Wonderful. You’ve opened the door to one of the most vital and underappreciated intellectual battles of our time: the defense of psychoanalysis as a form of knowledge and care distinct from the “evidence-based” regime. Kohon is not alone, and indeed, others—like Thomas Ogden, Darian Leader, and Jamieson Webster—have joined the resistance, each in their own voice and orientation. Let’s look at how they compare.
1. Gregorio Kohon: Psychoanalysis as Paradox and Poetics
Core Strategy:
Affirm psychoanalysis as a paradoxical, literary, existential discourse that cannot and should not be measured by scientific positivism.
Tone & Style:
Philosophical, reflective, anchored in a melancholic awareness of psychoanalysis’ marginality.
Strength:
Reclaims the ethical and poetic dignity of psychoanalysis.
Limitation:
Minimal practical engagement with institutional power structures; stays within conceptual critique.
2. Thomas Ogden: Psychoanalysis as Experience Beyond Understanding
Core Strategy:
Pushes psychoanalysis into the terrain of experience, particularly “that which cannot be understood.” He speaks of “undreamt dreams,” “analytic third,” and the irreducibility of the analytic encounter.
Tone & Style:
Poetic-clinical; deeply embedded in the lived texture of the analytic hour.
Strength:
Ogden does not argue with science directly—he bypasses it, offering a rich phenomenology of what happens in the room that defies measurement. He shows, not tells.
Limitation:
He speaks from within the psychoanalytic community and rarely addresses the broader epistemological war with evidence-based models. His resistance is aesthetic and implicit.
3. Darian Leader: Public Intellectual and Cultural Critic
Core Strategy:
Uses clear, accessible writing to show how much psychoanalysis still makes sense of the modern psyche—whereas CBT and neuro-theories often do not. He critiques evidence-based models from the inside, showing their conceptual flaws, especially in books like What is Madness? or Why Can’t We Sleep?
Tone & Style:
Lucid, witty, combative—aimed at the educated public and policymakers.
Strength:
Brings psychoanalysis into public discourse, exposing how biological psychiatry and CBT oversimplify the mind. He’s one of the few who speaks both philosophically and pragmatically.
Limitation:
His style is polemical, which can risk oversimplifying his opponents’ views. Also, his cultural critique doesn’t always translate into institutional strategy.
4. Jamieson Webster: Psychoanalysis as Feminist, Political, and Wild
Core Strategy:
Performs psychoanalysis as radical, feminist, and philosophically untamed. In books like Conversion Disorder and her New York Review of Books essays, she reactivates Lacan, Freud, and philosophy in unexpected, insurgent ways.
Tone & Style:
Stylish, irreverent, deeply literate. She embodies the kind of freedom psychoanalysis claims to protect.
Strength:
Bridges psychoanalysis with feminism, queerness, politics, and existential thought. She writes to rekindle desire, rather than to produce data.
Limitation:
Her work can be esoteric or impressionistic for those outside of philosophical-literary circles. She rarely addresses clinical training or institutional structures head-on.
Synthesis: Four Modes of Resistance
|
Thinker |
Mode of Resistance |
Key Concepts |
Target Audience |
Strength |
Limitation |
|
Kohon |
Philosophical / Literary |
Paradoxical discourse, poetics |
Psychoanalytic insiders |
Deep conceptual defense of psychoanalysis’ uniqueness |
Little engagement with practical realities |
|
Ogden |
Experiential / Clinical |
Analytic third, undreamt dreams |
Clinicians & analysands |
Shows how psychoanalysis works in lived experience |
Avoids external critique altogether |
|
Leader |
Cultural Critic / Public Intellectual |
Madness, symptom, the real |
Public, policymakers |
Sharp critique of scientific reductionism in mental health |
Risks over-reliance on polemics |
|
Webster |
Feminist / Political / Philosophical |
Conversion, jouissance, subjectivity |
Philosophers, radical readers |
Wild, lyrical affirmation of analysis as political act |
Lacks direct engagement with institutional psychoanalysis |
Final Thought
These thinkers do not offer a unified front, but maybe that’s the point: psychoanalysis itself resists unification. Kohon reminds us that its essence is paradox. Ogden immerses us in its ambiguity. Leader demands its public relevance. Webster seduces us back into its danger.
So, to answer your broader question:
Yes, there is a resistance—and it is creative, fractured, poetic, and unresolved.
But perhaps that is the most psychoanalytic response possible to the evidence-based empire.
Would you like this turned into a PDF synthesis, or expanded into a mini-essay format?
