78

The “general methodology of psychoanalysis” promised by Freud, from 1910, was never achieved. The long-held confusion between the original setting of the “cure type” (the standard form of psychoanalytic treatment), which is appropriate for the treatment of the adult’s transference neurosis, and psycho­analytical treatment, in the broader sense and which analysts wish for, probably forms the major epistemological obstacle accounting for this delay. Claude Bernard’s Introduction to the Study of Experimental Methodology provides a point of comparison, which allows for a better understanding of how a science’s general methodology is elaborated, a posteriori, by an effort of generalization starting from the original setting forming its premises. The clinical field of child psychoanalysis is probably the one most desperately lacking such a general methodology, while at the same time offering, empirically, a great number of alternative settings likely to compensate for the inadequacy of the original setting (“cure type”), depending on the diverse clinical situations to be treated. Relying on this knowledge, the author suggests that the metapsychological adequacy between the hyper-condensation of the original setting and the adult’s neurosis, presupposes sufficient effectiveness of the subject’s introjection process. He also points out that the totality of the alternative analyzing settings put forward within the infantile clinical field, can be described as ways of “unfolding” the original setting, following three possible axes, and allowing a reasoned typology. He finally shows how all these unfolded settings aim at giving an answer to the insufficiency or the overflow of the introjection process, while participating in its revival, allowing patients to get progressively closer to the metapsychological circumstances required to benefit from a more “classic” form of “analytical treatment” (associative method).