CHAPTER SIX

Experiences and considerations
of a “reader” of psychoanalysis

Fausto Petrella

The foremost purpose of a meeting between the individuals concerned with the publication of a psychoanalytic journal—the editors and the “readers”—should, in my view, be an eminently practical one. The aim is not to investigate the role of psychoanalytic writing in the emotional life and fantasy of the psychoanalyst, perhaps by invoking Derrlda. Nor is it to discuss and formulate a standard of scientific rigour for psychoanalysis, with an appeal to some updated thesis of epistemology. My intention is to have an open discussion about our experience as “readers”—that is, individuals who have agreed to perform an anonymous, largely unrecognized task on a text written by an equally anonymous author. When I speak of the “reader”, it is to this figure that I refer and not to the imaginary addressee of the text or to any particular living reader. My starting point will be the specific experience of this reader, who must formulate and express an opinion, and whose tasks are at once well- and ill-defined. This should give a pragmatic orientation to what I have to say. The overall aim should be one of improvement. But in which direction? One might be that of defining this function, determining the existence and efficacy of generally acceptable evaluative instruments and criteria, clarifying the way evaluations concerning each contribution evolve, and making explicit the characteristics and limits of such evaluations. The goal, then, is to arrive, if not at a relative homogeneity, at least at a certain transparency in the reader's operations, thereby promoting competence and mutual trust. This does not mean that we should strive for an impossible harmonization or a monotonous unison: what is needed is not so much a set of commonly agreed-upon criteria as an occasion to meet and discuss the criteria that are already being employed. The reader's function, if not privileged, is certainly specific and allows a few observations from a particular perspective. It is this specificity and the way it is made use of by both the readers and the editors that concerns me here. To do this, it will be necessary to set aside our mutual anonymity and to share experiences.

It may be useful to return to the past for a moment.

The board of readers was originally proposed in accordance with the habitual practice of scientific journals with claims to seriousness of having a committee of anonymous referees who are distinct from the management and from the editorial board and who are asked to express themselves in writing about the characteristics and publishability of each paper. This function— the fact that it was considered necessary for the Rivista—was in itself a mark of the great changes that have taken place over the years in the Italian Psychoanalytic Society. It was no accident that an innovative proposal of this nature was strongly supported by several so-called younger colleagues, if I remember correctly. In other words, the need was felt for a change from the family-style, oligarchical management of psychoanalytic matters to the government of a much vaster community that expressed theoretical and clinical positions both quite heterogeneous in content and varied in form. The Rivista, being the official scientific organ of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society, reflected this change faithfully and in a certain sense highlighted and intensified it. The number of analysts had been growing over the years, and therefore, although the papers submitted for publication were not multiplying at the same rate, it became increasingly important to provide some form of responsible appraisal and “imprimatur”. It should be remembered that the Rivista di Psicoanalisi is a strictly societal organ, reserved for members of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society and for occasional foreign guests belonging to the International Psychoanalytic Association. The work of non-psychoanalysts and students is generally not published. The principal purchasers of the journal are analysts themselves— they are, that is, those interested in research and in the study of our field—a category that all of us, and not least the publisher, hope is numerous and qualified.

Let us now consider the group dynamics that a journal like ours necessarily implies, connected with what is called psychoanalytic thought and with scientific production. It is not my intention to propose a thorough analysis of this complex situation but only to point out the existence of a series of problems of obvious importance.

Scientific journals, more than books, are an agile medium for the circulation of ideas and the communication of information on the state of research. They attest to the competence and skill of the authors. They corroborate current paradigms and indicate possibilities for their use. On occasion they break with the paradigms of mainstream science, for which the journal serves as a forum of the written word and the congress as a stage for live performance. But in addition to these functions there are others that concern the group's relationship with itself and with what is external to it as well as the relationship of each author with his colleagues and with the discipline. At periodic intervals the Rivista, unlike a book, allows the variegated and pluralistic experience of everyday clinical work—fragmentary, on the edge of suffering, ephemeral in its fleetingness, typically personal and idiosyncratic—to leave the subjective dimension of solitary reflection. Experience and practice plunge into writing, thirst for a place in the lexicon, strive for consensus and to be lifted up into the skies of theory, or in any case to be granted some form of eternalness, by becoming part of group culture and of the community.

