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A great deal of current debate within psychoanalytic theory has tended to focus on the explanatory and epistemological soundness of the concepts Freud developed to account for the workings of the human mind. MacKays study, a recent addition to the Psychological Issues series published by International Universities Press, represents a useful and insightful contribution to this discussion. In contrast to the widespread tendency among many commentators to employ a “hermeneutic” or “phenomenological” approach to the problem, MacKay has consistently and rather vociferously opted for what he terms a “scientific realist” methodology. By this he means that Freud's metapsychological theory is both philosophically viable and indeed scientifically verifiable when it is subjected to the forms of theory testing utilized by the natural science disciplines. Dismissing the frequently cited objection that human behavior cannot be explained with reference to causes, as the metapsychology appears to do, MacKay instead argues for an understanding of the central psychoanalytic concept of motivation as a “theoretical construct” whose existence may be proved scientifically.
In his preface, the author informs us that his theoretical project first took shape in response to a lecture delivered by Roy Schafer, one of the foremost proponents of the “antimetapsycholgoical” viewpoint. According to MacKay, the position adopted by Schafer and others critical of the epistemological and explanatory value of the metapsychology (M. M. Gill, George Klein, Robert R. Holt, et al.) was unsatisfactory in that it sought to erect a false dichotomy between Freud's clinical studies and the more general theoretical framework that supported them. Further, he believed that their rejection of the metapsychology as philosophically inapplicable to human behavior overlooked the close connection Freud constantly sought to establish between the world of meanings people inhabit and the biological