BOOK REVIEW BY KATHRYN G. WHITE, Ph.D.
Reprinted with permission from Psychoanalytic Psychologist,
Journal of the Division of Psychoanalysis,
American Psychological Association,
Fall 2006, pp. 64-65 and 69 with all rights reserved.
Continued from Page 1 of the Book Review
Every time we talk about “the relational field” or the experience of projective identification
we talk about non-tangible psychological reality. Our use and understanding of it might be
rationalized and justified by some statistical data about what factors influence it, or perhaps
even better for the literalists, some brain studies about what happens neurologically. But,
these data would not in any way change our primary empirical knowledge of its importance
to us in the consulting room. As I was finishing this review, the New York Times online
reported that we now have brain evidence that hysteria “actually exists.” Why is brain
evidence more valuable than thousands and thousands of hours of consensually validated
clinical experience? Are not the tools of science merely the tools of the knower?
We all know experiences that are individual and that cannot be localized with physical
instruments nor always confirmed with statistical rigor. But, if we are good at what we do, we
use them, and all the “science” in the world will not affect our experience of them as “real.”
This realm of experienced human reality is difficult to talk about at best, and even more
difficult when one is in a profession that is seen as “scientific” and logical. So, many of us
never speak of what we accept as meaningful in our consulting rooms. Others of us ignore
and in many ways refuse to allow our patients to bring in these experiences, and others of
us work hard at the mental gymnastics necessary to qualify all of our thoughts and words
into “as if” statements. “It’s as if you felt your father’s soul came to say goodbye to you as
he was dying.”
Bernstein himself, although clearly reasonable and grounded, is not so concerned to be
careful, and so he is fearless in his critique and about accepting that perhaps his patient
really does know how cows feel. Yet, how often do we experience the synchronistic, the
dream about what can’t be known, the experience of seeing something from the ceiling of a
room when one’s body is traumatized below? One of the most important points Bernstein
raises is that if we adopt a too rational need to fix and understand reality as tangible, literal,
testable, then we will shut down what we see, what we hear, what can be said to us, and
therefore how we can help our patients. We will tend to pathologize what is not acceptable
in our culture, but what might have been taken as insight and truth in another. To accept an
experience from a Native American, from a Hmong, or from a Balinese, but not from an
American of northern European heritage is to reveal an underlying value system that puts
science and rationality as primary.
Questions then: Are we patronizing cultures when we accept from those of particular ethnic
heritage experience that cannot be accepted from northern European, as the DSM does for
Schizotypal Personality Disorder? Are other worldviews mistaken and Western European
more accurate? Can we hold both meanings at the same time? Can we accept that
something does seem to exist at times that follows principals of meaning and timing rather
than following scientific principals of controlled replication? Can we say “These things don’t
happen to me, but they seem to happen to you and I’m OK with not knowing how that
works?”
Living in the Borderland will be annoying to rationalists. And there is a bit of choppiness in
the style. For example, his constructed epilogue “myth” feels forced and dead, without the
emotional energy of his psychological theories. This is not surprising since psychological
theories are some of the living myths of our time, and a Jungian should know that the new
myth must seem true to be alive.1 A story only works when it feels real, not when it is
constructed to prove a point. The impact of Bernstein’s book will lie not in his myth, but in
his concept, in his challenges to our own highly defended world views, and in the ideas
those challenges provoke.
1 Von Franz (1978): Now if you are critically minded you will say: “All right, but then you simply replace one
myth by another—by our myth, the Jungian myth, you could call it.” There one can only answer, Yes, we do
that, but… we know that we are doing it, and we know quite well that if in 200 years someone were to read
our interpretations, they would say: “Isn’t that funny! ...They translated …myth into Jungian
psychology…and thought that was it! But we know that it is —“ and they will bring a new
interpretation…Therefore we should never present our interpretation with the undertone of “this is it.”
References:
Kinetz, E. (2006). Is hysteria real? Brain images say yes. The New York Times, online
edition, September 26, 2006. Retrieved September 26, 2006, from source.
Von Franz, M. L. (1978). An Introduction to the Interpretation of Fairytales. Irvine, TX:
Spring Publications, pp. 31-32
