A dialogue on the difference between psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy - Paolo Migone discusses with Otto F. Kernberg and André Green on the difference between psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Migone, in agreement with Merton M. Gill’s conception of 1984, argues that there is not a real difference, but a continuum of techniques differentiated according to specific clinical situations and patients’ defensive structures, following the implications of ego psychology that were clear already in the 1940s and 1950s. Kernberg partly agrees, but he emphasizes the need of differentiating three psychoanalytically framed techniques (psychoanalysis proper, psychoanalytic [or expressive] psychotherapy, and supportive psychotherapy) mostly in order to perform empirical research on their efficacy. Green discusses in depth this problem within the context of the history of Freud’s theory of technique, and, among other things, shows how the original idea of Freud’s technique (couch, free associations, etc.) was derived from his model of dream work.

KEY WORDS: difference between psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, expressive psychotherapy, supportive psychotherapy, Merton M. Gill, dream model