Fundamental Ethical Ambiguity of the Analyst as Person (with a note on Confusion of Tongues) (Lecture)

Description:

In this presentation, I will address the largely unrepresented state of ethics in psychoanalysis.  We tend to do an end run around the subject of ethics in our field and take for granted that we all agree on what constitutes ethical behavior without inquiring further.  I will argue that because psychoanalysis as a discipline is based on what is not known, we must first take into account the unknown in each analyst's inevitably personal (unconscious) participation, including his/her motivation to become an analyst in the first place.  I will mention the concept of (typically sexual) ethical "boundary violations", and our tendency to conflate psychoanalytic discourse with forensic discourse at these times, resulting in a kind of confusion of tongues within the field itself.  

Objectives:

1. Describe the inevitable ethical unknowns in analytic work.
2. Discuss the role of personal history in becoming an analyst.
3. Explain the relevance of Ferenczi's concept of confusion of tongues in the aftermath of major ethical breaches.

Jane Kite trained as an analyst in San Francisco and is currently a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and Society. Dr. Kite has been on the editorial boards of the IJP, JAPA, and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, and is currently an associate editor of JAPA. Her abiding interests in psychoanalysis are centered in Character and Ethics, with special attention to the inevitable disjunction between theory and practice.