To the Editor

If the defining quality of a good teacher is clarity, the ability to communicate his or her knowledge and understanding of a topic to the student, then Lois Shawver (1996) is an excellent teacher. I had made efforts in the past to understand the ideas of postmodernism, but usually left through the same door through which I entered: unclear.

The topic Shawver chose to clarify could not be more daunting. It has been said of Lacan that he would not sacrifice style to substance in order to assist reader comprehension. One is reminded of Professor Higgins's satirization in his song in “My Fair Lady” that it does not matter what the French say, as long as they say it well. But the question remains: Despite its special terminology, such as difference and deconstruction and the complexity of thought of many of its advocates, is postmodernism really that abstruse? The answer is no, not if you have a Lois Shawver to explain it.

My enthusiasm for her lucid and comprehensive presentation of the major ideas of postmodernism does not mean that I am in agreement with everything she has stated. Let me cite two areas of disagreement.

I believe Shawver has misrepresented the theory of Karen Horney. She affirms that all language is conducted with an actual or implied other. It is dialogic in nature. She goes on to argue that there is a multiplicity of selves within us—not harmful necessarily in the author's view. Unfortunately, she then makes an unjustified leap, that such a beneficial multiplicity is also Horney's view. Horney indeed saw a multiplicity in the neurotic, but this is conflictual and pathologic according to her theory. Horney did not believe that “streamlining” or making one of the selves dominant ended the conflict. Horney did not feel that neurotic multiplicity, streamlined or not, was beneficial. I could not find any statement that multiple selves is an ideal of Horney, at least not in the pages of Neurosis and Human Growth, the work cited by Sawver in the text of her ar