43 Facts About Robert Langs

Robert Joseph Langs was a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychoanalyst.

Robert Langs was the author, co-author, or editor of more than forty books on psychotherapy and human psychology.

Robert Langs treated psychoanalysis as a biological science, subject to the laws of evolution and adaptation.

Robert 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.

Robert Langs contended that it had done so at the cost of adaptive failures and with devastating emotional consequences.

Robert Langs 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.

Robert Langs revamped the psychoanalytic view of the unconscious mind, in accordance with his evolutionary approach.

In contrast to classical psychoanalytic theory, which tends to view the unconscious mind as a chaotic mix of drives, needs, and wishes, Robert Langs sees the unconscious mind as an adaptive entity functioning outside of direct awareness.

Robert Langs maintains that, as a rule, dreams are responses to current traumas and adaptive challenges and that their story lines characteristically convey two sets of meanings: the first expressed directly as the story qua story, while the second is expressed in code and implicitly, disguised in the story's images.

For example, Robert Langs' focus on how human beings cope with reality and traumas resulted in his identifying three forms of unconsciously experienced death anxiety and in his showing how each form can mark a universal or archetypal path to devastation, not only individually but collectively.

Robert Langs' work moved into questions of spirituality, in part because so much of religion deals with death-related phenomena.

Robert Langs developed ways of recognizing what triggers death anxieties and ways of neutralizing their destructive effects.

Robert Langs worked in various internships and residencies at the US Public Service Hospital in Staten Island, The Albert Einstein College of Medicine, The Bronx Municipal Hospital Center, and The Research Center for Mental Health at New York University.

Robert Langs was an Honorary Visiting Fellow at the School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Regent's College, London, England.

Robert Langs has authored, co-authored or edited more than 175 scholarly articles and 47 books, ranging over many distinct genre.

Robert Langs's publications have been translated into the major Western European languages, as well as Russian and Japanese.

Robert Langs was editor of the International Journal for Psycho-Analysis from 1972 to 1983.

Dr Robert Langs wrote and lectured all over the world on dreams, emotions, unconscious communication, and the science of the mind.

Robert Langs's last speaking engagement was at the Library of Congress.

Robert Langs was a visiting professor at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and an honorary visiting fellow with the School of Psychotherapy and Counseling, Regents College, London.

Robert Langs is the founder of the "communicative-adaptive" school of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Robert Langs is best known for his rigorous emphasis on establishing and maintaining a secure frame for analysis, his development of the concept of the bi-personal field, and his extensive documentation of encoded transference derivatives in the analytic interaction.

From early on, Robert Langs analyzed this connection between psychic experience and reality in terms of "adaptation," suggesting that psychic phenomena should be interpreted in terms of the goals of adaptation in the individual, an adaptive process which refers not only to the patient's life outside of the consulting room but and especially to the patient's experiences within the consulting room.

Robert Langs differentiated "Type 1" derivatives, which refer solely to the client's internal experiences, from "Type 2" derivatives, which arise from the patient's attempts to adapt to reality, at times evoking psychic conflict.

One indication of Robert Langs' influence is the 1984 anthology Listening and Interpreting.

The Challenge of the Work of Robert Langs, edited by James Raney MD.

Also during this period, Robert Langs initiated book-length clinical dialogues with prominent psychoanalysts, including Harold Searles and Leo Stone, as well as an extended discussion on transference and countertransference with Margaret Little.

Some objected to the tone of Robert Langs' work, suggesting that Robert Langs was more confident in his conclusions than his work merited.

In other cases, Robert Langs' work was considered a significant advance over previous psychoanalytic texts.

The third phase in Robert Langs' work, stretching roughly from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, was motivated by a new set of clinical puzzles.

Robert Langs found that the clinical literature did little to illuminate this set of problems.

Robert Langs sought to explain biologically why these distinct mental modules function as they do.

Robert Langs's work linking evolutionary biology to the unconscious psyche required that Langs turn his attention to the problem of extinction and, with it, death and death anxiety.

Robert Langs defines a way of listening to the deep unconscious system, through trigger-decoded interpretations, making it possible, he believes, to understand the deep unconscious system as well as to operationalize unconscious perceptions in a meaningful scientific way.

One reviewer suggested that Robert Langs' idea that psychoanalysis is biological science is a myth of Robert Langs' own making.

Abramovitch, a Jungian analyst and scripture scholar, gave negative reviews to Robert Langs' efforts, suggesting that Robert Langs was out of his league to even treat of the issues.

Robert Langs acknowledged this state of affairs, but suggested that at least some of the lukewarm reception of his work might have been due to the unpleasantness of the message, namely, that the roots of psychic conflict are in death-related trauma and anxiety, requiring therefore of both patient and therapist that they face their own death anxieties head-on.

Whereas Robert Langs' earlier work sought primarily frame and ground rule violations through encoded communications, there is a greater emphasis on listening for encoded communications of patients' traumas.

The reason for this is that what Robert Langs calls the "emotion processing mind" has evolved in such a way that it separates out the deepest, most painful traumas from both the conscious and superficial unconscious experiences, stowing the painful and overwhelming traumas and anxieties in the deep unconscious system for the sake of easier conscious adaptation.

The members of the human species, on Robert Langs' account, are therefore highly susceptible to denial and obliteration of the deepest traumas, more or less guaranteeing that they will not be healed and tending them to deep unconscious death anxieties, profound guilt, violent acting out and other emotional disturbances.

Dr Robert Langs died in November 2014 after a long struggle with amyloidosis.

Besides several recently published articles, Robert Langs was working on a book-length study on American presidents and the traumas which have driven them.

Robert Langs was working on a memoir, tentatively entitled The Devil is in the Genes.