Correspondence: Peter T. Hoffer, PhD, 151 Bishop Ave, #L-14, Secane, PA 19018 e-mail: p.hoffer@usip.edu

¹Peter T. Hoffer is currently Professor of German at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia and a Fellowship Associate member of the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He is the translator of the Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi and has published several papers on the history of psychoanalysis.

Abstract

The publication in 1923 of Sigmund Freud's The Ego and the Id is generally recognized as a watershed event in the history of psychoanalysis. The following year Ferenczi and Rank jointly published a book on psychoanalytic technique, The Development of Psychoanalysis (Ger: Entwicklungsziele der Psychoanalyse), concurrently with the independent publication of Ferenczi's Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality (Ger: Versuch einer Genitaltheorie) and Rank's The Trauma of Birth, the latter of which sparked a storm of controversy within the psychoanalytic community. The ensuing debate over technical and theoretical issues raised in these works signaled the emergence of two rival paradigms (following the model described by Thomas Kuhn) in psychoanalytic technique, the one based on ego psychology and drive-dynamics, the other on preoedipal ego development and object relations, which, when viewed from a present-day vantage point, may be considered complementary. The current crisis in psychoanalysis represents a continuation of this not yet completed paradigm shift.