Colleagues, Correspondents and the Institution: Or: Is a Psychoanalysis without Institutions Possible?1

Let me make some declarations of interest. I am a member of an institution for which psychoanalysis has never been much of a presence, the University of Cambridge. I spend my time being a dutiful University teacher and researcher. I have experience of psychoanalysis in numerous forms, but I do not practise as an analyst, nor do I belong to any psychoanalytic institutions. I am a historian, a philosopher, a cultural critic and you could even call me, if it didn't make me feel rather someone who loves cricket and earns his living by talking about it, a commentator on psychoanalysis. The topic we have been discussing for the last two days has been one that has fascinated, preoccupied and worried away at me for years. One of the basic worries, basic questions I have asked and have yet to answer adequately comes from the writings of Jacques Derrida: ‘how can an autobiographical writing, in the abyss of an unterminated self-analysis, give birth to a world-wide institution?’ (Derrida, 1980, p. 324). In other words, how does one go from Freud's self-analysis and its record in The Interpretation of Dreams - and all of the other analytic acts which can be legitimately seen as extensions of Freud's self-analysis - to that cultural presence known as ‘psychoanalysis’?

A simple psychoanalytic answer to Derrida's question might be the following: psychoanalysis is simply the acting-out of Freud's countertransference to his patients, his colleagues, his family and his culture. If we take for a moment Winnicott's theory of the transitional phenomenon as the antecedent to ‘culture’, we could view Freud's