Whether psychoanalysis is a science or not has been a discussion in psychoanalysis itself at least since Adolph Grunbaum (1984) published The Foundations of Psychoanalysis and then (1993) Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis arguing that psychoanalysis did not meet the criteria for a science put forth by Karl Popper (1959; 1968), most importantly that hypotheses be falsifiable. Psychoanalysis had been under attack in the United States since 1910 (Shakow and Rapaport, 1964) when the opposition to Freud's ideas was reported to be almost a “Who's Who” of neurology and psychiatry in the US.
There are various definitions of science. Most scientists today agree with Popper's criteria and insist that science be more than a systematic body of knowledge. Wikipedia states “Psychoanalysis is a controversial discipline and its validity as a science is contested.”
There is probably less of an argument about the practice of psychoanalysis being an art. Most people would agree that any attempt at healing problems of living must include subtle features regarding interpersonal interaction that cannot be laid down in a computer program of rules. In fact, it is impossible to program a computer to deal well with the infinite possibilities of interpersonal interaction.
Freud gave several definitions of psychoanalysis. One of the most explicit definitions is at the beginning of an encyclopedia article written in 1922: “Psycho-analysis is the name (i) of a procedure for the investigation of mental processes which are almost inaccessible in any other way, (ii) of a method (based upon that investigation) for the treatment of neurotic disorders and (iii) of a collection of psychological information obtained along those lines, which is gradually being accumulated into a
new scientific discipline.” The problems arise with the third aspect in regard to “being accumulated into a new scientific discipline.” It is difficult to find the psychological information that has been established by methods that other scientists accept. Some psychoanalysts believe that information established through the psychoanalytic process by the verbalizations of patients is sufficient evidence to support their hypotheses. For this reason, many psychoanalysts have not been supportive of attempts by others to collect systematic empirical data. The problem with this later position is that the public would like to know if psychoanalysis helps, and, if so, if the theory has been scientifically demonstrated according to today's standards. Because there have been few psychoanalysts in recent years working in psychology departments where empirical research is conducted, it has been difficult for psychoanalysts to collect empirical data from their private offices that are comparable to those of psychologists working in clinics that support research, usually regarding short-term therapies so that the authors can publish their data quickly. Now, however, much evidence is beginning to accumulate from basic research and from research on psychotherapies that supports a scientific grounding for psychoanalytic hypotheses.
Psychoanalysts themselves have many different theories that are not consistent with one another. So let me attempt to state some of the hypotheses that analysts agree on in regard to the mind, defense, and motivation. The reader should be clear that I am not equating psychoanalysis with Freudian theory. Psychoanalysis has evolved considerably since Freud's formulations, often affected by data especially from psychology and neuroscience.
Psychoanalysts and others over the years have considered various ideas about the mind, personality, and major motivations other than the Freudian ones. Psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan (1953) developed his theories influenced by the cognitive science of his day, referring to selective attention, memory, and dissociation, consistent with cognitive theory, instead of the similar ideas such as “repression” that has never been satisfactorily demonstrated in the laboratory (Holmes, 1990). As psychoanalysts began to focus more on interpersonal interactions and relationships rather than only on internal workings of the mind, their ideas became compatible with and overlapping with data not only from cognitive psychology but also from experimental social, developmental,
perceptual, comparative psychologies, and neuroscience.
It is accepted in science that there is often an exploratory stage where hypotheses are generated and a later stage where these hypotheses are tested. This has gone on with psychoanalysis as a treatment generating many hypotheses and basic science now testing out many of these ideas, not always with recognition that they existed in psychoanalysis beforehand. I shall review the scientific evidence regarding the importance of unconscious processes, defense of self and worldviews, the use of transferential processes in psychotherapy, the efficacy of psychoanalytic treatments, and aggression as arising from frustration. Again, this is not a review of the support for Freudian theory, as psychoanalysis has advanced far since Freud proposed his theories and since his death many years ago. I shall not dwell on theories of gender or development as much has taken place recently in psychoanalysis and will be beyond the scope of this paper.
