ABSTRACT
In psychoanalysis, the traditional foci of theorizing—the targets, motives, themes, and goals of theorizing—have arisen from three interwoven strands. In mathematics and the natural sciences, it is taken as a matter of course that theorizing requires no particular justification or motive. Theorizing for the sake of increasing the store of “pure knowledge,” then, is one of the agreed-upon rationales for theoretical work in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic theorizing has been and is virtually a synonym for pure theorizing about psychopathology—in other words, it is theorizing in the pure knowledge medical paradigm. Theorizing about the former begins to take on the qualities of his later work, rich, complex, elaborate, with an intricate theoretical underpinning. Theorizing has focused on pure knowledge rather than on applications, on developing a general psychology rather than on clinical effectiveness, on pathology rather than on technique—the literature on therapy notwithstanding.
