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These two articles are of special significance. Leo Rangell is aware that the very acts of the Academy's inviting him to present this article and of his ready acceptance is a political event beyond the article's scholarly contribution. This reflects that for some years now we have moved into a period of rapprochement. Diversity of ideas is acknowledged. While welcomed by many, others regard it with dismay. Both speakers see the urgent need to place our pluralism into a larger, more open-ended framework and they confront us with the challenges this entails. Rangell observes that new ideas have been introduced by a process of elimination and replacement rather than by seeing new ideas as evolving and adding new perspectives to basic concepts. This is a very important point. In order to gain legitimacy, new perspectives have tended to be dramatized by being cast as cores of new theoretical stories, emphasizing differences. Rangell's heart longs for a comprehensive inclusive psychoanalytic theory. He characterizes himself as a “developed Freudian,” that is, one who has retained insights and formulations that have endured over time and has added such new ones as he feels have earned inclusion.
Arnold Cooper wholeheartedly embraces the pluralism of psychoanalytic ideas and concepts. He sees Freud's legacy as being intellectually very much alive and well and a continuing wellspring of ideas and observations.