In regard to Freud's ideas about the self, all theories in psychology describe actual and ideal aspects of the self, as Freud did. The “self,” however, as opposed to “Ich” and “Id,” no matter how important these ideas have been throughout Western history, as least as far back as Crete in its embodiment of lion, serpent and eagle symbolizing what is on earth, down below and above, has become the dominant focus in research psychology and in psychoanalysis as well. For further discussion of the self, I refer you to Curtis (2009).
In regard to development, I shall say that the ideas of psychoanalyst John Bowlby (1973; 1979; 1990) regarding attachment theory have received so much support from the scientific community that they are hardly a source of controversy. This is not to say that Freudian ideas have nothing worthwhile to say about development. Bowlby's ideas and the research supporting them, however, are accepted as the major theory of development in contemporary relational psychoanalysis. In regard to a baby becoming securely attached, most people would agree that this is an art that is supported by scientific evidence. I would suggest that this same principle applies to the application of psychoanalytic ideas to helping people. Helping others through psychotherapy, regardless the theoretical basis of the therapy, is an art, with some scientific evidence to support its tenets.
In regard to the mind, psychoanalysts, beginning with Freud, have agreed that there are sometimes important forces affecting behavior and feelings that are not conscious. It would be hard to find anyone familiar with recent research in social cognitive neuroscience who does not agree with this point (e.g., Greenwald, 1992; Jacoby, 1991; Kihlstrom, 1987; Roediger, 1990; Schachter, 1987 Gazzaniga, 1985; Kandel, 2006). The importance of unconscious processes might never have become controversial had William James in the US not banned the study of these processes from the new “psychology,” fearing it would turn the field into “a tumbling ground of whimsies” (1890, p. 163). This problem was confounded when behaviorists eliminated the study of mental processes from their understanding of human behavior. Even with the advent of cognitive-behavioral theories, unconscious processes were still banned from professional discussion, but with “implicit processes” becoming acceptable to mention. Still, psychologists went to lengths to explain that they were not speaking of anything like the seething cauldron of Freud. They discovered “clean” unconscious processes, but these did not affect motivation—therefore no sexual or aggressive urges were involved in their theories. Of course, it was very difficult to include powerful forces in studies in the laboratory, conducted usually for no more than one hour. So these studies had no ecological validity. Today as Cramer (2000) notes, “currently, ‘any basis for skepticism in academic psychology regarding the existence of ‘significant unconscious phenomena has crumbled in the face of recent research’ (Greenwald, 1992, p. 773).” And then Bargh and colleagues (Bargh, Gollwitzer & Oettingen, 2010; Bargh & Marsella, 2010) demonstrated that unconscious factors affect motivations, thoughts and behaviors. The cat was out of the bag.
There is an extensive body of evidence showing that memories unavailable to consciousness influence conscious memory and task performance. Such implicit memory is demonstrated in priming experiments, in which the activation of memories outside of awareness subsequently influences conscious recall and judgment (e.g., Cramer, 1965; Marcel, 1983). Schacter (1987) and Roediger (1990) provide extensive reviews of this work. Although some cognitive psychologists are considering how processes such as repression might function (Greenwald, 1992), I (2009) have suggested elsewhere that the term repression be abandoned. By
considering unconscious processes as those that are disconnected or “dissociated” from the conscious processes activated at any given moment, “[p]sychoanalysis can join mainstream neuroscience and scientific psychology by laying the term ‘repression” to rest and thinking instead in terms of “motivated forgetting” and of threatening experiences as sometimes “dissociated.” It is useful, however, to conceptualize unconscious processes not only as repressed, dissociated, or “adaptive’ (or maladaptive), but as a cauldron of generative experiences—perhaps burning, perhaps murky, but always rumbling in the shadows of the mind” (Curtis, 2009, p. 84) leading to creative processes. I (2009) argued that selective attention and memory best account for the phenomena previously referred to as repression. For a more thorough review of the scientific evidence for unconscious processes, see Westen (1999).
Psychoanalysts hold that people defend themselves against unacceptable impulses, feelings, and thoughts. Many psychologists have referred to these processes as coping mechanisms. Considerable systematic empirical research supports the hypothesis that people defend themselves against feelings and thoughts that are inconsistent with their views of themselves, others, and the world. Jacoby, Lindsay, and Toth (1992) stated, “there is now a great deal of support for the notion that an unconscious inference or attribution process underlies the subjective experience of perceiving … and remembering” (p. 803).
