ABSTRACT
A vital issue raised in the London Congress revolved around the question of whether or not – or to what extent – clinical psychoanalysis, as it was classically elaborated and understood, should be restricted to neurosis or could be successfully applied to the broader group of non-neurotic patients who comprised what was termed “the widening scope”. Green recognized that neurosis and neurotic organizations did not offer the most effective templates on which to base a model of psychic functioning that would help analysts understand and treat patients whose psychic structures placed them at the boundaries of what was then considered analysable. The problem for the analyst is how to decide the degree to which that miscommunication or rationalization is in the service of some psychological motivation, wish or need or when it reflects the root inadequacy of thought or language to encompass or convey some aspect of psychic life.
