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In this paper, Schafer acquaints the reader in a much condensed fashion with some of the basic points of his latest book, A New Language for Psychoanalysis. Schafer has been at pains to correct the long and unfortunate tendency among psychoanalysts to reify their theoretical constructs. It has been the custom, for example, to speak about the “ego's wish to avoid punishment,” etc., as though the “ego” — merely a symbol for a large array of mental “functions” — could “do” anything. Mindful of the fact that it is the person who performs, avoids, etc., Schafer advocates a refurbishing of our psychoanalytic language in which the metaphorical element is reduced as much as possible. Schafer suggests, as building blocks for a new and less confusing analytic vocabulary, speaking of actions (defined not only as motoric activities, but as human activities of all sorts, including wishing, refraining, thinking, fearing, etc.). Conflicts are then to be understood as phenomena of individuals engaged in simultaneous paradoxical actions (viz., wishing to make a sexual advance and wishing to appear aloof). Schafer also makes an excellent point about anxiety; namely, that the concept is inextricably bound up with our notion of conflict (one would not speak of someone being “conflicted” were he not anxious about one of the constituent actions of his mental/behavioral field). Therefore, remarks about causation (“the anxiety caused a conflict”) are logically incorrect. Psychoanalysts who take Schafer's recommendations seriously will find their communicative patterns much simplified and improved; the only “loss” will be the very welcome loss of pseudoscientific obscurantism.