The Psychoanalytic Theory of Addiction: A Reevaluation by Use of a Statistical Model

The theories and methods of psychoanalysis have had a profound influence on the other human sciences.1-3 However, movement in the other direction—from other human sciences to psychoanalysis—has normally been met with resistance. As Szasz has observed, this resistance may be attributed to the success of psychoanalysis in disseminating its theory and method to other sciences.4 In a struggle to retain their distinctiveness, psychoanalysts have refined their clinical techniques and defined them as the psychoanalytic method. This methodological resistance has had a negative effect on the development and evaluation of psychoanalytic theory. Thus, Sears can write (p. 133):

… few investigators feel free to accept Freud's statements at face value. The reason lies in the same factor that makes psychoanalysis a bad science—its method. Psychoanalysis relies upon techniques that do not admit repetition of observations, that have no self-evident or denotative validity, and that are tinctured to an unknown degree with the observer's own suggestions. These difficulties may not seriously interfere with therapy, but when the method is used for uncovering psychological facts that are required to have objective validity it simply fails…. This does not mean that all psychoanalytic findings are false, but it does mean that other methods must be sought for their critical evaluation and validation.5, p. 133

The purpose of this paper is to report on an investigation of psychoanalytic theory by the use of, as Sears suggests, a nonclinical method. Psychoanalytic theories of addiction were reviewed and an abstract statistical model was constructed to apply to questionnaire data from 1,684 resident addicts at the California Rehabilitation Center. The Center has provided subjects for a number of important addiction studies and is administrated as a large therapeutic community, rather than a prison.6 The questionnaire included many items of psychoanalytic content, and the required daily therapeutic