Rejoinder: With reference also to Garza-Guerrero (2002)

I welcome Dr Garza-Guerrero's challenging paper—but I also found it a difficult paper with which to enter into a discussion about the necessity for reform in the educational structures of the psychoanalytic institutes, because the criticisms of the present state of psychoanalysis used by Dr Garza-Guerrero do not allow for any reflection. Dr Garza-Guerrero writes as if the criticisms he brings to bear against the current state of psychoanalytic thinking have to be taken as an accepted fact, supported only with references to those authors with whom he agrees. He then uses these criticisms as proof of the failures of our organisational and educational structures and holds them responsible for the present crisis. He condemns the educational structures for creating impediments against permitting for the evolution and transformations in psychoanalytic established knowledge because of ‘their inherited but now untenable syncretism’ that is inherited from ‘the absolutist syncretism … inherent to the psychoanalytic movement at the beginning of the 20th century’. In particular, he seems to feel that we still see ourselves as part of a monastic movement that goes out to gain converts rather than as a science and a recognised profession.