Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

March 14, 1978. THE PROBLEM OF CONFIRMATION IN CLINICAL PSYCHOANALYSIS. Benjamin B. Rubinstein, M.D.

Dr. Rubinstein proposed to demonstrate that psychoanalysis as a cognitive investigative method is similar to other scientific disciplines in certain respects. Scientific hypotheses characteristically contain theoretical terms referring to constructs which are not directly observable. Hypotheses are confirmed by deriving predictions from these constructs which can be tested by experiment or by observation of nature. In some instances they are confirmed by postdiction, as in the case of variation and selection in the theory of evolution. Similarly, both prediction and postdiction are used to confirm psychoanalytic hypotheses. When analysts posit unconscious motives, they are forming a hypothesis to explain observations they have made. The motive itself is not observable, but the analyst expects that, if the motive is present, events which qualify as its derivatives will occur. This expectation constitutes an implicit prediction; subsequent observation of such events constitutes confirmation of the hypothesis. Psychoanalytic theorists have usually stressed postdiction, either of phase-specific events, such as those that might have contributed to an obsessional neurosis, or of more general occurrences, as in the assumption that a male patient with an unconscious hatred of his father felt rejected by the father during childhood and was thus unable to emulate him. It is important to note that psychoanalysts predict or postdict that one or more of a class of events will occur or has occurred, not a particular event. The theory of evolution also postdicts one or more of a class of forms; it does not state that remnants of a particular animal will be found in the fossil record.

In order to confirm hypotheses about unconscious motives, analysts must assume that there are processes which link them to the predicted derivatives. Traditional theory assumes the existence