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Disputes among colleagues of different theoretical bents is the everpresent name of the game; the challenge is to find a way during the play to discuss and disagree while maintaining open and inquiring minds. I hope for some of that meaningful exchange in this response to Lynne Layton's critique of my paper (Stimmel, 1996). But minds change slowly and stubbornly and less from direct disagreement, such as you will find in the following, and more in conjunction with the subtle impact of any set of ideas on the surrounding intellectual culture. It is this indirectness which accounts for the discomfort one feels in the clash of ideas even as that clash translates into a quiet struggle. The hope is that sometimes this struggle will give way to yielding, transforming, and acceptance—in both directions. It may seem novel, in this first issue of a journal devoted to what some consider a new direction of psychoanalytic thought, to assert that classical or mainstream psychoanalytic theory still has the power to participate in that tug of war over ideas. After all, to some it is the old guard against which new conceptualizations are bounced; but the theory is supple and flexible. New ways of thinking—more importantly, new questions—pose interesting challenges that many of us try to meet with the theory itself. And in that way the theory remains modern.
One finds in the beginning of Layton's essay that which is “outside of psychoanalysis.” The pages fleetingly refer to the complicated, growing literature on sexual object choice, self-definitions of gender, and the increasing antipathy among the different discourses on human sexuality.