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DISCUSSIONS OF PSYCHIC ENERGY SEEM LIKE DISCUSSIONS of religion and politics. They regularly recur, the disputants reiterate their familiar arguments, and no one's opinion is altered. The discussions are also usually conducted with the passion both indicating and befitting expressions of one's central epistemological perspectives, that is, what one feels the world is about. These are probably the reasons many people find a panel such as this a futile exercise if not downright boring.
I am not optimistic about changing anyone's opinion, but perhaps I can sharpen the statement of the nature of the disagreement. I propose that the concept of psychic energy is only a detail in conflicting over-all perspectives on what psychoanalysis is or should be. I am pleased to see that both Horowitz and Rosenblatt and Thickstun agree that we are discussing metapsychology as a whole, of which psychic energy is only one facet.
In George Klein's (1976) phrase, the question is whether psychoanalysis needs two theories or one; and in Roy Schafer's (1976) terms, the question is whether psychoanalysis needs a mixed physico-chemical and biological language as well as an