Sure It Works in Practice, but Does It Work in Theory? Appreciating Fred Pine

Abstract

Fred Pine is a major contributor to contemporary Freudian analytic work. He expanded the breadth of clinical psychoanalysis by showing how the analyst could integrate ever expanding perspectives in analysis, and he expanded its depth through greater insight into how development affects psychic structure and, thereby, the context within which unconscious conflict and compromise is experienced and processed. Both of these—his expansion of potential variables implicated in the process of dynamic conflict and his developmental focus on structural deficit—have led to a way of Freudian thinking that is highly assimilative and integrative. Pine’s focus on integrating disparate points of view—not different theories, but clinical observations that are featured in different overall theories—illuminates clinical possibility and nuance. Pine’s work leads to questions about the relation of psychoanalytic theory to analytic practice and the definition of contemporary Freudian psychoanalysis itself.