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November 26, 2003. I wish to note an unfortunate omission in “The Consequences of Abandoning a Comprehensive Psychoanalytic Theory: Revisiting Rapaport's Systematizing Attempt” ( JAPA 51/3). Shevrin explains how psychoanalysis is foundering because of the long-standing lack of recognition of the need for a general, comprehensive theory on a higher conceptual level than clinical theory. Shevrin refers to the overarching theory we once had, now supposedly outdated—David Rapaport's metapsychology. Shevrin's article is an eloquent call for a return to our conceptual roots.
But missing is any reference to the lifelong contributions of Leo Rangell. For decades he has never stopped advocating, as in his recent “The Theory of Psychoanalysis: Vicissitudes of Its Evolution” ( JAPA 50/4), a “single unif ied theory of psychoanalysis,” conceived of as a “superordinate theory” embracing Freud's “dynamic, genetic, topographic, economic, and structural viewpoints,” as well as “the adaptive viewpoint… coming basically from the formulations of Hartmann and Rapaport…. Any psychological investigation would do well to employ all six metapsychological points of view” (pp. 1109, 1112 - 1113). Compare with Shevrin: “Rapaport referred to the theory he was sketching as ‘general’ in order to distinguish this superordinate level of theory from what he called ‘special clinical theory,’ whose principles were to be derivable from the general theory…. It was Rapaport's intention… not to abandon clinical theory but to ground it in more fundamental principles” (pp. 1006-1007). Obviously these two thinkers see eye to eye in this very important area. Indeed, Rangell made a point of crediting Shevrin with adhering to Rapaport's view while most of his colleagues who were coworkers with Rapaport, including George Klein, Merton Gill, Robert Holt, and Roy Schafer, abandoned Freud's metapsychology (Rangell, p. 1119). One consequence of this, Shevrin points out, is that “it brought to a halt t