Constructing New Truths

THERE IS A REVOLUTION going on in psychoanalysis. Ultimate truths may be giving way to functional realities, arbitrary laws to relative truths. "New truths" or facets of knowledge are emerging that cut across metapsychological boundaries. I hope to show that from the point of view of Piaget's genetic epistemology, the same processes are operative in the construction of new truths in psychoanalytic theory as in the construction of new truths within the psychoanalytic dyad.

One of the problems with psychoanalytic theorizing is that models of the mind and clinical observations have become so interwoven that sometimes neither is clear. If we pay attention to personality organization and development on the one hand and therapeutic processes on the other, rather than both at once, we may be able to partial out what is "true" across the smörgesbord of psychoanalytic theory. A major move in this direction was spear-headed by George Klein (1973) who separated "metapsychological theory" from "clinical theory, " the latter having to do with psychoanalytic processes. I shall be addressing clinical theory, not metapsychology.

In this paper, I am concerned with the construction of new truths in clinical theory and with the parallel construction of new truths by analyst and analysand in the psychoanalytic situation, as seen from the perspective of Piaget's work on the development of knowledge.

For Piaget, knowledge is constantly being re-invented or restructured by the individual's active participation in his world, especially by his interaction with other people. Cognition is motivated by affect. Knowledge is a continuous construction that is activated in response to a need. In science, nothing is discovered unless there is curiosity and an active quest for knowledge. The same holds true in analysis. The scientist—like the analyst—is a participant observer and is constantly affecting the world he is discovering. In the same way, the interaction between analyst and patien