Research ... Research

It was my impression that the issue of the scientificity of psychoanalysis has subsided, if not because that it failed in coming up with hypotheses or suggestion of research, it would be because it is a ruse and displacement to the real problem in psychoanalysis: we just think that it works but have no prove to confirm that belief. Still, we keep seeking rescue from science. The latest appeal was few days ago:  One area for research that would be valuable is to examine what kinds of features "failed cases" or impasses, or negative therapeutic reactions have in common from the perspective of the clinician or the analytic pair. The notion of a Personal analyst in a dyadic situation assumes that one person is a capable match for the entirety of an analysand's developmental issues.

I will venture and IMAGINE a research done (by who!!) in that area:

We need four experimental groups of ‘failed cases, impasses, negative therapeutic, and successful analyses. Due to the original small numbers in psychoanalysis in general, each of those four groups could be 25 persons. The statisticians will raise the validity coefficient if they consider 25 a small number to guarantee validity of the coefficients. The members of the four groups have to be identical or very much similar to each other in age, gender, socioeconomic background, etc. They should also go through a battery of psychometric measures regarding the reason for referral to psychoanalysis. There are other aspects of the similarities that should be considered but this is not the place to go into details.

Then we come to the analysts: how similar in what and how we could judge them to be of equal competence. Add: four years of analysis with same number of sessions, duration, and circumstances. To avoid the sarcasm of my colleagues of Experimental Psychology I would say: I, personally-as psychoanalyst- do not think that any serios research in the field of psychotherapies is possible. The validity of psychoanalysis comes from internal consistency and correspondence between theory and practice. Based on the changes that happened in the field of theoretical and practicing psychoanalysis in the last ‘few’ decades, this link is quite questionable now. Analyst (in the USA at least) who are calling for research to validate their work are not paying enough attention to the theory and the practicing of that theory in their work. We should keep in mind that psychoanalysis reached its peak of credibility from 1900-197….. without any experimental proof of its validity: It was bringing to the attention the unconsciously obvious in the human subject.