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It is a general opinion that psychoanalysis is now going through a period of profound crisis. In 1985 the IPA organized a debate between the various schools, and every one of the six speakers maintained a different point of view, each disagreeing with the other five.
According to Greenberg & Mitchell (1), psychoanalysis is divided into two broad approaches: the drive model and the object relations model. Cremerius (2) makes a distinction between two analytical techniques: the classical one, which he calls the “therapy of internal understanding”, based on a deductive process, and another one which, being a “therapy of emotional experience”, is more attracted by borderline cases and follows an inductive procedure.
The Oedipus complex as the nucleus of the neuroses, the importance of the environment as against the intrapsychic quality of experience, the analyst's attitude, and the transference are all under discussion. The difficulties encountered and the arguments arising out of the attempts to draw a definitive line between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy provides an illustrative example of what is now happening in our discipline.
In the meantime, throughout these debates, perhaps awaiting the coming of a new Freud who shows no sign of appearing, clinicians still go on working and—here lies the problem—they cannot do so without theoretical references to give order to the data provided by their observations.
So, do they hole themselves up, each in the ivory tower of their own school of thought, or swing back and forth between the various positions in an eclecticism which only results in confusion? Or are there other alternatives?
I think that these are questions we are all trying to answer; and that this our common quest, our point of contact, is what best reflects our discipline right now. For may part, I shall illustrate my cultural persuasions using a clinical case as a basis.
A patient who had originally come to be to be treated for depression, after attempting to comm