Discussion

There is an aspect of the history of psychoanalytic thinking, which is obvious from reading the contemporary literature, of which this panel is a part, that should now be made explicit: The era of the domination of American ego psychology, which found its culmination in the ideas of Heinz Hartmann, is over. In fact, for many analysts Hartmann's ego psychology, far from dominating, need no longer even be included in contemporary discourse. It may be true that the basic precept of Freudian theory, intrapsychic conflict, lives on in modern conflict theory, as defined by Charles Brenner. And, even though modern conflict theory is now understood not to exclude but to include object relations—a long-standing misunderstanding which has now been resolved—the focus of analytic discourse these days has shifted to the role of the object in the psychoanalytic situation.

The cutting edge of psychoanalytic interest as illustrated by this panel concentrates its attention on a particular aspect of the psychoanalytic situation: the analyst-patient relationship. The larger interest now is in the psychology of the analyst, the new clinical subject—or, as others would have it, the dual object, the analytic third, or the coconstructed object. This trend has gone so far that Dr. Chused repeatedly had to remind the panelists that the ultimate goal of psychoanalysis is to understand how the mind of the patient works. What is clearly now a new paradigm in analytic technique is the mutual influence of patient and analyst, which, it is claimed, is an uncharted region requiring expeditions of students for its exploration. Moreover, there is now a new goal of analysis: the importance