There are two major types of responses to threat—avoidance and hyper-vigilance. Much attention has been given to avoidance or “repression” or what I would prefer to call disconnecting or dissociation. The concept of repression has never been accepted by experimental psychologists, as it has not been shown to exist in the laboratory (Holmes, 1990). But the experiences that are so upsetting that they are not allowed into consciousness cannot ethically be induced in the lab. To insist that phenomena do not exist unless they can be demonstrated in the lab, is scientism, not science. There is evidence for not connecting or avoiding connecting thoughts and feelings.
The avoidance reaction was the one focused on by Freud—a reaction he called repression. For example, Freud (Breuer & Freud, 1959) helped young Katharina on a mountainside when she approached him about
her panic attacks. Through a series of questions she came to realize that these attacks began when she has seen her father in bed with her cousin and subsequently told her mother, leading to a divorce. Katharina also recalled her father approaching her one night at a hotel. The face she was seeing in these panic attacks resembled that of her father when so angry at her that she thought he might kill her. Not avoiding knowing how the attacks began seemed to reduce her symptoms.
The phenomenon of this sort of disconnection or dissociation is accepted by experimental psychologists and also observed in medicine. Schacter (1987) and other cognitive psychologists speak frequently of dissociations, for example between explicit and implicit processes. Although there has been a question about whether memories are “repressed,” the critics of this concept have endorsed the idea that thoughts, motivations, and feelings can be “implicit,” and not connected to explicit consciousness. Selective inattention is also supported. There appear to be failures of encoding, as suggested by Donnel Stern's (1997) notion of unformulated experience, and also failures in retrieval.
Holmes (1990) also believed the evidence for repression was better explained by attentional processes. Bonanno and Wexler (1992) and Cherry (1953) showed that attention may be divided between stimuli, such that one stimulus is consciously recognized, the other not; such division of attention is the cognitive process that contributes to the defense of dissociation. Further, despite the lack of conscious awareness of the “unattended” stimulus, research shows that both the physical and semantic features of that stimulus are being analyzed (Greenwald, 1992) and that stimuli not attended to influence behavior (Jacoby et al., 1992). This has also been demonstrated in studies of subliminal psychodynamic activation, which have been reviewed by Hardaway (1990) and by Paulhus et al. (1997). In addition, procedures previously requiring attention may become automatized and thus unconscious, in that the person performing them is unaware of their operation (Jacoby et al., 1992; Kihlstrom, 1987). These findings provide an important basis for the study of the cognitive processes that are involved in the functioning of defense mechanisms, to be discussed shortly.
Krohne (1993) has suggested two underlying variables in anxiety—low tolerance of uncertainty—people we might call sensitizers—and low
tolerance of arousal—people we might call “repressors.” Psychoanalysts keep trying go to the threatening feelings in a safe situation, what McCullough et al. (2003) called affect tolerance. This is similar to the desensitization and prolonged exposure techniques used by behaviorists which have received much empirical support. Wachtel (1977) has long argued that desensitization and exposure in behavioral treatments are what psychoanalysts are doing in their talk therapy, increasingly exposing the patient to threatening material. CBT approaches have developed techniques to deal with the two elements of anxiety described by Krohne—called, not surprisingly, tolerance of uncertainty and distress tolerance. Linehan's (1993) Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills manual includes distress tolerance activities.
Selective recall for non-threatening information. Sedikides and Green (Sedikides, Green, et al. 2016;) have found inferior recall for self-threatening feedback as compared to other kinds of feedback. It is pronounced when the feedback poses high levels of self-threat (i.e., can detect accurately one's weakness), but is lost when self-threat is averted via a self-affirmation manipulation. This mnemic neglect is present in recall, but absent in recognition. The researchers found that repressors show enhanced mnemic neglect.
McCue and Curtis (2009) found an interaction so that only the “repressors” recalled fewer negative and inconsistent feedback about themselves, showing that it is the “repressors” who were accounting for the mnemic neglect phenomenon. Furthermore, the high anxiety-high defensiveness group displayed the strongest tendency to “remember” negative feedback items that had not been shown to them in the experiment, ultimately a false memory.
