The Goals of Psychoanalysis—A Survey of Analytic Viewpoints

In this broad survey of the diversity of analytic viewpoints on the goals of analysis, I have organized the presentation along three major dimensions, each of them posing an apparent opposition—or complementarity—in emphasis. The first has been the distinction between goallessness as the procedural stance necessary to technical analytic work and the far-reaching goal of fundamental character realignment as the outcome toward which the analytic work points. The second has been the distinction between the outcome goals of analytic therapy conceptualized in terms of observable behavior and relationship changes and the process goals of analytic therapy conceptualized in metapsychological explanatory terms that posit at least implicitly a theory of therapy, of how analysis brings about change and reaches its outcome goals. The third has been the oscillating distinction between the more limited and the more ambitious, the more pessimistic and the more optimistic view of how much of this sought-for change can actually be accomplished within the limits of human analytic endeavor. I feel that this totality and this complexity of considerations, inevitably entering into meaningful discussion of the goals of analysis, need to be set as part of the framework for useful examination of the theoretical and the technical limitations of analysis in bringing about the attainment of its goals.