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MAURICIO CORTINA'S INTERESTING AND INSTRUCTIVE PAPER COURA-geously takes a line of thought that is opposed to the current spirit of hermeneutic constructivism. He questions whether we are right in having settled for a conception of psychoanalysis as a playful, loosely organized body of metaphors, narratives, and forms of interaction. Ultimately, Cortina's paper raises the question again whether psychoanalysis is a scientific undertaking that should be grounded on good empirical evidence about causal etiologies, or whether it is a humanistic undertaking primarily concerned with the generation of meaning.
Originally, psychoanalysis was a theory about the causal etiology of psychopathological conditions. I think that the current multiculturalist, constructivist atmosphere of psychoanalysis is a way of coming to terms with the fact that we simply do not have the grand theory we once thought we had. Cortina attempts to reinstate some of the theoretical ambitions of psychoanalysis that have been given up, and he believes that he has identified a candidate for the grand theory in question—attachment theory.
The current pluralistic atmosphere turns psychoanalysis into a playful universe of cultural forms of life. This attitude has turned a necessity into a virtue: The lack of scientific grounding of psychoanalytic thought and practice could leave us with a constant sense that we don't know enough. Instead, it seems to me that the current climate has taken another option. Psychoanalysis is seen as a loosely connected culture of forming the self. It is an essentially humanistic undertaking centered on a ritualized interaction between two people. As psychotherapy research indicates that the outcome of therapy does