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The five metapsychological principles set forth by Rapaport and Gill in 1959 have flown like regimental colors above psychoanalysis. But the ranks of marchers following behind are rapidly depleting. One general is dead and the other has marched off in another direction under different banners; and some of the once loyal troops are shooting at the colors, leaving several in tatters. The metapsychological enterprise itself is accused of being a snare and a delusion — an empty, abstract neurologizing of psychoanalysis which is in accord with neither clinical observations nor contemporary neurology. Are we in danger of being left with these few tattered banners and no army, no generals, and no cause?
It will be my purpose in this paper to show that some psychoanalytic theoreticians who are urging us to abandon metapsychology may be leading us away from clinical reality even as they profess to draw us closer. I am referring in particular to the contributions of Gill (1976), Klein (1976), Holt (1976), and Schafer (1975). My main contention will be that much recent theorizing has failed because several significant distinctions have either been ignored or obliterated. The distinctions I have in mind are those that enable us to set apart from each other considerations of method, technique, and theory. Of necessity, these issues are complex, abstract, yet necessary for informed clinical practice and its scientific investigation. It