Afterword: The Future of Psychoanalysis

This issue features an introductory statement about the need for psychoanalysis as a field to expand its epistemological base. It further offers detailed descriptions of two efforts to fulfill Sigmund Freud's great wish: the establishment of low-fee clinics using psychoanalytic treatments for patients with mental health problems.

“Looking back into the future of psychoanalysis: a second chance” by Juan Pablo Jimenez describes the author's observations on the dramatic ruptures between psychiatry and psychology with psychoanalysis, emphasizing that psychoanalytic theory has since expanded and can grow further, if it will, “under the light of new epistemological frameworks.” He notes Eric Kandel's call for psychoanalysis to “define for biology the mental functions that need to be studied for a meaningful and sophisticated understanding of the biology of the human being.” He describes too his own work in psychotherapy with an epileptic young woman, in which a psychoanalytic therapy helped her to understand the context leading to some of her seizures, decisively decreasing their frequency. He advocates, along these lines, for a psychoanalytic study of the multicausality of biological syndromes. Similarly, Jimenez favors Fonagy and Target's interdisciplinary research , which systemically seeks to integrate psychoanalytic theory with empirical studies in developmental psychopathology, achieving a more articulated understanding of child development.

While Jimenez argues that psychoanalysis needs to build ongoing bridges with the natural sciences and other related disciplines, he also holds that the field must allow “the family name” to include various forms of treatment: “brief psychotherapies, low intensity psychoanalysis, psychodynamic family therapy, transference-focused psychotherapy, mentalization based therapy.” Instead of prohibiting therapeutic diversity, Jimenez contends that instead of harboring a “catastrophic fear of dissolution of psychoanalytic identity,” the f