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This is a response to Langs and Badalamenti's response on the question of a formal science for psychoanalysis. Earlier in the year I sent a longer draft of it directly to Dr Langs, who replied personally to me with what seemed like an olive branch. He pointed out that it was not only he, but many other readers, who had found the tone of my original piece (Harris 1994) pretty hostile. This seemed to me to justify my going into print once again, partly in apology, and partly in an attempt to convey more clearly what I consider a balanced position on this topic. In my original commentary I ended by likening work trying to operationalize the promise of psychoanalysis as a science to the construction of tunnels under the ocean, and expressed the hope that workers using Langs and Badalamenti's methods would soon join tunnels with other research workers, approaching as it were from another direction. Here I cited work studying attachment and meaning, the potential combination of which has recently caused optimism that ‘the empirical study of human psychology need no longer be seen as opposed to hermeneutics’ (Ryle 1995). It is my continued hope that we and our colleagues will ultimately achieve this kind of conjuncture of perspectives, and I feel that in the interim there is considerable value in monitoring the clarity of each other's communications.
It seems I am hoist by my own petard. The very point I was raising against Langs and Badalamenti's (1994a) paper about a formal science for psychoanalysis - namely that they have not succeeded in clearly communicating their meaning - must also apply to my comments on their paper, judging by the way they have reacted. So I am prompted to try the patience of the Journal's readership one last time in an effort to convey what I consider an important message. As often happens with communication failures, both in sessions and in everyday life, they have reacted in an all-or-none way: because I have raised some critical points they ha