Reply

I REALLY DON'T KNOW HOW to adequately express my appreciation for the obvious effort and thoughtfulness Jay Greenberg has brought to his review. Besides standing on its own merits as an essay, it is a marvelous exegesis of my writings, indeed so good—that to paraphrase Mrs. Brundy—I'm not sure that I knew what I thought 'till I heard what he said!

Greenberg had focused much of his discussion on the metapsychological implications of my position, attempting to dissect free

from what I have written, a coherent underlying theoretical thread. I must confess, I feel faintly embarrassed by his efforts. In my own view, I have tried to identify my clinical experience, what it is I do when I do what I know how to do; and then, to proceed to some reasonable formulation of that experience. So, I am very much praxis oriented. John Gardner, the author, said that he put down everything he could think of and then worked on it until he believed it! I'm afraid that I'm been arriving at a theoretical viewpoint very much the same way, elaborating a theory out of a pastiche of clinical impressions. Thus the difficulties which Greenberg so lucidly—and tactfully—defines.

Nevertheless, I persist in one iconoclastic conceit, namely that all theories about "human nature" are in the realm of sociobiology or, worse, social darwinism, and ultimately come down to political imperatives with teleological outcomes: "It is 'human nature' that. … and therefore. …" The moment someone evokes "human nature, " the cell door clangs. Not that there is not a human nature, but it is inextricably bound to social experience; and nature and society cannot be dissected free of each other. Man is a social being, and my only sense of "human nature" or "drive" is that the person both creates and must negotiate ef