Editors' Introduction: Toward the Improvement of Psychoanalytic Technique

As we noted in previous issues, there is a struggle ongoing between those urging radical transformation of psychoanalytic technique in the service of “humanizing” the analytic situation in the here-and-now (intersubjectivists, relationalists, et al.) and those urging preservation of the essential technique in the service of the exploration and resolution of unconscious conflicts. As is often the case in such conflicts, polarization occurs, and the extremists on both sides produce the loudest and most visible collisions at center stage. We tend to be distracted by the most colorful altercations, and not to notice that meanwhile, in the consulting room, the work of improving psychoanalytic technique goes quietly, slowly, surely ahead. Our present issue demonstrates some of this quiet mainstream work in progress.

We start with a symposium for which a group of distinguished analysts was asked to discuss how their concept of psychoanalysis has evolved over the years and how this evolution has been expressed in their analytic technique. A most stimulating and fruitful discussion ensued among the participants, Drs. Arlow, Orgel, Peskin, Weinstein, and Friedman. We continue with a Clinical Symposium on “The Limits of Analysis: Impasse and Unanalyzability.” We present the afternoon case discussion from this Symposium, in which Dr. Anna Balas with considerable courage and honesty, and also with considerable clinical acumen and expressive skill, presents a vivid picture of a difficult clinical situation. Drs. Rothstein, Kantrowitz, Coen, and Hoffman discuss the problems perceptively. Dr. Richard Waugaman, in an Analyst's Notepad contribution, presents another type of potential impasse, which he handled skillfully.

In the latter part of this issue, we broaden our perspective to include Dr. Kaplan's interesting assessment of the current situation of psychoanalysis amid competing modalities, and a contribution from the Lacanian point of view by Drs. Criscaut and Korin. We