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AS ANNA FREUD (1969) HAS RECENTLY POINTED OUT, metapsychology as "… theory building, distant from the area of clinical material… has become the bugbear of the clinically oriented analyst who feels wholly divorced from it. This brings about a division which, in the long run, threatens both areas with sterility: the theoretical field, due to the absence of clinical data; the clinical field, due to a diminution in their theoretical evaluation and exploration. What is lost, finally, is what used to be considered as a sine qua non in psychoanalysis: the essential unity between clinical and theoretical thinking" (p. 153).
That unity is the result of a fruitful amalgam. Clinical observation breathes life into abstract metapsychological constructs. Likewise, application of the five coordinates of metapsychology provides explanatory breadth for even the most familiar clinical data. This paper will illustrate the inter-relatedness of clinical observation and metapsychological application in the analysis of a simple parapraxis.
The patient was a 40-year-old school teacher who had entered analysis because of sexual frigidity. One day she reported an error which occurred during registration of a new student. In the "occupation" section of the registration form she had