Everyone who has participated in discussions between American and French psychoanalysts will have been struck by the different ways in which psychoanalysts in the two countries refer to Freud's work. For instance, an American refers to the structural theory, whereas the French refer to the second topographical system. The "structural theory" has for the French another meaning that is related to the linguistic and anthropological fields from which some French psychoanalysts have borrowed a conception of diachronic and synchronic views of psychological development. Other differences are related to the different styles of analytic writing. An American paper has for a French reader a medical style of scientific exposition; a French paper has for an American a flavor of philosophical thinking and a literary mode of writing. Nevertheless, this does not mean that psychoanalysis would be considered a science in America and an art in France. The French way