Sedikides and Green (2006) had previously found that normal adults recall poorly social feedback that refers to them, is negative, and pertains to core self-aspects. They state that the mnemic neglect phenomenon is equivalent to inhibitory repression. It is instigated under conditions of high self-threat, it implicates not-thinking during encoding, and it involves memories that are recoverable with such techniques as recognition accuracy. They (Green, Pinter, & Sedikides, 2005) also found that this phenomenon occurred for non-modifiable traits but not for modifiable ones.
I (2009) argued that perception and memory are related to two major goals of people—survival and survival of the meaning-making systems. The meaning-making systems include the views of self, others, the world, and causation. To the extent these goals are activated, the basic psychology of reaction to threats occurs.
Defense in Perception and Memory. How do selective attention and selective memory work? After pre-attentive detection, there is enormous evidence for two primary responses—avoidance and vigilance (Krohne, 1993). For a complete review of the research regarding these two responses, see Curtis (2009). The research referred to as New Look (Bruner & Postman, 1949) and New Look 2 (Allport, 1955; Bruner, 1957; Dixon, 1981; Greenwald, 1992) found that people took longer to look at threatening stimuli, presumably after a pre-attentive evaluative system. This work was discredited when it became apparent that conscious processing as well as a pre-conscious system could account for the data (Eriksen, 1960). Signal detection and behavioral theories gained dominance. Now “preattentional” processes are again accepted, as entry into consciousness appears to be determined by the goals of the person (Bargh, 1997; Ohman, 1992; Williams et al., 1997).
Considerable recent work on “perception without awareness” has demonstrated effects of stimuli not attended to consciously in dichotic listening experiments (Triesman, 1960) showing that information of high relevance is perceived nonetheless (Johnson & Dark, 1986). This work led to a revival of “perception without awareness” (Bornstein & Pittman, 1992; Wegner & Bargh, 1998). Defense is related to our primitive survival system. From an evolutionary perspective, “it follows that the burden for the discovery of threat should be placed on early, rapid and parallel pre-attentive processing mechanisms” (Ohman, 1997, p. 169). Ohman and colleagues have conducted multiple studies (Ohman & Soares, 1994) with angry faces backwardly masked by neutral faces. Responses produce neural activity in the right but not the left amygdala. This demonstrates that the amygdala discriminates between stimuli solely on the basis of their acquired behavioral significance and this response is lateralized.
After a pre-attentional evaluation, people likely either pay additional attention to threatening stimuli, although they do not bring this attention
to conscious control, or avoid them. There is enormous evidence for both types of responses (Curtis, 2009). People, especially anxious people, spend more time looking at negative and threatening information (e.g., Broadbent & Broadbent; Mogg et al., 1992; Ohman, Flykt & Esteves, 2001; Fox, Russo, & Dutton, 2002), take longer to process threatening stimuli, such as on the emotional Stroop test (McKenna & Sharma, 2004) and have poorer recall after such stimuli (Kindt & Brosschot, 1998). In fact, there is an emotional “blink” with people missing a second word when presented very quickly (Chun & Potter, 1995) after being presented with a threatening one. Thus, there is support for avoidance of threatening stimuli, as in the “repressor” personality type and the Cluster A personality types (avoidant and obsessive). There is also a large literature on “selective exposure” in social psychology where people only expose themselves to views consistent with their beliefs (Olsen & Zanna, 1979). There are thousands of studies demonstrating some sort of avoidance.
But arousing stimuli can also lead to greater attention, as is assumed to be the case with the sensitizer personality types, such as histrionic, borderline, and paranoid. In fact, Anderson and Phelps (2002) found a diminishment of the 'blink” effect after presenting arousing stimuli. But although anxious people perceive threatening words earlier they may have poorer recall (Williams et al., 1997).
Psychologists in the field of social psychology have continued to (re) discover the existence of processes by which humans deceive themselves, enhance self-esteem, and foster unrealistic self-illusions. These defensive processes have been “relabeled or rediscovered under the aegis of social cognition or other current theoretical frameworks” (Baumeister, Dale, & Sommer, 1998, p. 1116). One of the main research findings in social psychology, that of cognitive dissonance, is simply a resolution of conflict using the defense of isolation to resolved the conflict (see also Paulhus et al., 1997, p. 563).
