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This paper argues that not only is theory‐building often unfashionable, but the spurious assumption that the presence of scholarly disputes signifies the need to abandon theory‐building efforts adds to the difficulties of those willing to develop and expand general theories of human communication. We argue that the time is at hand to provide a new response to the published criticism of the symbolic convergence theory (SCT) and its attendant method of fantasy theme analysis (FTA). Since 1977, critics have made a number of charges about the usefulness of the symbolic convergence theory. We have collapsed the more frequently mentioned and argued points into four indictments of SCT: (1) SCT's proponents have not clarified the basic presuppositions that undergird the theory; (2) SCT is Freudian‐based and therefore applies only to small group communication; (3) SCT's insights are researcher‐dependent not …