Remembrance of Things Past: Reflections on the Analytic Process

Abstract

As Freud said, as far as `the ultimate things, the great problems of science and life' are concerned, `each of us is governed... by deep-rooted internal prejudices, into whose hands our speculation unwittingly plays' (1922/1985: 333). This article offers a very brief series of reflections on the different treatments offered by two great writers at the beginning of this century to the perennial human problems of how to understand and manage the complicated business of living. Their individual authorial solutions are placed in the context of some of their own life experiences and some attention is paid to the implications of this for the practice of group analysis at the end of this century.