ABSTRACT
Acknowledging the plurality of theories in psychoanalysis constituted a liberating advance within the analytic community, but it also concealed a potential inhibitive factor in attempts to integrate concepts. In fact, to date, there is no consensus on how to decide in favor of one or the other competing, at times mutually contradictory theory, and how to integrate divergent concepts and theories. In response to an initiative by IPA President, Charles Hanly, from 2009 to 2013, an IPA Committee on Conceptual Integration1 studied the possibility of integrating concepts which, originating in different psychoanalytic traditions, differ entirely with respect to their fundamental assumptions and philosophies. In view of the theoretical and clinical diversity of psychoanalytic concepts, we realized the necessity of developing a method for comparing the different conceptualizations and their underlying theories and, further, placing them in a frame of reference that would allow for a more objective assessment of similarities and differences. Using this method, we began by studying the concept of enactment, the results of which were then published in a paper.2 This was followed by a study of unconscious phantasy. Unconscious phantasy3 is one of the central concepts in psychoanalytic the-
ory and practice. Due to its clinical and theoretical importance, all psychoanalytic schools have developed their own concept of unconscious phantasy. In view of the pluralistic status of theory, it is hardly surprising to discover a large
number of definitions, ranging from the classic wishful activity and psychic representative of instincts to a definition of a “not-me experience” as enacted in the analytic relationship. In order to limit the spectrum of investigation, we were obliged to make a
selection of the main papers. We have established a canon of important contributions from different psychoanalytic traditions: from Kleinian psychoanalysis Isaacs (1948), Segal (1991; 1994), and Britton (1995; 1998); from the Contemporary Freudians Sandler and Sandler (1994); from the modern American Ego Psychology Arlow (1969a; 1969b) and Abend (2008); from Self Psychology Ornstein and Ornstein (2008); from Relational Psychoanalysis Bromberg (2008); from French psychoanalysis Laplanche and Pontalis (1968), and Aulagnier (1975).
