Programme notes. 36th IPA Congress, Rome, 1989. The search for common ground: clinical aims and processes

This paper presents a summary and an overview of the 36th IPA Congress, 'Common ground in psychoanalysis: clinical aims and processes'. The theme emerged from Dr Robert Wallerstein's 1987 Montreal Congress Plenary Address, 'One psychoanalysis or many'. The paper focuses on the three Rome Plenary presentations and their discussions, Wallerstein's presidential address, and the final panel review. A paper presented at the meeting by Charles Hanly, 'The concept of truth in psychoanalysis', which outlines theories of truth: correspondence versus coherence, provides the conceptual tools for considering the different points of view. The author shares Hanly's support for a pragmatically qualified commitment to a correspondence theory of truth.