You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Do we have a choice? As analysts we need to move with, and be influenced by, the spirit of today, otherwise we face isolation. If we cling to the practices and theories of Freud, Jung and of organic psychiatry, inevitably shadowed as they are by the legacy of Puritanism and of Victorian morality, we remain closed to the liberating influence of present-day life.
We know, however, that a rebellion against the existing structure, both analytic and social, can be anarchistic and chaotic. All the precious store that has so far been accumulated could be destroyed. We need standards and procedures, order and discipline, to help us control greed, loss of boundaries and wild analysis. If these controls are too tight our society will lose its energy; if too loose there will be a loss of respect for boundaries and for professional discipline. It is vital, therefore, to attempt to strengthen both essential procedures and ethics, and, at the same time, allow for a greater release of libido.
The events of the summer of 1975 were the outcome of this gradual awakening of the spirit of change. It is inaccurate to describe the International Seminar and the formation of the Association as events in themselves. They were the result of a fermentation. Nor was this fermentation confined to the ‘younger group’. It was—and is—a movement within the whole of the analytic scene, the outcome of the relationship between the ‘younger group’ and their analysts, supervisors and colleagues. The warmth which surrounded us created a powerful energy which manifested itself by an explosion. At the 1974 I.A.A.P. Congress in London, Dr Plaut, as a member of the Programme Committee, had arranged for a meeting of trainees. It erupted. Angry shouts and accusations were flung across the room: ‘You are a Kleinian’; ‘you don't know how to analyze regression’; ‘you rigidly require four times a week’; ‘you aren't competent if you haven't been through a clinical regression’; ‘you aren't true to Jung’; ‘