ABSTRACT
Clinical data are of necessity a function of many interacting variables which cannot be isolated and controlled. As a result, the best one can hope from clinical data are crude empirical uniformities. Such crude uniformities cannot serve as the foundation of a highly abstract theory that seeks to encompass a wide range of apparently dissimilar empirical phenomena. Psychoanalytical theory as it is formulated seeks to explain empirical phenomena that cover a wide range. Psychoanalytical theory would profit much by deciding to restrict the empirical scope of its theoretical formulations, and by paying more attention to experimental facts. Perhaps a more modest approach, with ingenious experimentation, might produce a psychoanalytical theory that would not suffer from the many defects it possesses.
