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MY PURPOSE TODAY IS TO DISCUSS this year's White Society theme, the interpenetration of interpersonal and object relations theories, from the perspective of its clinical implications. My focus will be on the broadest aspect of this issue, the theory of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. I am going to approach the problem through a back door, by pointing to some recent ferment within classical psychoanalysis. This approach will, I hope, illuminate some of the problems which come up in any discussion of the relationship between theory and practice.
The past five or ten years have seen an unprecedented outpouring of criticism directed against Freudian metapsychology by analysts who were trained in and who have contributed to the classical tradition. The modifications which have been suggested, although they differ significantly from each other, share a common directional thrust: each represents an attempt to substitute a psychology predicated on experience and meaning for one based on structure and mechanism. Thus, Kernberg (1976) retains the classical concepts of drive and structure, but describes each of these as derivative of the early experience of the self with others. In a more sweeping attempt at theoretical revision, Kohut (1977) in his "psychology of the self in the broader sense" retains the concept of