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Psychoanalysis has always been beset by charges of insulation and parochialism. What such admonitions usually mean is that psychoanalysts do not familiarize themselves sufficiently with the fine print of kindred fields, such as psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, neurophysiology, and anthropology, for if they did, they would surely mend their theories and change their practices. On the other hand, our critics are themselves likely to be only approximately familiar with the technicalities of psychoanalysis, so that their recommendations are often addressed to merely fictive psychoanalytic theories and practices. Such is part of the normal exchange that goes on across boundaries of disciplines that hold certain interests in common. However distracting and digressive this state of affairs might be, it is not altogether unproductive, because it moves many practitioners on both sides of a boundary to get better acquainted with another's point of view on a shared interest, thereby enabling a realization yet again of all the subtleties that are entailed in one's first principles and the practices they constitute.
Particularly sensitive and often intimidating exchanges for the psychoanalyst go on at the boundaries of clinical research, because, among other things, psychoanalysis is importantly a clinical practice, and therefore diagnosis and prognosis have always been especially urgent matters for the psychoanalyst. Indeed, the nature of analyzability, its limits and forms with respect to differential diagnosis, e.g., anxiety as distinguished from panic disorder or neurotic