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Arnold Richards has invited his discussants to participate in a project that many would consider daunting: to comment critically on a “plea for a measure of humility.” Humility, of course, is a commodity that has been in notoriously short supply throughout the history of psychoanalysis. Introducing it, even at this late date, is bound to seem as if it will be a balm for all that ails us: it will simultaneously enhance our intellectual credibility and contribute to the civility of our discourse. In light of all this, having reservations about such a proposal—and Richards is psychologically canny enough to recommend not that we be abjectly humble but that we strive for a measure of humility—is likely to mark the discussant as a curmudgeon.
And yet, churlish though it may be, I can't help thinking that Richards's plea entails more than meets the eye. Let me begin with his reading of Freud. Quoting from his introduction to the Little Hans case, Richards approvingly cites Freud's statement of intention that “for the present, we will suspend our judgement and give our impartial attention to everything that there is to observe.” Acknowledging—in the spirit of humility—that Freud himself often honored this sentiment in the breach, Richards nonetheless considers it an “admirable precept.” It is, then, a small step for Richards to ask that we import Freud's openness into the pluralistic world of contemporary psychoanalysis, urging us “to forgo a discourse of dichotomy and polarization and instead approach one another in a dialectical spirit.” We are all tilling the same field, Richards tells us, and polarization and the resultant rancor compromise the quality of our crop.
But the problem with Freud's admirable precept is that it prescribes the impossible, a truism that renders it less than fully admirable. We