The Human Nature of Psychoanalytic Theories

The bewildering array of psychoanalytic theories cries out for clarification. Each theory presents its students with an impressive body of tenets that are based on clinical observation, followed by a process of intellectual scrutiny. Each one attempts to use a collection of raw data to integrate them into ordered principles. Out of ordering principles theories are built. They all purport to describe and explain the observed, the field of observation being human conduct, human motivation and, ultimately, human nature. Differences between the various theories, however, are so profound that it is hard to believe that they could all be accurate or even compatible. Adherents of the various theories are intensely partisan. They are organized in schools that criticize followers of other theories with a vehemence that is reminiscent of religious sectarianism. There are more parallels: Organizations that represent older, well established schools of thought are more intolerant of innovations, much like established churches. They tend to believe that theirs is the only truth, which is the meaning of orthodoxy, and that to deviate from it constitutes heresy.

Psychoanalytic innovators, much like their religionist counterparts, usually did not plan to effect a rift. They rather intended to contribute to the existing body of knowledge, so as to enrich and benefit the establishment to which they belong. It is the orthodox establishment that feels threatened by change and that is likely to banish the reformer. The split occurs because the innovator has no choice but to become the founder of a new organization of his own. At this point the merit is likely to be on the side of the dissenter, the villain being the orthodox establishment. The issues, however, have a way of becoming muddled. Innovators age and die, yet their systems endure. Their successors, who did not generate new ideas themselves, follow the letter more than the spirit of innovation, thus creating a new brand of orthod