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AS USUAL, GILL HAS BROADENED and deepened the discussion at hand, having raised the fundamental point of whether, in essence, we should concern ourselves with any of this at all. But for purposes of my discussion, I would like to say yes to the question, discuss the two papers, and then return to Gill's argument.
Dr. Horowitz reviews some of the fundamental economic concepts and the evidence on which they are based, pointing out how valuable they were in enlarging the scope of Freud's understanding. There is no doubt that this is so and also no doubt that, as he states, economic explanations pervade analytic contributions. This is not in itself an argument for their correctness or their usefulness at the present time. The question really is not whether they are used, but whether they are indispensable, especially in view of the complications and difficulties involved in energy theory. Horowitz cites the work of Mahler, Kohut, and Jacobson as examples of where the economic point of view has led to new understanding, but I feel that he has not established his case. In their work, important new clinical understanding has been offered, but seems not to depend necessarily on economic hypotheses. Although it is commonly said that the economic point of view is important in clinical understanding generally, it seems to me that just there it sees little essential use. It is just as profitable, clinically, to speak of taming of drives or affect as it is to