B. A Useful Introduction:

The most irritating issue I seem to create in my postings is insisting all the time to make a distinction between psychoanalysis as a theory of the subject and as part of the western philosophical heritage, and its function as psychotherapy. I understand that irritation very well. I am a psychoanalyst who defined himself as a therapist for the first thirty years of my involvement with psychoanalytical matters (learning, practicing, teaching, and training). Its is when I started to see the deteriorating standards of all those matters in most of the places I visited in one capacity or another, and the glaring crisis of the dropping interest in psychoanalysis [admitted by the IPA in 1995] and responsible analyst looing outside analysis for the reasons of its deterioration. As an analyst I looked and still look within psychoanalytic mater for the conditions and causes of its deterioration.

Without hesitation I will introduce the post with two very brief introductions to give a background of what I still expect to be resentment my views about psychoanalysis.

1.                  Freud was exploring some psychological features in hysterical patients. He noticed the difficulties face in talking about sexual matter and then moral issues in general. He concluded that he should the let the patients free to just say what comes to their mind instead of asking questions. He called that ‘free association’. He used the term psychoanalysis to define his method of exploration. Psychoanalysis thus is a description of what Freud thought he was doing, which was listening to the patient talking about his psychological and psychopathological condition. He did that in a deliberate way instead of doing it unintentionally as we all do our daily communication. Freud’s exceptional talent was noticing that the patients say things about their condition without being conscious of what they were saying. Psychoanalysis gradually became more than just an exploration of things- unconscious, but also a method of ‘making patients get acquainted with their unconsciousness. Psychoanalysts-not Freud- wanted to systematize that process hoping to make psychoanalysing a defined, standardized, method of a therapeutic objective. The fact that neither the patient, nor the analyst, knew what was going to be said or meant to be said made the process of psychoanalysis unavailable for standardization and unmanageable in the tradition of a scientific methodology.

My argument is that psychoanalysis is not and should not be assess in terms of scientific viability. However, what is uncovered in psychoanalytic work could be studied scientifically in the related and relevant field of sciences. Discovering the lasting impressions of some childhood experience could be studied scientifically by scientists of other fields (psychometrically, child psychology, social psychology, etc.). Psychoanalysis could provide the subject matter of different scientific endeavours without having to be judged in terms of scientificity. Psychoanalysis is the knowledge we gather not the tool of gathering this knowledge. Medicine is not a science but many sciences were and still are needed to state with authority that medicine is scientific?

There is no factual need for psychoanalysis to be a science: it is enough to verify its findings scientifically to make it a credible part of human knowledge. The issue of how to give psychoanalysis the required and acceptable status of being scientifically based has to start first with identifying what of it needs scientific verification-in order to know if they are amenable to the methodology of scientific research. Take, for an example, what is involved in reaching a scientific answer to the patients’ “habits” in arriving to their sessions and leaving them. The main point I am making is that the psychoanalysts are not scientifically equipped to know the basics of even choosing the issues that could be researched scientifically. What is raised now about psychoanalysis and science is still at the stage of the wish (we wish it to be scientific) but there is no serious attempt at offering, suggesting, or even identifying what we wish to be verified scientifically. Some analysts who claim authority (Training Analysts) do not have even an agreed upon clear distinction between what they call theory and what they call practice to create the scientific aspect of psychoanalysis.

However, knowing the basic evolution of the theory of psychoanalysis [psychodynamics- object relation to ego psychology-the schools- the theoretical ciaos- separate theory and practice to finally doing away with theory(ies) and making the practice of psychotherapy a scientific issue], is essential in making sense of our serious stand now: letting analysis die or try to reincarnate it in a different form.