The Search for Integration or How to Work as a Pluralist Psychoanalyst

Bibliographic Data

ID5847741
AuthorsJuan Pablo Jiménez (0000-0002-8679-6614, University of Chile, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume25
Issue5
Pages602-634
Publication date2005-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePsychoanalytic Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0735-1690 • E-ISSN: 1940-9133
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2513/s07351690pi1601_3
OpenAlexW2039112151
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited7

In my professional path, I strove for the integration of my identity as a psychiatrist and as a psychoanalyst, in the frame of pluralism, which exists in modern psychoanalysis. Having been trained in a Kleinian approach, I will explore the painful breach experienced during my parallel trainings as a psychoanalyst and as a dynamic psychiatrist. I worked for five years as a psychoanalyst and a researcher in Germany and was involved to a large extent with the psychoanalytic world, which increased my self-definition as a pluralist. On my return to Chile, I discovered the need for political changes in the psychoanalytic society and curricular modifications in my training institute to recover psychoanalysis from its academic isolation. Finally, I will analyze the extant connections between the ideology of pluralism in psychoanalysis and its application in clinics. I will show that the exploration of the inference processes of the psychoanalyst inside a session-the psychoanalyst's mind at work-demonstrates that the analyst in fact functions as an artisan thinker. This means that pluralism-that is, the use of more than one theoretical frame and of different levels of abstraction and explicitness-is the way the majority of psychoanalysts "naturally" work. What probably differs is the self-consciousness, scope, and rank of pluralism

Pluralism · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications