Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a family of psychological theories and methods within the field of psychotherapy that seeks to elucidate connections among unconscious components of patients' mental processes, and to do so in a systematic way through a process of tracing out associations. In classical psychoanalysis, the fundamental subject matter of psychoanalysis is the unconscious patterns of life as they become revealed through the analysand's (the patient's) free associations. The analyst's goal is to help liberate the analysand from unexamined or unconscious barriers of transference and resistance, that is, past patterns of relatedness that are no longer serviceable or that inhibit freedom. More recent forms of psychoanalysis seek, among other things, to help patients gain self-esteem through greater trust of the self, overcome the fear of death and its effects on current behavior, and maintain several relationships that appear to be incompatible.

Criticisms

Psychonalysis has been criticized on a variety of grounds by Karl Popper, Adolf Grünbaum, Peter Medawar, Ernest Gellner, Frank Cioffi, Frederick Crews, and others. Popper argues that it is not scientific because it is not falsifiable. Grünbaum argues that it is falsifiable, and in fact turns out to be false. Exchanges between critics and defenders of psychoanalysis have often been so heated that they have come to be characterized as the Freud Wars.

Related Topics:
Karl Popper - Adolf Grünbaum - Peter Medawar - Ernest Gellner - Frank Cioffi - Frederick Crews

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Some defenders of psychoanalysis suggest that its logics and formulations are more akin to those found in the humanities than those proper to the physical and biological sciences, though Freud himself tried to base his clinical formulations on a hypothetical neurophysiology of energy transformations. By the 1970's, psychoanalytic writers like Roy Schafer and George Klein treated psychoanalysis as two separate theories, one, a theory of energy transformations that lacked empirical validation and the other, an "experience-near" theory of human intentionality that was philosophically independent of the reductionism and determinism of 19th century science as seen in the works of Helmholz and Hobbes. Reductionism and determinism were recognized as contrary to the clinical methods and goals of psychological liberation. Psychoanalysis as a collection of clinical theories was recast as a theory of interpretation and development with a focus on understanding how the varieties of nonconscious dispositions and actions influence a person's life in the form of transference and resistance.

Related Topics:
Roy Schafer - George Klein

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In a closely related argument, the philosopher Paul Ricouer argued that psychoanalysis can be considered a type of textual interpretation or hermeneutics. Like cultural critics and literary scholars, Ricouer contended, psychoanalysts spend their time interpreting the nuances of language- the language of their patients. Ricouer claimed that psychoanalysis emphasizes the polyvocal or many-voiced qualities of language, focusing on utterances that mean more than one thing. Ricouer classified psychoanalysis as a hermeneutics of suspicion. By this he meant that psychoanalysis searches for deception in language, and thereby destabilizes our usual reliance on clear, obvious meanings. The philosopher Jacques Derrida took a similar position. Derrida used psychoanalytic theory to question what he called the metaphysics of presence, a body of philosophical theory which assumes that the meaning of utterances can be pinned down and made fully evident.

Related Topics:
Paul Ricouer - Hermeneutics - Polyvocal - Jacques Derrida

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An early criticism of psychoanalysis was that its theories were based on little quantitative and experimental research, and instead relied almost exclusively on the clinical case study method. This criticism has been addressed by an increasing amount of psychoanalytic research from academic psychologists and psychiatrists who have worked to quantify and measure psychoanalytic concepts.

Related Topics:
Theories - Clinical case study - Psychologists - Psychiatrists

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Psychoanalysts have often complained about the significant lack of theoretical agreement among analysts of different schools. Many authors have attempted to integrate the various theories, with limited success. In this regard, psychoanalysis is similar to the related discipline of psychology.

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An important consequence of the wide variety of psychoanalytic theories is that psychoanalysis is difficult to criticize as a whole. Many critics have attempted to offer criticisms of psychoanalysis that were in fact only criticisms of specific ideas present only in one or more theories, rather than in all of psychoanalysis. For example, it is common for critics of psychoanalysis to focus on Freud's ideas, even though only a fraction of contemporary analysts still hold to Freud's major theses. As the psychoanalytic researcher Drew Westen puts it, "Critics have typically focused on a version of psychoanalytic theory?circa 1920 at best?that few contemporary analysts find compelling...In so doing, however, they have set the terms of the public debate and have led many analysts, I believe mistakenly, down an indefensible path of trying to defend a 75 to 100-year-old version of a theory and therapy that has changed substantially since Freud laid its foundations at the turn of the century." link to Westen article

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Although the popularity of psychoanalysis was in decline during the 1980's and early 1990's, prominent psychoanalytic institutes have experienced an increase in the number of applicants in recent years. link to article

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