EDITH KURZWELL
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individual child-rearing practices, and the nature of the population
coming to psychoanalysis. In addition to citing observational studies
of children and adults which greatly enhanced psychoanalytic knowl–
edge exploring the depth of the mind "in reality, in fantasy, develop–
mentally, and chronologically," joseph elaborated on the ego's medi–
ating role between id, superego, and the external reality, on the
relationship of the mind
to
aspects of time and space, and on the
conflict and dynamic interplay at unconscious levels in terms of
language and language development. Essentially, joseph underlined
that the systematic collection of data in all these areas, which led
to
changing theories, and, in turn, influenced subsequent data collection,
proved the scientificity of psychoanalysis. In detail, and rather convinc–
ingly, he drew an analogy to nuclear physics, where, as in psychoanaly–
sis, everything seemed clear as long as a simple theory explained the
nature of the atomic particle, and became complex and finally com–
pletely unclear when more knowledge about atoms was available.
But unlike the physicist, who can learn about his field through
books and from experiments, the analytic candidate must make his
personality an integral part of his educational process. Thus the
training, along with the personality of the candidate, will itself
influence the type of analysis and theory he will practice. joseph
perceived this as an important reason for many of the arguments
within psychoanalysis, as a problem leading to a breakdown in
communication between analysts, and as a reinforcing link between
analysts of different generations who hold the same theoretical views.
joseph's address was a call for solidarity, a reminder that every
psychoanalyst functions primarily in the psychoanalytic session by
submitting his own self to scrutiny, honesty, transference, and counter–
transference phenomena. By stressing this unifying element, joseph 's
olive branches dominated the meetings.
Nevertheless, there were some minor tempests. The old debate
around metapsychology, once more, was continued by Charles Brenner
and Merton Gill. Brenner argued that for Freud "metapsychology" ,
ever since 1901, meant the study of unconscious mental processes via
the psychoanalytic method, whereas Gill, since 1959, had defined it as
"the study of the assumptions on which psychoanalytic theory is
based." Tracing the concept through all of Freud's works, Brenner
found that Freud had understood metapsychology to be the totality of
psychoanalytic theory. On the surface, debates on these definitions of
meta psychology resemble useless academic exercises. From them,
however, derive assumptions about all aspects of psychoanalysis. Thus