A journal, ours or any other of the same kind, may initially be part of the foundations of a group—a component, that is, of a society or association. Subsequently, however, it must reflect and reconfirm the group's identity over time and constitute what is called a tradition. In other words, it must continually represent, despite on-going changes, the same picture, a sort of family portrait of itself and of a handful of ancestors. This kind of common ground, grounded in the reassurance deriving from shared knowledge, has become increasingly problematic and hazy as the number of members has grown and as the generations have passed. If the family becomes overextended, it becomes more and more difficult to recognize oneself in this enlarged picture, and the feeling of a common identity—that of the community of psychoanalysts—becomes more faint and uncertain. One begins to lose hold of this grounding in genealogy, filiation, and affiliation, in which the ancestors and a shared analytic experience guarantee membership in the community and even in a broader international movement. It becomes necessary to turn to the world of thoughts and ideas: a vaster and more open-ended superindlvidual reality, which is farther from specific founding personalities and much closer to concreteness, to ideas, conceptions, and applications. It is this reality, made up of experiences and language, that must be the object of publication and collective circulation.

The creation of a committee of readers is part of an operation designed to “normalize” the Rivista di Psicoanalist and adapt it to certain standards of the culture of science-in-journals and to the constraints this science imposes on its practitioners: limitations on text length, precise rules of uniformity for references and quotes, and a whole range of conventions concerning layout and graphics. A certain number of formal limitations does not hurt. After all, the rules imposed on sonnet writers did not prevent the creation of great and even marvellous communicative events despite the rigid confines of a hypercodifled poetic form. What is more, limitations on length, for example, are underpinned by an idea of democracy and discipline: everyone, or very many, who accept these constraints may take the floor.

The task of the reader, who works to no personal advantage as he exercises his own dispassionate (but also passionate) Judgement on the most qualifying aspect of analytic work, provoked in me a series of different reactions. Initially, these reactions were negative.

To begin with, this task was made extremely arduous by the rather unsettling, chaotic disunity of theoretical perspectives and approaches. I also remember quite well how I first reacted to the prescribed anonymity. There were fewer analysts then than today, and those who wrote were a minority within the minority. I found the anonymity of the reader and author an unpleasant and pointless hypocrisy: Who couldn't recognize the author, especially if, as was often the case, he cited his own work in the references? Wouldn't it have been possible to take an anonymous jab at the author, pretending not to know him? It seemed that in this way we were institutionalizing the bad habit of “throwing the stone and hiding the hand”. Or the error could be aggravated by penalizing a respected author by mistaking him for a faltering beginner. Considering that all analysts are always to some extent beginners, it was an easy trap to fall into. But what made me most uneasy was that my idealized image of the analytic community, which I associated with frankness and the possibility of open polemics, seemed to vacillate. On more than one occasion I sent in my little reader's reports proudly signed, since it seemed absurd, and even unacceptable, that one should not assume the responsibility for one's own judgement, especially concerning recognizable authors. But I was rather naively underestimating both the socially positive role of hypocrisy and the advantage of this “double blind” for the editors and directors. These individuals, in fact, maintained their sovereignty of Judgement concerning both the anonymous experts and the authors (who in the end were not at all anonymous for those who had the last word). Clearly, this two- or even threefold blindness—a myth with oedipal, or rather anti-oedipal overtones, since castration is ritually anticipated—serves to reduce the level of conflict between author and editor and to reinforce, but at the same time to dilute, the responsibility for a possible rejection, with everything that such a rejection may mean for the author … All this seemed to aim at the constitution of a scientific body cleansed of potentially deadly tensions, thus leaving room for an inextricable mix comprising the defence of doctrinal purity, the genealogy of the author and the group, and the institutionalization of scientific and cultural power. On the other hand, those who feel a certain nostalgia for those fascinating and at times brutal exchanges of opinion between editor and master concerning authors and articles, of the type that we find occasionally in the correspondence between Jung (editor of the Jahrbuch) and Freud, should also bear in mind the trajectory, and the outcome, of that relationship. But let us not further complicate the already complicated matter of today with references to the archaeology of our field.

