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All life reveals itself as a continuous interchange between an inner and an outer world.
Karl Jaspers, p. 12.
THIS PAPER CONSIDERS THE IMPORT of Jaspers' view—contemplates, indeed, the possibility that it has no use at all. This consideration is prompted by the growing acceptance of the thesis that the concept of an inner world is logically impossible and therapeutically harmful (Schafer, 1976), (1983). We are necessarily led to fundamental issues—of how, for example, we sense our existence and of how this elusive apprehension might be expressed. The argument clearly has a philosophical flavour not generally associated with psychiatric dissertations. Nevertheless, since Schafer states that he has derived his approach from such sources, it demands examination, however brief.
What follows is an unusual dialectic. Thesis and antithesis evolve toward no synthesis; rather, the conclusion shows their irreconcilable, revealing two quite different traditions of thought within the psychoanalytic movement. Schafer himself is a distinguished representative of one of these traditions; Winnicott gave original expression to the views of an alternative.
In brief, the argument revolves around the value of the spatial metaphor of self, which Schafer rejects but which others find useful both theoretically and therapeutically (e.g., Davis and Wallbridge, 1983).
Schafer has performed the valuable service of pointing out that the language of metapsychology is based on metaphor and should be recognized as such. His criticism, however, of the reification of