You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The most generalized objection to psychoanalysis by its critics is the statement, “psychoanalysis is unscientific.” In an attempt to defend psychoanalysis and establish at least parts of it as scientifically verifiable, Kline, in the second edition of his book, presents a rigorous analysis of research which tests the validity of Freudian theory. He dissects Freudian theory into its component propositions and identifies those which can be subjected to the Popperian scientific test of refutability. In addition, he describes those which in fact have been verified as well as those which have been tested and not refuted. The author expresses the hope that “this book will help to put psychoanalysis back among the sciences and encourage imaginative researchers to investigate with methodological precision those areas of human thought and behavior that Freudian theory has attempted to illuminate and which behavioristic psychologies seem unwilling to study or even contemplate.”
In his first edition it was concluded that Freudian theory was not a single coherent theory but a collection of theories. Some of these theories were supported by objective quantified evidence making a sweeping rejection of Freudian theory unjustified. Notwithstanding the rigorous manner in which the data were presented and evaluated, critical comment came from Eisenck and Wilson rejecting the positive claims made on behalf of Freudian concepts. Fisher and Greenberg then published a volume in which the evidence presented by Kline was recapitaulated and supplemented by relevant published papers and theses.
In the present edition the data presented in the first edition and the data uncritically presented by Fisher and Greenberg are included with, in addition, a rigorous examination of methodological adequacy. More recent studies including new objective methods of investigation of psychoanalytic theories are described. The Freudian hypotheses examined are the empirical and specific psychoanalytic propositio