Down to Cases: The Ethical value of “Non-Scientificity” in Dyadic Psychoanalysis

The efficacy of the dyadic psychoanalytic method cannot be verified empirically, due to the impossibility of counterfactuals, controls, or double-blind experiments, although inventive psychoanalytic researchers have established validation methodologies for analyzing groups of case studies, outcomes, and even theoretical precepts. The unavailability of complete empirical validation for the most basic method of the discipline of psychoanalysis, or of its fundamental “report of findings”— the case study—means that the field's scientific rationale must be supplemented with public reasoning of another sort. Fortunately, the very conditions of uncertainty that make it impossible to falsify the findings of dyadic psychoanalysis lend it its ethical force by compelling its participants to confront the basic human dilemmas of freedom, meaning, and judgment, the ethical horizon of human affairs. One substantial value of psychoanalysis, then, is its capacity for generating “ethical knowledge” of the sort adumbrated by Aristotle's conception of practical knowledge (phronesis). Case studies written for a lay audience to highlight these basic dilemmas can demonstrate that psychoanalysis produces crucial knowledge, specific to individuals, for living a healthy and satisfying life.