ABSTRACT
'Conceptual research' is normally connected with the name of Joseph Sandler who introduced it into the analytic literature. The unfolding and constant differentiation of concepts was one focus of the kind of conceptual studies which Sandler had proposed and had then carried out himself with different colleagues. The idea that conceptual research could offer a constructive contribution to solving this problem and thus might yield gains for clinical work and scientific endeavours, has become accepted by many in contemporary psychoanalysis. In psychoanalysis, have over the course of time become familiar with discussions about the pluralism of theories, perhaps even the pluralism in clinical practice. Two pluralisms—perhaps one can better answer the question of what truly is research in psychoanalysis, and what the status of individual research programmes is, if one took a closer look at the difficulties, presented by the research-pluralism, against the background of the more familiar discussion about the theory-pluralism.
