Meeting of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

January 25, 1955. AN APPROACH TO THE RELATION BETWEEN CONCEPT AND CONTENT IN PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY (WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE WORK OF MELANIE KLEIN AND HER FOLLOWERS). Elizabeth R. Zetzel, M.D.

Psychoanalysis, even more than other social sciences, presents peculiar difficulties of objective validation of its theoretical concepts. There is a lack of concrete objective data, and the relative difficulty of repeating psychoanalytic observations. Difficulty arises in differentiating theory from practice, theory based on interpretation of specific content (stages of libido development), and theory of a more general abstract nature concerning the function and structure of the mental apparatus. In considering this problem, the model used is Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. Modifications of the basic concepts have usually been closely related to increased knowledge of content. Though difficult, it is desirable that new theoretical formulations be oriented with regard to content as well as conceptual significance. To do this it is necessary to separate the concrete from the abstract, a difficult task because of the nature of the material. With some clinical formulations couched in general abstract terms there is the potential danger of their being compatible with divergent interpretations. Mrs. Klein's work is examined with this in mind. Many of the difficulties raised by her theoretical formulations may be due to her failure to distinguish the relation of content to concept. Mrs. Klein's work concerning aggression and its relation to anxiety and depressive tendencies, introjective and projective mechanisms, the role of object relations in early mental development, and placing Oedipal fantasies in the earliest period, is reviewed, and its controversial aspects are indicated. The contributions which are most generally acceptable and fit into the general conceptual framework of analytic theory are seen to fit under the heading of content rather than concept. T