Social psychology also took the cognitive processes involved in the defense of projection and studied them under the name of attribution, and, later, the false consensus effect. According to the false consensus effect people overestimate the extent to which other people hold their own opinion It differs from projection in that a person does not deny
that he or she also holds that view Undoing has been researched under the name of counter-factual thinking. The defense of displacement formed the basis for early work in scapegoating. A meta-analysis found that the evidence for displaced aggression is strong (Marcus-Newhall, Pedersen, Carlson, & Miller, 2000).
Reaction formation is represented in self-presentation ploys associated with counteracting negative attitudes through overly positive behavior. Work on positive illusions (Taylor) is similar to the defense of denial., As noted by Paulhus et al. (1997), “social psychologists have begun to address virtually the full gamut of psychoanalytic defenses, albeit with different labels” (p. 564).
Children have been observed after being exposed to emotionally disturbing events. They often provide a positive emotion verbally. But when the self-reported positive emotion is compared with a concurrent assessment of facial expression, there is often a high degree of disagreement. This disjunction between positive verbal and negative facial expression is now understood as being due to “denial as it has been classically defined” (Strayer & Roberts, 1997, p. 641). Laboratory studies have also demonstrated that children who experience failure increase their use of defense mechanisms (Cramer & Gaul, 1988). Children who increase their use of defenses following a traumatic event are then protected from psychological upset, it has been observed clinically (Dollinger & Cramer, 1990).
In regard to moral development, it has been shown in two longitudinal studies that adolescents with strong defense use used lower levels of moral judgment and that early defense use predicts moral judgment both in adulthood (Hart & Chmiel, 1992) and late adolescence (Matsuba & Walker, 1998). Reaction formation is represented in self-presentation ploys associated with counteracting negative traits through overly positive behavior. More recently, aspects of denial (e.g., refusal to recognize reality implications) have been recast as positive illusions, and undoing has been relabeled counterfactual thinking. As noted by Paulhus et al. (1997), isolation appeared as dissonance reduction.
Psychoanalytic treatments value the use of transferential phenomena. First, what is the evidence that such phenomena actually occur? Most people accept the idea that previous experiences affect expectations in future situations. More specifically, however, Andersen, Baum & Beck (1998) have published more than 30 papers documenting her attempts to understand how transference works in everyday life. Her research conducts preliminary interviews with participants, asking them to focus on a “significant other”—a parent, a relative or a friend. Participants then create lists of descriptive terms about the significant other. They are also presented with a long list of adjectives and asked to choose ones that describes their significant other, others that are the person's opposite and a final group that is simply “irrelevant.” Two or more weeks later, subjects are contacted and invited back to participate in what they believe is an unrelated study about learning and memory. After the learning phase, the participants are asked to remember the descriptions of all the fictional characters. The subjects tended to attribute traits to the significant-other characters that they had not been told, but that they had earlier used to describe their own real-life significant other. This is what Freud meant by transference—seeing in someone new characteristics the person does not have, but that a previous person did have. By using MRI Gerber and Peterson (2008) examined the parts of the brain that are activated when a person with characteristics similar to the significant others is presented vs. other people without those characteristics.
Other research also demonstrates the generalization of threatening stimuli to new situations. The researchers (Dunsmoor et al., 2017) stated that after Pavlovian conditioning, items highly similar to those from the object category previously paired with shock were mistaken for old items more often than items from the shock-unpaired category. This finding indicated that threat learning promotes generalization of episodic memory and is consistent with the idea that threat generalization is an active process that may be adaptive for avoiding a myriad of potential threats following an emotional experience. Enhanced generalization of aversive episodic memories may be maladaptive, however, when old threat memories are inappropriately reactivated in harmless situations, exemplified in a number of stress- and anxiety-related disorder.
