E Pur si Muove

I am not sure that integrating classical and relational psychoanalysis is what Dr. Varga's excellent and thought-provoking paper is about. Probably the day is gone when schools in psychoanalysis have the kind of clearly defined borders that promote integration. This paper stands well on its own, without needing to be an integration of anything. I am of the opinion that Varga's ideas fit within the expansive reach of contemporary Freudian analysis, and probably colleagues who talk a different language about (but not with) patients would arrive at the same conclusion. When two schools are reductively defined in order to finesse a contrast, neither fares well, because each becomes limited and then operates to claim turf the other is seen as owning. Traditional analysts have spent decades piecing together perspectives on the analytic relationship, and the same is true for relational psychoanalysis with respect to analyzing transference. Both schools may well be equally stereotyped in this instance; we can do without any of it.

I could certainly nitpick along the lines of the paper's prevailing assumptions about schools, but actually I find myself seeking rather the opposite, breaking free of schools if possible. If I had to sum up one overall and dominant reaction, it would not be that the ideas are wrong, or that my way of doing things is better. Rather, it is that there is too much of the pars pro toto in it for my taste. Parts stand in for wholes. Categories end up bullying around processes. E pur si muove—and yet it moves.

This is not a surprise, because it is a dramatically ambitious paper, taking aim at the essential aspects of clinical theory dominating all of our thinking. I want to frame my responses in the form of questions. I hope that in Varga's response he will be able to build upon my questions so as to clarify for readers his points of