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DR. RUDOLPH M. LOEWENSTEIN:
Lack of time does not permit me fully to discuss the paper by Drs. Ritvo and Solnit and their excellent presentation of two cases that are part of the longitudinal studies headed by Ernst Kris. I presume and hope that Miss Freud will devote her whole evening's presentation to the longitudinal studies. Here I should only like to say a few words about their importance.
These studies, which Kris had originated and whose creative spirit he remained, fascinated and occupied him until the last. Very frequently in personal discussions did he talk about problems raised by these studies. One aspect that always particularly interested him was the possibility presented by direct observation of children in a longitudinal study to validate psychoanalytic hypotheses. By this he meant hypotheses of a general nature, concerning childhood development, as well as more circumscribed ones, e.g., such as analysts may be led to formulate in reconstructing specific childhood events from the analyses of adults. Kris considered that the longitudinal studies, moreover, might afford an opportunity to test some psychoanalytic hypotheses by attempting to predict the future development of the children observed.
As a matter of fact, prediction in psychoanalysis is not limited to such studies; some predicting is indeed an essential part of our daily analytic work. When we decide for or against the use of analytic therapy in a given case, for instance, we make a considerable number of implicit predictions: concerning the future formation of an analyzable transference neurosis, the therapeutic effect of interpretation and of insight, the future course of an analysis, its possible outcome, etc. In another sense we make implicit, retrospective predictions as a logical counterpart of every reconstruction of a patient's past; indeed, we thus state that such reconstructed event determined (in whole or in part) those later events or developments on the basis of which the