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This paper offers a response to Grünbaum's criticisms of psychoanalysis, specifically focusing on his claim that any therapeutic gains from psychoanalytic treatment are due to an unintended placebo effect, and on his supportive argument that at best, studies show psychoanalysis fares no better than rival therapies, and at worst is totally ineffective.
The authors summarize the elements on which the philosopher bases his criticisms of psychoanalysis. According to the authors, the criticism based on the Repression Aetiology Theory is the most potentially damaging to psychoanalysis. This theory claims that repression is the cause of neurosis, a claim that constitutes one of the major tenets of psychoanalytic theory. Grünbaum bases his notion of the Repression Aetiology Theory strictly on what Breuer and Freud reported on their work in curing hysterical symptoms through the cathartic method. Grünbaum acknowledges that repressed memories have a causal role in the formation and maintenance of neurotic symptoms, but claims that the cathartic method for treating them is of limited value because of the finding that therapeutic gains are not always durable, and because durability of therapeutic gains is also vulnerable to the nature of the doctorpatient relationship. The authors believe that for these reasons alone,