Some problems and potentialities of present-day psychoanalysis

In a critical review of the current historical situation of psychoanalysis and its unique problems, the author considers a variety of specific but interacting factors. The potentialities for advance as therapy and science, their interrelationship, and the possible channels for such advance are examined. The social, clinical, and scientific importance of derivative 'psychotherapies' and of rationally flexible boundaries of 'indication' are discussed. As differentiated from rational conservatism, the phenomenon of analysts' irrational resistance to potential change in basic tenets of technique or theory is held to be a critically formidable impediment to the further development of psychoanalysis.