Panel Reports — Annual Meeting, 1953—I. Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychotherapy—similarities and Differences

The opening presentation on this panel was by Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. She began by pointing out that the bases of psychoanalysis are the significance of the childhood history, the doctrine of the unconscious, and the concepts of transference and resistance. To these she would add, at the present developmental stage of psychoanalysis, the paramount significance of anxiety for the dynamic understanding of human personality. Dynamic psychotherapy also accepts these concepts as its basic operating principles, but while the two schools of thinking agree as to their dynamics, they differ in their interpretation of the content meaning of these basic principles.

Thus, whereas classical analysts view childhood development in terms of the libido theory, i.e., in a psychosexual sense, other dynamic psychotherapists (and Fromm-Reichmann models these primarily after the teachings of Harry Stack Sullivan) conceive of childhood development in terms of the child's interpersonal relationships. For example, the zones of intake and elimination, the "erotogenic zones" of classical analysts, are called by Sullivan "zones of interaction." While both groups agree as to the dynamics of the transference relationship, a basic difference exists in its content meaning, stemming, Fromm-Reichmann says, from a difference in concept with regard to the sexual interpretation of the oedipus complex. The dynamic psychiatrist, conceiving as he does of the oedipus complex not in a sexual sense but as revolving around jealousy of the closeness between the parents, consequently considers the transference phenomena to involve a similar type of content. In contrast, to the classical analyst's approach, transference entails repetition of the sexual entanglements of the oedipus constellation. Dreams and free association, which are used by both groups, again differ in their content meaning, in accordance with a difference in their conceptualizations of the unconscious. Many dynamic psychiatrists do not