The question asked in this paper is whether the various modifications taking place over the past 50 years are enhancing or undermining the core of psychoanalysis - namely the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, a theory of resistance and repression, a key role for the importance of irresolvable conflicts originating in infantile sexual experience and the challenges referred to as the Oedipus complex. The author deploys a new clinical theoretical framework for comparing the ways psychoanalysts work and uses it to highlight what changes have and have not taken place, The future is still open.
