Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 12(6):857-898, 2002 The Language of Psychoanalytic Discourse Drew Westen, Ph.D. Much contemporary analytic writing is focused on the intersubjective “space” between analyst and analysand. This article focuses on a different area of analytic subjectivity and intersubjectivity—on the implicit rules that guide psychoanalytic thought and discourse, which have not received the kind of critical scrutiny as our explicit theories. The paper describes five problematic aspects of this implicit grammar and corresponding ways of refining it: articulating conceptual multiplicity where we often use unitary constructs (such as the unconscious or the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis); specifying mechanisms rather than causally ambiguous descriptions (such as two unconsciouses talking to one another) and conditional rather than blanket statements; avoiding using terms in overdetermined ways that lead to theoretical imprecision and confusion of theory and metaphor; exercising greater caution in the use of developmental constructs and analogies, particularly from infancy; and rethinking the nature and presentation of evidence in psychoanalytic discourse. HEORY AND PRACTICE ALWAYS STAND IN DIALECTICAL RELATION TO one another. At times, clinical observation and practice lead theory, as when, at the turn of the 20th century, Freud started to notice that his patients seemed to attribute to him qualities that did not belong to him. This observation led to the theory of transference (Freud, 1912), which then guided practice and further observation. This neck-and-neck relation between theory and practice—where one is a step ahead, and then the other—is essential for the development of both. Drew Westen, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University. He is the author of numerous articles and two books, Self and Society: Narcissism, Collectivism, and the Development of Morals and Psychology: Brain, Behavior, and Culuere I thank Drs. Laura Arkowitz Westen, Margaret Crastnopol, and Jodie Davies for their helpful comments on a draft of this paper. 857 © 2002 The Analytic Press, Inc.858 Drew Westen In psychoanalysis, we are currently in an era in which not only is practice leading theory in most domains, but also the theories that guided clinical practice and observation for decades no longer seem adequate to the task. There is no longer a consensus on the nature of motivation—a cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory, at least in the United States, through the 1980s—or even of unconscious processes perhaps the cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory since its inception (see, e.g., Stern, 1983, 1997). We no longer have shared theories of development: Is development characterized by a movement across psychosexual stages? Ego-psychological stages? Object-relational stages (and, if so, posited by whom: Klein? Fairbairn? Kernberg? Kohut?)? Nor do we have shared theories of psychopathology: Is psychopathology a result of infantile fixations and regressions, a failure to transcend the schizoid position, the mirror stage, or the stage in which the child should be developing grandiose representations of self and idealized representations of parental figures? Or is psychopathology the result of a failure in the original intersubjective relationship between parent and infant, which does not leave the developing child with a capacity for playful, mutual engagement? In a collective sense, we find ourselves in an epoch of Eriksonian crisis, a period of both opportunity and danger. The opportunities can be seen in the development of new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between patient and analyst, integrations of psychoanalysis and neuroscience, and, perhaps most important of all, new ways of relating to our patients that would have been unthinkable (or unacknowledged) two decades ago. The dangers lie, on the one hand, in rigid adherence to models that may no longer work well but have the imprimatur of oedipal authority; and, on the other, in reactive and equally defensive denial of elements of theory and technique that need to be preserved and incorporated into any new synthesis, such as the importance of conflict, aggression, sexuality, and unconscious processes. A third danger lies in a defensive retreat from theory, often rationalized as a respect for the ineffability of the mind, which leaves practice unmoored in explicit theory and driven instead by unconscious, unformulated ideas and unanalyzed countertransferential pulls. Much contemporary analytic writing is focused on the analyst’s subjectivity and the intersubjective “space” between analyst and analysand. Here my focus is on a different area of analytic subjectivityThe Language of Psychoanalytic Discourse 859 and intersubjectivity: on the nature of psychoanalytic dialogue, that is, on the ways we talk to ourselves and with each other, and the implicit rules that guide discourse. My aim is to describe what | believe is a realm of “unformulated experience” in this “analytic fourth’—a set of rules for thinking, writing, and conversing that have not, like drive theory or other aspects of explicit theory, drawn our conscious attention, but that continue to guide the broader context of psychoanalytic theory and practice.' As I hope to show, contemporary psychoanalytic theories, including many of those that have self- consciously diverged from classical psychoanalysis, have inherited an implicit grammar that warrants careful examination to maximize the promise of this era of creative tension. Before beginning, it is important to place these arguments within the context of current psychoanalytic thinking and to emphasize the difference between the implicit and explicit grammars that guide psychoanalytic clinical and theoretical thought and language. One may object, and rightly so, that many of the arguments in this paper are not new or that they apply more to one school of psychoanalytic thought than another. For example, the 1970s saw a critique of the reification of such constructs as “the ego” (e.g., Schafer, 1968, 1976; Peterfreund, 1975), which led to language that tends to be more experience near. More recently, a number of authors have criticized the tendency to infantilize analysands through inappropriate developmental metaphors (e.g., Mitchell, 1984), and relational theorists in particular have emphasized multiplicity in such phenomena as self-experience, transference, and countertransference (e.g., Mitchell, 1991; Bromberg, 1996; Pizer, 1998; Davies, 1999). 'For another recent look at this broader context for the dyadic inrersubjectivity of the consulting room, see Aron (1999). hope the reader will forgive a certain egocentrism to this paper, which in some summary of a way of thinking that has guided my work as it has evolved over the last 15 years. It is humbling to admit that much of what I have to say can be presented in such a brief space, but such is life. If the references at the end of the paper appear weighted toward my own, this no doubt reflects @ combination of my efforts to refer readers to other papers in which I have developed some of these ideas more fully; efforts to avoid singling out particular authors for unnecessary tar-and- feathering (since there is plenty of tar to go around for all of us); and my obviously incomplete analysis.