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No keen observer can have failed to notice that psychoanalysis is going through a crisis. The official way out of this would seem to be that of saying that there is not just one psychoanalysis, but many. In my opinion, this is not a scientific solution, but a political one, which aspires to avoid painful clashes by taking into account the marked differences between various subgroups. In actual fact, I believe that there are only two solutions possible, the first hermeneutical-metaphorical and the second neurological-organicistic. Both are included in every psychodynamic approach. Freudian metapsychology, which is still accepted by the majority of psychoanalysts who use its double-track model (the conscious/unconscious contraposition), can be seen as an attempt to mediate between these two positions, an attempt I feel to be doomed from the start.
The two propositions differ greatly in their respective heuristic value, and as I have made clear in numerous publications (1981; 1984; 1988; ), I favour the neurobiological approach. The present article is a description of the hermeneutic position, aimed at