Comment on Clifford Scott's Paper

IT GIVES ME much pleasure to comment on Clifford Scott's paper because of its fine regard for essentials. I know of no other contribution like it, and so it requires special attention. It further revives memories of discussions held in London to which Scott contributed. What he said at them was invariably puzzling, interesting or stimulating. His departure to Canada was a loss to English psychology, so I am particularly glad to find a paper of his in our Journal.

Scott compares psychoanalysis and analytical psychology in relation to the detailed behaviour of analysts. This is essential because behaviour determines, to a large extent, both the data produced and the field of study in which analysts are engaged. Today all these are in a state of flux and he recognises that in his first paragraph: ‘We try to understand the changing uses of such words as …’, and follows this up with a list of them. In this sentence he introduces the difficulty in understanding what is being talked about as well as the way meanings change as developments take place. Later, the same topic is taken up when he points out how naive many of the statements by Jung and Freud seem today. He also points out how important one study has become: that of gender identity. He could have mentioned many more, such as his own contribution, or emphasised the growth of interest in childhood among analytical psychologists, which has had so many repercussions.

Among the changes in behaviour is one not sufficiently appreciated in his paper. A good many analytical psychologists have found out that there are advantages to be gained by using the couch, and, while not making it conditional for analysis to take place, they use it more often than the chair. Again, though it still is current practice to ‘ask patients to concentrate on an image and see what happens’, or, for that matter, to concentrate on dreams by writing them down and reporting them in the session, a growing number of analytical psychologists follow a