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The literature of psychoanalysis is replete with articles and symposia testifying to the difficulties inherent in psychoanalytic research. It is indeed true that the structure of treatment and the non-replicable aspects of the raw data discourage systematic research as an ongoing component of the therapeutic setting. Diligent notation by the analyst distorts the interactive flow, taped sessions fail to transmit nonverbal cues and the parallel associative clusters that develop between the participants. By the same token, videotape and oneway vision screen cannot communicate the thought processes, affects and associations behind the visible phenomena.
Although social scientists in general appreciate the analytic situation as a rich resource of data, the question, practically, boils down to ‘data for what?’
For the hard-nosed scientist the data are invalidated at the outset by the fact that the typical analytic session is not observed or recorded by any external agency. Worse, session recording is done-if it is done-by an active participant in the process, whereas the ideal scientific model strives for an experimental situation which-to the fullest extent possible-eliminates the subjective factor. At this very moment the files of the National