Some Recent Trends in Psychoanalytic Theory

Some years ago (1945) in course of examining the Klein system of child psychology I took occasion to remark that 'hypothetical reconstructions of the mind in early infancy, however far they may be extended, can never quite link up with clinical (analytical) observations. They are of a different order. They may increase the plausibility of a clinical interpretation, and their own plausibility may be re-enforced by clinical interpretations; but they cannot really dovetail with clinical facts. Attempts to merge the two systems usually lead to confusion.'1

Two years later, discussing the nature of 'basic mental concepts', I defined these as concepts that are 'incapable of further reduction, indispensable to the development of analytical theory and to that extent fixed ideas'.2 These dynamic, economic, and structural concepts, I suggested, can however be used as a discipline to control all hypothetical reconstructions of infantile mental development. True, they cannot of themselves bridge the developmental gap between birth and the age period when standard analytic techniques can be applied to children; but when employed in conjunction with behavioristic data they can, subject to the laws of economy of hypothesis, provide a speculative frame of reference to point the behavioristic researches of those psychoanalysts who at long last use methods of direct observation to examine infants who are of their nature analytically inaccessible. There are, however, some risks attendant on the procedure. Concepts 'of the first order' (basic concepts) can and must be extended to meet the theoretical exigencies of mental growth. We must sooner or later be able to account for the 'clinically observed' appearances of the organized ego to say nothing of its various parts. But since the means of extending these basic concepts depend more on the logical techniques of metaphysics than