[Superstructure or foundation? On metapsychology and the metapsychology debate]

In the sixties and seventies the value (or otherwise) of Freud's metapsychology was the subject of animated discussion. Today the subject seems to have lost its power to excite controversy. The author reconstructs the criticism of metapsychology and shows that the problems posed by the "witch" metapsychology can by no means be regarded as shelved. If we locate metapsychology in the boundary area between psychic and somatic and regard it as an attempt to conceptualise the unity of body and mind/soul, then the author feels it necessary to hold on to metapsychology as a crucial source of psychoanalytic knowledge. Further, she calls for a research programme with a historical perspective to establish an archeology of the argumentative structures underlying metapsychological discourse since Freud.