Freud and Psychology. Selected Readings: Edited by S. G. M. Lee and Martin Herbert. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1970. 398 pp.

The clinical reports of individual psychoanalysts can be legitimately accepted as validation for parts of the theory; every psychoanalysis is, in a sense, a series of single experiments. These experiments have been replicated many times; yet clinical tests, valuable as they are, are no substitute for rigorous scientific experiment. Freud and Psychology is largely a collection of studies and papers by highly respected scientists who attempt to test some of the basic constructs of psychoanalytic theory. Theories must be tested—scientifically—and psychoanalysis can claim no immunity from such rigorous inspection. But there are pitfalls in this endeavor for, as every scientist knows, defining constructs operationally in such a way as to permit careful experimental testing is a tricky business. Add to this problem methodological difficulties and problems of sample selection, and the likelihood of producing experimental results that support or, especially, disprove analytic theory is limited. The paper by William D. Wells and Rachel L. Goldstein (pp. 211-224) clearly illustrates these difficulties. On the other hand, the article by Paul Mussen and Luther Distler (pp. 305-319) on hypotheses regarding masculinity, identification, and father-son relationships is an example