A Reply to a Reply

In the hope that future discussions may be clearer, I will answer briefly the Reply which was published in the March, 1951 issue of the Bulletin of the American Psychoanalytic Association (Vol. VII, No. 1). This reply purported to be an answer to an article which had been published in the previous issue of the Bulletin (December, 1950, Vol. VI, No. 4), in which I discussed one of the several dilemmas which confront the analyst in today's world, i.e., the dilemma over whether to identify himself publicly with public causes. At the end of that article, I pointed out that I had no solution for the problem, but that I hoped that my description of it would evoke discussions which might lead to a solution.

I read this first reply eagerly, but with quick disappointment; because the authors evidently misunderstood my entire exposition, misrepresented both my major thesis and its details, and in the reply discussed an entirely different matter, about which there can be no disagreement. My concern was with what happens when analysts remain in an ivory tower, or alternatively when they become publicly involved in public causes. I attempted a crude cost-accounting. In my article, the price which is paid by patients, by analysts, and by the analytic process if we participate publicly was compared with the price paid by society, by analysis, and by analysts as members of society if we hold ourselves aloof. The reply does not deal with this question at all, but discusses only whether analysts should study the social sciences and the social applications of psychoanalysis. Who has ever doubted this? Certainly not I … but equally certainly this has nothing to do with the dilemma with which I am concerned. It would not be worthwhile to enter into a discussion of the detailed misunderstandings which follow from this basic misconstruing of my argument; and I will ask the authors of the reply to re-read my original article more carefully.

There is, however, one more fundamental is