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If psychoanalysis is a science, then experimental studies must be able to correct and revise the theoretical perspective(s) of psychoanalysis. Such studies cannot be merely confirmatory, but must provide tests that can falsify. In short, it is never enough to note correspondences between predictions from psychoanalytic assertions and experiments; indeed, such “verifications” of psychoanalytic propositions were—perhaps quite rightly—dismissed by Freud himself.
Summarized above are the conclusions of E. R. Hilgard (1952), who, in the 1950 Hixon Lectures on the Scientific Status of Psychoanalysis, presented an evaluation of psychoanalysis as a science which is cogent even today. Now, approximately 40 years later, another elder statesman, Leopold Bellak, has finally published his definitive reflections on the scientific status of psychoanalysis. These are the hard-won understandings of a lifetime of work in psychiatry, psychology, and psychoanalysis, and as expected, Psychoanalysis as a Science constitutes an argument and an encomium for psychoanalysis' identity as a psychological science.