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Dear Sirs,
The psychoanalytic controversies article by Blum and Fonagy (2003) outlined the apparent differences of the protagonists in what makes for recovery in psychoanalysis: specific transference interpretations and reconstruction, with critical recovery of repressed memories, or primarily procedural learning based IJPon affective and cognitive processing associated with the ongoing analysand–analyst encounter more generally. The vigor and detailed questioning within the debate establish unequivocally that psychoanalysis is alive and well as a scientific discipline.
It may therefore come as a surprise that someone like myself, one of many researchers exploring the intersection of mind and brain, and thus relating directly to the competing theories examined in the article (Levin, 1991, 2003), is not at all convinced that this debate concerns what it seems to be about. In other words, I am concerned what readers of this debate in IJP will take away.
Most critically: I am worrying about two things. The first is that this debate may not be understood at the very high level of its presentation within IJP, and that it may increase suspicion among the different schools of psychoanalysis. The second is whether the debate, not as it is recorded in IJP, but as it reverberates around the psychoanalytic world, will disrupt the cooperation between the different schools and diminish the current trend towards interdisciplinary psychoanalytic research which I believe has been a healthy development.
Both Blum and Fonagy at points in their debate indicate that they recognize the advantages and limitations of either a relentless focusing IJPon transference, or of ignoring transference more or less. I believe that psychoanalysis cannot afford to ignore transference and reconstruction or to ignore exploring how analysands are changed by