This collection of short stories and essays calls into question the medical-scientific CPS Patrick B. Kavanaugh narrative, its understandings of psychoanalysis and madness, and the identity, purpose and ethics that flow from and sustain its narrative. These stories are S gathered from meetings with people on in-patient units and in private practice. t Emphasis is placed on the centrality of the Freudian unconscious in the process of o r listening, understanding and responding in the analytic discourse. Collectively, i e Stories from they reintroduce the identity of the analytic practitioner as the shaman of s contemporary times, a mind-poet who sees the world through a magical –as f r opposed to a scientific- visionary experience. o m “With a wry humour and piercing intellect, Dr. Kavanaugh’s Stories from the Bog…, the Bog evokes the Celtic legacy of story-telling in psychoanalysis.” - David L. Downing t h “A scintillating book that dances on edges of the human mind. At once, e challenging, reflective and enriched by details of therapeutic work.” B - Michael Eigen, Author, Contact With the Depths o g “Dr. Kavanaugh captures the essence of the psychoanalytic enterprise. … this On Madness, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis book is a work of psychoanalytic art by one of its most creative practitioners. - Marvin Hyman Patrick Kavanaugh, Ph.D. is the founding president of the Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts, and a former president of the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education and the Michigan Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology. He is a former director of clinical training at the University of Detroit-Mercy. Currently, he is in private practice in Farmington Hills, Michigan. P a Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies (CPS) is an international scholarly t r book series devoted to all aspects of psychoanalytic inquiry in theoretical, i c k philosophical, applied, and clinical psychoanalysis. Its aims are broadly B academic, interdisciplinary, and pluralistic, emphasizing secularism and . K tolerance across the psychoanalytic domain. CPS aims to promote open a v and inclusive dialogue among the humanities and the social-behavioral a sciences including such disciplines as philosophy, n a anthropology, history, literature, religion, cultural u ISBN 978-90-420-3487-7 g contemporary studies, sociology, feminism, gender studies, h psychoanalytic political thought, moral psychology, art, drama, and film, biography, law, economics, biology, and studies cognitive-neuroscience. 9 789042 034877 PPCPS Stories from the Bog This page intentionally left blank. Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies 14 Editor Associate Editors Jon Mills Gerald J. Gargiulo Keith Haartman Ronald C. Naso Editorial Advisory Board Howard Bacal Robert Langs Alan Bass Joseph Lichtenberg John Beebe Nancy McWilliams Martin Bergmann Jean Baker Miller Christopher Bollas Thomas Ogden Mark Bracher Owen Renik Marcia Cavell Joseph Reppen Nancy J. Chodorow William J. Richardson Walter A. Davis Peter L. Rudnytsky Peter Dews Martin A. Schulman Muriel Dimen David Livingstone Smith Michael Eigen Donnel Stern Irene Fast Frank Summers Bruce Fink M. Guy Thompson Peter Fonagy Wilfried Ver Eecke Leo Goldberger Robert S. Wallerstein James Grotstein Brent Willock R. D. Hinshelwood Robert Maxwell Young Otto F. Kernberg Oren Gozlan Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies (CPS) is an international scholarly book series devoted to all aspects of psychoanalytic inquiry in theoretical, philosophical, applied, and clinical psychoanalysis. Its aims are broadly academic, interdisciplinary, and pluralistic, emphasizing secularism and tolerance across the psychoanalytic domain. CPS aims to promote open and inclusive dialogue among the humanities and the social-behavioral sciences including such disciplines as philosophy, anthropology, history, literature, religion, cultural studies, sociology, feminism, gender studies, political thought, (cid:80)(cid:82)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:79)(cid:3)(cid:83)(cid:86)(cid:92)(cid:70)(cid:75)(cid:82)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:92)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:85)(cid:87)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:71)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:80)(cid:68)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:3)(cid:191)(cid:79)(cid:80)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:69)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:83)(cid:75)(cid:92)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:79)(cid:68)(cid:90)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:72)(cid:70)(cid:82)(cid:81)(cid:82)(cid:80)(cid:76)(cid:70)(cid:86)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:69)(cid:76)(cid:82)(cid:79)(cid:82)(cid:74)(cid:92)(cid:15)(cid:3)(cid:68)(cid:81)(cid:71)(cid:3) cognitive-neuroscience. Stories from the Bog On