Robert Langs
| Robert Langs | |
|---|---|
| Born |
June 30, 1928 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | November 8, 2014 (aged 86) New York City, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, psychiatrist |
| Known for | Adaptation-centered psychoanalytic psychotherapy. |
Robert Joseph Langs (June 30, 1928 – November 8, 2014) was a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyist, the author, co-author, and editor of more than forty books on psychotherapy and human psychology. Over the course of more than fifty years, Langs developed a revised version of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, currently known as the “adaptive paradigm”. This is a distinctive model of the mind, and particularly of the mind’s unconscious component, significantly different from other forms of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic psychotherapy.
Langs treated psychoanalysis as a biological science, subject to the laws of evolution and adaptation. As with any living species, coping with environmental threats—and the resultant stresses and psychological traumas– must lie at the heart of human life including human psychological life. Langs’ research led him to posit the existence of a mental module he termed the “emotion-processing mind,” a psychic function which evolved to ensure the survival of the species. Langs contended that it had done so at the cost of adaptive failures and with devastating emotional consequences. He maintained that he had identified the assets and limitations of the emotion processing mind clinically and shown how the insights from this approach can help correct adaptive deficits, allowing more fulfilling lives, both individually and collectively. Langs therefore rejects the prevailing belief among psychoanalytic traditions that sexual or aggressive wishes and fantasies, the need for sound relationships with and affirmations from others, or self-actualization are the main issues in emotional life (see psychoanalysis). For Langs, the latter may be significant in any given clinical situation but precisely to the extent that they raise issues associated with emotional adaptation.
Langs revamped the psychoanalytic view of the unconscious mind, in accordance with his evolutionary approach. According to him, the unconscious mind operates on the basis of perceptions outside of awareness – subliminal or unconscious perceptions – much as the conscious mind operates on the basis of conscious perceptions, i.e. perceptions within awareness. The unconscious mind evolved, according to Langs, due to the development of language acquisition, which brought with it the uniquely human awareness of the future and, correspondingly, the sense of our own mortality and other death-related issues. This realization of mortality is often evoked by traumatic incidents and, thus, the anxiety-provoking ramifications of those experiences are barred from consciousness, though perceived unconsciously and then adaptively processed towards resolution. In contrast to classical psychoanalytic theory, which tends to view the unconscious mind as a chaotic mix of drives, needs, and wishes (see psychoanalysis), Langs sees the unconscious mind as an adaptive entity functioning outside of direct awareness.
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