A review like ours, which we might call a statutory and non-partisan organ, has first and foremost certain obvious, modest documentary functions. It must publish articles that, aside from their specific value, bear witness to what is being thought or done. It is here that one should be able to discover what psychoanalysts think, what their practice and theory is about, how they conceive of their work. It is obvious, then, that the Rivista must offer space for, as it were, the convergence of divergences and allow for the juxtaposition, the concentration and comparison, the contrast and mirroring of radically different positions. Provided that they are psychoanalytic positions—which cannot be assured ipso facto by the author's membership in the circle of analysts, even though a non-institutional definition of what psychoanalytic means could raise numerous problems.

I was less reluctant to accept the anonymity of the role of reader when I realized that despite my efforts to unmask their identity, it was increasingly common that authors remained anonymous: trying to discover the identity of an author is a very instructive game, but too often it is very difficult or even impossible to win. Once I was forced to examine without guidance the merits and contents of the articles, I became immediately aware of the need for considerable tolerance and openness towards the most disparate ideas and positions. In the end, the documentary role of the review rendered the job of evaluating the publishability of a work less burdensome than expected; and in any case, as it turned out, I have never seen an article about which I had expressed a substantially negative opinion go unpublished. Eventually I understood that the reader has a merely advisory function, while the final judgement is reserved for the readers' readers—that is, the editorial board and editor-in-chief of the review, both of whom may judge on the basis of criteria that are in conflict with the opinion of anonymous readers. The point is not secondary, because this makes it impossible to call the reader a “referee”, a reviewer whose opinion is significantly more binding than that of a “reader”.

The reader, then, did not have the power to decide the life and death of a creature presented to the temple, nor even to determine whether a paper was good or excellent, as opposed to mediocre or bad. In this way the function of the reader came to be one of collaboration, aimed at improving the product by offering a critical and, in the final analysis, therapeutic contribution: a contribution to the care of the text, to use a meaningful expression bordering both on the medical and on the maternal. The changes effected were often not merely cosmetic but truly delicate operations that raised questions about the very content of the text.

A text that presents itself in society should be clean-shaven and, if not elegantly dressed, at least orderly and appropriate in appearance. Casual clothes are permitted, but they should not be the fruit of negligence or naiveté in writing and, ultimately, in thought. Looks count in writing as well. Form and content pursue each other, and I do not think that I can be accused of excessive aestheticism for saying so. The reader is certainly required to be tolerant of positions different from his own, but this tolerance must not turn into an excessive suspension of judgement, refusing to navigate between the crags of the debatable. But then what and how are we to judge, if we must respect the orientations of authors with whom we do not at all agree? Even from the perspective of this prudent respect there are many things that can be judged and debated about a psychoanalytic paper. I will list a few of the elements that I feel should be taken into account:

• the relationships between the conjectures brought to bear, the argumentative apparatus, and the descriptive aspects of the materials presented; even the proportions between these ingredients can determine the quality of the dish;

• whether, and to what extent, the attention the author draws to method and technique is reflected in his argumentation;

• the balance between mimesis, diegesis, and comment in the clinical account; how well the author controls the oscillation between metaphor and conceptualization in his overall presentation;

• the awareness of ideological aspects, of the options and criteria employed at each theoretical and clinical level, and the way in which all this is presented and is transformed into expository discourse.

