Chapter 5 Some Reflections on the Problems of Comparison and Difference in the Light of Doubts and Enthusiasm

The comparative project that is the subject of this book is concerned with trying to describe and specify psychoanalytical traditions as different as British, French, Kleinian, independent, contemporary Freudian and Lacanian, together with techniques and theories as diverse as drive psychology, ego psychology, object relations psychology and newer developments, such as relational psychoanalysis and intersubjectivism. The aim is to be able to get to know these traditions thoroughly, in sufficient detail, and from within. The comparative process brings to light similarities as well as differences, and, in the course of this process, we hope it may be possible to understand more precisely what psychoanalysis is. Or perhaps we will be left repeating Wolfgang Loch: ‘One cannot say what psychoanalysis is; it becomes apparent’ (personal communication).

My participation in the comparative methods project began when I was invited as a discussant to the first Brussels workshop (see the

Appendix). I was a last minute moderator in Prague, where demand outstripped supply and we had to arrange three extra groups. I have been a moderator at every meeting since. In this chapter, I shall discuss some of the theoretical issues involved in comparing differences in psychoanalytic practice, as well as report on a small survey I undertook with Manuel Fernández Criado into both the doubts and the enthusiasm that the project has aroused.

I will begin with an account of my own ambivalently enthusiastic and doubting response to the invitation to participate, before discussing similar feelings expressed by my colleagues. I will then seek to explore at some length what I consider to be the main psychoanalytic reasons both as to why, in my opinion, comparison is a necessarily difficult process, and as to why there must inevitably be a signific