ABSTRACT
Too many philosophical writers on psychoanalysis have attempted to solve all their problems at one attempt by saying what the status of psychoanalytic propositions is. It is therefore perhaps worth stressing at the outset what I have reiterated in the essay that I am here concerned only with one central concept of psychoanalysis, although its linkages with other concepts make it impossible to isolate the discussion from a discussion of some kindred topics. For I recognize that psychoanalytic theory is so complex and various that when one has disentangled the strands which I have dealt with here one is only at the beginning. I ought to say that the gap between theory and therapy which I point to in this essay seems to me already to be largely overcome in the metapsychologies of Melanie Klein and Fairbairn. But to enlarge upon this would be to write another essay.
