Author's Response

I thank the discussants for the many positive things they find in my paper and for their tolerance and understanding of its shortcomings.

Dr. Kairys suggests firing with careful aim at fewer targets. Although it is a critical paper, my personal fantasy while writing was of painting on a panoramic canvas—very much involved in it, yet far enough removed to be objective about the human dilemma of the psychoanalyst from the day when a young (?) man applies to his school (home) of choice and asks to be accepted (adopted) into it, to the day when he either joins the “elders” as an equal member or departs to integrate his psychoanalytic knowledge with other vocational and life interests.

As psychoanalysts, we acknowledge this emotional and intellectual duality; it is a cornerstone of the analytic process. Why does it work for some and not for others?

I have suggested we get better acquainted with emotions associated with revived and continuing transferences; that we should examine them in ourselves and in each other.

What transferences? What emotions?

Am I wrong in seeing these exact questions appear in Dr. Kairys' discussion? He agrees the training analysis, “the keystone of the training arch is in need of repair” and describes training analysts as acknowledging

problems in the training arrangement, yet actively resisting proposals to change it.

Dr. Kairys says that a few analysts warmly approved his paper on this topic, while the majority were either apathetic to its contents or disputed its avowed purpose. He predicts McLaughlin's paper will have received similar treatment from his colleagues. He even portrays an Education Committee meeting, where a group of analysts “illogically” insist on the “logic” of reporting on a candidate's analysis: and then he proceeds to say, “Dr. Dorn's thesis, while imaginative and provocative, is unsupported by ‘clinical’ data and must therefore remain in the realm of interesting speculation.”

Has not Dr. Kairys himself already supplied us wit