You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Since this meeting marks the hundredth anniversary of the American Psychoanalytic Association, I thought it would be fitting to present an overview of some significant developments and trends in psychoanalysis during a good part of that period. My approach to the overview will be largely conceptual. That is, I will focus on broad conceptual trends rather than present a chronology of events.
A central trend I discuss is the increasing disjunction between psychoanalysis and the “Enlightenment vision” as expressed in a decreasing emphasis on the therapeutic value of interpretation, insight, and self-knowledge. A second and related trend I take up is the shift in emphasis from the intrapsychic to the interpsychic (Bolognini 2004), or what has been referred to as the move from a one-person to a two-person psychology. This shift is expressed in an increasing emphasis on the therapeutic relationship as the main ingredient in therapeutic action or, in Sullivan's words, on the “interpersonal field” (1953).
The third trend I discuss is increasing skepticism toward even the very possibility of discovering truths about the patient. The fourth topic is a reconceptualization of the function of interpretation, one that continues the link between psychoanalysis and the Enlightenment vision. And finally, I discuss the shift from psychoanalytic research concerned with broad areas of human functioning to a near exclusive focus on therapeutic outcome.