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IT IS COMMONLY HELD THAT THE creation of technical language is the necessary means to the understanding of new truths; this is easily demonstrated in the physical sciences. Atomic physicists theorized that atomic particles consist of more elements than they had previously imagined, so they were forced to give names to these entities. Proton and electron were not enough. Now they imagine quarks, mesons and muons. Testing these ideas experimentally they found them useful in predicting atomic phenomena. Indeed, they could not proceed without the invention of the new vocabulary. Other sciences have developed and grown similarly. Their growth can be charted by the development of their technical languages. Psychoanalysis has likewise evolved and continues with a technical language which is purported to reveal truths about human behavior hitherto unknown. Robert Coles, in discussing the philosopher-novelist, Walker Percy and his (Percy's) attitude toward scientific method and human relations says:
One makes hypotheses, comes up with inductions or deductions. One does tests in order to verify. One shows oneself able to predict. All very well, when it is the physical world of the life cycle of plants and animals that is under scrutiny. Let man himself be the subject of research and we have what is sometimes called the 'human sciences' and certain notorious difficulties.
We psychoanalysts have flooded the language with "oedipus complex, " "transference, " "resistance, " "defense mechanisms, " "cathexis, " "projective identification, " "splitting, " Ad infinitum and thereby proclaim that with these "instruments" we have plumbed new depths into the human psyche. We have what Stephen Jay Gould has called a case of "physics envy". We love to say that "we