Roy Schafer
Roy Schafer was an American psychologist and psychoanalyst, who emphasised a psychoanalytic concept of narrative. For Schafer, an important purpose of the analytic process is that the analysand regains agency of their own story and of their own life. Psychoanalyst and analysand each have a role in telling and retelling the analysand's life story: the analyst helps the analysand by elevating subjectivity as awareness of multiple interpretations.
Biography
Roy Schafer was trained at the Menninger Foundation and Austen Riggs Center, then became Chief psychologist in the Yale Medical School Department of Psychiatry, subsequently a staff psychologist for Yale’s health service during which time he was appointed Clinical Professor, and later Training and Supervising Analyst in the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis. He was recruited to New York City to join the full-time faculty at Cornell University, Medical College in 1976. In 1979, he established a private practice in New York City. He remained a clinical professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research since that time.His early work focused on psychological testing. Melvin Belli called upon him as an expert witness for Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald's killer, whom he diagnosed as suffering organic brain damage that most likely involved psychomotor epilepsy. His first publications were on diagnostic psychological testing and included the very influential Psychoanalytic Interpretation in Rorschach Testing. He later wrote on psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in works including Aspects of Internalization, A New Language for Psychoanalysis, The Analytic Attitude, Retelling a Life, The Contemporary Kleinians of London, Bad Feelings, Insight and Interpretation, and Tragic Knots in Psychoanalysis.
He has received many honors, ranging from First Sigmund Freud Memorial Professor University College London to the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award of the International Psychoanalytic Association.
Interpretations of life stories
Schafer began to present traditional psychoanalytical concepts not as scientific principles but as interpretative storylines. In this view there is no single correct interpretation of a life story; rather, like other narrative constructions, such as poems or novels, the account lends itself to various understandings each of which can legitimately claim to be true while emphasizing another way of looking at it. According to Mitchell's alternative view of Schafer's work, the value of an interpretation lies not in its objectivity or correctness, but in its potential for opening up new forms of experience and allowing the analysand to claim a deeper and broader sense of its own activity.Narrational process
A narrational process in psychoanalysis consists of two people: the psychoanalyst and the analysand. Roy Schafer prefers the use of the word analysand instead of patient to avoid the implication of disease. Schafer describes psychoanalysts as ‘retellers of narrations’, but he states that more descriptions of psychoanalysts are possible. The analyst’s retelling influences the ‘what and how’ of the stories told by the analysand. The analyst establishes new questions that amount to narrative possibilities.Schafer divides the narration of the analysand in two parts:
a) The analysand him- or herself.
In the psychoanalytic situation, the psychoanalyst gives an account for the meaning an analysand gives to certain events. In the analytical situation one needs to deal with excessive claiming or disclaiming. In psychoanalytic narration some people present themselves as regularly blaming themselves for being responsible for misfortunes and accidents in their lives; this is called excessive claiming of action. The opposite of claiming of action is disclaiming of action: many others view themselves regularly as passive victims of circumstances when in fact they have played a part in bringing about these circumstances.
b) Narration.
Following literary theorists, who examined the role of telling and showing in narration, Roy Schafer makes a distinction between telling and showing in the psychoanalytical situation. Telling happens when the analysand tells in words about events; about the past. Showing happens when the analysand conveys ideas, feelings, fantasies or reactions, verbal or non-verbal and freely associates these in an unselective way and without rehearsal. The analysand seems to be operating in the present; even when talking about the past.