The Standing of Psychoanalysis. B. A. Farrell. New York,  Oxford University Press, 1981,  232 pp.

By careful examination of every facet of psychodynamic psychotherapy (with special attention to psychoanalysis), B. A. Farrell tries to settle the issue between those who think very highly of it and those who disparage it. Is Freud “the Darwin of the mind” or the perpetrator of “the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the 20th century” (P. B. Medawar) or is he, as Farrell thinks, like Newton, the inventor of a loose model left to future generations to apply, test, and revise? This is what he means by the standing of psychoanalysis.

Farrell replaces the extreme criticisms of detractors with his own more temperate skepticism regarding psychoanalysis as theory, method, and treatment. The detractors would have us believe that psychoanalysis is a myth with no greater claim to objectivity and truth than Homer's epics (Karl Popper). They deny that psychoanalytic theory is a science on the ground that none of the concepts which comprise it are empirical in the sense of there being definite rules for their applications, as there are, e.g., for determining whether a DNA molecule is present. But Farrell parries this attack by comparing the psychoanalyst to an art historian who recognizes a face in a painting as that of a member of the Hapsburg family (p. 32) and by comparing the empirical support for his generalizations with that provided by clinical medicine; i.e., if we reject