ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis is the first theory of the psyche, and it happened to be a theory of the dynamics of the intrapsychic. It took Sigmund Freud many years and several attempts to find the prompting stimulus for those dynamics; hence psychoanalysis and the conception of the intrapsychical eventually became synonyms. For reasons I explained in other works (Fayek, 2010, 2013) some psychoanalysts tried to replace Freud’s intrapsychical propositions with different ones, but they were only able to make the change from an intrapsychical theory to an interpersonal one. The psychoanalytic scene began to unravel. As a result, The International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) recognized theoretical plurality and accepted the notion of schools of psychoanalysis (Wallerstein, 1989), and that was for political expediency as Wallerstein himself has stated (2005). This was a main shift in the field. After more than a century of psychoanalysis being a unitary theory of the intrapsychical and the trademark of the Freudian doctrine, it started to have diverse denotations. Instead of declaring the original theory of psychoanalysis obsolete and inadequate they claimed theoretical novelties and appropriated the term and title ‘psychoanalysts’. The general but undeclared reason for that is none of those schools had any substance that could identify them to coin as their title. Another reason is that most of those who claimed coming up with novel theories were formerly trained psychoanalysts and derived a great deal of narcissistic gain from being known as such. It was one of those unethical professional gestures on a big scale. Despite Freud’s few revisions and the additions of few talented analysts in his time and after he passed, the core of the theory did not change. It also proved that it could not be changed without becoming distorted; nevertheless it could be revised without losing its core. There is only one psychoanalysis: a theory of the intrapsychic, or any theory of the intrapsychical, is psychoanalytic.
