Abstract

TUCKETT, David. What are Working Parties and what can they do. Rev. bras. psicanál [online]. 2010, vol.44, n.3, pp. 15-32. ISSN 0486-641X.

Understood as an opportunity to debate the fact we have different ideas and the support for them, pluralism provides the context for rigorous and respectful examination of differences. But for debate to be effective it requires discipline - real informed engagement between competing viewpoints and an institutional and cultural framework. The European Psychoanalytic Federation's scientific policy we introduced in 2001 and the role within it of Working Parties aimed to create such conditions to help us to reach more secure conclusions. We wanted to facilitate, in the long term, a much more rigorous, better-informed and engaged peer culture. One important area of the discussion was the psychoanalytic theory of the clinical situation as psychoanalysis is actually practiced every day. Clinical practice has been in increasing disarray as pluralism has developed - potentially allowing clinical psychoanalysis to drift disastrously away from a specific Freudian modality towards "anything goes". This paper starts by describing how Working Parties "work" (distinguished the Working Party from workshops) using the FEP Working Party on Comparative Clinical Methods as an example. It then discusses how we thought about the core elements that the analyst's ordinary everyday clinical theory will cover as s/he works - whether the analysts knows it or not. Three clinical examples are then presented showing how different psychoanalysts actually worked - using the theoretical and comparative framework the Working Party developed and implemented in the workshops. All three presenters were experienced training analysts. I then review eight core elements that appear to divide how contemporary psychoanalysts really work today. Each element raises reasonably precise theoretical questions - fundamental ones to which answers are often very confused, which then makes psychoanalytic training confusing. I conclude that the core elements of clinical psychoanalysis require much clearer reflection, specification, understanding and discussion and so a lot more work from us all.

Keywords : pluralism; differences; comparison; Working Parties; workshops; clinical theory; clinical practice; technique; scientific policy; anything goes.

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