Book Review: Echoism: The Silenced Response to Narcissism

Echoism: The Silenced Response to Narcissism

Donna Christina Savery (2018). London and New York: Routledge.

This review is for a large part a remake of my foreword to Donna Christina Savery's new book. As an excuse, I can give many arguments, not least the invitation from the Editor of this Journal to do so.

I was happy to write the foreword to Savery's book mainly for two reasons. First, the book is so different from most in this realm – it may just add a new feature or give a slightly novel perspective on a phenomenon already much-treated in psychological literature. Second, she does not write as a member or representative of one specific school of thought, which is unusual. In both respects, courage is needed to speak with one's own voice! I felt attached not only to the book but also to its author, because I realized that we have something in common. We are 'go-betweens' between psychoanalysis and existential philosophy. The author's strong bond to the truth one finds in myths and dramas (which stems from her former career as a theatre director) also drew me in. My personal experience of searching for a combination of the essentials in psychoanalysis and existential philosophy

left me to wonder if this book would provide similar obstacles for existential therapists and psychoanalysts. I wondered if there would be a certain amount of defensiveness, even of resentment on either side – from the existentialists who pretend to have overcome the prejudices of psychoanalysis and from the psychoanalysts who not so seldom reject thoughts that result from looking beyond their own garden fence.

Two more thoughts spring to mind as I write this review and once more consider my foreword in the book. First, I believe it is important not to come to the wrong conclusion from the new term 'echoism' with which the author has chosen to identify a specific psychic phenomenon. As it is almost common sense today that such a 'labelling' is only helpful in the realm of medical-psychiatric diagnosis, a cursory examination of the book may lead the reader to the mistaken opinion that this new term is designed as a diagnostic label. Nevertheless, once a reader is ready to plunge into the book, he or she will realize that Savery relies on Freud's fundamental discovery that neurotic symptoms have a hidden meaning. She is not interested in psychiatric diagnosis but rather in a hermeneutic approach to the phenomenon, she discovered in her therapeutic practice and which she decided to name 'echoism'. She inquires into what these patients are unconsciously suffering from. In her hermeneutic unveiling of the hidden meaning (unconscious), she relies on Kleinian psychoanalysis on the one hand and existential philosophy on the other. I guess that emphasizing this point is especially important for existential therapists who too often – just like traditional daseinsanalysts of who I am one – misinterpret the Freudian method as taken from natural sciences of the nineteenth century.

Second, I realize more and more that choosing the position as an echoist is not just a potential problem of our patients but of us as therapists as well. This is evidently the case when we whole-heartedly identify with the school of thought we belong to. There is no question that while such identification provides us with a sense of belonging and security, mostly combined with the belief that we are on the 'right' side and possess a monopoly of the truth. Of course, the book is about patients and not about therapists, patients who are strongly joined to narcissistic partners or parents who deny them their own voice. However, is the situation of therapists who identify closely with their school and its ruling figures not similar? Do they not submit and obey because they are too anxious of the consequences of becoming a 'single individual' (Kierkegaard) with their own voice? Is there not a tendency of 'orthodox' psychoanalysis to punish members who dare to develop their own voice? Moreover, is there not for the therapists in the echoist position, some gratification as it helps them to evade their anxiety?

I am convinced that we can learn a lot about the problem of the identity of a therapist from this book even as this issue is not explicitly mentioned. We can learn to make a difference between commitment and identification or even introjection. While a real commitment to the thoughts presented by one's own school will never hinder us if we are also committed to our own thinking and gaining of our own voice, but introjection is. Savery clarifies the consequence in her reflections on anxiety: a commitment will not shelter us from the ontological experience, but introjection will. I ask myself whether a willingness to bear anxiety is not a fundamental requirement for a therapist who is 'with' patients who suffer from exactly this ontological experience?

The book breaks new ground not only in terms of content but also in process. Savery writes about a new phenomenon: 'echoism' which existed previously but, until now, had gone unnoticed. She explores it through her work with echoistic patients by combining insights about the human condition from existential philosophy with psychoanalytic theory and practice, mainly from the Kleinian School.

Let me dwell a little on these two points as they make the book special. When Savery writes about echoism, she writes about a phenomenon, which had no name before and therefore could not be identified as a psychological condition worthy of attention in psychoanalysis. This is regrettable, but by no means uncommon because, for the most part, we give attention only to phenomena which are already named and conceptualized and therefore recognisable. This may sound pessimistic, and it certainly runs counter to an idealisation of the phenomenological method in the form valued by many existential therapists. From Gadamer's Truth and Method (1960), we know that we cannot easily rid ourselves unconditionally from assumptions, expectations and preconceptions, to become completely and directly open to phenomena, to be able to perceive the 'things themselves' (Husserl). Every 'thing' needs 'words' to become something of which we can speak. Furthermore, we usually take up common words and phrases in order to name a certain phenomenon, in order to feel we are on safe ground where we discuss it.

