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Controversy is the growing-point from which development springs but it must be a genuine confrontation and not an impotent beating of the air by opponents whose differences of view never meet. What follows is a contribution to bringing different psychoanalytic views together in agreement or disagreement.
Hearing psychoanalytic controversy I have felt that the same configuration was being described and that the apparent differences were more often accidental than intrinsic; different points of view are believed to be significant of membership of a group, not of a scientific experience. Yet everyone knows that what is important is not the supposed use of a particular theory but whether the theory has been understood properly and then whether the application has been sound.
It may be objected that to establish this would involve consideration of every individual analyst and of the circumstances of every individual interpretation. Even so, many difficulties could be obviated by more precise definition of the point of view (vertex). It is permissible for an observer to say that he has no evidence of infantile sexuality provided he also adds that he is an aeronautical engineer and does not take anything but a cursory view of children. What is not permissible is that he should say that he has no evidence of infantile sexuality without mentioning his vertex. I hope that there will be evolved a method of designating the vertex with brevity and precision. The following is a loose description, by way of a prelude to something more scientific.
To attain to the state of mind essential for the practice of psychoanalysis I avoid any exercise of memory; I make no notes. When I am
tempted to remember the events of any particular session I resist the temptation. If I find myself wandering mentally into the domain of memory I desist. In this my practice is at variance with the view that notes should be kept or that psychoanalysts should find some method by which they can record their