Reply to Discussions of Oedipus and Beyond*

I am grateful both for the thought that the reviewers of Oedipus and Beyond (Greenberg, 1991) have put into their papers and for the chance, given to me by the editors of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, to respond. The book itself is wide ranging, and so are the reviewers' comments. In a brief reply I can address only some of the issues that seem most pressing. In a similar vein, I cannot respond to Havens's (1995) paper, which, however much I appreciate what he has to say, does not directly address my main lines of argument. Despite these limitations, however, I think the reviews open a crucial conversation about some of the most important questions facing psychoanalysts today.

The central vision underlying Hoffman's critique, as I understand it, is that my views are insufficiently anchored in a social-constructivist epistemology. In saying this about me, Hoffman (1995) is undoubtedly correct. But he also believes that I should want to be more anchored in constructivism. This is a point he argues weakly, when he bothers to argue it at all; it seems as self-evident to him that I should want to be a constructivist as it is to a true believer that membership in the One True Church is preferable to remaining a pagan. Only the most self-assured critic, asserting that one of my arguments “fails to take seriously