The Research Method in the Making of a Psychoanalyst

When Drawin, as a fairly untutored young man, took a voyage on the Beagle, his sensationally perceptive observations led him to generate hypotheses that made scientific history. In describing how he worked, Darwin said, “I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it” (Britannica, p. 65). He was inspired by his observations to develop hypotheses and to test them by further observations. Doing experiments is often considered “the scientific method,” yet some of the most famous names in science were not experimentalists but observers.

When Freud began the observations that led to what was to become psychoanalysis, he brought with him an open mind. Being a skeptic, he was not committed to any of the then-prevailing views of the mind—so he did not have to fit his observations to any preexisting theory. When people talked in ways that reduced their symptoms—he began thinking that talking itself could be curative. When his patients often mentioned sex and dreams, he got interested in those topics. When they talked about him, he got interested in how the relationship was used. When he noticed that his patients did not always operate in accordance with the pleasure principle, but often repeated unpleasurable patterns that did not seem to be aimed at mastery, he began thinking about the need to repeat. First he made observations, then he developed hypotheses—about sexuality, unconscious processes transference, and resistance, and the repetition compulsion.