EDITH KURZWEIL
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thought this was archaic, and that psychoanalysis ought not relive
conflicts which exhaust people in political struggles that have little
clinical importance.
EK:
But don't all analysts also belong to a school, be it Lacanian or
any other, and need to justify their positions? And don't they all
need mentors to get patients? Or do French psychoanalysts recom–
mend patients to members of other psychoanalytic groups?
JK:
Well, I suppose it is important to belong to a society not only in
order to get patients, but mainly for exchanges, clinical and theoreti–
cal discussions with colleagues. But things have changed . My patients
are not sent to me by members of my institute alone, they also are
referred by others. This means that tolerance of different approaches
has increased, and that you are appreciated for what you are. When
I have a patient I cannot take care of, I often send him to a friend
from my institute, but if I believe that he would be better off with
someone from another, I send him there.
EK:
Is that partly the result of such groups like
Confrontations?
JK:
Maybe. That group helped this trend to take hold, but it no
longer is very active. Yet, many people shared this way of thinking,
and its ideas continue to work.
EK:
I had that impression the last time I was in Paris, although I
also noted that there was tremendous chaos. One couldn't even find
out what was going on.
JK:
That is true . But much depends on what generation you belong
to. People older than I have been fighting so hard
contre les autres
that
they now hate the others, or if they don't hate them, they are unable
to have relations with them . My generation, I believe, is more eclec–
tic. For theoretical reasons, we feel that we have to know what all the
others have done, even the Kleinians, the Freudians, and the fol–
lowers of Bion and Winnicott. So, we have a sort of psychoanalytic
Babylon, but it's useful: you no longer want to be pure, to belong to
one and only one group. You want to know what
all
psychoanalysts
have done, in the hope of someday hitting upon
the
pertinent synthe–
sis. So I am not disturbed by the heterogenity of approaches; in fact,
I think of it as an essential part of clinical work itself in this very
moment.
EK:
Yes. You know, of course, that things are different in this
country.
JK:
Yes. But in a sense the French institutes as institutions also need
their divisions. Otherwise the institutions could not maintain them-
