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Doctrines must take their beginning from that of the matters of which they treat. (Vico, 1744/1948, § 314)
Moreover, we can regard a beginning as the point at which, in a given work, the writer departs from all other works; a beginning immediately establishes relationships with work already existing, relationships of either continuity or antagonism or some mixture of both.
Two and a half centuries apart, both Giambattista Vico and Edward Said focused their attention on the conundrum of where one begins the psychoanalytic process, the same conundrum faced by psychoanalysts today. And now, years later, we are beginning to recognize that the therapeutic gains of any analytic encounter may not begin with the patient's present, but with the analyst's past. In this century, psychoanalytic education, pedagogy, formation, transmission, and even the politically incorrect training model have come under such scrutiny that a simple solution has become untenable. It is one thing to offer suggestions to modify our institutions, and another to propose creating new institutions for the purpose of transmitting psychoanalytic knowledge to future generations; but the clinical praxis of psychoanalysis must be de-institutionalized before any proposals, however valid, may become possible.
The ongoing historical conundrum of the relationship between the theory and practice of psychoanalysis has created a biased set of standards at all institutions, has led to a defensive structure that will not allow for the necessary change. This difficulty must be addressed in such a way that an emergent property will manifest itself within the ongoing debates that are, only now, being confronted.
The pedagogical and ethical necessities of teaching opposing theoretical views at all institutions (Jacobs, 2011), while brushing up against imbedded power enclaves which support one theory or another, must be the first step to deinstitutionalizing what has become so rigid and brittle that it thr