The Interface between Psychoanalytic Theory and the Practice of Psychoanalysis

Dear friend all theory is gray, and green the golden tree of life. (Goethe, “Mephistopheles and the Student”)

Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact.

It seems to me that the interface between psychoanalytic theory and the practice of psychoanalysis illustrates the complexity of the relationship between general principles and actual experiences. The clinical part of psychoanalysis reflects Goethe's tree of life, while theory is an intellectual device.

In psychoanalysis we depend largely on the way we conceptualize the external world we live in within the scope of our inherent mental faculties, that is, the phenomenon called the human mind. Our quest for knowledge is invariably challenged by uncertainty or the outright ignorance of fact. In earlier periods theoretical models were constructed by philosophers, gifted writers, religious thinkers, by mythologies, and by intuition. Today they are determined by people in the sciences and allied fields. Models derived from science infiltrate existing cultural, societal, and religious belief systems. This means that science shapes our conceptions in spite of popularization and warping of the scientific point of view.

Einstein, in a discussion with Heisenberg, is quoted saying that “theory determines the boundaries of what we can observe.” For Einstein, theory controls our observational horizon. He implies that what we think, imagine, and observe is in accordance with prevailing constructs of knowledge in combination with cultural prescriptions of a particular era. Accordingly, novel theoretical