ABSTRACT
To be meaningful, this would not be approached from a theoretical angle or from the angle of the setting (frequency of sessions, etc). Instead we would start from the observation of what happens in practice when a psychoanalyst is ‘doing psychoanalysis’. Only once we had recorded and abstracted the multiplicity of ways of working would we begin to be able to address the question: what is and what is not psychoanalysis? It was important not to confuse plurality with the idea that ‘anything goes’ (Tuckett, 2005). This meant finding a way of abstracting the models that lay, usually implicitly, behind the different ways of working, eventually describing various ‘types’. Such an approach meant recognizing that psychoanalysis cannot be psychoanalysis without the structure of a theoretical model, even if models vary. In my view, this is the recognition of the importance of ‘the third’ – that is, of the oedipal structure at the heart of psychoanalysis. To be psychoanalysis the two person situation must include a theory as its ‘third object’. Psychoanalysis is not just two people talking; the setting itself implies a theoretical structure which comes from outside and is essential to it. This is why the theory, which may vary with practitioners, is an
inherently necessary feature. Respecting difference is the other essential element of the oedipal structure, which is based upon differences of sex and generation.