There is not one of the aspects mentioned above that does not have a decisive impact on the evaluation of the quality of a piece of psychoanalytic writing, and in my experience as a reader I have often been struck by the discordant and curious effects of the author's insufficient or poor control over them. Below I have listed in note form some typical examples of commonplaces that can compromise the quality of a paper:

• a certain disdain for metapsychology and its arbitrariness, while at the same employing its concepts and unilaterally introducing new, no less arbitrary options

• the criticism of Freud and of certain aspects of his approach while drawing on arguments found in Freud himself, apparently unknown to the author; the same may hold true of the criticism of other authors

• the introduction of new paradigms or simply of new terms without considering that these may enter into contradiction with other and different assumptions of the discourse and method employed in the text

• the uncontrolled proliferation of analogies, allusions to myth, and clinical rituals, in the form, for example, of sketches that claim to give an empirical foundation to the argument but instead often create more problems than clarity

• the disproportionate, or even irrelevant, interacting with or embarking on lofty cultural issues (aesthetics, ethics, logic, etc.), for which the psychoanalyst is not particularly well equipped and which must be approached with caution and rigour in order to be treated fruitfully for psychoanalysis

• the adoption of philosophical and literary technical jargon to substitute the language of psychoanalysis, with the typical result that it is often difficult to distinguish the enrichment deriving from such operations from adulteration and abuse

• a tendency to advance metaphysical assertions and options that allegedly arise from the materials and experience of the analysis, but which seem to reflect, rather, the author's “scarce awareness that one is interpreting”, as is said of certain responses to the Rorschach test

• the straying of the theoretical and clinical discourse which ultimately leads to an imbalance in the text; this may be due to excessive references to other disciplines (from mathematics to logic, from narratology to epistemology) or to an uncontrolled proliferation of metaphors, though metaphorlc discourse is admittedly unavoidable

• the belief that a useful remedy for all this consists in turning either to clinical material (the case history, the “sketch”, the suffered exposition of one's countertransference) or to some theoretical discovery considered to be decisive.

Having pointed out these sins, which are only a few of the most common, I will not be the one to cast the first or the second stone. Nor do I believe it possible to prescribe true remedies—by preaching continence, for example. What I can propose are not remedies but simply suggestions, such as the appeal to temperance, the rule of Occam's razor (the fundamental methodological principle that prescribes that the formulation of all scientific theories should follow the famous maxim: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessttatem¹), an invitation to a sense of proportion—proportion and congruence between theory and the clinical; between analogies, metaphors, and Illustrations on the one hand and concepts on the other; between description, delineations of the workings of the psychic apparatus, and argumentation; between efforts to persuade and the presentation of proof. It is impossible to prescribe, or perhaps even recommend, a precise balance among all these elements. This much is obvious. The awareness of the conjectural character of many psychoanalytic propositions, the control over form, the “play” between, on the one hand, the flexibility of the author's associations and correlations and, on the other, the precision of his writing; these are all factors that have to do both with the scientific quality of a text and with what is generally attributed to its style. We know that style is in part rooted in the author's personal fantasy and that this fantasy induces the sort of reflection that flows headlong onto the written page, even to the point of becoming identical with it.

But writing is also a place in which the author's megalomania, great and small, expresses itself. This megalomania is often legitimate, just as it may be legitimate to express polemics, impatience, and many other feelings that outside the written page would be damaging and blameworthy. Artistic prose—that is, stylistically controlled writing—and scientific prose converge in an original way in the construction of the scientific discourse of psychoanalysis, and they are to some extent both necessary, as we have learned from the texts of Freud. Ideally, science strives for a form of truth that exhibits its own proof, confirmation, and reproducibility. All these things are possible in our case, but they are condemned to remain only experimentum mentis and have an insurmountable element of uncertainty. On the basis of all this, it is evident that if the reader were really to embark on extremely precise appraisals, his task would be extraordinarily complex. In any case, the reader's judgement should not be too personal, nor should he be overly influenced by his own “vision” of the treatment and the analysis. Personally, I have always tried to go beyond this direct comparison and to identify points of analytic interest at a more general level, which may serve as parameters for judging the quality and publishability of a paper.

