ABSTRACT
At the winter meeting in 2002 of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and also at the Deutsche Gesellschaft Psychoanaltiche meeting in Berlin in May 2002, The author presented a major paper on the contemporary failure of nerve and the crisis in psychoanalysis. He argued that the identity crisis in psychoanalysis today has to do with our failure of nerve in the teeth of the abusive behavior of insurance companies regarding their refusal of payment for psychoanalysis and the current cultural ambience demanding fast-fast-fast relief. Then he wrote about the great and ongoing conversation over the ages regarding these questions as it has unfolded in the world of psychoanalysis, poetry, literature, and philosophy from the time of Thales, Parmenides, and Heraclitus to the present day. He began to study medieval philosophy and history more carefully because there are parallels in these disciplines to what is going on today in the field of psychoanalysis.
