For TICP Members
Wednesday April 17, 2024
The Importance of Being Useless
Bruce Herzog, M.D., F.R.C.P(C)
Virtual
7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. EST
Abstract:
Sometimes a clinician’s best-intentioned advice, clarifications or interpretations are anti- therapeutic events. This should be a consideration when such interventions continue to be ineffective. At those times it may be preferable, in order to do therapy, to NOT do therapy. The therapist avoids the temptation of the incisive interpretation or empathic gesture, especially when an element of control, or even subversion, may be embedded within it. Traditional analytic approaches have inferred a non-directive connection, so it is arguable that the “useless” position is an extension of this. Perhaps there has always been a tacit acknowledgment that it can be quite useful to be useless. Regardless, it can be challenging for a clinician to repress the tendency to become actively helpful when the patient is floundering, especially if there is a request for more therapist engagement. There are several suggested reasons for the clinician to assume and maintain a “useless” stance:
1) A therapist being useless can encourage the patient to take the lead, and not be overridden by a professional agenda. This can be especially relevant for patients who had a history of their own initiative being repeatedly subverted by those in charge.
2) A shared “useless” experience of both patient and therapist may provide the opportunity to engage in an affect-sharing form of empathic connection. The uselessness of the therapist may be an intended outcome of the relationship, where both therapist and patient can experience and
understand their helplessness together.
3) Ostensibly allowing a therapy to fail could establish the acceptance of the patient as a “failure” – who can be loved and appreciated despite their
inadequacy. A less than successful therapeutic relationship may confirm the patient experience of failure in the eyes of others, removing the pressure for treatment to succeed and the therapist to manifest competence, in order to prove the patient worthy of being cared for.
Clinical verbatim examples are used to illustrate the different reasons for the necessity of a “useless therapist” sensibility. Regardless of the difficulty for a clinician to maintain a position of ineffectual helplessness, when the issue of therapist uselessness presents itself in the therapeutic
endeavour, we should consider how allowing oneself to be “useless” may be the best way to be “useful”.
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About the speaker
Bruce Herzog, M.D., F.R.C.P(C), is a graduate in Psychology and Medicine from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He completed his specialty training in Psychiatry and the Child and Adolescent Program at the University of Toronto, and received his Psychoanalytic certification at The Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis. He is a faculty member at the Toronto Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and an associate editor of the journal “Psychoanalysis, Self and Context”.
For TICP Members
Saturday May 4, 2024
The Match Made in Heaven: A Psychoanalytic Analysis of the Erdogan Regime
Dr Timur Fadil Oguz, Psychiatrist
Virtual
10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. EST
Abstract:
Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his party AKP (Justice and Development Party) have been in power since 2002 in Türkiye. Erdogan now controls the judiciary and the media. There is massive disinformation. There are widespread human rights violations, and corruption. There has been a progressive erosion of secularism and democracy. Elections have many times been declared unfair by international
organisations.
Concepts such as populism, right-wing populism, neoliberal authoritarianism, neo patrimonialism, competitive authoritarianism, permanent state of emergency, neoliberal authoritarianism are used to describe governments like Erdogan’s.
I believe that psychoanalytic theory provides valuable insights into the Erdogan phenomenon. Erdogan promotes a split view of the world like culturally alienated small elite vs uncorrupted real people; the representatives of the established order; homebred vs foreign-bred; patriots vs non-patriots: enemies vs friends; the pious vs the sinner. This paranoid-schizoid world view has two main functions. One function is that it simplifies the world and this simplification although fills the world with threatening enemies relieves people from the confusion they experience towards the world. Its other function is that it helps people positively regulate their self-esteem in two ways. First one is that it validates their primitive way of thinking, and the second is that it idealises their way of living, and beliefs.
Erdogan pictures himself as a very strong leader. People identify with this image and feel stronger and more secure in the world. It’s interesting that
Erdogan also pictures himself as a victim. These two images seem to contradict each other but the image of the victim facilitates people’s
identification with Erdogan because it matches with their devalued parts of their selves and eases their shame about them. It even turns shame into pride.
In my presentation I also would like to talk about how it is like for a psychiatrist/psychoanalyticly oriented therapist live in such an environment.
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About the Speaker:
