Psychoanalysis During the Last Decade: Clinical and Theoretical Aspects

Psychoanalysis of the eighties presents itself for our consideration as a complex, changing, and very much alive discipline which may be contemplated from different angles, thus making it seem difficult to achieve a view of it as a whole. Waiving the possibility of carrying out such a synthesis, this paper will concern itself with the relationship between clinical endeavors and psychoanalytic theories, in the hope that this road will lead us to problems that genuinely interest the psychoanalyst of our times.

In presenting my points of view, which are necessarily limited and fragmentary, I should like to start by saying that our times are heavily influenced by the 50th anniversary of Freud's death. I feel we have only recently begun to be aware of his absence and the loss this entails, to recognize that he is no longer with us.

If we take a bird's-eye view of how the psychoanalytic science has evolved, we are faced with a clear-cut dividing line that coincides with the end of Freud's life. Until that moment, by reason of his unequaled genius, of his great authority, and — why deny it — of a kind of theoretical greed, psychoanalysis' creator restrained all the different currents that moved over, and sometimes