Commentary on Irwin Z. Hoffman's Discussion: “Toward a Social-Constructivist View of the Psychoanalytic Situation”

I would like to respond to Hoffman's (1991) commentary on the papers by Modell, Greenberg, and Aron. The papers and the commentary are extremely rich, and I will address only a few key issues raised by Hoffman. In particular, I want to examine Hoffman's formulation of the new paradigm that defines contemporary psychoanalysis. His premise is that the great changes occurring in our field can be articulated in terms of one epistemiological principle, in this case from positivist to social-constructivist. To begin with, this premise raises a question as to the adequacy of any one epistemiological or metapsychological principle to grasp these changes. It seems to me that this kind of conceptualization misses the structure of many great changes in intellectual history. Such changes do not necessarily fit Kuhn's model of the structure of scientific revolutions, which involve the creation of a new paradigm. For example, the emergence of postmodernism embraces many intellectual and cultural movements; it can be characterized not by one single principle, but rather by a plurality of elements, most, but not all, of which may be present in any single work. The breadth of the changes in contemporary psychoanalysis, including the many disagreements among those who hold in common their rejection of “classical psychoanalysis,” more closely fits this pluralist configuration than it does the idea of a paradigm shift based on one underlying principle.

Does this mean that Hoffman's definition of the epistemological change we are undergoing is accurate but simply claims too much? Not