A Dictionary and a “Dictionary”: Response to Commentary

I appreciate the concise and yet rich summary of my paper that Samberg and Auchinclossoffer at the start of their commentary. And, although they regard my defining features of psychoanalysis as “woefully sectarian,” the reader has my presentation available and can decide.

Before I discuss the “Dictionary and the ‘Dictionary’” that is, the title of this response- I want to set the record straight on one point. The commentary authors misread my expectations. I fully expect that the ideas of my paper will be quite unpopular with many. Indeed I ask the readers, in the words of Samberg and Auchincloss, “to resolve our transferences to theory, our teachers, our mentors, and our analysts, i.e., the sum of our transferences to authority” not a light task. Or, in my words now, I ask the reader to shift his or her stance toward favorite models and to view them instead as but one part, though a significant part, of our expanding knowledge base and our set of theoretical constructions. My subtitle, “A Position Paper,” was intended to indicate that I am taking a strong stand-well aware that such a stand will arouse strong reactions.

But the authors of the commentary write as though (in their words sprinkled throughout) I have an “idyllic vision,” or an expectation of a dictionary as promoting “peaceful coexistence,” ideas that run counter to the actual history of dictionary making. They say “Pine's …. reference book” is one “he imagines to be …. ‘factual, accurate, and disinterested’” but this is a quote from Jonathon Green, not from me. And while I do include a quotation from Schafer that can but should not be read as having a similar tone (“celebrating our differences”), my use of it is meant to find links to our literature, not to have Schafer speak for me. Schafer seems to me to be stating an open-minded view toward the development of ideas, but certainly neither a naive nor an