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The main thesis of this paper was that data from laboratory experiments can be of value in the development of the clinical theory of psychoanalysis when considered in conjunction with data from the psychoanalytic situation. The two approaches—experimental and clinical—can be considered as complementary in that each has inherent limitations that can be offset by the strengths of the other. With regard to the laboratory-experimental approach, its principal limitations are its artificality and its tendency to produce data of such small magnitude and lasting for such a limited time that they seem irrelevant to real life. But in the context of clinical data that point in the same direction, one can feel considerably more comfortable accepting the relevance of such laboratory data and viewing them as emanating from a true analogue of a real-life event. Conversely, the main limitations of the clinical situation for theory development relate to what can be termed problems in exercising investigatory controls—that is, the impossibility of holding constant all variables but the particular one(s) the clinician wants to zero in on; and the infeasibility of utilizing 'control interventions'. The principal handicap this imposes is in terms of it frequently preventing a reasonably certain judgment as to whether one aspect of a psychodynamic sequence has caused another—whether it is a result of the second—or whether both are the result of some third aspect. Thus when a particular causal relationship is suggested in the clinical situation, its investigation in the laboratory can allow for the ruling out of other cause–effect sequences.
A detailed attempt was made to concretize and illustrate the thesis just outlined by discussing a series of laboratory experiments that have been carried out over the past several years addressed to two controversial theoretical issues relating to schizophrenia: (1) Does conflict over aggression play a central role in this disorder? (2) How is the schizophrenic's well-recognized tendency to merge self and object representations to be understood? In the course of this discussion, consideration was given to the kind of experimental techniques that seem most promising for investigating psychodynamic relationships and the way such techniques together with laboratory assessment procedures can play a role in the seeking of necessary and sufficient conditions for the ebb and flow of psychopathology.