity of the analyst is a "process enhancing
intervention"(73). The analyst is
a catalyst.
Thus, it is clear that Palombo proposes an
alternative understanding of how Psychoanalysis cures. Let us recall that Freud
explained therapeutic change as the result of a controlled release of damned up
psychic energy. Palombo alternative view is that the therapeutic effect comes
instead from the reorganization of experiences, feelings and beliefs into new
and more complex systems.
Modern biologists use the idea of phase transition
to refer to abrupt changes of organization with the emergence of new properties
in complex systems. For instance the biochemist Morowitz (1992) argues that
three distinct phases of molecular evolution were required before the first
cell could form. Physicists also use this concept to describe non linear
changes in complex systems. Palombo refers to Michio Kaku (1994), an important
contributor to the superstring theory, who studies self-organizing events at
individual and social scales as 'phase transitions'. Kaku sees the
developmental phases of childhood as well as political and social processes, as
phase transitions. This gives an idea of the ambition that modern scientists
have for the emergent paradigm.
Palombo underlines that the concept of phase
transition, as a critical moment in the evolution of organizations, "makes
the origin of life integral to the evolution of life" : development of
increasingly complex structures is a normal process in the natural world. It is
the very strength of Palombo's thesis that it makes the human psyche part of
nature as a whole, thus taking its distance from Descartes' dualism - that
deeply influenced some post-Freudian schools of psychoanalysis. In this view,
the process of change in psychoanalytic treatment shares its basic features
with all other kind of progressive change in nature. Self-organized behavior is
a basic property of the material world according to the new scientific
consensus : its occurrence in psychoanalysis is nothing surprising.
Complexity and simplicity are linked in a dialectic
fashion. Indeed, as Gell-Mann warns (1994), complexity theoreticians should not
neglect the simplifying aspects of emergent organizations. The key to
understand this puzzling notion is that higher level of complexity makes
possible higher integration and therefore unity. Wholeness implies a
certain kind of simplicity.
In this line, psychoanalysis aims at bringing about the
emergence of wholeness in a person who is internally divided or
conflicted. As Palombo puts it : "the gain in the organizational power of
the patient's psyche that gives psychoanalysis its therapeutic value is due to
the integration of the new structures that emerge in the analysis" (87).
As he also suggests a person who is well put together is better described as a
'whole person' rather than as a 'simple person'.
The adaptive value of increased wholeness is seen by
Palombo as an evident claim made by evolutionary biology : " Although a
whole person is simpler as entity than the sum of his individual parts, he can
accomplish much more than the sum of his parts can (.) The ability of complex
system to influence the outside world is highly correlated with its inner
integrity " (90). It is by restoring an harmonious integration and
cooperation of the various subordinate functions into a whole person that the
psychoanalytic patient can reach agency and better adaptation.
This notion sheds a new light on the long standing
Freudian view of conflicted neurotics, as well as on latter concepts such as
personality splits and false self. As the patient's mind becomes more and more
organized, new hierarchical structures are stabilized. It is Palombo's
contention that these new structures in turn increase the patient's powers of self-observation.
At the neurological level, developmental deficits of
many kinds can prevent connections from forming. As Palombo puts it :
"some things have to be learned just at the right time or a permanent
deficit results"(147). One illuminating and familiar example is the
difficulty of learning the phonemes of a new language after puberty. In other
words, caretaker inputs are needed to evoke the new functions of the maturing
brain at specific periods in childhood. Palombo proposes to distinguish programming
aspects of development (set in interaction with postnatal inputs from
caretakers) from hard-wired neurological deficits (in other words,
prenatal genetic deficiencies).
Psychoanalysis primarily deals with missing
connections at the programming level. Patients' infantile experiences have led
them to conflicts and confusions that distort or disregard new information.
Palombo refers to Anna Freud's listing of defence mechanisms (1936) as a useful
guide to these 'pathways of evasion'. The mechanisms of defence "divide
the content of the patient's mind into zones [mental spaces as he latter
puts it] that are not accessible to conscious scrutiny" (149). For
instance, repression is the mechanism that prevents new connections from being
formed within the associative structure of the patient's long term memory.
