The Freudian Metaphor

by Donald P. Spence

Published 17 August 1987
Until recently, psychoanalysis has been a most reluctant recipient of the new inheritance. For most of its century-long life it has clung to the positivist epistemology of Freud, its founding genius, belying his hope that his followers would be as skeptical about received wisdom in their time as he was in his. Psychoanalysis has protected itself from change by preserving its store of founding metaphors in their original form.