On the Scientific Legitimacy of Psychoanalysis: The Controversy that Won’t Go Away

Abstract

This paper briefly examines the history and present status of the question: Is Psychoanalysis a Science? and the subsidiary question: Is Psychoanalysis an effective treatment method whose, either theory or practice, is "evidence-based"? The long history of the controversy between two opposing ways of answering these questions is briefly summarized and described as a specific case of the opposing views regarding the famous "mind-body problem" which has been vexing philosophers and psychologists since at least the time of Descartes. There is also a discussion of the relative merits of the case study method as opposed to empirical research on process and outcomes of the clinical encounter for advancing psychoanalytic knowledge and legitimacy in the eyes of the psychotherapy profession, and the public.