Endnotes

I would like to begin by looking at the title of this conference, ‘Science and the Symbolic World’. We have science on the one hand and the symbolic world on the other. These two aspects raise different questions:

1. The relationship of psychoanalysis to the so-called ‘hard’ sciences and the recognition of psychoanalysis as a science engaged in scientific enquiry; and

2. Our explanations regarding how processes of symbolization come about - or, in other words, our theory of mind.

Turning to the first question, I would like to refer to what is happening at the moment in the UK with regard to our profession. As chair of the British Confederation of Psychotherapists, I have been involved in discussions about impending government regulation of psychotherapy. Recently the Health Care Standards Act was passed to regulate private clinics operating in the health field. We were concerned that the Act would also regulate medically qualified psychotherapists working in private practice and wrote to the Health Care Commissioners to determine whether or not this was the case. The response we received from the Commissioners made it clear that in their view psychoanalytic psychotherapy is considered a diagnostic tool and not a treatment approach in its own right. While this effectively means that medically qualified psychotherapists are not covered within the remit of the Act, it places the profession on the edges of the scientific community and opens the way for psychotherapy to be considered as an art rather than a science.

I would like to stress the importance of recognizing psychoanalysis as a science - not an art - and that what we are engaged in is building up a body of knowledge rather than working within an aesthetic tradition. In this respect, Freud's concern to establish the credibility of psychoanalysis as a scientific enterprise was well founded. The incorporation of psychoanalysis within the sciences also marked a paradigm shift in the scientific world with the introduction of