Discussion

Engel is concerned with what he considers to be "the very inadequate state … of psychoanalytic research at the present time." So are we all, as indeed we should be in a science with so many unanswered questions. Certainly, we would also agree on the need to develop techniques for testing the clinical hypotheses which the psychoanalyst uses in his daily work, as well as the more abstract theories which comprise what is known as metapsychology. But we may not agree that this inadequate state of psychoanalytic research is indicative of a "failure" of some sort or that it is the result of the "history and present organization of psychoanalysis, that is, social and political." It may be, rather, that psychoanalytic research is itself in the process of development, influenced by intrinsic and extrinsic factors (as Engel also notes), and what appears as failure to some may by others be recognized as a slow growth that cannot be hurried. Even Engel's criticisms may, in this sense, be seen as part of the process of growth.

Engel begins by telling us that psychoanalysis is more than seventy-five years old, "a venerable age for many scientific disciplines," and this becomes an indictment of the failure of the "more than 1,300 members of the American Psychoanalytic Association" in research activities. Is seventy-five years so "venerable" an age for a scientific discipline? And what are the many other disciplines whose scientific achievements have reached such notable distinction within this period?

Engel concedes that through clinical studies "certain basic