Teaspoonery

Anthony Storr described his attempt to psychoanalyse Ranulph Fiennes as 'like stirring the void with a teaspoon'. It's one of the single most eloquent phrases I have heard all year--doesn't all psychoanalysis perform this manoeuvre, with different varieties of spoon? (For that matter, doesn't physics? Philosophy?) And who is to say that such an activity isn't revealing? It may tell us little about the void, but it gives valuable information about the spoon, and most of all about the stirrer.