I want to thank Merle Molofsky for her generous response to my article. Let me say at the beginning that I myself am not a scientist. My point in bringing some of what we have learned from quantum findings is that, by analogy, we might better understand the clinical process of psychoanalytic therapy. One need not know physics, in this discussion, to appreciate the role of analogy in gaining a deeper appreciation of psychoanalytic experience.
I quote Einstein, as Molofsky approvingly notes, since he affirmed the role of imagination and creativity in aiding our search for a deeper understanding of reality. It's interesting that Einstein greatly appreciated Freud's writing style—which he conveyed in their numerous letter exchanges—but was not a follower of his theories. Perhaps his focus was so centered on the outer world that the world within him held less interest. This is a bit puzzling, nevertheless, since his undying commitment to determinism would be consonant with many of Freud's assumptions.
Of course, as therapist and patient interact, they necessarily change what is experienced—another analogy with quantum findings. An analogy that I have found deepens my appreciation of clinical experience. My point in making such an analogy is simply to say that there is no need to be defensive and say psychoanalysis is just an art; unique interventions are not per se, unscientific. What my readings in quantum theory have made clear is that psychoanalysis is both an art and a science…at the same moment. And that is the point.
Finally, Molofsky playfully notes that she leaves it to the reader's imagination to decipher what I mean when I note that a good analysis, following Paul Ricoeur, changes a person's history. Change the effect, as John Wheeler established, and you can change the cause, literally in quantum observations, symbolically in therapy. To re-experience and revisit
childhood events, memories, and phantasies, now with mature understanding, is no longer to be the victim of events but to be the conveyer, now with insight and, whenever possible, compassion. That gives one a new childhood.
What has been singularly unscientific about psychoanalysis has been the behavior of many of its practitioners. For too many years, again as Molofsky conveys, analysts from different perspectives, have assumed that unchanging truth has been found; that technique was codified and that theory was no longer theory but fact. That is, that models of the mind, particularly the model of a psychoanalytic unconscious, somehow reflected an unchanging reality. Needless to say, such beliefs are the ground space of religion and not the home of either science or art.