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We respond to the two discussions of our paper by Bernard Burgoyne and Tirril Harris, not so much to take issue with the unwarranted rejection of our efforts and the erroneous arguments used for this purpose, but primarily because of the grave concern for the fields of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis (we will not distinguish the two here) that these discussion papers aroused in each of us. Their prejudice and evident resistance against the new methods and ideas reflected in these two papers should be cause for deep worry in every psychotherapist regardless of clinical persuasion.
We have little to say about the specific criticisms levelled at our work; they are insubstantial, negatively biased and, often, simply in error. It will do little to argue our position further because, like our discussants, most readers already stand on one side or the other of this debate. We need to step back for a broader perspective.
We are reminded here of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce's critique of Darwin's theory of evolution as expressed in his debate with Thomas Huxley: ‘Was it on your grandmother's or grandfather's side of the family that you descended from the apes?’ asked the Bishop. What possible answer can one make?
None of our results is given serious consideration by either critic and, as such, there can be no fruitful response on our part. In passing we note that our scales which, as one discussant noted after a belaboured bit of carping, have, of course, been utilised quite reliably by three different teams of scorers, do represent real, quantifiable increments; we are not dealing with either metaphor or flight into physics, but with a set of remarkable findings - of great surprise to ourselves and evidently to others - results that we believe call for serious consideration.
The essence of our presentation is that we found that, by quantifying measures of the means or vehicles through which humans communicate, we derived some rather striking laws of human expression and therapeut