Certainly, not only the reader but also the author who writes for the Rivista should know to what and to whom the review is addressed. If it is to circulate among specialists or followers of a particular school, a certain exotericism—in vocabulary, style, and subject matter—may be justifiable. To the initiates it would not even appear to be esoteric, since they would understand each other even in obscurity, and the obscure discourse would confirm their status as initiates. But there also is a responsibility towards the “outsider”, towards the reader who is not a member of the system but who can contribute to the configuration of the ideal addressee of the Rivista and of its articles. Personally, when I write, I always keep in mind the non-specialist. Ideally—and si licet parva and so forth … in other words, if I may be permitted—the same paper can be designed to be read at different levels, as great art teaches us. As for non-specialists, some might become irritated at not understanding very much, others might be dazzled by the obscurity, and we might find, as in fact we do, the most varied positions towards all this. It would always be possible for someone to unmask the emptiness that lies behind the layer of textual tinsel and remind us that the emperor is naked. This enfant terrible, sworn enemy of textual theatrics, could at this point consider his critical task accomplished. On the other hand, he might—once the emperor is dead—propose something else, of his own, for example. In this way the game goes on, the infinite entertainment of writing and criticizing. But, aside from the game, at issue are decisive aspects of the credibility of psychoanalysis and its therapeutic practice, and more simply the vitality and appeal of a review should reflect the state of health of a scientific society.

I do not believe that all these problems can be solved by listing a series of criteria to be followed. This could be done, but I think that they are obvious enough to everyone. Who wouldn't agree that a piece of psychoanalytic writing should be characterized by sobriety and clarity and that each paper should state its aim, begin with some thesis—clinical or theoretical—that should, at the conclusion, be, if not proven, at least examined thoroughly or clarified? All of us feel that one should always respect not only the grammar and the syntax of the language but also the vocabulary of our discipline and of those brought to bear in any given study. We all agree that one should avoid the abuse of neologisms, which is rarely justified, and jargon. (I had occasion recently to hear a colleague read a paper at a psychoanalytic conference and justify the obscurity of his language with the need—the reasons for which were not stated—to reinvent the terminology of psychoanalysis in a personal way. His neologisms, he said, would require a key for their interpretation, best dealt with in footnotes, which, however, would be inappropriate at a conference!)

I have sometimes thought, on reading certain papers, that “here we could use some plain common sense”. But we all know that “common sense” alone would never have given us psychoanalysis and that it is the task of writing to contain the boldness of thought and of unbridled theoretical fantasy, rendering them effective by the demands of argumentation, style, and conceptual elaboration.

Finally, I would add that the reader should take an active part in the present (re-)definition of the Rivista's aims and of his mandate to evaluate papers. Whatever this mandate might be, certain fundamental criteria must be observed, such as attention to form, to the connection between form and content, and to the proportion between thesis and proof.

Psychoanalytic writing has a great variety of “subgenres”, which should be identified and measured against the general characteristics that we are striving for in the Rivista. Two of these are the clinical paper and the theoretical paper. But we also have the clinical-theoretical genre and the theoretical-clinical one. Since these are circular genres, rotating on their own axes, it is necessary, as at the roulette, to observe where the author's “ball” comes to rest and to make sure that there are no tricks that tilt the game wheel and its truth.

There are also centripetal papers, which keep coming back to psychoanalysis, though taking more or less extravagant detours to other sciences. From mathematics to psychology, there is no field that cannot be integrated into our peculiar discipline, including astronomy, ecology, optics, the arts, alchemy, immunology, chemistry … And then there are centrifugal papers, which drift more or less visibly until, abandoning both clinic and theory, they weigh anchor to sail to new waters. As we have no accurate territorial map, it may be difficult to determine when one has deviated from the legitimate routes of psychoanalysis. Indeed, even Freud might find that some of his writings would be rejected by a contemporary committee of readers.

It is not uncommon to come across “gut” papers in which the author feels that to be up-to-date he must exhibit his own emotions, his entrailles, and those of his patient. Generally, we find negative, depressive feelings or feelings of laceration and anxiety (due to separations, mournings, the loss of various things, …). The stylistic range of these outpourings is quite varied but certainly not sufficient to qualify a paper as psychoanalytic, although it constitutes an essential aspect of our work that can hardly be ignored. Those who choose to ignore this aspect risk falling into the unhappy genre of the intellectual or intellectualistic paper; these texts are alienated from feelings, and both patient and analyst are merely a bothersome means to scientific illumination, a necessary obstacle in the path of a cognitive construction. “Gut” papers are generally classified as “clinical” and intellectual articles as “theoretical”.

