Letters to the Editors: Response to Luyten, Blatt and Corveleyn

Dear Sirs,

I am indeed gratified at the degree of response I have received to Wallerstein (2005a, 2005b) and Green (2005) over the enduring status of the theoretical pluralism that characterizes contemporary psychoanalysis worldwide. In their letter, Luyten et al. deal with the issue of the exclusionary (‘either/or’) or complementary (‘both/and’) nature of the distinction between: 1) nomothetic and idiographic stances in psychoanalytic research; and 2) what they call the related ‘neo-positivistic explanatory’ and the ‘interpretive intuitive’ approach to psychoanalytic understanding.

The essence of my position on these issues over my entire psychoanalytic lifetime, and, as I trust, was made quite clear in my dialogue with Green, is in total agreement with the viewpoint articulated by Luyten et al. Setting each of these issues up as representing antithetic and incompatible conceptual stances has been only to the detriment of our psychoanalytic scientific evolution. Our psychoanalytic progress as a science can only come in the manner so clearly stated by Luyten et al. and I thank them for highlighting this perspective in their letter.