There is considerable current controversy among Freudian scholars about whether psychoanalysis is basically a hermeneutic discipline not amenable to scientific validation or a body of theory and practice that can and must be susceptible to such investigation. This debate stems partly from unresolved issues regarding certain diverging philosophic orientations in Freudian theory. Holt characterized these perspectives as differing images of the human being—“mechanistic” and “humanistic”—in Freud's thought. This article argues that Rychlak's “rigorous” humanistic notion of psychological agency can (a) clarify the implicitly humanistic philosophical position of proponents of hermeneutics in psychoanalysis (e.g., Schafer), and (b) help build bridges to those positions which advocate the scientific validation of psychoanalysis.