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This well-attended meeting opened in an atmosphere of active collegial involvement and sophisticated consideration, an atmosphere maintained throughout the presentations and audience discussion. The question posed in the title is, of course, of considerable general interest. Answers offered by the discussants, Elizabeth Lima da Rocha Barros and Rene Roussillon, were based on a frank, detailed clinical presentation by an experienced and skilled practitioner, Bien C. Filet.
Chairman Paul Israel welcomed the group, presenting a brief history of ‘COPAAT’ (Committee on Psychoanalysis and Allied Therapies), which was formed three years ago under the aegis of the IPA to explore ideas and questions about the relationship of psychoanalysis and the unique nature of psychoanalytic training to the practice and theory of psychotherapy. It is upon the work of that committee, of which Dr Israel is Chair, that this panel is based, focusing specifically on how the psychoanalyst conducts him/herself technically when defining the work as psychotherapy and how this difference is conceptualised.
Dr Lewis Kirshner, Moderator, then addressed some issues germane to the implicit necessity for differentiating between the two praxes, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Based on surveys done by the committee, Dr Kirshner cited two commonly held broad positions. The first holds that psychoanalysts are practising psychoanalysis irrespective of the setting or frequency of sessions when their work centres on transference, defences, unconscious function and other fundamental analytic concepts, to whatever extent is possible with any given patient. According to this model, variations and differences are of minor theoretical significance. Kirshner spoke of a ‘hard version’ of this position that advocates a ‘classical’ analytic approach to be applied across all diagnostic lines, and a ‘soft version’ that speaks in terms of a continuum of techniques across the clinical spectrum.
The second broad position ci