Chapter 2 In Praise of Empiricism

Misunderstandings between psychoanalysts from different schools or different countries are not common - they are the norm. Any international psychoanalytic congress can provide numerous examples of this, although we shall deal presently with a misunderstanding that arose between Theodore Jacobs and André Green at the International Psychoanalytical Association Congress in 1993.

To illustrate the benefits of taking into account the analyst’s psychic functioning during the sessions, Jacobs (1993a, 1993b) has given a detailed report of a session during which his own intercurrent thoughts had given him a better understanding of what was happening for his patient. Calmly reading this paper today, it is very obvious to see both a psychoanalyst at work, listening to his countertransference reactions, and a patient who is truly engaged in an analysis, experiencing a fairly characteristic form of father transference. Although, when presenting the case, Jacobs refrained from doing so, any analyst reading this material can perceive the homosexual aspects of the situation, including Jacobs’ comments about his own past submission towards his elder brother. Any readers who are psychoanalysts will also think about their own clinical cases and sequences from their own work, a product that in some ways demonstrates the integrity of the clinical account. Although he did not, should Jacobs have explained this homosexual aspect and detailed the personal fantasies that are likely to have been activated in this session - despite being in front of the three thousand participants at a congress, including some of the analyst’s former patients and supervisees? My own response is that Jacobs was under no obligation to mention the homosexual subtext

of the analysis, and that, as it was, Jacobs’ paper was more than adequate to launch the discussion and to benefit everyone. With this in mind, it seems that André Green’s comments were extraordinarily acerbic. Far from reading between the lines an