Savery had the courage to stay with a phenomenon that she encountered in therapy even though it made no sense to her while using current psychopathological concepts. Instead of giving up, as we usually do in such circumstances, she puzzled it over in thoughts and feelings, and finally found help in The Myth of Echo and Narcissus. This allowed her to trace an arc between the enigmatic being of certain patients and the mythical figure of Echo, and discover how much these patients had in common with the Greek nymph. The affinity made it possible to give the phenomenon its appropriate name: echoism.

Sceptics may question whether it is simply a new label for a long-established and already widely discussed phenomenon. In studying this book, I concluded that the opposite is true, that it is a phenomenon that has been constantly overlooked until now. As a result, it seems fitting to me, to speak of a discovery in the field of psychopathology. Any reader will soon gain a sympathetic understanding that the author is not claiming to have the final word on the phenomenon, but that her intention is to open up a field for further investigation and discussion. What we find in the book, however, will no doubt enhance our theoretical understanding as well as our therapeutic practice.

Through the book, I have learned that there exists an important distinction between echoism and ordinary forms of what we consider depression. The echoist shares some features or forms of defences (in the psychoanalytical language) with depressed individuals, however, there is an important difference, which the term of echoism already alludes to, namely its inherent relationship with narcissism. It is essential for an echoist to be attracted to narcissistic people, to look for shelter by submitting to them, to play the silent, or better, the silenced role in an imbalanced relationship with a narcissist.

This leads me to my second point, which concerns the way in which Savery has chosen to approach her topic. Her decision to combine existential philosophy with psychoanalysis is courageous. In continental Europe, this is represented in the Daseinsanalyisis movement, psychoanalysis under an existential perspective (Binswanger, 1950). In the UK, on the other hand, many existential practitioners believe that this integration is neither necessary nor desirable, suggesting that perhaps her approach falls between two stools. Fortunately, Savery takes the risk, allowing the reader to see that it is suited to her subject, because it is only in using these two seemingly different perspectives, and by so skilfully combining them that the complexity and richness of the phenomenon of echoism can come into view.

What is true for the phenomenon of echoism is true for other psychopathological phenomena as well. In reading the book, one cannot help but become acquainted with a new approach that is fruitful for the whole field of psychopathology and, indeed, psychotherapy. Thus, the book has a pioneering role quite independent of its specialist topic. A psychoanalyst may realize that integrating philosophical ideas about the human condition does not go against psychoanalysis but deepens its insights. I also hope that existential therapists will realize that it is time to overcome their deep-rooted prejudice against the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious as irreconcilable with a phenomenological stance. The value of existential therapy lies in its willingness to encounter clients not as people afflicted by 'mental disorders' but as individuals wrestling with existential problems.

Yet, I consider it a weakness to dismiss the psychoanalytic perspective by holding on to the phantasy that existential philosophy can replace psychoanalysis. The psychoanalytic perspective is not only indispensable to understand the childhood of our clients or patients, but is even more important for reflecting on our dynamic interaction in the here and now of the therapeutic session. In this respect, the many vignettes in the book are impressive!

Some of the book's psychoanalytic terminology is not always easy to digest for a phenomenologist. Nevertheless, for me it was a rewarding task to become a translator of psychoanalytic terms by searching for their hidden existential meaning. We might look to Sartre who, in Being and Nothingness, rather than dismissing the unconscious, provides an existential concept for it, and in his phenomenological analysis of Bad Faith, succeeds in demonstrating how the unconscious works in all of us.

In summary, Savery's book not only paves the way for a better understanding between existential and psychoanalytic therapists but also provides a broadening of the horizon for each of them. It requires that readers open their mind and ready themselves to look over their teacup, so to speak. I am confident that it will find them.

Alice Holzhey-Kunz

References

Binswanger, L. (1950). Daseinsanalytik und Psychiatrie. In Ausgewählte Vorträge und Ausätze Bd. II, Francke Verlag Bern. 1955: 279-302; 293.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1960). Truth and Method. Trans. rev. Weinsheimer, J. and Marshall, D. In Bloomsbury Academic 2013: 278-397.