Truth and Reality in Psychoanalytic Discourse

Dear Sir:

I am writing to correct what I find to be a significant misrepresentation of my work, as stated in a recent paper by V. Hamilton, 'Truth and reality in psychoanalytic discourse' (Int. J. Psychoanal., 1993, 74, 1). The author writes:

Schwaber has written extensively of the analyst's 'listening' as the data-gathering instrument which can free analysts of different persuasions from the bounds of their theories. From this radically empiricist stance, the investigative mind of the analyst is conceived as a sense organ which directly perceives raw sense-data or impressions without theoretical inference or interpretation. However, this distance offers no asssurance that the eye of the mind is a 'clear and equal glass' that reflects uncontaminated observations (pp. 65-6).

There is no indication who is being cited in the words placed within quotation marks. Neither the words nor the ideas stated here are mine.

Hamilton discusses the views presented by a number of speakers at the recent IPA Congresses. In my own plenary remarks in Rome, which she does not cite, I noted:

It should be clear, sharpening the focus on the use to which we are putting our theories, and augmenting our effort to limit their superimposition, does not mean that we are to suspend them. Indeed we cannot. ('The psychoanalyst's methodological stance: some comments based on a response to Max Hernandez; Int. J. Psychoanal., 1990, pp. 34-5.)

In another presentation at that Congress, which is cited, I further said:

I make no plea for an atheoretical orientation, even if that were possible. Indeed, there is no way we can extricate ourselves—our own theories, values, life experiences, from our understanding of the patient's communications. What we can know of the world is by our own ways of seeing it. But this need be no limitation. Modern science teaches us that the observer's participation is an essential and fascinating element of the data. Herein lies the power in the discovery of transference