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The Chair, Otto Kernberg, noted that the subject of the Congress—‘Psychoanalysis: Method and Applications’—concerned the application of the psychoanalytic method to the derived techniques of psychoanalytic psychotherapy so as to reach a broad category of patients that could not be treated by ‘standard’ psychoanalysis. Such application implied some sort of modification, giving rise to two questions. First, what were the boundaries of psychoanalysis and when is treatment no longer psychoanalytic? Second, to what extent were these boundaries gradual or was there a qualitative change in crossing a boundary?
He felt the overall discussion was made more difficult as there existed two major approaches to the method: a so-called Anglo-Saxon one, dominant in countries where the Eitingon training model applied, and the French approach, applicable in the Francophone areas. While both approaches agreed on the importance of free association, transference and countertransference analysis, and interpretation (even though the various schools in these regions differed in terms of what content areas were important), the main differences arose in the way interpretations were thought about. For him, the various Anglo-Saxon approaches utilised ‘systematic interpretations, i.e. relatively rapid interpretations throughout the session’, versus ‘tactical interpretation’ in the French approach. The latter were more ‘unsaturated’ and attempted to go to all levels at the same time in order to stimulate unconscious change, which is then evaluated by the changes in free associations. They thus placed an important stress on the après coup (Freud's Nachtraglichkeit) where the meaning of the changes, or the lack thereof, can only be understood post factum. By contrast, the Anglo-Saxon approaches tended to move from surface to depth. He felt this applied even to the Kleinian approach, which attended to what was most dominant in the here and now in contrast to the deepest level of meaning.
Further, he