Current controversies about the nature of the knowledge analysts offer their patients and the kinds of authority they can legitimately claim are of central importance in the evolution of psychoanalytic ideas. These controversies reflect deep differences regarding basic assumptions about both epistemology and the nature of mind. An approach to these issues is offered which, it is argued, is closer to broad cultural shifts in thinking about knowledge in general than is the traditional psychoanalytic stance. Implications for theory and clinical practice are explored.