Psychoanalytic technique and 'analysis terminable and interminable'.

Abstract

Some of the implications for psychoanalytic technique of the papers given at the plenary sessions of the Montreal Congress are considered. Emphasis is placed on the role of affects in development and in current psychic functioning. Motivation for unconscious wishes arises from many sources, and affects should not only be thought of as drive derivatives. There is a substantial gap between the (largely) implicit clinico-technical theories in the analytic work presented, which do in fact show great sensitivity to the patients' affects, and the formal 'official' general psychoanalytic theory used. This discrepancy in our theories should be faced. Freud's tripartite structural theory of the mind (the 'second topography') seems now to have limitations for clinical purposes.