ABSTRACT
Controversy is the growing-point from which development springs but it must be a genuine confrontation and not an impotent beating of the air by opponents whose differences of view never meet. By psycho-analytic controversy the author felt that the same configuration was being described and that the apparent differences were more often accidental than intrinsic; different points of view are believed to be significant of membership of a group, not of a scientific experience. Yet everyone knows that what is important is not the supposed use of a particular theory but whether the theory has been understood properly and then whether the application has been sound. The rules are relatively easy for a psycho-analyst to obey, and if they are obeyed dissimilar people with dissimilar patients may yet have a similar experience.
