Introduction

Is there an epistemology of psychoanalytic cure? Does one particular method of relatedness represent the “only” avenue through which cure is realized? Do other psychoanalytic schools, with their differing theories of human development, conflict, analytic method, and outcome, lend themselves to systematically criticize an already extant case? Among the limitations underscored by such trans-theoretical challenges are the different definitions of what constitutes relatedness, transference, “the human condition,” the goals, and the expected outcomes of psychoanalyses. Can the working assumptions of one psychoanalytic orientation be meaningful and usable to another? Likewise, can the outcomes expected by one methodology be considered as expectable by another, needless to say comprehensible? Critics do not view a case presentation only from different theoretical perspectives. They view clinical data from perspectives of personal values, as well as what has worked for them.

With the possible benefit of hindsight and the assuredness of theoretical fundamentalism, the three contributors to this discussion consider an already concluded 2-year analysis; in particular, the material of its 15th month. The analysis, presented with candor in rich explanative classical psychoanalytic detail by Dr. Paul Dewald, was published 20 years ago in 1972. The case, according to Dewald, was one of “classical hysterical and oedipal conflict with the major psychopathology revolving around [the patient's] relationship to her father and her sexual conflicts around this” (p. 14). Diagnostically, she was a “mixed psychoneurosis with phobic, conversion, and depressive symptoms