Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Dr. Michael Porder examined the views of Kohut and Kernberg, emphasizing the apparent "re-parenting" fantasy present in the theory of Kohut

and a more subtle emphasis on the need to cure the "bad" internal child in the theory of Kernberg. He also questioned whether the inclination to endorse interpretation alone as the only appropriate mutative intervention by analysts might not reflect another infantile source—the belief in the omnipotence of thought. Dr. Jacob A. Arlow noted that patients' fantasies of analytic cure come into focus particularly as termination approaches, when the patient seeks a last chance, as it were, to find fulfillment of the infantile wishes for which he or she unconsciously sought gratification in the transference. Secondly, he examined the psychology of the "apprentice" and its theoretical expression first articulated by Strachey. The patient "incorporates" the analyst in the course of the analysis. This set of ideas and wishes leads to particular problems in training analysis. Finally, Dr. Arlow showed how theories about the cause of neurosis fall under the sway of what he called the psychology of the "villain" or "culprit," which has the same unconscious appeal as our tendency to believe that every death represents at bottom a murder. It is precisely in the most ambiguous and complex theories—such as theories of neurosogenesis or theories of cure—that unconscious wishes have the greatest opportunity for expression.