The Language Tools of Psychoanalysis: A Search for Better Tools Drawn from Better Models

For some years articles have been appearing with increasing frequency which indicate that dissatisfaction is growing with the kinds of metaphors, the parallels to mythology, and the assumptions of changes in quantities of energy which have long been misused as explanatory tools in psychoanalysis. The realization is growing that quantitative analogies drawn from muscular effort, from hydraulic engineering or from the concepts about electricity which were current at the turn of the century do not provide appropriate models, appropriate metaphors or appropriate tools of communication, rumination or for testing the reality of psychoanalytic concepts. The muscular metaphors are especially misleading, because they depend on projections outward from the inner subjective experience of effort. Thus whenever a therapist found it difficult to reach a goal, as when a parent could not induce a child to change his ways, it was assumed that the failure could be 'explained' by invoking an increase in the strength of a hypothetical counter-force, usually called a 'resistance', or by the use of such descriptive epithets as 'lazy', 'weak-willed', 'weak egos', etc. What I intend to do here is to show that there are many alternatives to such metaphors which should be considered and explored. I will also describe briefly a few examples of these, drawn from modern mathematical and experimental physics. At the same time it should be clearly understood that none of these is offered as an exact or true model of what goes on psychologically. They will be cited merely to enrich our imaginations as we attempt to formulate our impressions of quantitative changes among psychological processes; because such impressions remain and must be dealt with. My purpose, hopefully, is simply to free our thinking as psychoanalysts from bondage to models which are still current but remain fallacious and inapplicable. Yet let me remind ourselves again that these newer alternatives remain metaphors; an