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In a discipline as exacting, arduous and complicated as psychoanalysis is, where even the boundaries of the field have not been delineated and the rules of the game or the system of scoring have not as yet been clearly formulated, it is of course an inestimable honour to be given a prize—especially so when the judge has been as fair, knowledgeable and seasoned as Dr Kenneth Calder is well known to be.
It is also encouraging and validating, despite the different approach he adopted in dealing with the subject under discussion, that Dr Calder (1974) does concur with the main thesis of my paper (Ramzy, 1974) and agrees that too little attention has been paid to the study of the logic and methodology of psychoanalysis. A great deal of the analyst's clinical work depends on how he first understands the import and implications of what his patient says or does, does not say or do, before the analyst utters the interpretations that are his essential therapeutic tools for helping his patient.
Though I am inclined to agree with Dr Calder's view that psychoanalysis deals with more than the errors of the human mind, in our present state of knowledge the fact remains that the main source of our data and the major bulk of our knowledge are derived from the pathological phenomena which bring the patient to us seeking understanding and help; so-called normal or healthy people rarely come our way, if ever. And it is upon 'the soft but persistent voice of reason' that rest all our scientific and therapeutic endeavours to right what has gone wrong. Only when psychoanalysis reaches out beyond its basic clinical method which relies on the work with transference and resistance, and when it amplifies its methods of investigation and diversifies its subjects to include a wider range of people in various states of health and sickness thus becoming a general psychology, that we can happily then agree with Dr Calder's ambitious definition that psychoanalysis is the science that deals with al