Theory and Technique: What is Psychoanalysis?

I found the Richards' paper extremely interesting, since it touches some of the very important issues in the expanding world of psychoanalysis and the still wider area of application of psychoanalytic theory to the most varied activities (psychotherapeutic and others). The problems they discuss, such as the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and technique and the comparison of some of the existing different schools of psychoanalytic thought, has, as they say, been the topic of many scientific meetings—the Rome and Buenos Aires International Psychoanalytic (IPA) congresses, to mention only two of them.

It is important for us to arrive at some conclusions on this topic because we want to be sure that our theories (i.e., the theories which, shared with our group or institution, we know best) instrument and teach as effectually as the techniques that derive from these theories. Moreover, we must be sure that our theories are better than those used, instrumented, and taught by other groups. Related to this is the fact that we want to improve our theories and technique by including hypotheses made by other individuals or schools if we find them useful and applicable to our way of dunking and working with our patients.1

Another important reason for this discussion is that, as scientists, we want to be sure that our hypotheses are correct, or at least verifiable, and therefore, that the consequence of using them in our technique will help our patients more than other technical approaches.