On the Present-Day Use of References in Psychoanalytic Literature

One of the advantages of aging is that it gives a person an opportunity to compare the once with the now: it provides the vivid experience of the changes that occur in the cultural milieu in which one lives…changes which nowadays surpass in their rapidity any earlier epoch during the existence of the human race. In a recent paper on “Therapeutic Goal and Present-day Reality,”* I ventilated some ideas concerning the effect of the technical revolution on our present-day ego. I pointed out how the technical and scientific orientation in our modern world forces a multitude of individuals to conformity, and how the most outstanding achievement of industrialization…namely mass production…necessitates this conformity in the process of production, whereby in turn the mass product itself creates conformity of the consumer. This conformity is easily noticeable in the behavior of the members of a collective, as we call (according to Erich Kahler†) the supraindividual and postindividual groups which are established by common ends and for common purposes.

We have no hesitation to designate the psychoanalytic community at large as such a collective. It has not always been that. It has acquired the features of a collective with the increased centralization, stricter regimentation and the intense pursuit of professional distinction and exclusiveness. It was Robert Knight who expressively