‘Controversial Discussions’ the Issue of Differences in Method

As the legend goes, German bombs were pouring down on London while two of the three more or less formal groups of British psychoanalysts were fiercely battling each other in what were to be remembered in psychoanalytic history as the ‘Controversial Discussions’. According to the same anecdote, while the discussions carried on, no less violent in a way than the boming itself—which in the meantime grew more intense—a member of the third group, D. W. Winnicott, would raise a timid hand and, when finally given the right to speak, he would suggest that they postpone whatever urgent theoretical issue they were debating and all go for shelter. I do not know what historical truth there is in this vignette, but it certainly depicts the magnitude of affect invested in the ‘Controversial Discussions’, not only for those involved in them at the time, but also for those of us now who can only rely on the more or less accurate narration that percolates through the strata of oral and written psychoanalytic history.

At the most recent IPA Congress in Nice, last July, we did not yet know that we were moving towards a juncture partly resembling that surrounding the Controversial Discussions. Our times are certainly different, though, not only because the sort of war we now live in could not have been imagined during the nineteen forties, but also because those involved in the discussions at that epoch would hardly recognise their psychoanalytic progeny. In Nice, the exponents of the three groups within the British Psychoanalytic Society (Peter Fonagy for the ‘Freudians’, Ronald Britton for the ‘Kleinians’ and David Tuckett for the ‘Middle group’) were no bellicose foes, but courteous debaters who agreed to answer, before a large audience, a series of three questions put to them by the chair of the panel, Glen Gabbard. To answer, that is, not in parallel monologues nor in an overtly competitive fashion, but within the framework of a genuine and warm exchange of ideas such as, I must sa