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The multiple and misleading uses to which the designation 'psychoanalysis' is applied raises the question whether some persistent confusions about it might be clarified by a more precise definition of the subject. Reasons are briefly presented to show the increasing need for sharp differentiation between psychoanalysis as a theory and as a method. The historical expansion of psychoanalysis and the development of the omnibus, 'dynamic psychiatry', render psychoanalysis, as theory, a too broadly inclusive and ill-defined term. By contrast, psychoanalysis as a scientific method of observation (the analytic situation) has undergone neither expansion nor shrinkage. Following a period of dilution, diffusion, and confusion, it has gradually become better defined than it had been previously. The proposal is made that the word 'psychoanalysis' be used only to denote an expanding area of science ('theory'). By the same token, however, use of the word 'psychoanalytic' as an adjective applicable to innumerable diverse modes of operation is crippling to further progress in the field. It is urged that different psychological operations be clearly designated by different expressions (e.g., the primary model technique, therapy by example, etc.). Considerable controversy seems to arise and to continue because some people use the word in one sense, and others in another sense, without either group making this explicit.