Comment on Dr Waldhorn's Paper1

Waldhorn has been very successful in his choice of the lessons from the second analysis as a starting point for the study of indications and contraindications for psychoanalytic treatment. Certainly, evaluations can give us a very good key to research in this area, if they are seen from the point of view of second analyses, with the purpose of reconsidering the therapeutic events in the first.

In his previous paper Waldhorn (1960) followed this line, which allowed him to reach a conclusion about the resemblance of the factors involved both in overt and potential difficulties in the treatment of many patients. In my opinion he overstressed the importance of the references to second analysis in the clinical illustrations mentioned in papers on working through, termination of treatment, technique of interpretations, transference and countertransference problems. A more empirical approach would have been better.

In the library files of the Argentine Association there are many unpublished papers (from candidates qualifying for associate membership) with clinical material as well as material from supervisions at the Institute. In spite of the different requirements in the different Societies, I am sure similar clinical material must be available for research at many of them. Much of this material concerns second analyses, as I realized when Waldhorn drew my attention to this subject, which is not systematically dealt with in analytic literature. For this occasion I have reviewed all the clinical material provided by former and present candidates under supervision with me, and I was able to find a relatively large number of second analyses as well.

I found Waldhorn's approach a little too scattered because of having disregarded this source and having only considered the published literature, which does not go deeply and directly into this subject, but studies the cases from many other angles. As an example of such scattered sources, I will repeat the list of viewpoints