Psychoanalytic treatment fills in the connections
that are missing because of repression. Isolated areas of repressed material in
the neurotic patient's long term memory need to be reconnected with one another
and with larger networks of memories. The analyst's reaction to the patient's
story and its obscurities, absence of affect or obvious disavowals of reality
(as a sign of potential missing connection) acts as a catalyst. New connections
will bring about a transition to a new organizational phase.
Palombo refers to modern brain sciences that see
brain activity as a vastly complex interaction among neural networks. A neural
network is the basic unit of the brain organization and is a set of neurons
linked by connections that provide feedback when the cells are stimulated.
Palombo enters detailed considerations on the evolution of the synaptic weights
(in turn linked with the neural network's propensity to react to external
stimuli) to conclude that neural changes are small and gradual. Time is needed
to effect a major change in these systems undermining their historical
stability. In other words, "when majors aspects of personality structure
need to be reorganized, years may be required" (164).
This idea seems to contradict Palombo's basic
insight that psychical reorganizations are non linear. However Palombo takes
great care to explain that gradual and apparently insignificant changes
eventually lead, once a critical mass is reached, to macro reorganization. A
very expressive comparison is established by reference to a mound of sand that
eventually collapses when the 'critical' grain is added. Another way to look at
this is to say that "in a complex adaptive system, resistance to change is
built into the process of change itself" (114).
On this basis, one can easily understand why a biological
understanding of the brain is crucial to psychoanalysis. As we have seen,
neural connections are the crux of the matter. Therefore is it clear that
dysfunction of the neurotransmitter system can be implicated in many
mental illnesses or mal-adaptive organizations. As Palombo stresses, effective
drug therapies assist the action of specific neurotransmitters and consequently
enhance the efficiency of an analysis. Drug therapy and psychoanalytic
treatment go hand in hand.
Palombo draws from chaos theory two of his main
concepts : the "edge of chaos" and the "unconscious
attractors".
The concept of edge of chaos describes the
sate of a system which unstably stands on the very limit between predictable
(e.g. periodic) and chaotic behaviours. It was originally coined by Langton
(1992) to describe Cellular Automata (invented by Von Neumann to simulate
self-reproducing organisms) such as the famous Game of Life, whose regime of periodically ordered behaviours
collides with the zones of chaos. As a result, for a system near the edge of
chaos, a small change in input from the environment can lead to a dramatic
reorganization of the entire system : in that sense, the ideal psychoanalytic
hour stands on the edge of chaos.
The most illuminating idea of the whole monograph
is, in my judgement, the incredibly appealing concept of attractor. An
attractor is a property of certain non-linear dynamic mathematical objects. Strange
attractors are such that the trajectories of two points initially close to one
another may diverge rapidly. Still, the range of possible locations of the
moving point is perfectly determined. Therefore, no particular trajectory is
predictable, but the shape of the set of possible locations is. As Palombo puts
it : "strange attractors are deterministic but not predictable".
Palombo has the idea to apply the concept of
"attractor" to study the patterns of connectedness between mental
contents. Non-pathological mental organizations behave like strange attractors
: for instance, when the patient associate freely in an analytic context, he
displays this pattern of diverging trajectories.
A pathological connection is a closed circle of
condensations that "fuses relationships formed in early childhood with
relationships encountered in adult life" (181). This closed circle (of
'transferences' could we say) "remains a potential attractor for the
patient's feeling during times of stress, even after a successful
analysis" (181).
An attractor is surrounded by a basin of
attraction, that is a mechanism that draws the patient's conscious adult
experiences of the present down into an unconscious region of childhood
memories. The end result is that, at the emotional level, the current and the
past (traumatic) experience are undistinguishable. All subtlety and
distinctiveness are lost in computing new information.
Elements of current experience drawn into the
infantile attractors (that constitutes their food set) are transformed
through an active process : they are "re-synthesized into emotional
facsimiles of the fantasies" that form the core of the attractors
(185). This is why, to the outside observer, the pathological attractor
"typically appears to be making emotional mountains out of tiny
molehills" (186). What emanates from the attractor is not information but
the return of a whole infantile feeling state, reconstituted repeatedly, when
the attractor is fed a current event that resembles it only partly.