Madness, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis Patrick B. Kavanaugh Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012 Cover illustration: www.morgueFile.com Cover Design: Studio Pollmann The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 978-90-420-3487-7 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0764-5 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012 Printed in the Netherlands Brigid These words will never carve your image out of bog oak but that is what they want to do to dig down into the moist wetness to touch the layers of centuries that have made you woman, goddess, saint to see your shape emerge intact from the dark earth. My instruments are crude for such a work the bog resistant to intruders as an ancient tribal memory in its dark and secret places. But I must search out these roots this memory as vital as breath. I must drag this ancient oak from the centre of the bog. I will wait as I must for the time of dryness where I can see the shape of what you were and what you are… From the Collection, Singing From the Belly of the Whale (Dublin, 2009) by Anne F. O’Reilly This page intentionally left blank. Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction xv One Stories From the Bog: On the Underworld, the 1 Underconsciousness, and the Undertaking Two The Dead Poets Society: 21 Ventures into a Radioactive Psychoanalytic Space Three Frankenstein’s Genie-ology: The Magical Visionary 39 Experience and the Associative Method Four An Ethic of Free Association: Questioning a Uniform 57 and Coercive Code of Ethics Five Wang Fo and an Ethic of Free Association: Poetic Imagination, 75 Mythical Stories, and Moral Philosophy Six The Dramatic Meaning of Madness in Psycho(analy)sis: 97 The Ear-Rationality of Treating Illusion as Reality Seven Escaping the Phantom’s Ghostly Grasp: On Psychoanalysis 113 as a Performance Art in the Spirit World Eight A Fractured Fairy Tale: The Story of Our Professional Lives 133 in the Kingdom of Positivism Nine Developing Competency in the Destruction of Psychoanalysis: 151 An OtherApproach Ten How Will Bodies of Knowledge(s) Speak the Psychoanalytic 175 Practitioner of the 21st Century? On Madness, Shamans and the Psychoanalytic Arts Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge some of the different people, life-experi- ences, and groups that have influenced my thinking over the years about philoso- phy, madness and psychoanalysis. First and foremost, I feel privileged and deeply indebted to those people who shared their stories with me over the years at various residential treatment facilities, day treatment programs and in private practice. Not only did these sto- rytelling and institutional experiences allow me to learn something about institu- tional life and the profundity of the human spirit, they enabled me to learn some- thing more about the analytic discourse, myself, and the notion that, indeed, we are all more alike than otherwise. While certain identifying information and circumstances have been altered in the following stories in the interests of confidentiality, the mystery, magic and muscle of the analytic discourse as a unique storytelling process remains. The selection, organization, understanding and recounting of the following stories are functions of my own perceptions and constructions of reality. Having come from a blue-collar background and ethic, my first introduc- tion to the method and madness of institutions and their discourses of power, knowledge(s) and ethics -outside the institution of the family, that is- came from significant experiences gathered from my “misspent youth,” involvement in the military, and membership in the Teamsters union while working as a truck driver. Although not fully appreciated at the time, these early experiences proved to be quite valuable in my later involvements with institutions in professional life whether they were residential-treatment, academic-educational, or professional- political. The rationality of an institution’s seemingly irrational discourse(s) follows its own discursive rules. The awareness and understanding of these rules, I came to realize, is absolutely crucial so as to function effectively and ethically within its dis- course(s) -and, often times, to do so in spite of them. Collectively, these institu- tional experiences played a major role in shaping my views on the inseparability of culture and psychoanalysis, the significant and dynamic interplay of context and meaning, and the necessity of appreciating and respecting the relativity of reality in attempting to understand the complex and often times contradictory meanings of a person’s life-story. I would like to acknowledge Dr. La Maurice Gardner for his generous support, advisements, and sharing of knowledge(s) in helping me navigate the institutional power, discourses and madness I encountered early on in my profes- sional life. Attending the University of Windsor for my doctoral studies involved crossing the border between Detroit and Windsor on a daily basis. These border