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We as analysts are becoming increasingly aware of the existence of different forms of listening and interpretation. This situation not only constitutes a source of difficulties but also offers scope for enrichment. To the extent that psychoanalysis is regarded as a discipline with a number of different paradigms, it is now no longer a matter of simply minimising individual differences in listening and interpretation; rather, these differences must be studied with a view to understanding what they tell us about the working of the analyst's mind. We must, therefore, examine how different theories coexist in the conscious and unconscious thought of the analyst, to what extent they condition his listening, and how they manifest themselves in his relations with his patients and colleagues. This highlights the role of the assumptions introduced by each analyst into his work, thereby challenging us to transform this seeming obstacle into an instrument for gaining new insights.
The material presented by Duncan (1993) at this Congress is a stimulating contribution to the discussion of these problems. Duncan aptly points out that it is not enough to consider theories in terms of their abstract formulation alone but that they must be examined 'in vivo', as they appear in the mind of the analyst.
His presentation begins with an account of a session in which the analyst feels that Mrs Brown, his patient, will not let him intervene; he wonders how this attitude would be interpreted in terms of different psychoanalytic theories (of Freud, Klein, Kohut, etc.). Duncan notes that Klein's ideas would induce him to seek the explanation for this attitude in