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It is common to believe that one's own era is one of particular ferment. We believe that about psychoanalysis today. There do seem to be a number of foci of active challenge to received wisdom. Some of the important issues of debate are these: (1) is psychoanalysis a hermeneutic discipline or a natural science, or both, or, alternatively, what is the proper role of psychoanalytic metapsychology (Gill and Holzman, 1976)?; (2) in another version of the nature of psychoanalysis as a discipline, on the assumption that it must include a natural-science metapsychology, should the energy metapsychology be replaced by an information-theory metapsychology (Peterfreund, 1971; Gill, 1977; Rosenblatt and Thickstun, 1978)?; (3) is psychoanalysis a linguistic discipline, as Lacan (1977) maintains, and does Schafer's (1976) proposal for an “action language” have the