Discussion

I was very pleased to have been invited to participate in this most exciting symposium, the theme of which is so appropriate to the interests and activities of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. The theme is an intriguing and challenging one. I have often pursued this question with wild flights of imagination, restrained only by the pessimistic picture which would frequently unfold. However, when some discipline, bolstered by realistic considerations, is brought into the daydream, a more optimistic and likely image begins to take shape.

You have heard three profound prognostications based on a consideration of the likely directions psychoanalysis has taken in the past 70 years, and which it must continue to take if it is to remain a viable influence in the 2000's. Whether it will do so remains to be seen. At times the image of psychoanalysis is so blurred, spattered and besmirched by zealous “true believers” who intend to preserve the doctrine in its original pristine form, that one fears for its future.

Change must come, however, to all living things and ideas are as alive as if endowed with RNA and blood corpuscles. Posing the theme in terms of a new image clearly implies that there is an old one, and that the image will continue to change so that what we propose today will also be affected by the ever-growing accumulation of knowledge about man. The portrait of psychoanalysis is far from finished. Tomorrow will undoubtedly require new shadings, new angles, some additions as well as erasures, and possibly even a new coat of paint for some parts of the portrait. It is even conceivable that the whole canvas may need to be redone without necessarily sacrificing the valuable base or throwing out the original picture. Some may wonder, however, why the painting should be tampered with at all. Why not accept it as a finished and perfect portrait? Must the canvas be redone because of some frivolous dissatisfactions, or in order to conform to changing sty