Is there a Common Ground in Psychoanalysis? Some Reflections on the Subject of the 36th Congress

The following reflections concern the problematic nature of psychoanalysis, as it appeared in the 36th International Congress in Rome, and which was particularly evident in the final comparison between the papers read by Robert Wallerstein and Roy Schafer.

Above all I will try to account for a contradictory feeling I experienced on that occasion. The feeling, which I reveal at once, is this: that although on the whole I agreed with Schafer's argument, while I was listening to him I felt a sensation of repetitiveness and impasse, and a desire to go beyond that relativist Zeitgeist which seemed to me to close psychoanalysis in the blind alley of radical epistemologisation, from which there was no escape. On the other hand, apart from its naturalist and objectifying outlook, which I did not share, Wallerstein's paper seemed to keep the question of its epistème open.

I shall invert the order in which the papers were read and outline first Schafer's and then Wallerstein's ideas, while reminding readers that in both cases these are my own personal interpretations.