You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
PSYCHIC CHANGE: DEVELOPMENTS IN THE THEORY OF PSYCHOANALYTIC TECHNIQUE was chosen as the overarching theme for the 37th IPA Congress, Buenos Aires, 29 July-2 August 1991. This theme addresses both clinical and theoretical issues of fundamental importance. The goals of psychoanalysis have been described in many ways, e.g. insight, conflict resolution, and from different clinical and theoretical perspectives, e.g. analysis of a transference neurosis and genetic reconstruction. All the goals of clinical analysis converge in psychic change whether conceptualized in restoring the ego to optimal function, structural change, or personality reorganization, etc. How is psychic change effected in analytic work, why and when does change occur, and what are the technical principles and specific technical agents of change? How has analysis changed or developed in recent years, both within the field and for the particular analyst? Further considerations lead to the theory of technique. What are the underlying assumptions and models that guide the analyst's listening, observing, and organizing the analytic data? No analyst can approach the analytic situation without some theoretical notions and convictions, while, at the same time, every analysis is a potentially new learning experience for the analyst as well as the patient.
The goals of analysis are defined differently in different analytic frameworks and are not always made explicit. The patient may have the immediate goal of symptom relief or magical cure from the modern Delphic Oracle, but the analyst's formulations of desired psychic change may be very different. There are differences in the goal of analytic change that have evolved long after Freud's own renowned metaphors of 'making the unconscious conscious', and 'where id was there shall ego be'.
We are interested in the structure of the psychic changes achieved, i.e. structural change, and whether psychic change is enduring and resistant to regression. Both pr