The next issue is whether making transference interpretations is helpful in psychotherapy. This assumption has mixed results, but Hoglend et al. (2011) concluded that transference interpretations improved outcomes with Cluster C personality disorders in a year-long treatment of 46 patients in a randomized control study. Previous studies usually showed that transference interpretations were not helpful in short-term therapy (Hoglend, 2004). Of the eight naturalistic studies, five reported negative correlations, two reported non-significant correlations, and one initial study by Malan reported a positive correlation between frequency of transference interpretations and outcome. In three studies (Malan, 1976; Marziali & Sullivan, 1980; Marzali, 1984), only when the transference interpretations were linked to relations with parents were the interpretations related to a positive outcome. One study found an inverse relationship between simple transference interpretations and improvement in relations with friends and sexual adjustment (Piper, Debbane, Bienvenu, de Carufel, & Garart, 1986). In a follow-up study, a high dosage of transference interpretations was predictive of poorer outcome (Piper, Azim, Joyce, & McCallum, 1991). Although it was possible that therapies with a high dosage of transference interpretations meant fewer “correct” interpretations, another study showed that the high dosage or concentration was not confounded by correctness or lack of correspondence (Piper, Azim, Joyce, & McCallum, 1993). In this study, a high dosage of transference interpretations was related to a positive outcome for patients with a high quality of object relations, but to a poor outcome for patients with a low quality of object relations. Ogroduniczuk and Piper (1999) drew three conclusions in a review of studies of transference interpretations in treatments of patients with personality disorders: (1) a strong therapeutic alliance is necessary for successful exploration of the transference; (2) transference-focused work should be balanced with supportive interventions, and (3) the patient must have a high quality of interpersonal relations. McCullough and her colleagues (1991) compared the effects of transference interpretation, patient-and-significant-other interpretations, and clarifications on patients' affective and defensive behaviors. Transference interpretations followed by affect were related to favorable outcome, but defensiveness was associated with negative outcomes. Other research has demonstrated that interpretations in accordance with the patient's unconscious plans are effective, whether or not they are transference interpretations .
Many activities are therapeutic. Is psychoanalysis one of them? Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy have been included in the many studies examining the efficacy of psychotherapy with emotional disorders. The result of these studies is that psychotherapy is helpful (Smith & Glass, 1977). It has also been shown that the major types of psychotherapy all come out as winners—what has been referred to as the “dodo” bird effect.
Peter Lilliengren (2019) has recently downloaded to researchgate. net a compilation of 245 randomized controlled trials (the “gold” standard of research trials) showing effectiveness of psychodynamic treatments. He excluded interventions that simply might contain psychoanalytic elements, such as Interpersonal Psychotherapy, (), but were not explicitly psychodynamic. A summary of studies supporting the effectiveness of psychodynamic treatments is also available in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, (2014), Vol 50.. Leichsenring, Klein, and Salter (2014), for example, showed “there is evidence from RCTs that psychodynamic therapy is efficacious in common mental disorders, that is, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, somatic symptom disorders, personality disorders, eating disorders, complicated grief, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and substance-related disorder. These results clearly contradict assertions repeatedly made by representatives of other psychotherapeutic approaches claiming psychodynamic psychotherapy is not empirically supported” p. 89?). Fonagy (2002) had previously collected outcome studies supporting the effectiveness of psychoanalytic treatment.
There has been considerable criticism of Freud's ideas that sexual and aggressive urges were those most likely to influence behavior, especially when these motives did not become under conscious control. Most people would not argue against the idea that sexual urges get many people into trouble when they are not controlled—unwanted pregnancies,
decimation of careers, failure of obligations to others and the wrecking of valued relationships testify to this. In regard to aggression, for Freud, it seemed often that it was an instinct that would be expressed in one way or another, but this idea of his has not been validated by empirical psychological research. Psychologists left theorizing about instincts.
It was psychoanalysts after Freud who first hypothesized clearly that aggression in most people arises from anxiety and frustration. The psychoanalyst Fairbairn had already stated in his 1932 address “The Psychopathology of Aggression:” “Aggression is the instinctive reaction to frustration; and frustration is particularly bitter when it originates in those whose love and affection are most eagerly sought” (1995, p. 255). He had stated, however, consistent with Freud's thinking:” Unless, therefore, the conception of instinct is to be abandoned altogether, it seems necessary to recognize the instinct of aggression as one of the best established and one of the most important instinctive tendencies” (1995b, p. 148). So for Fairbairn, aggression was not an instinct that had to be expressed, but that was expressed in reaction to frustration. Fairbairn, of course, is one of the first analysts to focus on object relations – relations with internalized images of other people as opposed to primarily conflicts between instincts and their expression or lack of expression.
