ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the sense of crisis and demoralization that came to plague the profession. It explores the root causes of a stagnated professional culture and considers both resistance to and the value of embracing the idea of progress as foundational to the professional culture of psychoanalysis. The malaise throughout psychoanalysis in the 2000s was years in the making and had both external and internal causes. To revitalize psychoanalysis, D. Kirsner believed it was necessary to move from the training analyst system toward assessment of actual knowledge by national accreditation bodies. In marked contrast to K. Eisold’s rejection of the link to medicine, P. Stepansky believed that psychoanalysis should have emulated the model of scientific progress in modern medicine. Progress in psychoanalysis can occur if it is a “both/and” discipline able to “hold” both the dynamics of advancement and the power of embeddedness. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.