It Ain't Over till It's Over Response to Editors' Follow-Up Questions

The editors are a bit more sanguine than I am about the idea that the drive theory framework is fading. It is true that since most psychoanalysts, and certainly most psychotherapists, never read Freud in any depth, they easily dismiss drive theory as being, at best, a metaphor—it saves a lot of reading that would otherwise have to be done. The attitude of the analyst/therapist toward patients is, however, still formed by this supposedly discarded concept, although those who use it usually do not know where it comes from. One of the few people who understands drive theory and adheres to it in practice is Charles Brenner. Although his traditional position is today often criticized, in a limited number of cases it makes good sense. In a neurotic transference to the analyst, everything that the analyst does or does not do has symbolic significance and, in the interest of mobilizing the unconscious, there should be as little opportunity for the diversion of the unconscious sexual and aggressive longings that the neurotic patient has repressed. For that reason, when analyzing the psychoneurotic patient, one should eschew many of the social amenities, small kindnesses, clarifications, and helpful comments and interventions that the patient asks for directly or indirectly. That this position, appropriate for the psychoanalysis of the psychoneurotic patient, has been carried over into analytic and psychotherapeutic practice—usually without any justification other than the mistaken notion that this is what Freud dictated—is a disgrace. So, even though many agree that drive theory, from not only the psychoanalytic but also the biological point of view, has had its day and at best needs to be significantly modified in order to be useful, I still often encounter the kind of situation that happened to me recently when a young therapist in the elevator asked me if he might have a consultation with me. I agreed gladly to meet with him when we could find a mutually agreeabl