You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This discussion is based upon certain thoughts arising from a recent talk I had with Peter Fonagy about his aims in setting up the project.
The design of the research is sophisticated and I want to spell out some of the reasons why. I will talk from the perspective of one of the analysts on the project about the experience of taking part in it. I will also raise certain difficulties posed by the project's design.
As we know, people do not agree on definitions of what constitutes valid research into psychoanalysis. The analyst who struggles to marry the sense of conviction that comes from his experience in the consulting room with a concern about the nature of evidence is engaged in research. So is the statistician, who struggles with questions of outcome and efficacy. I note that in their paper Fonagy and Tallandini-Shallice refer to Grunbaum's argument that clinical work alone cannot yield a validation for psychoanalytic theory. They present this argument as if it is unchallenged, but this is not the case. Strenger, in a recent book, Between Hermeneutics and Science, while agreeing with certain of Grunbaum's criticisms of the hermeneuticists, has presented a careful and cogent rebuttal of Grunbaum's claim. Strenger puts forward the case for clinical work alone constituting research.
An important point about the design of the Young Adults Project is that it gathers different types of data from many sources. Research is not conceived of in narrow terms. There are questionnaire and interview data from the assessment phase. This allows for an interface with the body of research findings into outcome, efficacy and psychiatric nosology. Peter Fonagy is one of those rare analysts who keep alive a dialogue with psychiatry and with academic psychology, and for this we are in his debt. There is the Profile, there is the weekly checklist and summary of sessions, and there are the random monthly research sessions. The findings of the project will yield a data bank not only for us