A Decade of Psychoanalytic Praxis

As this journal comes to celebrate its tenth year of its existence, it can look back at a decade of rather remarkable ferment in psychoanalysis. The ferment can be most easily recognized, first in the changes that have evolved in the organizational and institutional aspects of the field, and second in the swirl of theoretical currents that are presently awash in the psychoanalytic tub. My impression is that there has also been significant ferment in the development of psychoanalytic technique or praxis. In the present essay, I would like to try to identify and assess some of these possible directions in praxis.

The institutional gyrations are matters of public record and thus identified. The theoretical turmoil is a bit more complex, but nonetheless flourishes quite noisily on the pages of many journals and assaults the ears in many professional meetings. But the shifts in how analysis is practiced are more subtle and hidden—veiled behind the closed doors of individual consulting rooms and more masked than unveiled in the more public contexts of collegial exchange. Matters of technique and the understanding of aspects of the psychoanalytic process are written about, but one is never sure of the extent to which what is written about in the public forum corresponds to what transpires in the many contexts of ongoing interaction between analyst and patient. Trying to assess these matters becomes less a matter of hard evidence than astute