LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:

ABSTRACT

Although printed information on secondary reading has expanded, adequate synthesis across types of publications is lacking. This study suggests and tests the hypothesis that professional textbooks serve a major role in broad synthesis of information for secondary reading. Research results from the bibliometric analysis of five secondary textbooks indicate: (1) no consistent pattern of reference use by authors, (2) wide author variation in the types of publications cited, (3) predominance of monographic over serial, dissertation, report and research literature citation, (4) referencing of older archival rather than more recent sources, (5) relatively few materials cited which appeared within 1 to 4 years of the publication dates of the five texts, and (6) low percentages of citation overlap and minor referral to a common body of literature by the five authors. According to this Investigation, it appears that individual professional texts do not necessarily reflect the extant information base or state‐of‐the‐art in secondary reading. The authors recommend existing information tools be modified to incorporate more effective perpetual literature synthesis or new tools be created by learned societies to fill the information synthesis gap.     

From Resistance to Analytic Truth

“Resistance” in psychoanalysis from its inception has meant the patient’s opposition to and interference with the analytic process that must be followed to resolve the patient’s neurosis. This concept of “resistance” implies the analyst possesses an objective truth about the patient and the therapeutic action of the process. Without that assumption, the concept itself is meaningless. It is argued that the concept of objective truth is inapplicable to any study of the human process, such as psychoanalysis, so resistance is not a defensible concept for the field. However, the commonly proposed alternative, relativism, leads to solipsism and therefore is also not a viable epistemology for psychoanalytic investigation. The concept of analytic truth is proposed as a third way that avoids the pitfalls of both objectivism and relativism. It is argued that when the patient opposes what the analyst regards as a self evident truth, an especially difficult type of enactment is occurring. The clinical approach to extricating the analytic pair from the strangulated enactment of clashing viewpoints is illustrated with the case of a young man who “never got angry.”