ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors examine some of their ways of using words, in terms of their inexactitude: and to try to say something about the two different realms of psychoanalytic theory and practice—and the muddle caused in them, by the words used. The metaphors might very appropriately illustrate the idea; but to have meaning for us, they have to be utterly familiar. Indeed, Sigmund Freud used, as metaphors, some of the terms he had used literally in the "Project for a Scientific Psychology". Confusions of categories are, of course, by no means confined to psychoanalytic thinking. Words are a major tool in the practice of psychoanalysis, and are just about all that is available for constructing our background theories. The use of psychoanalytic words, like "id" or "internal good part-object", are inevitably misleading if they are used indiscriminately, both for observed phenomena and for items of abstract theorising.
