Can Psychoanalytic Theory Be Cogently Tested “On the Couch”?: Part I

Hans Eysenck (1963) has maintained that “we can no more test Freudian hypotheses ‘on the couch’ than we can adjudicate

between the rival hypotheses of Newton and Einstein by going to sleep under an apple tree” (p. 220). And, in Eysenck's view, only suitably designed experimental studies can perform the probative role of tests while the clinical data from the couch may be heuristically fruitful by suggesting hypotheses. As against this denial of clinical testability, Clark Glymour (1974) has argued that “the theory Sigmund Freud developed at the turn of the century was strong enough to be tested