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Reid and Finesinger study the logic of inference testing as employed in psychotherapy. For example, inasmuch as the past is irrevocable and can only be described in terms of symbols, or relived in imagination, the psychiatrist must depend upon reconstructions and inferences for his knowledge of the patient's early life. To validate such assumptions as that dyspnoea or aphonia are related to 'repressed oral material', further assumptions must be made. A term like 'superego' is of value as a device for cognitive orientation but cannot serve as a phenomenological description.
With such postulates, Freud's case of Dora is subjected to scrutiny. The supposition that her spasmodic cough was the expression of a fantasy of intercourse between her father and Frau K. is found to present 'a veritable thicket of logical problems'. The cough, it is concluded, must have been a sign of the fantasy not to the girl but to Freud, who had certain ideas about this symptom and certain beliefs with regard to its etiology. In fact, this single hypothesis cannot be evaluated without reference to the entire system of psychoanalytic thinking.
The authors, while appreciating the need and utility of clinical formulation, urge that the ideal be maintained of clearly defining and verifying the terms and concepts used in psychotherapy.