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Discussions with colleagues on the metatheory of psychoanalysis often lead to the impression that their prevalent attitude is one of deep mistrust about its relevance for clinical practice: They will remark on the cleverness of, for instance, “X”'s theories and statements, but disclaim their usefulness in their own clinical work.
My contention is that, on the contrary, perhaps more than anyone else within the psychoanalytic movement, we - the rank and file of ordinary practitioners - cannot manage without at least an elementary metatheoretical knowledge. As an example we are continually being bombarded by proposed innovations from prominent analytical theoreticians which have immediate clinical and technical implications. These are often presented simply as additions to or improvements upon existing theory, necessitated by the widening of clinical experience (guided, of course, by theoretical, metatheoretical and metaphysical assumptions, although this is not always openly recognized). But equally so, the reasons given are overtly metatheoretical, as in the case with many recent attempts to “revise” Freudian metapsychology,