The Psycho-Analytic Method of Observation

For many persons the critics of psycho-analytical hypotheses seem to make very logical (and so far convincing) objections. They easily show that the psycho-analysts' formulations are often out of harmony with inferences that are very logically drawn from popular preconceptions of psychology. At other times it is shown to their 'discredit' that psycho-analysts tend to ignore moral values and to depreciate 'absolute truths', except to make 'disagreeable' explanations for others' need of moral values and of absolutes. These logical critics show also, that the psycho-analysts' hypotheses are in violent conflict with some popular desires as to what the truth ought to be. This is especially the case in so far as sex and the 'unconscious' psychological data are involved. The fault with all such logical criticism is that it assumes the psycho-analytical hypotheses to be also a matter of logical inference from facts that are equally familiar to the critic, who believes himself to be in command of a better logic, in defence of older and more popular conceptions of psychology.

The psycho-analysts claim for their hypotheses that these are not mere logical inferences from a common stock of known 'facts', but are the fruit of a new method of observation. More clearly than many other persons, psycho-analysts see that none of our 'truths' are exact transcripts of the realities. There are only relative degrees of remoteness from, or approach to, such 'absolute truths'. Their new and improved method for the observation of the force-aspect of psychological processes, so the psycho-analysts believe, brings their concepts of some psychological truth somewhat nearer to being an exact transcript of one aspect of psychological reality than any previous method for psychological investigation. Some of us believe that we can roughly measure relative degrees of approach to the truth by reference to an evolutionary concept of desire. Those critics who have achieved a better understandi