ABSTRACT
In institutes of psychoanalysis, theory and psychoanalytic technique are taught at seminars, and candidates’ clinical cases are for the most part supervised individually or, in some institutes, also through collective supervisions. In this chapter, the authors try the experience of organising seminars in psychoanalytical institutes using the rules as for the working groups formed for research at congresses or in societies. The “topical” theory seemed sufficient for resolving the problems, even though part of the pathology described in Freudian clinical work by then lay beyond neurosis. The insufficiency of the topical theory and the gravity of the pathology being treated— S. Ferenczi’s clinical work is an example—induced S. Freud to formulate the so-called structural theory. The modality with which a theory was constructed becomes decisive for the evaluation of its scientific merits, this alone is not sufficient for deciding about its merits.
