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IN ORDER TO FACILITATE A meaningful dialogue I thought that in the time allotted to me it would be useful to highlight a few central psychoanalytic concepts which I have found particularly helpful in my work, concepts which I believe to be thoroughly embedded in a developmental point of view. So I shall be saying quite a lot about my psychoanalytic technique, but in doing so I believe that I shall also be conveying something of my own developmental perspective.
I should like to start by making some remarks about my understanding of the part played in psychic life by conflict, and to comment on the way I see its relation to development. My approach to the analytic process is very much influenced by the view that throughout life we all have to deal with continual conflicts between opposing psychic forces, and that an integral part of development is the progressive adaptations we make to these conflicts. However, whereas the so-called normal individual manages to find more-or-less satisfactory intrapsychic adaptations, the patients who come to our consulting rooms have fared less well. Their