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I shall attempt to describe the formation and some of the characteristics of rival groups of analysts. My principal source will be psychoanalytic material obtained from trainees in analysis with me, the strictly personal interpretation of which will not be included in this paper.
Psychoanalysts are no different from other people and, regardless of the quality of their psychoanalytic work, they tend to form into rival groups. Because it is always difficult to be objective about the present, this paper will be confined to describing the characteristics of two antagonistic groups which formerly existed in Buenos Aires. One of my trainees showed clear evidence of the presence of these groups and of certain differences between them in a dream: “I was going to a football match between England and Argentina. In order to get a ticket, you had to stand in four queues.”
On analyzing this dream it became clear that “England” symbolized the Argentine analysts who favored the “English school” of Melanie Klein, while the “Argentines” were the analysts whom the trainee placed in the other group. The “four queues” were the four years of compulsory training at the Psychoanalytic Institute. One of the latent meanings of the dream was that by doing this the trainee could become a member of the Argentine Psychoanalytical Association, represented by the football stadium, where he could then listen to the “matches” between the two rival groups of analysts, represented by the football teams.
One of the rival groups explicitly favored Melanie Klein, and this was clearly expressed in the trainee's dream by his use of the
word “English” to designate that group. Very broadly speaking, it believed that conflicts concerning the maternal breast were the most important source of neurosis, while the other group of analysts placed more importance on genital conflicts. It can thus be said that there was a tendency toward interpretations with oral contents in the one group and genital interpretations