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Dr Kris has presented us with a paper (this issue) with which I can agree in many respects, concerning its theoretical and technical propositions. He tries to apply modern knowledge and theorizing on narcissistic phenomena and syndromes to a paper written by Sigmund Freud in 1916. And this is where I find some difficulty in following him, because he interprets in an a-historic way statements on observations and descriptions of cases (and very sketchy descriptions they are) that were made about 60 years ago, without in the least being aware of what Reichenbach (1938) called the 'context of discovery'.
It is rather important to raise the question of method here and Dr Kris will forgive me if I use him as an example for a very common occurrence in psychoanalytic publications. We analysts seem to have a certain leaning towards 'revisiting' Freud's works and only rarely do we realize that what we are actually attempting is a sort of travelling in a time machine. Because in a real journey through time we would not expect to find the same customs and costumes as nowadays!
Klauber (1968) has pointed to the advantages of emphasizing the value of a historical orientation, which are greatest when psychoanalytic controversies are being considered. He recommends an interpretation which regards controversies among analysts as historical phenomena and not simply as technical disputes in a technical discipline. But this applies not only to controversies but also to the uses of concepts and constructs in our theory, to the diagnostic labels used as well as to the nosological considerations attempted. Thiel (1966) has shown the trends in respect of a psychoanalytic nosology: (1) analysts agree about 'nosology and its discontents'; (2) analysts also agree in wishing psychoanalytic data to be used in establishing nosological classifications; (3) they disagree, however, sometimes fundamentally, when they start elaborating their points of view.
There is no doubt that a revision of p