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Discussions of psychoanalysts' fees were not on the agenda, but it
was clear to everyone that the Argentinians and Mexicans could afford
to stay at the Waldorf-Astoria (with their famili es), whereas most of the
English, Austrian, and Israeli analysts lived elsewhere or were put up
by American colleagues. But the analyst's financial status , inevi tably,
reflects sociological factors and cultural differences. Some of these, to a
certain extent, were addressed by Erik Erikson.
Erikson's assignment for his concluding talk had been to relate
transference phenomena to the human life cycle. H e chose to include
the generational cycles, which, in turn, are experienced differently in
different cultures. Enlarging on his former concepts of
factuality
(recognizable by all at a given stage of cognitive development in a given
technological period) and
actuality
(actualization of individuals shar–
ing such facts) , he now added
contextuality
(comprehensibility which
suddenly explains what was previously known). "Freud's discovery of
infantile sexuality belongs to this category," as does his own concept of
epigenesis.
With the help of tapes tri es (woven by Joan Erikson), he
illustrated how the stages of life he wrote about in
Childhood and
Society
and in
Identity, Youth and Crisis
are both specific and
interwoven, yet contain their dystonic elements (mistrust, shame,
guilt, etc.). Conceding that details may be debatabl e, he added a new
dimension to each of his stages of life (hope, will, purpose, compe–
tency, fidelity, love, care, and wisdom) to explain intergenerational
renewal. By postulating such a human potential to the crisis at every
stage, Erikson managed to inj ect a popular note into an otherwise
theoretical congress. He thereby helped to show in simpler language
how psychoanalysis is of potential concern to us all. (He again
indicated his sensitivity to contemporary issues when he mentioned
that in the play age masculine and feminine modes and roles are taken,
alternately, by both sexes, and that he calls this the infa ntil e–
genital rather than the phallic stage.) H e continued to return to the
issues that had dominated the congress, enlarging on the Oedipus
myth-its social issues, its origin as a play with an audience, its
linguistic implications, and metaphoric qualities. Erikson also spoke
of birth control as a new form of repression, by those young adults who
sublimate their generativity in activity: they now seem to care more for
the children who are born, but don 't know what they are missing by
not bearing their own. Thus they present a new problem to the
psychoanalyst, who can deal with it through the transference. By
comparing transference and the corresponding countertransference
experiences, in various cultural and historical settings, between analy-
