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Joseph Lichtenberg explained in his introductory remarks that the panel's title, “A Return to Basics,” was meant to address the waning interest in what once was a cornerstone of psychoanalysis, the construction of theories of motivation, and a corresponding drift toward theories of more immediate clinical relevance. The challenge faced by the panel and the audience, he said, was to determine any patterns that might emerge from the presentations suggesting that the theory of motivation remains central to the psychoanalytic enterprise. Lichtenberg briefly traced the history of psychoanalytic theories of motivation from Freud through the ego psychologists and object relations theorists to our postmodern preoccupation with multiplicity and uncertainty, and the current influence of theories of intersubjectivity, attachment, social constructivism, feminism, and the analyst's use of self.
The panel was organized as follows: Murray Peskin and Adrienne Harris would present position papers that Owen Renik and Jay Greenberg would then discuss. Then Renik and Greenberg's would present papers to be discussed by Peskin and Harris. General discussion would follow.
Peskin proposed in his position paper that the reconsideration of motivation, a fundamental concept in psychoanalytic theory, engages us with basic postulates of our field and draws us to its borders with neighboring sciences and their elaborations of the design, structure, and function of the mind. Natural selection has played a fundamental role