Palombo smartly insists on the adaptive value of
such primitive (non strange) attractors for the infant's mind. Indeed, the
attractor's function is to "reduce the overwhelming variety of experiences
to a few stereotypes that can be handled by the child undeveloped cognitive
capacities. This is why Palombo sometimes uses the concept of attractor-transmitter
whose function is to "narrow down the band width of its inputs (.) It
attracts and intercept new experiences that may signal danger and then
substitutes a small and more predictable set of unambiguously dangerous
items" (195). In my understanding, this means that pathological attractors
all have an infantile way of processing information.
This reminds us of the need for sameness on
the part of the infant's mind, which has been found to be the
neurophysiological basis for the so-called 'repetition compulsion'. Moreover,
in term of cognitive psychology, Palombo's concept of 'attractor' can be seen
as a particular case of the mental process of classification. Therefore
a pathological attractor could also be looked at as a deficient and
mal-adaptive ways of classifying
experiences.
How can the analyst perturb a pathological attractor
? First by helping the patient to discover the closed set of rules
underlying the falsely diverse set of output of this attractor. The latter must
be "located and brought into the analytic discourse". This is done
through free association, dream and transference interpretation. Then, with the
active implication of the patient, it becomes possible to perturb the attractor
by extending its rule set, that is making it more flexible and aware of
new information. In other words, perturbation aims at increasing the diversity
of the attractor's output, by rendering its food set smaller and smaller. By
bringing to the attention of the patient a more complex and differentiated view
of external events, only fewer and more specific events can trigger the
distorting emotional effects.
Thus, by perturbing the attractor's environment, the
analytic process entails a reorganization of the attractor, so it can
eventually include a more mature and differentiated view of reality. However,
it is Palombo's realistic contention that, though the attractor may be outgrown
as far everyday life goes, it remains latent in a form that can be revived
under sufficient stress.
Palombo sees the unconscious as a complex and
hierarchical organization of attractors. Inputs of some attractors are
outputs of some others. This makes the analytic process even more complex, but
opens up the possibility of therapeutic and non linear chain reactions that
account for sudden and dramatic improvements.
A successful interpretation has by definition a
mutative effect on the patient's psychic organization. This is done through the
establishment of a neural connection entailing a chain reorganization. It is
worth noting that in Palombo's understanding, dreams are a key process
in the selection and formation of long-term memories. Consequently,
intra-psychic reorganizations taking place in the analytic treatment are
reflected and sometimes announced in dreams.
Palombo has the excellent idea to look at the issues
of trust and mistrust in the analytic ecosystem with the new and powerful tool
of game theory. His first finding is that the asymmetry in the aims and stakes
of the of patient and analyst enhance their value to each other as partners.
The analyst's smaller stake in the outcome helps him maintain greater
objectivity. The patient's greater freedom to express himself provides the
material for analysis.
Building on the analysis of the famous prisoner's dilemma
and its sub-optimal Nash equilibriums, Palombo gives a new and clever
account of why the analytic process should be open-ended, just like the
infinite iterated prisoner's dilemma. In short psychotherapies the patient can
correctly unconsciously believe that he can hold back painful material without
ever being called to deal with it.
What makes Palombo's work utterly interesting and
relevant is that he takes as its object the standard model of psychoanalysis as
practiced by most analysts.
His strong monism is reflected in his deep belief
that the modern scientific paradigm is applicable at all scales, to all objects
in the entire universe. Whatever the focus, from sub-atomic physics to social
phenomena, through human mental processes, the same concepts of evolution,
adaptation, hierarchical organization, phase transition, chaotic behaviour, and
attractors have something to teach us.
Palombo's work makes clear how Psychoanalysis cures
: by altering the brain. Interpretation does not cure by itself : it only does
if it entails the constitution of new mental functions and processes. It also
explains how a patient can possibly recover from many years of maladaptive
living through a de facto time-limited
analysis : this 'miracle' is possible due to the non-linear responses of the
brain to increases of its inner connectedness.
I greatly enjoyed studying this monograph and, in clear interaction with the seminar, it radically changed my understanding of what Psychoanalysis is and has to say about the human mind.