‘Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy And Supportive Psychotherapy: Contemporary Controversies’ By Otto F. Kernberg

Otto Kernberg's paper, published in Volume 80, Part 6, and placed on the website several weeks earlier for discussion, explores the relationship between psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy from conceptual, clinical and educational perspectives. It proposes an integrated model of psychoanalytic modalities of treatment and their subdivision, on the basis of the techniques utilised, into standard psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalytically based supportive psychotherapy; and it offers indications and contra-indications for each modality. It proposes further that psychoanalytic psychotherapy should be taught to candidates in psychoanalytic training.

The paper aroused strong feelings and provoked an exceptionally long, thoughtful, frank and often passionate debate. This was inevitable, since the subject of the paper and its implications concern issues that are topical, controversial and emotionally highly charged. The discussion ranged from points of theory, technique and clinical practice to explorations of the inextricable links between the issues raised by Kernberg and fundamental conceptions about the meaning of psychoanalysis. These included our identity as psychoanalysts; the relative value of different psychoanalytic approaches—and who has the right to be the judge of that; the perceived crisis of psychoanalysis and what to do about it; the political dimensions of psychoanalytic theory and practice; the history of attempts to classify psychoanalytic currents; the moral standing of the IPA among psychoanalysts in different countries; the issue of whether by now psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy can be clearly differentiated or whether they exist on a continuum of psychoanalytically based therapies; the issue of psychoanalytic institutes teaching also psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Every contributor seemed to have something interesting, different and valuable to say in what became a fascinating discussion. I hope that