Comments on the Conference

Of the conference I have scarely a criticism and much praise, and gratitude for the easy way in which it all went. I found it particularly helpful to have printed papers available to save note-taking and to tax the memory less, and to allow me to look back on what was actually said. Some mild criticisms were offered at the end and here is my reaction to them: (a) If the topic had been offered at greater length (the length it in principle deserves) I could not have found the time to come; (b) If there had been smallgroup discussions, the toing-and-froing would have been very time-consuming, and we would still not have known each other well enough for their purpose to be served. However, I do think the conference was expensive. Did we subsidise something? If so, what? And if so, should we have been told that costs were more than covered and that the surplus went to …? All costs get passed on to patients, thereby limiting still further the number of those who can afford psychotherapy. I like to know where my charitymoney goes. But this is a tiny frown. I feel tremendously clearer, and thank you and all participants at the conference.

As you know, I started with an ignorance in my mind about just what the difference was between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Indeed, it was to learn more about this that I registered for the conference. Although initially disappointed that neither Sandler nor Wolff told me what ‘it’ - this difference - was, I realised at the end of the first day that I had, with their help, come to conclusions which I found satisfactory.

Regarding the papers, I thought Sandler's paper statesman-like and humane, and Wolff's outstandingly humane but in one respect unhelpful: it cannot be right to compare five-times-a-week psychoanalysis with once-a-week psychotherapy, and then attribute the difference not to differences in the frequency of sessions but to ‘it’- the intrinsic difference between therapy and analysis. Friday put me in a good mood to appreciat