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The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
— Alfred North Whitehead
D. E. Scharff, and J. S. Scharff, Object Relations Family Therapy. New York: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1987.
E. F. Wachtel and P. Wachtel, Family Dynamics in Individual Psychotherapy. New York: The Guilford Press, 1986.
IT IS UNCOMFORTABLE TO BE ON the wrong side of the angels, to advocate dissension rather than harmony. In contrast to an earlier era of sharp challenge and provocation, our contemporary psychotherapeutic community seems warmed by the spirit of integration and ecumenism. Within the psychoanalytic literature there is a new spirit of compromise. We discern in the Freudian literature a focus on the curative aspects of the real relationship (Grunes, 1984), which essentially narrows the gap between classical and self psychology. In complementary fashion, self psychologists have extended hospitality to psychoanalysts of all persuasions, relegating differences to diagnostic, rather than treatment issues (Atwood & Stolorow, 1984). Adaptation and assimilation are the watchwords of the day.
I think that it is too early to beat our theoretical swords into ploughshares. The press of our patients' needs and our anxiety about the predictability of analytic work may impel us prematurely to censure our differences. It is a baby and bath water dilemma