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The eight position papers published here in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly's 2007 monograph offer a picture of the main ideas on therapeutic action present in our discipline today, reflecting the pluralism of theoretical and technical ideas that exist in modern-day psychoanalysis. These ideas produce a double effect on the reader. On one hand, we have a feeling of richness and creativity regarding the variety of ideas, but on the other, this wide variability can promote more unsettling reflections in reference to the difficulty of comparing different approaches, and uncertainty about the possibility of establishing shared criteria of evidence upon which various opinions can be based. This is a problem I will discuss in more detail at the end of my commentary.
Some convergence points and preoccupations are common to the different authors in this issue, such as the role that the relationship between the analyst and the patient plays in therapeutic change, the way in which something new arises in the analytic process, and the desire to deepen knowledge within a certain perspective rather than comparing or discussing other positions. In reference to the analyst-patient relationship, even though different points of view are represented, all the authors here consider it a crucial point to be discussed in relation to therapeutic change. Eizirik highlights the importance of this topic in many countries of Latin America,