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What are these stories I described as central that have raised Joseph Schachter's ire? They are “the stories remembered but never integrated; the stories experienced but never formulated; the stories experienced and remembered only in the language of action; the stories of uncon258scious fantasy and defense; and the importance of all these in every other story” (p. 25).
In short, these stories are the representations of the dynamic unconscious, the core of psychoanalysis since its inception, and the one component of psychic structure considered central in symptom formation by all schools of psychoanalysis.1 It hardly seems to me to be a “personal” or “unqualified” conclusion. Psychoanalysts don’t differ in their belief in the patient's need to tell and own stories but in (1) what stories we sometimes consider central (e.g., Kleinian or self psychological) and (2) what methods we emphasize in describing how we help patients own their stories (e.g., interpreting countertransference, empathic failures, drive derivatives, etc.).
For over a hundred years the vast majority of analysts of different stripes have listened and tried to understand their patients’ stories. While Schachter disputes this telling and owning of stories as central, he wants his “knowledge” of uncertainty to be central. Here, as so often seems the case, we have the hidden authoritarian claim behind the plea for diversity.
Chilling is the way Schachter casually distorts the clinical material. By not focusing on the full clinical material, he tries to make it appear