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It was stimulating to read Dr. Erich Fromm's editorial in your spring '66 issue, concerning the apparent failure of psychoanalysts to develop a scientific method and a body of research sufficient to refute the familiar charges that psychoanalysis is an art and not a science, that it lacks scientific controls, etc.
Dr. Fromm has touched a sensitive spot. Not only are the basic tenets of psychoanalysis being scrutinized by experimental psychologists but, I would add, also by psychopharmacologists, endocrinologists and ethologists, all of whom have very pertinent questions to ask.
Dr. Fromm's editorial makes such good sense that to re-emphasize its other good points would be to repeat the entire essay. On one point, however, that of the formation of research groups, I am not as hopeful as Dr. Fromm.
Research groups among analysts are not new (Chicago and Columbia come quickly to mind) and yet at least to my knowledge, while contributing significantly in their own way, have not begun to answer the needs outlined by Dr. Fromm.
To my mind the essential problem lies in the fact that the tools of psychoanalysis have not changed since their discovery, three quarters of a century ago, not because of any lack of scientific zeal on the part of analysts (some of whom were or continued to be skilled researchers in the physical sciences), but because identifiable insight (empathy) is the final common denominator in therapeutic relationships between human beings, and this cannot be changed.
The psychoanalyst, then, must find new tools, among whose findings he can search for meaningful associations with his psychoanalytic data.
To accomplish this, I would like to suggest that there is need for some mechanism to be set up, whereby mature, experienced analysts could spend two to three years minimally in advanced training "getting his (or her) hands dirty" in neuroendocrinology, pharmacology (if a physician), or in experimental psychology (if a psychologist). I emphasize the word "mature"