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Psychoanalysis is interested in change; that is in how people change both as they grow and develop and particularly as they are influenced by psychoanalytic treatment. However, that is not the kind of change that I will be discussing. I will be addressing change in psychoanalysis, rather than change that is studied or brought about by psychoanalysis; about how the science, art, and profession of psychoanalysis have changed (or failed to change); about the history and sociology, or perhaps even the philosophy of psychoanalysis, rather than about people or treatment, the primary subject matter of psychoanalysis itself.
Freud said that psychoanalysis was three things: a method of treatment, a method of observation, and a set of facts. Today we would add a fourth: it is an organized profession with thousands of members all over the world, with schools, journals, scientific organizations and meetings, and a community of discourse. Each of these, the treatment, the scientific method, the body of knowledge, and the profession, has changed since the beginning of psychoanalysis; and each is continuing to change. Furthermore, many psychoanalysts and some important friends and critics of psychoanalysis are concerned that all is not well in these change processes. The science of psychoanalysis has suffered because it has failed to develop the mechanisms of change and advancement that characterize most other sciences. Some philosophers of science have even suggested that this failure suggests that psychoanalysis