Discussion

I wish to express my gratitude for the privilege of reading Professor Bally's paper and being asked to make some comments. My remarks will not be in the form of any criticism since there is hardly anything with which I would not agree. I want to limit them to the impressions the paper made on me and to the emotional reaction which it elicited.

I might quote a Latin saying that came to me while reading Professor Bally's paper: Tempora mutantur et nos mutamus in illis. Times change and we change with them. It is a paper of “Then and Now.” How was it at the beginning of the psychoanalytic movement? Seventy years ago Sigmund Freud coined the term psychoanalysis when he presented a paper at Charcot's hospital in Paris. He wanted, as Professor Bally has pointed out, psychoanalysis to be considered a natural science, and in spite of great efforts to convince his medical colleagues he was confronted with an intense and long-lasting resistance from most of his contemporaries.

In reviewing the literature on psychoanalysis which was written early in this century, one is amazed by the degree of ignorance, ill will and outspoken, evident hostility. One of the most outstanding publications of this kind was an issue of a German magazine which under the heading Gegen Psychoanalyse (Against Psychoanalysis), contained a series of anti-analytic articles, two of them written by outstanding professors of psychiatry. Times have changed and today psychoanalysis, either in its original form as postulated by Freud, or with modifications, is an accepted theory and therapeutic method in the medical and the non-medical world. The original skepticism towards the use of dialogue as a therapeutic method has disappeared and the relationship of analyst and analysand as “partners” has found general acceptance. Early in my psychotherapeutic work, thoughts about this “partnership” came to the fore. The nature of the relationship gave rise to many considerations and the unique character of the relationsh