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The editors wish to thank Professor Grünbaum for his exposé of the defects in the experimental procedures of traditional psychoanalysts in their efforts to reconstruct the patient's past in search of the traumatic causes of current incapacities. We concur also with his description of Freud as an intuitive genius and agree that his intuitions may be more valuable than the cause-effect conclusions drawn from these intuitions. We wish only to add that modern psychoanalysis has moved away from the reconstruction of the past that occupied early analysis (and still preoccupies many analysts loyal to that tradition). Rather, it has learned how to use the intuitions of the analyst and experimental procedures in the psychoanalytic setting.
Modern psychoanalysis has come to recognize that not all characterological structures or symptoms can be explained by identifiable trauma from the past. Much is based on genetic and constitutional factors. Energy and the balance of constructive and destructive inclinations may shape the environment rather than result from it. When an integrated ego that can structure a vision of its own history is the goal of treatment, the accuracy of the alleged facts in such a history is secondary to their power to release the creative potential of the individual.
To the extent that Grünbaum remains focused on the conceptions of early Freudian theorists rather than on more recent developments in Freudian analysis, he beats a dead horse that refuses to lie down. He does not see that a new horse eagerly awaits a rider. The very questions that Grünbaum raises may have been answered when modern analysts began to track and to join the patients' perceptions in the spirit of true scientific research.