[net.origins] Scientific status of psychoanalysis

carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (05/14/86)

Matt Wiener writes:

>And Freud is still considered garbage by the scientific community....
>[Freudian garbage] still fails every known test that the scientific
>community throws at it.

This is an extremely uninformed statement.  Does the scientific
community include researchers in human development, pediatrics,
clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, psychiatry, anthropology,
family studies, etc.?  Perhaps not, to the devotees of Ubizmo.

Psychoanalysis has traversed an immense distance since Freud.  Freud
himself was constantly revising his theories in the light of evidence
and was the exact opposite of a dogmatist or occultist.

There are many books that you could read to learn something about
research being done today that is influenced by psychoanalytic
ideas.  Some of them:

Daniel Stern, *The Interpersonal World of the Infant*.
John Bowlby, *Attachment and Loss*.
Seymour Fisher and Roger Greenberg, eds., *The Scientific Credibility
  of Freud's Theories and Therapy*.  (Freud wins some, loses some.)
Various books and articles by Heinz Kohut, Selma Fraiberg, and 
  T. Berry Brazelton, to name a few.

A short and very interesting introduction to psychoanalytic ideas,
with discussion of their scientific status, is *Psychology and
Freudian Theory* by Paul Kline.  Here is Kline's summary of his
main points:
______________

1.  Psychoanalysis was shown [in this book] to be much influenced by
ideas current during its initial development by Freud.  It was
distinguished from psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy.

2.  An outline of Freudian theory was given in which its most
important concepts were delineated.

3.  The scientific objections to psychoanalytic theory, notably its
poor sampling, its lack of quantification and its intertwining of
data and interpretation were examined.

4.  It was shown that psychoanalytic theory could be regarded as a
collection of separate hypotheses rather than one theory and that
these hypotheses could then be put to the scientific test.

5.  Some empirical studies which attempted to do this were then
discussed.  It was shown that there was a degree of empirical support
for:

  a. oral and anal character syndromes, although links to childhood
     training and pre-genital eroticism were not well established;
  b. Oedipus and castration complexes in a whole array of cultures;
  c. dreams as wishes; symbolism in and out of dreams; the
     psychological meaning of dreams and the implication of
     unconscious conflicts; importance of manifest as well as latent
     dream content;
  d. defense mechanisms and especially repression;
  e. the importance of unconscious conflicts in psychopathology.

It was found that there was lack of definite evidence about the
efficacy of Freudian therapy, but it was shown that well-known
studies indicating psychoanalysis to be ineffective were not
adequately carried out.  Study of the therapeutic process itself was
shown to be valuable.

6.  A sizeable number of important Freudian concepts have been shown,
therefore, to have an empirical foundation.

7.  A number of empirical methods, in the course of examining these
concepts, were shown to be valuable in the study of psychoanalytic
phenomena:

  a. psychometric investigations including cross-cultural studies;
  b. hologeistic studies;
  c. percept-genetic methods and similar techniques, such as those of
     Silverman;
  d. Malan's approach to the investigation of psychotherapeutic
     success.

8.  The implications of Freudian theory for a number of important
areas of human life were explicated to illustrate the richness of the
theory.

9.  Given that some significant concepts in Freudian theory have
empirical support and given that the theory can illuminate the vast
gamut of human behavior, certain conclusions seem to follow directly:

  a. It is incorrect to say that psychoanalytic theory is
     unscientific in the sense that it cannot be refuted.
  b. It is incorrect to reject psychoanalytic theory as false.
  c. It is incorrect to accept psychoanalytic theory as true.
  d. The theory needs far more careful empirical analysis than it has
     yet received.

10.  As a final postscript to this book, I want simply to argue that
this further empirical analysis of Freudian theory is valuable, not
as an attempt to prove Freud was right, but rather as an attempt to
sift through a theory which, founded on brilliant insights, does deal
with concepts that have a bearing on the matters that seem truly of
importance in human life.  Thus the establishment of their truth (if
true) will help to establish a theory of relevance to society and
those trying to organize it.  It is envisaged that those Freudian
concepts which pass the sifting test of the scientific method will be
incorporated into a theory of behavior, together with all those other
concepts which have similar experimental support, although derived
independently of psychoanalysis.

Put simply, it seems madness to jettison a set of ideas as
stimulating as those of Freud because they do not conform to a
conventionalized methodology at present in favor in psychology.  What
is required is a scientific psychology that combines theoretical
rigor with the rich comprehensiveness of psychoanalysis....
[Paul Kline]
________________
-- 
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
To work at the bidding and for the profit of another is not a
satisfactory state to human beings of educated intelligence, who have
ceased to think themselves naturally inferior to those whom they
serve. --J.S. Mill