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In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
Where would we be today if Freud had not challenged the assumptions of his day regarding human behavior and had never made a project of exploring the deeper meanings of psychological existence? Although I recognize that Freud's search for truth in an overarching theory explaining all psychic phenomena stands in contrast, epistemologically, to our contemporary, postmodern idea that objective knowledge divorced from subjectivity and context is an illusion, I still wonder whether psychoanalysis has not, in a way, come full circle. What we share with Freud and every analyst following in his footsteps is a desire to make sense of the puzzling nature of the psychological. We also share with Freud a reluctance to foreclose knowledge. Theoretical diversity has been inherent in psychoanalysis from early on. Freud's writings stimulated many others? explorations of human behavior, and the outcome has been a mixture of theories influenced by each individual's perspective, history, and personality. Different and diverse constructions of psychoanalytic knowledge characterize our schools of thought. Psychoanalysis began with a burgeoning of multiple perspectives, perhaps stagnated in the competition to hold the “truth,” and now has returned to the kind of vitality that accompanies exploration and intellectual creativity.
Why, then, does it seem like we are in such a different place? Pluralism is more than just acknowledging multiple perspectives. As a consequence of an epistemology that rejects the possibility of asserting