You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
THE DEATH OF ERNEST G. SCHACHTEL was a severe blow to the many people whose lives had touched his directly, and who had benefited from his shy warmth, sensitivity and wisdom. For others who had not had the opportunity to know him personally, his passing represents a setback for the scientific progress of psychoanalysis. Schachtel had undertaken the risky but much needed task of examining the fundamental concepts needed to humanize the overly biologized, outmoded theory that was Freud's legacy. He was trying in his own quiet and deeply thoughtful way to find a metaphor or a scientific image that could preserve the value of the great clinical observations of psychoanalysis, and somehow bring its theory in closer touch with how humans think, feel and talk. In his articles and books, published over several decades, he addressed again and again the question of how we develop a set of basic assumptions that can help us grasp more fully the special humanity of the individual. If a single book can be said to make a difference in lives his great Metamorphosis(1959) can be appraised as that one. Rarely in art or science have wisdom and beauty of language come together so well in one work.
The task that Schachtel set for himself was no less than the formulation of a fundamental psychological model for the interpersonal theory of Sullivan, Fromm, Horney, and various clinicians who adhere to some phase of the increasingly convergent neo-Freudian and existential positions in contemporary psychiatry and clinical psychology. As one delves deeper into the crucial issues of a clinical theory, one is confronted with the necessity for a more precise statement of its underlying premises. For Sullivan to talk of