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In his usual perceptive and thoughtful manner, Peter Thomson has given us another insight into his psychoanalytic work. In the two analyses of George, we are privy to more than a psychoanalytic cure effected through a self-psychological frame and its theoretical elaboration. We also witness the development of a psychoanalyst over the decades, from a Freudian classicist into a contemporary self psychologist equipped with the theoretical sophistication and clinical skills that represent his rich psychoanalytic experience. It was a pleasure to read Thomson's case history, and I was stimulated to comment on several aspects. Thomson may be aware that, by referring in the very beginning to the “two analyses of George,” he is inviting an inevitable comparison with Kohut's “The Two Analyses of Mr. Z.” And, indeed, just as Kohut's Mr. Z has become a landmark in the development of self psychology, so George will come to mark our present level of self-psychological progress.
Where have we come to? My answer must be a personal one. Certainly, there are many colleagues who question whether we have made any progress at all since Kohut. And there are others who think they have left the Kohutian concepts far behind. They have fashioned a conceptual frame and language that, while still connected to the self-psychological fundamentals, at times suggests that the emergence of a new and independent theory is the measure of our progress. It is almost traditional in psychoanalysis since early Freud that such opposing points of view generate heated discussion, as does any scientific discourse. The din is loud enough to make us forget those clinical facts and theoretical fancies on which we can all agree. In this essay, with the help of Thomson's George, I shall focus on these areas of essential agreement.