What Hath Freud Wrought? Current Confusion and Controversies about the Clinical Practice of Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

This article discusses the current state of psychoanalysis and the challenges to the fundamental premises of Freud's psychoanalysis by those who have shifted to relationship or so-called two-person psychologies in our field. The author begins by briefly describing a parallel to the recent history of psychoanalysis in the sudden rise and fall of scholastic philosophy in the 14th century. He then focuses on contemporary attacks on Freud's psychoanalysis as a science, based on the contention by two-person psychologists that free association by the patient and evenly hovering attention by the analyst are actually impossible. He reviews Freud's idea of psychoanalysis, discusses psychodynamic psychotherapy, both conceived as scientific treatment procedures, and describes the current assault on their metapsychological and epistemological foundations. Returning to the parallel between what happened to medieval scholasticism and what has happened to psychoanalysis, he examines why this happened, and the resulting fragmentation of psychoanalytic practice. The article concludes with suggestions for the integration of various schools of psychoanalysis, reminding us of Benjamin Franklin's warning: “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”