Charles Rycroft and the Making of an Independent Psychoanalyst

AbstractThis article explores the work of Charles Rycroft and the potential reasons why it has been unjustly—in the author's opinion—consigned to an obscure corner of the history of psychoanalysis and contemporary psychoanalysis. In the first section, the author traces the origins of the Independent group in Great Britain to which Rycroft belonged. The second section outlines the key stages in Rycroft's private and professional life to provide insight into his development as an Independent psychoanalyst. The final section highlights one of the key ideas that Rycroft bequeathed to us: namely, his theory of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis.Keywords: Charles Rycrofthistory of psychoanalysisBritish Independent groupobject-relational theoryhuman communicationtherapeutic action Notes1 In addition to classic books on the Independents by Kohon (Citation1986) and Rayner (Citation1991), as well as more contemporary ones by Giannakoulas (Citation2010) and Williams and Keene (Citation2012), many notable authors have cited Rycroft as an important contributor to psychoanalysis. Among these are Lewin (Citation1953, 1954), Spitz (Citation1955), Tauber and Green (1959/2006), Loewald (Citation1960), Searles (Citation1962), Klauber (Citation1972), Bowlby (1973), Schafer (Citation1973, 1977), Manfredi (Citation1978), Levenson (Citation1981), McLaughlin (Citation1981), Etchegoyen (Citation1983), Modell (Citation1984), Cremerius (Citation1985), Di Chiara (1985), Aron (Citation1989); Rycroft's friends Khan (Citation1974), King (Citation1978), Storr (Citation1979) and Padel (Citation1985); and his "pupils" Lomas (Citation1965), Arden (Citation1984), Holmes (Citation1993), and Edgar Jones (Citation2004). Robinson (Citation1996, 2010), Budd (Citation2004, 2005), Groarke (Citation2007, 2010), and this author (Cassullo, 2007/2010b) have further assessed Rycroft's legacy.2 The Stephen siblings were joined over the years by the political theorist Leonard Woolf (who would marry Virginia), the novelist Edward Morgan Forster, the playwright George Bernard Shaw, the economist John Maynard Keynes, the art critic Clive Bell, and the painter Walter Sickert.3 Jones's hostility was probably linked to the fact that none of these individuals were medical doctors. After Adrian and Karin Stephen took up Jones's invitation to undertake medical training, he appears to have considered them in a far more positive light (Brearley, Citation2000). However, Jones continued to harbor certain doubts about the Stracheys, because they refused to study medicine and instead obtained their full psychoanalytic legitimization directly from Vienna, where they were accepted for analysis by Freud (something that Jones, despite his requests, was never granted [Caine, Citation2005]). Although Klein was not a doctor—indeed, she had no degree—she was irreproachable in Jones's eyes because, after a first analysis with Ferenczi in Budapest, she had a second analysis in Berlin with Abraham, whom Jones held in the highest regard. A case apart, finally, is that of the relationship between Jones and Joan Riviere, the troubled history of which is touchingly described by Athol Hughes (Citation1991, 2004).4 See also Simon Patridge (Citation2011), who applies the explanatory insights of what he calls "the upper-class and/or boarding school complex trauma syndrome" to the psychic dilemmas of someone of Rycroft's social status and to his decision leave the British Psychoanalytical Society just when he might have played a commanding role in it.5 We should also add that Colonel Lowry-Corry also died two years later, a further bereavement that surely exacerbated his daughter's mental and social condition.6 Rycroft wrote on these matters in 1984, displaying a persistent ambivalence as to whether solitude is to be lived as freedom and independence, or as abandonment: "Looking back on it, it seems to me extraordinary that I should have had to, or been allowed to, make so many decisions alone and unaided" (Rycroft, 1984/1985e, p. 203).7 Arden and Pearson's lapse is also curious when we consider the extent to which Rycroft's childhood was marred by loss and bereavement.8 In an interview with Pearson, King revealed that: "When Sylvia was thinking about retiring, I remember her saying that it would be impossible for her to retire and stay in London, because there was one patient who would never stop seeing her, and that was Charles Rycroft" (Pearson, 2004a, p. 205).9 Many of the Independents, including Rycroft himself (Borgogno & Cassullo, 2007/2010), would soon focus on this concept (Lomas, Citation1967, pp. 21–22; Heimann, Citation1975, p. 468).10 In this sense, Rycroft anticipated Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson's (1967) idea that man cannot not communicate and the interest of cognitive sciences in the pragmatics of human communication (Bara, 1999/2010).11 It is worth noting that Rycroft (Citation1954a) reviewed Psychoanalysis and the Occult (Deutsch, 1926/1953), edited by Devereux in 1953, which includes Deutsch's 1926 essay, "Occult Processes Occurring During Psychoanalysis." In this essay, Deutsch explores the distinction between concordant and complementary identifications. The distinction was later taken up by Racker (1949–1958/1968) in his work on countertransference.12 It is worth noting that the conception of interpretation as a "relational gesture" is implicit in the thought of Rycroft's mentor, Donald Winnicott. This conception is being developed today in an exquisitely Winnicottian flavor by Franco Borgogno (Citation1999, 2011).13 For a comparison between Sullivan's interpersonal theory and Ferenczi's ideas, see Conci (Citation2000).14 Actually, Rycroft was well known to interpersonal psychoanalysts from the beginning of his career. For example, his seminal (Freedman et al., 2009a) reformulation of the Freudian theory of symbolism (Rycroft, Citation1954a)—in which "the primary processes are considered to be interwoven and integrated with the secondary processes in the normal development of a sense of reality and of an affective investment in it," so that the imaginative functions should not be viewed anymore "as either escapes from or hindrances to establishment of a relationship to external objects" (De Saussure, 1969, p. 408)—went almost unnoticed in Europe, although it was acknowledged by Tauber and Green in Prelogical Experience (1959/2006). This book, as Donnel B. Stern (Citation2006) writes, would become one of the cornerstones of the American interpersonal tradition, for Green was the writer who, "in coining the term 'interpersonal psychoanalysis' as the title of Clara Thompson's selected papers, bequeathed a name to the group of loosely allied psychoanalysts … that grew up around Fromm and Sullivan," thus encouraging "later interpersonal writers to see themselves as a single group" (p. viii).Additional informationNotes on contributorsGabriele CassulloGabriele Cassullo, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, Research Doctor in Human Sciences (Clinical and Interpersonal Relations Psychology Section), and a nontenured professor of clinical psychology at the University of Turin, Italy.