Introduction: What Does the Presentation of Case Material Tell Us about What Actually Happened in an Analysis and How Does It Do This?

The present controversy brings together different perspectives on the nature and value of analytic case material. This topic was chosen in order to invite reflection on what appear to be differences between analysts, as well as analytic schools and cultures regarding how clinical material ought to be presented and what it is intended for. Should the material strive to present an accurate description of the analytic encounter? What does accurate mean in a context in which our emotional reactions and ways of listening are integral to the encounter? And given the biases and limitations, theoretical and personal, which influence our experience of events, our recall of them and how we choose to present them, is it ever possible to provide a somewhat objective account of what happened? What then can clinical material demonstrate, illustrate, or tell us about the analytic encounter and what can be inferred from it? These questions rest in part on how we consider the aims of analysis and the kind of understanding or truths it provides.

Of special interest in this context is what is thought to be the unique position of some schools of French psychoanalysis on the presentation of case material. Most psychoanalytic schools tend to stress the importance of hearing portions of verbatim of analytic sessions (usually based on process notes written up after the session). The verbatim is commonly regarded as a kind of ‘raw material’ that in some way gives listeners or readers less contaminated access to what went on in the analytic encounter. While perhaps not free of selection bias, it is thought to provide data that potentially can be understood differently from how the presenting analyst himself may have understood it. It thus provides the reader or listener with the opportunity to assess the value or validity of what the analyst claims about the encounter and what he learned from it. In contrast, in some French psychoanalytic circles detailed verbatim accounts of the sessions see