PSYCHOANALYTIC PROBLEMS AND POSTMODERN SOLUTIONS

A number of recent revisions of psychoanalytic theory implicitly draw on postmodern conceptualizations of human selves and human subjectivit y. Though postmodern ideas have a wide currency in the humanities and in literary criticism, and are increasingly represented in critiques o f science, psychoanalytic clinicians are generally less familiar with the body of writings that encompass postmodernist thought. This paper discusses the evolution of postmodernism and its emergence into psycho analytic theory using the work of Roy Schafer and Irwin Hoffman as cas es in point. I will suggest that when postmodemism is applied to psych oanalytic practice, the result is only a partial solution, at best, to the problems Of metapsychology postmodernist revisions were intended to resolve.