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Victor Calef introduced the panellists and invited them to present their views.
Calef referred to a letter he had sent early in 1974 to former supervisees, former candidate analysands and former psychiatric analysands. The analysands wrote of the disappearance of their symptoms and about the differences in their relationships both to people and to their work—and the supervisees of their learning experiences, with much less reluctance about attempting to express what the learning process was. Calef contrasted the atmosphere of frustration and renunciation of the analytic situation with the atmosphere of gratification of the supervisory situation.
In Calef's view, the image of the therapist after analysis is related to post-oedipal developments. The atmosphere of frustration and renunciation of the analytic situation creates an altered state of consciousness resembling a dream state, though not identical with it. The frustrations and the renunciations of the personal analysis prepare the stage for a particular kind of learning which can be experienced in supervision. That type of learning may be conceptualized as sublimatory.
Calef then reviewed some of the salient points in the history of psychoanalytic therapy.
When it became clear that abreaction, catharsis and the return of memories were inadequate explanations for the therapeutic process, certain formulae (i.e. 'to make the unconscious conscious' and 'where id was, ego shall be') reflected the evolution of psycho-analytic theory. Analysts became more intent on describing the fate of the ego and the superego in the therapeutic process. They sought to detail the changes wrought in these structures by therapy. The Marienbad Congress of 1936 explored many of these developments in terms of change in the ego and superego. During these phases of analytic theory-building the prevalent view was that the pathology of the ego was the indirect result of sexual conflicts and the regressions instituted by them. The thoug