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Panelists Michael Parsons of the United Kingdom and Nancy Chodorow of the United States joined Chair, Warren Poland, and the IPA 46th Congress audience to examine aspects of Independent, Middle Group and multi-theoretical perspectives. Prominent themes included historical and cultural influences upon individual and group analytic identity, theory of mind and of analytic action. Participants discussed creative use of multiple theories and careful listening to patients.
Opening the panel, Warren Poland posed the question of how an analyst can learn from and fit into previous analytic traditions while, at the same time, protecting an individualistic and even creative frame of mind. In introducing the two panelists, he pointed out critical historical differences from within which the British and the American Independent Traditions separately arose, the intensity and rigors of post-World War II England with possibilities for growth and challenge outside as well as within the analytic establishment in the States.
Michael Parsons (UK) discussed his training experiences, the evolution of his understanding of what it means to be ‘part of an Independent tradition … and to form an analytic identity’. Parsons relies upon his freedom to create a psychoanalytic home without borders that does not limit him to an ‘alignment with any specific viewpoint’ but rather allows the depth and expansiveness of a foundation centered on ‘intellectual and human values rather than particular psychoanalytic doctrines.’ An analytic attitude that treasures uniqueness of each individual analyst, patient and the interactions between them is essential to ‘Independent’ analytic work. Working within an Independent tradition allows each analyst to create ‘a way of thinking and working that is individually his or her own’.
‘What comes from the patient and what the patient experiences as his or her own discovery in the analytic encounter matters more than anything that comes from the analyst.’ As the analysan