You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Both in his clinical practice and in his publications (La Interpretación en Psicoanálisis [Interpretation in Psychoanalysis] and Teoria y Técnica de la Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica [Theory and Technique of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy], among others), Dr Joan Coderch has shown a deep interest in unravelling the complexities of this ‘impossible profession’ that is psychoanalysis. He always compares his own clinical experience with the relevant literature without taking shelter in our predecessors’ authority. Coderch seems to be especially concerned with specifying what is the true nature of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts, and which theories are best suited to sustain it.
It is surprising to find that Freud himself was still interested in this topic as late as 1928. At that time he wrote to his disciple Oskar Pfister, “I want to protect analysis from physicians … and … from priests. I want to entrust it to a profession that doesn't yet exist, a profession of secular ministers of souls, who don't have to be physicians and must not be priests” (Freud, 1963, p. 126).
In a subsequent letter Freud clarifies that, when he envisions his psychoanalysts of the future, he is thinking of a very distant future. Such a statement seems to anticipate that the understanding of the true nature of psychoanalysts will demand many years and great effort. I think that we have not truly acknowledged, as Bion has done, that psychoanalytic practice is a new profession for mankind. This fact generates such personal and social apprehension that we all feel reassured if we can refer psychoanalysis to a discipline already known to us (medicine, for example). The novelty of psychoanalysis probably underlies the first problem posited by Coderch, namely, the current plurality of psychoanalytic theories — a ‘tower of Babel’ that seems to threaten us with the confusion described in the myth. Coderch appears tolerant toward this theoretical and practical diversity. He even tends to see it as beneficia