Critical Notice

SCHAFER, ROY A new language for psychoanalysis. London,  Yale University Press 1976. Pp.  xii + 394. £12.

This book is indicative of that direction in psychoanalysis which seeks to establish a specifically human rather than a mechanistic organismic (also called a biological, physico-chemical or natural science) approach to the subject. It does so by creating a new language, called action language. The author sees it as the alternative to meta-psychology which, therefore, has to be abolished. In order to achieve his objective Schafer has to attack the main proponents of meta-psychology, Hartmann, Kris, Loewenstein and even Freud. Other psychoanalysts who come close to his avowed objective like Erikson (identity) as well as Jacobson and Kohut (self) must also suffer for not having been radical enough. Winnicott is similarly blamed with faint praise. Target of the attack is the anthropomorphising and personifying which are shown to be inevitable accompaniments of meta-psychology.

In addition to the major tactical device, action language, which is claimed to be the native tongue of psychoanalysis, Schafer provides examples of translation from meta-psychology into action language. This he has to do in order to stay within psychoanalysis at all. Judging by his disclaimers, e.g., that he is not creating a psychology of the conscious, nor using behaviouristic criteria, nor advocating changes of psychoanalytic technique by substituting a Weltanschauung or poetic posturing, Schafer must be well aware of the charges which are liable to be levelled against him by his colleagues. More about disclaimers later; the book is full of them. First it must be said that language carries a heavy burden in Schafer's thesis: ‘It is all a question of the rules of the language being used, not of the facts’, (p. 227, author's italics), and, ‘language rules, rules that establish the kind of reality within which the phenomena may be stated’, (p. 201), and most of all, ‘theoretical problems, which is