Complex thinking and the future of analytic training

an introduction

Abstract

The author looks at the impact of complex thinking on psychoanalytical training. He departs from the idea that disorders that previously were not possible to analyze consist in the vast majority of people who seek treatment. He underscores that the quick changes taking place in the current world cause the representatives of analytical knowledge transmission to require adaptation to this moment. He draws attention to the fact that psychoanalysis has been going through changes in which the previous empirical model of positivistic nature coexists with what is usually called complex thinking. He believes that such a change is essential for the future of psychoanalysis as individuals are less influenced by drives and more motivated by the need of relationship and adaptation in a universe that has become more ambiguous, complex and dialectic. He discusses the paradigm of simplicity highlighting that it is based on the principle of authority and on a master concept from which the others derive. On the other hand, complex thinking will never be reducible to a master concept, it will never be predictable. He believes that disciplines need to engage in a dialogue with one another, because no system of knowledge is sufficiently capable of conceiving itself, explaining itself and supporting itself on its own fundamentals. He also thinks that the principle of certainty, predictability and position of authority over patients has to be left behind. There is an interaction between patient and therapist that is called intersubjectivity. Complexity models will introduce new categories in which objects are not isolated, but rather object networks are studied in a context in which the concept of network and multidisciplinary activity would have to be added to complex thinking, and the concept of limit should be reviewed, which, in practice, consists of not knowing the extent to which we are separated from each other, but the extent to which we make associations as his clinical example illustrates. He thinks that the future of analytical training relies on paying heed to the risk of isolation, while, without giving up on the basic principles of Psychoanalysis, we seek to constantly evolve, keeping ourselves inserted in the network, understanding that, instead of hierarchical thinking, we have heteroarchical thinking. He concludes by emphasizing that the knowledge of the exchange between the classical deterministic view and complex thinking is a key part of the clinical work and psychoanalytical transmission, since the relationship between causes and fortuity is an integral part of our experience.