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The Scientific Proceedings of the May, 1971 meeting of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis are published as The Dynamics of Power, Volume XX of Science and Psychoanalysis. There are seventeen papers more or less related to the central theme, and two
special papers, the presidential address by Eric Wittkower and the Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Award address by Bruno Bettelheim.
Since the time of Adler, power has not been a central concept in the main stream of psychoanalytic thinking. Many of the papers in this symposium give the impression of straining to fit a preselected title—responses to the assignment 'write a paper relevant to Psychoanalysis which includes the term "Power" in the title'. The results are mixed, sometimes pedestrian, but sometimes suggestive of new and interesting points of view.
The term 'power' has several meanings in the symposium. One theme is introduced by John Schimel who cites Sullivan's definition of power as 'having weight and influence in interpersonal affairs'. Silvano Arieti adds a strongly negative connotation: 'a force which is experienced by the individual as thwarting, deflecting, inhibiting, or arresting one's will, one's freedom, or one's capacity for growth'. A second emphasis is suggested by Kurt Adler, who quotes Alfred Adler: 'a feeling of inferiority … demands an enhancement of the self-esteem. Here the fictional final purpose of the striving for power gains enormous influence'; and again, 'The personal striving for power is a concretization of the general striving for perfection'. This is discussed genetically by Paul R. Dince, who states that 'the roots of pathogenic strivings for omnipotent power over people and events abide within the terror of the young child experienced in separations from the mothering person'. This presentation calls for elaboration in terms of our clinical and theoretical understanding of narcissism, but unfortunately this is not attempted. These two themes, power as interpersonal coerci