In their book, researchers Dollard, Miller, Doob, Mowrer, & Sears (1939) attributed their formulation of the frustration-aggression hypothesis to Freud. Although they cited a number of psychoanalysts other than Freud—Abraham, Aichhorn, Erickson, and Fenichel, their work did not seem to be influenced by Fairbairn who was not widely known at the time. It was Fairbairn, however, who first made the most explicit statement about aggression stemming from frustration.
Dollard et al (1939) stated that their book illustrated following a procedure of inquiry that is well known but seldom used in the social sciences. The problem of aggressive behavior is here advanced one step along this road which all social inquiry that aspires to become truly scientific must eventually follow. This step has consisted partly in a more systematic formulation and further elaboration of the Frustration-Aggression hypothesis that had already been stated by Freud and others. Dollard had studied psychoanalysis at the Institute in Berlin and Miller at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in Vienna. They were eager to combine psychoanalysis with learning theory.
A whole program of research investigated the “frustration-aggression” hypothesis. It turned out that the aggression of angry people often arose from frustration, but that frustration did not always lead to aggression. The frustration–aggression hypothesis, sometimes known as the frustration–aggression–displacement theory was further developed by Neal Miller (1941) and Leonard Berkowitz (1969). The hypothesis attempts to explain why people scapegoat. It attempts to give an explanation as to the cause of violence. According to Dollard and colleagues, frustration is the “condition which exists when a goal-response suffers interference,” while aggression is defined as “an act whose goal-response is injury to an organism (or an organism surrogate).” The theory says that frustration causes aggression, but when the source of the frustration cannot be challenged, the aggression gets displaced onto an innocent target. This theory is also used to explain riots and revolutions, which both are believed to be caused by poorer and more deprived sections of society who may express their bottled up frustration and anger through violence.
While some researchers criticized the hypothesis and proposed moderating factors between frustration and aggression, several empirical studies were able to confirm it as is. In 1989, Berkowitz expanded on the hypothesis by showing that negative affect and personal attributions play a major role in whether frustration instigates aggressive behavior.
What is referred to as “psychoanalysis” is a wide body of theories often contradictory with one another in offering differing explanations of events. Some psychoanalysts have argued that psychoanalysis is a form of hermeneutics, not of science and should not aim to be a science. Until certain hypotheses receive broad acceptance, it can hardly be called a science. Yet there appear to be a number of ideas that are agreed upon and that have received support from accepted procedures in the scientific community. These are 1) the importance of unconscious factors in influencing thought, feelings and behaviors; 2) the role of defense in preserving views of self and others such that perception and memory are selective; 3) a role for transferential processes in psychotherapy with the value of analyzing these processes with various patients and various disorders still undergoing investigation; and 4) the frustration-aggression hypothesis. The vocabulary used by most psychoanalysts does
not lend itself to systematic empirical research, yet psychologists and others have been able to investigate these ideas using other terms and formulating falsifiable hypotheses. Furthermore, more researchers are investigating psychoanalytic tenets and practices nowadays. It would be quite a mistake to assume that unless something has been demonstrated by accepted scientific practices, it does not exist. Furthermore, it would be a mistake to think that all of the ideas embraced by psychoanalysts hold up under intense scrutiny of the evidence. It is a benefit for all trying to understand the human condition and its variances to investigate processes by all methods, by all ways of knowing, available. To this end, the scientific status of various hypotheses put forth by those listening to people talk freely for long periods of time will continue to be evaluated as we study more about human psychology. To answer the question posed for this article, no doubt the practice of psychoanalysis is an art, and some of its tenets are supported by empirical research according to today's scientific standards, making some of psychoanalytic ideas a part of the growing science of psychology.
Obviously, for transference interpretations to be helpful in therapies, they must be used judiciously.