Few issues inflame heated discussion in the scientific community as the scientific standing of psychoanalysis. (One editor cannot but help add “that Viennese quack” after any mention of Freud. I began thinking about the issue of what kind of knowledge is critical theory after coming upon Raymond Geuss’ concise and brilliant The Idea of a Critical Theory.)
Now Butterflies and Wheels, one of more intelligent on-line journals/debate fora, has an exchange on Psychoanalysis as Science with Norman Holland insisting:
“Current objections to psychoanalysis as untestable and unscientific ignore two facts. First, a large body of experimental evidence has tested psychoanlaytic ideas, confirming some and not others. Second, psychoanalysis itself, while it does not usually use experimentation, does use holistic method. This is a procedure in wide use in the social sciences and even in the “hard” sciences.” (Read the full article here.)
And Frederick Crews rejoins:
“[Norman] Holland maintains that important parts of psychoanalytic theory have been experimentally confirmed . . . As he recognizes, this judgment stands at odds with the tacit, all but unanimous verdict of North American psychology faculties. Where psychoanalysis appears at all in the catalogs of well-regarded university departments of psychology, it usually figures as a prescientific historical curiosity, not as a viable body of theory. . . Holland asserts that this snub bespeaks not a considered scientific assessment but rather “a deep-seated prejudice against psychoanalysis” on the part of psychology professors and textbook authors. The academic establishment, he holds, has turned its back on a mountain of studies validating key portions of psychoanalytic doctrine . . .”