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Reading these six papers, I was reminded of how allegiance to an idea—almost any idea—calms the elemental fear we have of being alone with another person. In analysis we call it a theory, and, again, it can be any theory, as our profusion of theories attests. Freud (1927) said as much: “And thus a store of ideas is created, born from man's need to make his helplessness tolerable” (p. 18; quoted in Casement, 1985).
Not only is each as passionately argued, one could wish, but each author is so convinced of the position he holds, and so apparently intolerant of certain others, it would seem his very survival depended upon it. I wondered, how could this be? Could they really be proposing such entirely different views of unconscious fantasy? Are we not at some point examining the same patient?
And then I remembered a comment of Bion's : “In every consulting room there ought to be two rather frightened people; the patient and the psycho-analyst. If they are not, one wonders why they are bothering to find out what everyone knows” (p. 13; quoted in Casement, 1985). If we take Freud's helplessness and Bion's fear as the common ground that binds us all in this work, then the theories proposed and the certainties with which they are proposed become each analyst's attempt to make sense of the chaos of the consulting room and to not get swept away.
Might it be this that leads analysts not only to put forth a new theory but to argue against the old as if it were determinative of a kind of untenable world in which they—or their theories—cannot survive? Some feel that the concept of unconscious fantasy, as it was originally conceived, must be eliminated; others say it can and must be modified. But the fact that it feels like a battle for survival is testament to the power of this particular piece of psychoanalytic theory and history.
Can a concept crystallized from a set of observations about patients ever be so easily discarded? Isn't it putting the theoretical cart before the horse t