Some Aspects of Psychoanalytic Methodology

The panel, as arranged by the Chairman, was designed to facilitate a maximum of open participation and discussion. Following the opening presentation, this was accomplished very effectively by interspersing the other papers throughout the discussion at the discretion of the Chairman. There was a brief introduction by Charles Brenner outlining the above method of procedure and pointing out the confluence of the subject matter in each paper, essentially revolving around the crucial role of the psychoanalytic situation in methodology and theory formation.

In "Notes on Psychoanalytic Methodology: Empathy, the Analyst, and the Analytic Situation, " Bernard Fine pointed to the necessity for asking the "good and proper question" in any scientific endeavor, and emphasized the possibility of being misled into procedures which are not applicable to psychoanalysis, or into inappropriate types of quantification or experimental approaches, if one does not understand the basic concepts and problems involved. Fine focused on an interesting and unexpected parallel between psychoanalysis and microphysics (elementary particle physics) in that both are growing research disciplines and are at the "frontier" of scientific knowledge. In contrast to the "finished" physical systems, such as optics and planetary mechanics, microphysics will remain an unsettled dynamic research science because of its conceptual framework. This will be equally true of psychoanalysis, particularly because of the nature of its basic instrument of observation, the empathic and intuitive processes of the analyst. In both sciences, inquiry is directed not to the rearrangement of old facts and explanations leading to more formal patterns but rather to the discovery of new patterns of explanation. Physicists and psychoanalysts alike rarely find laws or establish theoretical concepts by enumerating and summarizing observables.

Actually important differences in conceptual organization show up only in "frontier"