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The body of knowledge that Freud bequeathed to us includes a modality for understanding the human psyche, a methodology for conducting research, and a means of treating mental disorders. Throughout his fruitful labors Freud sustained a continual dialectic between theory and practice. In their genesis, then, Freud's metap-sychological “points of view” and his theory of technique were organically related.
Before examining critically the major relationships between psychoanalytic metapsychology and its theory of technique, I want to articulate certain basic precepts that underlie this essay. All systems of understanding developed by human beings, regardless of their brilliance and breadth, are partial and subjective instrumentalities for imposing some semblance of order upon the complex phenomena that confront man in his minute corner of the universe. To deny contingency in scientific or philosophical systemizations is to transform what may be inordinately useful structures for understanding into sterile dogmas. This is as true of psychoanalysis as it is, for example, of Marxism.
Thus one of the major premises that will thread its way through this essay is that regardless of the integral relatedness of Freud's metapsychological “point of view” and his central concepts of technique, they are far from constituting a seamless whole the usefulness of which derives from its purported unity.
Fundamentally, whether psychoanalysis is employed as a means to understanding, a research methodology, or a treatment modality, its effectiveness resides in the attributes of those human beings who make use of its structuring of understanding. Mechanistic ways of being-in-the-world are spawned by intolerance of uncertainty, ambiguity,