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The commitment to pursuing an agenda of advancing psychoanalysis through the application of scientific and quantitative research methods has a long history, but has recently experienced renewed energy, often under the rubric of an “evidence-based psychotherapy” movement (Fonagy, Roth, and Higgitt 2005; Norcross, Beutler, and Levant 2006). I understand that many of my psychoanalytic colleagues are dedicated to the ideal of fashioning a psychoanalysis that is resistant to dogmatic and authoritarian reification. I share this aspiration, but disagree sharply with the empiricist methodologies that are being employed and valorized as the most epistemologically sound to accomplish our shared goal. This commitment is exemplified by the recent critique by Eagle and Wolitzky (2011) of Hoffman's essay (2009) opposing the privileging of systematic empirical research over other sources of knowledge in our field. In this paper I take a critical perspective on the kinds of systematic quasi-experimental research advocated by Eagle, Wolitzky, and others as the most scientific means to provide new knowledge and scientific legitimacy as understood by many psychoanalytic researchers and therapists.
It is important to state firmly that I am not anti-science. I am not against empirical research, or systematic observation, or statistical analysis, properly done. Beatrice Beebe's infant-mother observational research (2005) is an exemplar of good qualitative systematic research. I am impressed, for example, that she acknowledges that her rating system is an ordinal, not a ratio, scale and is therefore not truly quantitative. Her studies yield empirical evidence guided and interpreted by theory-driven observations of videotapes of mother-infant interactions. However, I