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  • A Bricoleur or Two in the Consulting Room
  • Robert King (bio)

In popular contemporary use, the French term bricolage refers to the activities of the home handyman. It is sometimes used in a disparaging way to refer to work that is improvised, uninformed by expertise or specialist knowledge, and probably inferior in its results when compared with the work of a tradesman or professional. In 1962, anthropologist and philosopher Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that bricolage is a modality of human thought. Since then, the importance of bricolage as a mental activity has been identified in relation to art and architecture, as well as other fields of cultural activity. In this paper I consider bricolage as an activity of the ego and explore its role in the consulting room. I argue that by necessity the psychoanalytic work undertaken between patient and analyst relies on this modality of thought and, furthermore, that the use of bricolage is entirely compatible with evidence-based practice.

Modalities of the Ego

We understand that the ego is unique and particular. Freud termed it 'das ich' or 'the I', which fully conveyed its intimate relation with the specificity of the person. Strachey preferred to use Latin terms for structures of the psyche. This had the effect of distancing the ego from subjectivity but highlighted another equally important dimension, the universality of its function as the intermediary between the psyche and its environment.

Freud viewed the ego as a psychical agent in the service of the reality principle. The ego had the capacity to apprehend both internal and external reality and to identify and test [End Page 543] rational and effective responses. As Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) point out, "the ego is treated [by Freud] essentially as a mediator attempting to reconcile contradictory demands" (p. 138). Irrationality in human conduct is a function of these contradictions and of the subversion of the ego that arises when the work of mediation immobilizes or overwhelms reality testing.

Psychoanalysis is, at heart, a study of these contradictions and the consequent subversion of the ego. In its clinical application psychoanalysis is a practice that restores the ego to its place at the center of the person. This is why, in the history of ideas, psychoanalysis may be understood as a humanistic project, or more specifically, an enlightenment project (Eagle, 2011).

Psychoanalysis came into being at a time when the apprehension of reality had become more than something that people simply pursued in the ordinary activity of living. Rather, it had become a process governed by rules and conventions, which might loosely be termed the scientific method. The method contributed to intellectual developments and technological inventions that allowed a steady and rapid progress in the apprehension of reality, such that, by the beginnings of psychoanalysis, our understanding of the nature of our world, the universe beyond it, and even the interiors of our bodies would have been unrecognizable to those born only a few hundred years previously.

The success of the scientific method meant that it provided Freud with a model for the ego. The reality principle seemed to Freud to demand a psychical structure that operated in accordance with the principles and procedures of the scientific method. Precisely these principles and procedures had proved to be most effective in the collective apprehension of reality; there was no reason to suspect that they should not also be the principles and procedures that governed the operation of that part of the psyche whose function it was to apprehend reality.

Furthermore, because of this Freudian ego we can trace unerringly the reasoning that impelled both Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck (both of whom spent their formative years as trainees in the ego psychology tradition of psychoanalysis) towards their development of a purely cognitive therapy. If the goal of psychoanalysis (or indeed any therapy) is the triumph of the ego, there is a certain logic to being less concerned with what [End Page 544] has weakened it and more concerned with providing it with rigorous training in the application of those principles and procedures that will make it strong.

While the relationship between the psychoanalytic project and the thinking processes (including the scientific method) broadly...

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