'The Future of Psychoanalysis'

DEAR DR HAYLEY,

In response to Evelyne Schwaber's letter to you of 12 May, 1985 regarding my review of The Future of Psychoanalysis. Essays in Honor of Heinz Kohut, edited by A. Goldberg (1983), to which she contributed the article 'Construction, Reconstruction, and the Mode of Clinical Attunement', I must agree with her criticism in the main. Because her contribution was grouped in the section on Dreams, Technique, and Clinical Theory with three other 'committed self-psychologists' (as I see them) I erred in so classifying Dr Schwaber. Certainly her self identity in this regard is critical and decisive. Nevertheless, some of her readers, besides myself, may have fallen into the same error, according to discussions I have heard locally and elsewhere. It is regrettable therefore, that this and her other papers with which I am familiar in the same area of clinical attunement and mode of analytic listening may be mistakenly taken to constitute a basis for the judgment that she derives her thesis from Kohut's later writings as well as his earlier ones. Similarly, she has good reason to dissent from my conceptualization that her 'mode of attunement' is similar, parallel to, or equivalent to 'total empathic immersion'. This, however, was not a (mis)quote from her paper but a judgment that her concept fits into the same conceptual framework—erroneous or mistaken as this view may be, compared to her own meaning. Her careful letter to you serves to explicate her position usefully, and I am glad that the review afforded her the opportunity and the forum for this clarification.

I wish to point out (as acknowledged by Dr Schwaber) that I was attempting to discuss a group of contributions together, as organized by the editor (not by me). Total empathic immersion, self states and transmuting internalizations were erroneously applied or implied as pertaining to her contribution. These terms should have been limited to three others in the group. I was attempting to integr