Psychoanalysis at the Millennium

This article explains and discusses the immense complexity of the psychoanalytic process as it is becoming increasingly understood at the millennium, and offers the possibility that it can be viewed from at least five channels of psychoanalytic listening. The careful ongoing examination of the transference-countertransference interactions or enactments, and their “analytic third” (32) location in the transitional space is extremely important in psychoanalytic practice. We must be careful in our interpretations of the clinical data not to stray any farther from the fundamental concepts of Freud than is necessary, lest we end up with a set of conflicting speculative metaphysical systems and become a marginalized esoteric cult. Freud’s work remains our basic paradigm, the core of psychoanalysis, even though his papers on technique and his emphasis on the curative power of interpretation are from a one-person psychology standpoint and his view of psychoanalysis as just another empirical 19th-century science requires proper understanding and emendation in the light of accumulated clinical experience since his time.