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Phillips and Phillips (hereafter referred to as P and P) aim to show that the scientific credentials of psychoanalysis are in better shape than Adolf Grunbaum (1984, 1986, and other works) allows. This is a desirable objective, but their presentation of Grunbaum's criticisms and especially their response to them give rise to some questions. In outline, their analysis runs as follows.
P and P begin by summarizing Grünbaum's concerns about the scientific credentials of psychoanalysis as they understand them, then they mount their response, first examining Freud's reasoning when he rejected electrotherapy and hypnotic suggestion in favour of the cathartic method early in his career, then examining some implications of the surprise Breuer and Freud often felt at some of the things they were observing. P and P take the first to be an early example of scientific reasoning based on evidence (catharsis was observed to work better than the other two), the second to tell against the charge that Breuer and Freud's patients were merely complying with their therapists' wishes. (P and P hold that if the patients' reactions were not the result of suggestion, improvement in the patients was not likely to be merely a placebo effect. It is not entirely clear how they see the connection between the two.)
Next, P and P turn to the question of the therapeutic efficacy of psychoanalysis, focusing on the conditions for a valid study of efficacy. They argue that one must have diagnostic categories adequate to distinguish between conditions in which psychoanalysis might be effective and ones which it was never designed to address. Here's what they have in mind. Suppose that some skeptic comes along and shows that psychoanalysis is no better than a placebo at curing the common cold.