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Hungarians with a brilliant summary of the major directions in
American psychoanalysis, the splits that had occurred during the
last four to five decades, and particularly the controversies within
and about ego psychology. Now Meyers, upon introducing the
panel of distinguished analysts-Arnold Cooper, Otto Kernberg,
Paulina Kernberg, Paul Ornstein, and Roy Schafer-informed the
audience that they would hear of the current concerns and debates at
the "cutting edge" of psychoanalysis; and that some of these, about
the emotional bond between mother and infant and about object
relations theory, had been foreshadowed by the Budapest School.
Arnold Cooper outlined the accepted Freudian paradigms and
why and by whom these had been called into question. He suggested
that American analysts reexamine their thinking in line with the new
pluralism and the desirable "crisis of confidence" (in ego psycho–
logy)-due to the recent focus on the roles of narcissism and masoch–
ism in pathology, which also required giving up the centrality of the
Oedipus complex in neurogenesis . Roy Schafer discussed the rules
of psychoanalytic techniques - advisory rather than compulsory,
guiding rather than prohibiting, supportive rather than threatening,
and the importance of working with the analysand's experience of
the past and the present . And he went on to focus on the psychoana–
lytic dialogue, on the specific language between the analyst and the
patient, and on the delicate judgements the analyst must make . By
recounting the case of a man whose mood improved - thanks to a
specific insight - Schafer invited the participants to discuss how they
might have handled the situation. Otto Kernberg started out by de–
fining and contrasting the British, the ego psychologists', and the
"culturalists' " views of object relations - in terms of how they con–
ceptualize motivation, structure, and clinical techniques. He then
proceeded to explain his own approach, which not only is said to in–
corporate the most valuable aspects of each, but focuses on the im–
portance of affects in borderline and narcissistic disorders. Kernberg
listed Heinz Kohut, known for his theory of self-psychology, among
the culturalists because, I assume, of his stress on the analyst's em–
phatic listening position and its interpretive mode of intervention .
Paul Ornstein elaborated on clinical observations that support such
techniques in that they increase a patient's self-cohesion and thus
make defensive operations less necessary. Furthermore, he ex–
plained Kohut's simultaneous exploration of external and internal
reality as a means of research. Paulina Kernberg talked of the dif:
ficulties facing child analysts -lack of training facilities, social and
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