Second Day

The second day began with a plenary session, chaired by Dr Lebovici, the first part of which was devoted to the summaries of the previous day's discussions in the three groups. These were given by the appointed recorders for each group.

There now follows Dr R. Wallerstein's summary of the discussion in Group One which had been chaired by Dr Sandler

Group One began with an opening position statement by Jeff Masson, the title of which was ‘Current transference experience versus the recovery of memories: in defence of a topographical model and of genetic interpretation in the genesis of insight’.

Dr Masson started from what he said was the linkage of insight as a concept to history, and a look at psychoanalysis as a historical science, and he developed two main themes in his presentation.

The first theme was of insight as a search for historic truth, and he said that an achieved insight was by definition a true evaluation of a real state of affairs. The rest of his presentation, and his second theme, was a defence of the concept of insight and its importance as against all those many people in the history of analysis who have emphasized the transference experience — i.e. the here and now. He traced that concept from its origins in the book by Ferenczi and Rank in 1923 through Strachey's paper on the mutative interpretation, the work by Alexander and his coworkers in the United States on the corrective emotional experience, to the most modern—day emphasis by many in the Kleinian group, and especially Bion, on what Dr Masson called the total over-emphasis on the here and now as against the effort to ascertain an accurate history. (Incidentally, he did not mention Merton Gill who is the leading current exponent of this point of view in the United States.)

Obviously, these authors whom he quoted express viewpoints which are disparate in many ways, but he did trace this common theme which he opposed. His paper was declared by one speaker to be provocative; and, in fact, that par