The search for common ground: a critique

The paper discusses the positive and the negative sides of the common ground perspectives as proposed at the Montreal and Rome Congresses. Freud is the origin of the guardian role of the IPA, but the time is over when one man or one small group could dictate what psychoanalysis is and should be. This task has become an ongoing challenge for the total group. Psychoanalysis has to avoid becoming a fourre-tout as well as avoiding being ruled by any sort of dictatorial credo. One ideal way to deal with the unavoidable basic divergences is what Roy Schafer has called comparative psychoanalysis, where each new approach is evaluated in respect to the existing fundamental principles; in the long run, the irrelevant views would fade away. In the second part, the author gives his own idea about the irreducible principles that should define essential psychoanalysis.