Dale Boesky

The most important question about which Brenner and I disagree is whether or not we can preserve the definition of unconscious conflict without some kind of notion of psychic structure. Brenner would be the first to agree that the concept of unconscious conflict is a bedrock definitional requirement for psychoanalysis. He and I would therefore also agree that pathological compromise formations are often enduring and stable. But this means that the components of the compromise formation remain continuously interactive and that requires the assumption of functional continuity. I do not see how one can have a notion of unconscious conflict without an assumption of functional continuity in the human mind. Functional continuity is essentially another term for psychic structure. How best to account for these functional continuities remains to be seen, but functional continuity is in this sense just as much a part of the idea of compromise formation as it is of structural theory. Brenner's new proposals actually depend on two concealed assumptions. The first assumption is that we can simply ignore the requirement that there be functional continuities in the human mind in order for compromise formations to develop, endure, or change. The second is that the theory of compromise formations which is a subset or component of modern structural theory can be simply detached from the rest of its theoretic linkages to structural theory without detrimental consequences regarding coherence and consistency.

Psychoanalysis is the science of the mind in conflict. Does this necessarily mean that we should define the domain of psychoanalysis as consisting only of the study of the components of compromise formation? Is there nothing else in the functioning of the human mind which should properly attract our attention? When the mind of a person “decides” to modify a compromise formation are there no advantages to clarifying such processes as memory, perception, and learning in so far as thes