Challenges to psychoanalytic methodology
pp. 219-238
in: Man Chung, Colin Feltham (eds), Psychoanalytic knowledge, Berlin, Springer, 2003Abstract
What is psychoanalytic knowledge about? Is it about calming the worried well or curing the mentally ill? Actually, we know it isn't about therapy of any kind because there are simply no data that distinguish psychoanalysis as therapy from its competitors. There is also a great deal of data showing that whatever changes its therapy does bring about are not due to its supposedly essential ingredients of "psychoanalytic process'. In any case, no one, including Freud, values psychoanalysis because it is a therapy.
