Editorial: What does the Analyst Know?

Ours is a time of uncertainties and reevaluations. Bion (1) remarks in Attention and Interpretation that the proportion of what we know about our patient is only a fragment of what we do not know. The longer analysts have been working with analysands the more ambiguous and relative have become their understanding of human nature in general as well as that of the specific patient. In his new book Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis Stephen A Mitchell (2) raises the question chosen as the title of this editorial, and illuminates various facets of this challenge to the pride and feeling of safety of the psychoanalyst. In some of the papers in this issue the nature of the knowing of the analyst comes to the fore in special ways.

Lena Teurnell, who has a background as a child psychologist and psychoanalyst, presents a reading of Winnicotts The Piggle where she brings together the signs she finds in the text pointing to a possible sexual abuse. Arne Jemstedt discusses Winnicott's case presentation from other vantage points and finds that the meaning of the whole process collapses in a reading assuming sexual abuse. The two different perspectives connect to the debate which now and then flares up on “the seduction theory” and on how the psychoanalytic material relates to inner and outer realities.

The discussion about The Piggle brings to mind one of the more awesome episodes in psychoanalytic history. I think about the fate of Sandor Ferenczi—the man who proposed the founding of the International Psychological Association—to be labeled mad during his last three years by Jones; a verdict readily accepted by “the entire psychoanalytic community, with few exceptions” (3). One of the papers written by Ferenczi (4) during these last three years of his life is “Confusion of Tongues between Adults and the Child: The Language of Tenderness and Passion.” What is the content of this article that led to “considerable distress and shock in psychoanalytic circles (…) and that Ferenczi died