Can there be a psychoanalytical science without a metaphysical meta-psychology?

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to elucidate two basic meanings given to the term "meta-psychology" in the history of psychoanalysis: as a theory about the psycho-affective development of the human being which takes into account unconscious determinations, and as a group of supporting concepts which serve as a speculative theoretical superstructure of psychoanalysis. Secondly, this article will show why Winnicott rejected and refundedthe meta-psychological psychoanalytical theory. With this type of analysis, it is possible to explain how Winnicott uses abstract concepts (such as "need of being", "inborn tendency towards integration", "pure feminine element", "essential loneliness", among others) but not speculative concepts, seeing that abstract concepts may have appropriate referents in the phenomenal reality and speculative concepts may not. This type of difference is also used to examine the issue of the place and the need of a meta-psychological theorization in the development of psychoanalysis, offering the possibility of constructing a psychoanalytical theory as a science which needs no speculative supporting constructions as suggested by Freud.