The psychoanalytic theory of the clinical situation is in increasing disarray, helping clinical psychoanalysis to drift disastrously away from a specific modality toward 'anything goes.' This article aims to discuss the core elements that the analyst's ordinary everyday clinical theory will cover as he works, whether the analysts knows it or not. A framework for discussing and discovering that theory, which I developed with my colleagues in the European Psychoanalytic Federation Working Party on Comparative Clinical Methods, is introduced. Five clinical examples showing how different psychoanalysts worked follow. Briefly, I then review 9 core elements that appear to me to divide how contemporary psychoanalysts actually work. Each element raises reasonably precise theoretical questions that are fundamental, but to which answers are often very confused. The core elements of clinical psychoanalysis require much clearer reflection, understanding and discussion, which is what I hope to provoke.