The psychoanalyst's methodological stance: some comments based on a response to Max Hernandez

Our theories are to derive from empirical clinical findings. Their task is to order the data and broaden our perceptual scope. But often and unwittingly, we draw upon them to make leaps of inference about unconscious meaning, and bypass untold directions for which the model may not fit. Despite the fact that such super-imposition is generally decried, we are each of us vulnerable to using theory--experience-near or distant--to rationalize hidden assumptions and agendas, to lead our patients to 'truths' we presume we already 'know' to be present. The effort of this discussion has been to highlight this ubiquitous risk and to consider its implications for our psychoanalytic listening and concomitant methodology.