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This panel was the first in a series designed by the programme committee to examine different ways of working psychoanalytically. In the contemporary psychoanalytic ‘tower of Babel’ what are our differences, how far do we share common ground and, if so, what are its boundaries?
Thomä and Kächele's paper presented clinical material, discussed later by a range of authors from different approaches in subsequent panels. The authors offered what they called a ‘new form of treatment report’ which, if applied extensively, could become a basis for sharing and comparing experiences. The presenter was Thomä, head of the Psychotherapy Department of Ulm University, 1967-89, and director of the newly founded psychoanalytic institute housed under the same roof. He calls himself an analyst ‘on the way to an intersubjective relational understanding of the psychoanalytic process’. Kächele succeeded Thomä at Ulm in 1990.
Thomä made some initial general statements about his psychoanalytic thinking. He then gave an example of the application of his treatment report format in the case of Amalia. Amalia's case is one of the 12 completely audiotaped analyses and analytic therapies which are now stored in the Ulm text bank unit, director E. Mergenthaler.
Points 1-7 cover Thomä's views on comparative psychoanalysis. Point 8 describes Amalia's case.
Thomä finds that, in view of the official recognition of psychoanalytic pluralism brought about by the courage of Wallerstein, we are now forced to compare various psychoanalytic techniques with each other. But to make the comparison reasonable, reliable and fruitful, shared criteria are needed. So we are forced to identify and state what is usually just implied in published case reports and membership papers: how exactly the clinical facts have been collected and recorded. There are many possible ways to do this and in fact this question has been the object of much thought and debate, as an important corollary to comparative psychoanalysis.
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