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I would like to thank Dr. Steven H. Goldberg for his thoughtful and stimulating discussion of the conversation I had with Dr. Stefano Bolognini. In particular, I will focus on the last section of Goldberg’s remarks, “Controversy—Toward a New Paradigm?” in which he queries me directly.
In the course of more than a century of psychoanalysis, we have witnessed a multiplication of theories, schools, models, and techniques. Our discipline proceeds by juxtaposition rather than by objective verification, as others do. Concepts and models are hardly ever disavowed; instead, they fall into disuse—only to be taken up again at other times, perhaps, and in other parts of the world.
So why did I “hound” Bolognini with a series of questions regarding a new paradigm?
Because in all the world’s cuisines, salt and sugar are used; no cooking tradition exists without one or the other of these ingredients. It is the different amounts used that guarantee an infinite variety of dishes around the world.
Understanding and experience, Goldberg argues, should not be too sharply polarized, but inevitably they are blended by different analysts and analytic traditions in ways that make the transcripts of sessions quite different, to the point that we wonder to what extent the same work is being done. When Ogden says, “I don’t find that the term interpretation well describes how I speak to patients” (Ogden and Di Donna 2013, p. 631), and when Ferro says that “an interpretation of this kind [a transference interpretation] would mean the collapse of the field and a return
to a highly relational situation” (Ferro and Nicoli 2017, p. 108), they are speaking of ways of being in session and dealing with the clinical situation that are completely different from those adopted by colleagues who see transference interpretation and insight as the primary vehicles of psychic change.
Even today (though more rarely than at one time), in meeting rooms (and more often in hallways), some analysts ask: “Is this sti