Letters to the Editor

DEAR SIR,

A dispute between author and reviewer can be enlightening if it brings fundamental issues into relief. Unhappily the debate between Emanuel Peterfreund and myself (Friedman, 1972); (Peterfreud, 1973) concerning his book, Information, Systems and Psychoanalysis(Peterfreund, 1971), seems to have missed this opportunity. If that is because I misrepresented his theory, I owe an apology not only to Peterfreund, but to the readers of this journal. But if I have not misrepresented him, I think it may be possible to learn something interesting from the very lack of substantive debate in our exchange.

I submitted some criticisms of Peterfreund's theory. In turn, he has submitted that I am careless in my reading, confused in my thinking, inaccurate in my reviewing, and otherwise unqualified to comment, to which he has added five examples of my distortions and one rebuttal. I will defend myself on each count and then draw some conclusions.

• 1Peterfreund says that the following is an unfair description of his theory:

Resistance is an error that the patient makes because he is processing the input from the analyst in a narrow range of old programmes. It is an error which can be corrected by encouraging the patient to receive input about the error itself. [My review.]

• That, he says, is a distorted version of his theory of transference, not resistance. He does not say in what way it is distorted, but he does warn that one cannot trust a reviewer who confuses a discussion of transference with a discussion of resistance.

• This reply may bewilder psychoanalytic readers. Is transference not a form of resistance? Should we not expect to learn about the nature of resistance from a theory of transference? But let us ignore this puzzle, and examine the comments and quotations with which Peterfreud hopes to show my distortion. I select the following passages:

Through constant interpretation, the analyst works toward the establishment of the optimal process … [His book.]