Abstract
Freud’s last papers, published shortly before his death, intrigue us for the double perspective they afford. On the one hand, they offer an opportunity to share his retrospective evaluation of his whole “project,” as in “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” (1937a) or “An Outline of Psycho-Analysis” (1940a). On the other hand, we also look to them for clues to what Freud thought needed continued scrutiny—for what future post-Freudian “projects” should address. As we read these late papers we find ourselves as he did at the start of “Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence” (1940b): “I find myself for a moment in the interesting position of not knowing whether what I have to say should be regarded as something long familiar and obvious or as something entirely new and puzzling” (p. 275). 1
One of these last papers, “Constructions in Analysis” (1937b), from which my title is taken, presents that double perspective, looking back but also raising questions for us today. Here (as in “Analysis Terminable and Interminable”) Freud is addressing the question of evidence: on what basis do we justify our technique? Freud begins the paper by invoking a favorite analogy, comparing the work of analysts to that of archaeologists. Our task, like theirs, “is to make out what has been forgotten from the traces which it has left behind, or more correctly, to construct it. . . . [The task is] of construction, or, if it is preferred, of reconstruction. . . . Both [analyst and archaeologist] have an undisputed right to reconstruct by means of supplementing and combining the surviving remains” (1937b, pp. 258–259). In looking back over his writings, Freud then considers how he has dealt with this topic: If, in accounts of analytic technique, so little is said about ‘constructions’, that is because ‘interpretations’ and their effects are spoken of instead. But I think that ‘construction’ is by far the more appropriate description. ‘Interpretation’ applies to something that one does to some single element of material, such as an association or a parapraxis. But it is a ‘construction’ when one lays before the subject of the analysis a piece of his early history that he has forgotten . . . [p. 261].
2
The topic of reconstruction was an abiding interest of our long-time colleague and friend, JAPA Associate Editor Richard Gottlieb. His essay reexamining Freud’s relationship with his analysand Sergei Pankejeff—the eponymous Wolf Man—was posthumously published in JAPA (Gottlieb 2017). In tribute to Richard we are honoring his interest in reconstruction with two additional publications: the clinical “note” and commentaries introduced in this issue by Anne Erreich; and a series of papers from an APsaA panel on reconstruction, suggested by Richard before his death, to be presented in New York in his honor this very month.
These further discussions provide opportunities to revisit Freud’s question regarding evidence and technique and to explore again two factors that Freud stated are critical advantages for analytic (versus archaeological) reconstructions: transference and early childhood experiences. In the ensuing eighty years, however, post-Freudian thinking about these two factors has undergone major changes. The first of these factors is taken up in Richard’s essay as he reexamines Freud’s famous case through the lens of current perspectives on transference-countertransference in the analytic dyad. New knowledge about the child’s earliest experiences is the focus of Newell Fischer’s clinical “note on the indelible” and the commentaries by Phillip Blumberg and Alan Sugarman in this issue, as Anne Erreich explains in her introduction.
