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September 30, 1985
Leo Rangell (1985), in "On the Theory of Theory in Psychoanalysis and the Relation of Theory to Psychoanalytic Therapy" (This Journal, 33:59-92), alludes to my work at three points in his paper, and in each instance he misrepresents my position. Oddly enough, my own position on many of the issues raised by Rangell is in many instances close to his own thinking.
Rangell (pp. 64 and 65) states that I support Bion's proposal that the analyst enter the analytic hour without memory, desire, or understanding, only to immediately contradict myself by proposing that the analyst should also have silent hypotheses and specific recollections as guiding principles to generate clinical predictions. Rangell proposes that this is a gross contradiction that remains unquestioned by my "attentive and impressed audience."
The citation alluded to by Rangell clearly shows that the statement I make is that the analyst should enter each session intially without desire, memory, or understanding, but that he is "quickly directed toward silent hypotheses, free-floating associations, a bit of theoretical thinking, specific recollections about a particular patient, and such, responding as much as possible to the patient's associations" (italics added). Thus, I am attempting to indicate that theory prejudices listening, and yet remains indispensable to the task of meaningfully organizing the material. In the same book, as well as in later works, I propose that