Elliot Jurist Interviews Peter Fonagy*

J: Peter, I'm going to ask you a series of questions, but I'm going to begin with one that is not officially on the list: What keeps you up at night when you think about our field?

F: What keeps me up at night? I actually have to confess with you that I sleep extremely well (both laugh). As far as the future of the field is concerned, I'm gravely concerned about the future of institutional psychoanalysis. I don't think that organizations like the International Psychoanalytic Association, or the psychoanalytic “churches,” I don't think they have much life left in them, or that they will change. As far as psychoanalysis as an intellectual or clinical discipline is concerned, as the truths that Freud identified, I sleep soundly. I sleep well.

J: I see. So, can you imagine what the discipline will look like 20 years from now?

F: I can. If I'm kind of dramatic about it, I will say you will not be able to call it a discipline anymore. It will not be a modality. There will be an intellectual force. I think psychoanalysis, as in Psychoanalytic Psychology the journal, will be there. I don't think you've got anything to worry about as journal editor of Psychoanalytic Psychology. However, as a kind of professional training, psychoanalytic ideas will survive, and people will be training in a number of techniques, some of which are understood as psychoanalytic, but they aren't going to be techniques that are very easily traced back to Freud's free association model.

J: So, if it's the institutions that you are skeptical about, can you say a little more about what place psychoanalysis will have within health care systems?

F: I think, as I said, modalities like “I do psychoanalytic psychotherapy,” I don't think that will be a legitimate statement. “I treat this or that disorder, and in that I will use psychoanalytic principles, psychoanalytic ideas, psychoanalytic techniques, inspiration from psychoanalysis,” that will exist. But, I will be identified as a psychological therapist,