Not infrequently, we find polemical writing: polemics against some aspect of technique, against a certain concept of therapy, or against some theoretical position. On occasion such papers are clothed in a more or less effective humorous or sarcastic veil. Of course, Polemos is one of the great divine patrons of writing, and personally I do not believe I have ever written anything that did not contain some conscious or subtle attack against someone, at times so well concealed that only a few intimates would notice, but at times quite explicit. In company, however, polemics should not be exaggerated and pushed across the threshold of bon ton: no one can raise his voice in your living room without becoming unpleasant after a while. A muffled tone is generally more appreciated and produces effects of reassuring equilibrium. Monotony is preferable to wild shrieking.

Naturally, boring papers do not make up a genre apart. But they often appear in a rather well-defined genre, which we might call normal papers. Normal papers have the principal aim of corroborating the stability of psychoanalytic discourse, its conformity with some accepted and recognizable aspect of culture, and of showing that the author is in line with those aspects. This genre often has precise textual markers and presents specific lexical and expository options.

A reader and an editor find themselves in the position of having to examine a psychoanalytic paper in terms of a broad range of possibilities, a few salient characteristics of which I have indicated above. I believe that in general the management of a review that serves as the emanation of a scientific society would run its true risk if it thought, on the pretext of adopting the theoretical-clinical pluralism currently in vogue, that it had to please everyone, authors and users alike, thus responding to the edifying demands of uniformity and conformity. To push the point: if we did this, we would have a cross between a parish news bulletin and Harlequin's costume. The most obvious risk, of course, is that of shoddiness, which would result in a product that would be better off not circulating. The two risks are not mutually exclusive. I do not believe that we have got to this point, but it is worth keeping these risks in mind in our evaluations.

All this is accompanied by a further negative possibility: that for the most varied reasons we lose or blunt our capacity to distinguish between great cuisine and industrial and adulterated foods. “Great cuisine” is as much a rarity in our field as in any other, but the anonymous expert taster and the Rivista should at least recognize and encourage well-prepared dishes. Otherwise we would end up putting different “businesses” on the same level, as can be found in certain publications by restaurant owners' associations that simply list all the restaurants in the country without distinction. But the guides that sell well are those that make choices and point out the restaurants that are worth a visit or even a journey. A psychoanalytic review, if it intends to go beyond the restricted function of documenting the scientific activities of its members, must make choices, but it will always be obliged, given the nature of its statutory constraints, to settle for minimal requirements. And yet it can contribute to the improvement of the “business” and the quality of the products offered, from the most humble to the most sophisticated. Its job, then, is to support and guide the author. The task is not an easy one, and it does not fall to the reader alone but to the entire editorial board. I am also convinced that only those who come to terms with the actual work of cooking and with its difficulties will acquire the skills needed for the specific job of analysis and of critical support for the work of other colleagues. The operations involved will always be delicate and to a large extent arbitrary. They require editorial tact and balance, but also the author's willingness to interact with those responsible for the publication. This is where science ends and taste begins, though the former can never be reduced to the latter.

I would not like to give the impression in concluding with this gastronomic analogy that I have sought to underestimate the import of the whole problem. Anything but! From the point of view of a connoisseur of fine cuisine and a sometime amateur chef, I have given to the problem the same importance I attribute to the Rivtsta. Our publication must also provide refreshment for the soul. It is not necessary for the entire menu to appeal to everyone, and the customer must be allowed a choice, but there should always be a main dish along with something on the light side and the occasional tasty morsel. As a whole, the dinner should be pleasing and all the courses prepared with care. Otherwise the result will be, if not indigestible, certainly uninteresting; an exclusively documentary function, necessarily marked by little or no selection, will tend to prevail, and we will end up with a dull publication of little interest or appeal to anyone.

NOTES

1. Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem: Entities must not be multiplied beyond what is necessary.