Ah, The French

W. C. Fields, in his terse commentary on French psychoanalysis and pluralism, captures in his dyspepsia the attitude of most North American psychoanalysts toward Gallic contributions to our collective wisdom. To this attitude should be added, for balance, a long history of anti-Americanism among the French that certainly antedates the birth of psychoanalysis. It is into this history that the trouble I am alluding to is to be fitted. In this issue, Mitchell Wilson contributes a piece sure to stir up the controversies that swirl around pluralism and the misunderstandings and anxieties it creates. While psychoanalytic pluralism began with Freud and Breuer and their differences, which were diplomatically contained in their joint writings, our present era is characterized by an ever widening panoply of theories, schools, and techniques that we increasingly accommodate under the psychoanalytic umbrella. Where alternative schools historically were extruded from the mainstream, today there is no mainstream. Wilson writes about a traditionally “French” subject that he attempts to formulate to American sensibilities. Our commentators take up one or another of the issues such translation requires.

This entire issue of JAPA is concerned with our pluralistic psychoanalytic world, at its core conceding grudgingly that the study of personal meaning allows for—some would say demands—different readings that lean on personal, organizational, national, and cultural contexts. Whether we are thereby enriched or hamstrung is a question every psychoanalyst faces. My own experience, which likely mirrors that of many in my generation, has been to embrace a hard-won pragmatic ecumenicism. It is now more important for me to understand and learn from a diverse group of colleagues than to feel I have cornered the truth. From another perspective, my need for friends has outstripped my propensity for building impenetrable walls as the world has grown increasingly challenging of psychoanalytic idea