ABSTRACT
Any exploration of the directions and possibilities for progress in psychoanalysis depends, of course, on what one means by “psychoanalysis.” The author was one of the founders of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) that is committed to transcending the differences, to bringing together therapists of different orientations in order to listen to and learn from each other. Through its journal, its annual meetings, its newsletter, and its local chapters, SEPI continues to pursue this aim in interesting and creative ways, and increasingly, other venues have emerged as well for the promotion of integrative rather than tribal thought. That default position, the unexamined persistence of rules and restrictions from an earlier era of psychoanalytic thought, has in important respects been sharply challenged by Mitchell himself, as well as by other relational thinkers. The boundaries around psychoanalysis include within a single psychoanalytic community a range of viewpoints that once would have led to splintering and anathematizing.
