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My essay is in the form of an exchange between two other analysts and me. The first analyst is a respected classicist acknowledged for his contributions to theory. He works exclusively with adults and has a well-deserved reputation for effective results. The second is a woman, principally recognized for her clinical work with children. Her results are equally admirable, although it has been said that her interest in the children she treats often overshadows her concern with technical niceties. They have both agreed to help me prepare this essay with the title, “How Child and Adult Analysis Inform and Misinform One Another.”1
Our exchange begins with each of them reproaching me for the title for overlapping reasons.
In a tone that is ironic, pedagogic, and somewhat autocratic all at once, the adult analyst declares that such a title has a “scope” problem, the subject matter is simply too broad. He continues,
What, for example, do you mean by “analysis”? No reasonably sophisticated audience agrees on what that process consists of in adults these days, much less in children. Some clinicians will expect you to focus upon conflict, others upon the status of the representational world, and the rest will assess your qualifications to address the subject by determining how attuned you are to
Prepared for the Child Analytic Section at the UNC Psychoanalytic Institute, May 3, 1997. Earlier versions were read at the Long Island Psychoanalytic Society, December 1996, and the New York Freudian Society, October 1996. The essay was stimulated by discussions in a five-year study group chaired by Samuel Abrams and Albert J. Solnit, sponsored by the Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund.
The phrase “inform and misinform” was suggested by Dr. Lee Jaffee at a meeting devoted to similar issues in December 1994.
Page 3defects in structures and deficiencies in functions. Are you planning to view the analytic partnership as designed to resolve dynamics, repair past objects, or as a way of enha