Reply to Comment By N. Schwartz-Salant

Dr Schwartz-Salant's comment on my paper has greatly delighted me, not simply because of his appreciation of what I was struggling to articulate, but because he clearly shares with me what he claims not to share. This apparent paradox goes to confirm the value of dialogue and my optimism about bridge-building increases.

What I describe as my bias towards psychoanalysis does not describe something different from what Schwartz-Salant demonstrates in his comment. What he shows is a keen interest in the writings of the psychoanalysts and a rigorous attempt to determine whether and to what degree their thinking, derived from Freud, and his own thinking, derived from Jung, can be brought together. Such a process should lead to actual enrichment in our understanding of the same clinical problems, as we all go on trying to develop models of the psyche from where Freud and Jung left off. This is what I meant by my bias in favour of psychoanalysis, shared by most of us in London, though not by all Jungians. Schwartz-Salant is not, of course, uncritical of certain psychoanalytical formulations. Nor am I. Despite fine points in his discussion where we would not see eye to eye, I broadly agree with him. Specifically, I am in strong agreement with his remark on Melanie Klein, that her style of interpretation voids the self of paradox. I also agree about Winnicott's use of the phrase ‘new instinctual experience’.

None of this alters the strength of my bias in favour of psychoanalysis, however—a bias which enables me, too, to ‘wrestle gently’ with psychoanalytic formulations. I do think, though, that criticisms of psychoanalysis need continuously to take account of developments within it. These theoretical advances result from practising psychoanalysts making the same kinds of objection that Schwartz-Salant and I do. Two major developments need to be noted. One is that there is a move away from drive-theory, which was still influencing Winnicott when he spoke of new instinctual needs