The Present Crisis in Psychoanalysis
The Present Crisis in Psychoanalysis

Summary/Abstract: There is little doubt that psychoanalysis finds itself in a mounting state of crisis which has become increasingly visible in the last ten years. This crisis is occurring both in the theoretical and in the clinical aspects of psychoanalysis. Theoretically the concepts of the libi do theory and the pleasure principle are widely believed to be outmoded, not only by psychoanalysts outside the Freudian organization, but also by many authors inside the Freudian establishement, especially by the now leading group of Freudian theoreticians, the ego psychologists, who also admit that these principles are in contrast to the more recent findings of neurophysiology. On the other hand, the theoretical concept that governed the second please of Freud's work, that dealing with the life and death instinct, since the early twenties, were never properly coordinated with the earlier theory, either by himself or by his pupils, and remained a theoretical torso, in spite of the fact that they constituted an important progress over the initial instinct theory.

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