Outline of Psychoanalysis*

Happily, for those who love peace, psychoanalysis is no longer forced to assume the offensive, or the defensive, when it is brought before a scientific body. Current psychiatric literature and clinical discussions show beyond a doubt that considerable portions of Freudian psychology and psychopathology have been incorporated by psychiatry. The case is different with psychoanalytic therapy, which has received thus far a less cordial welcome. There are many reasons for this, of which two may be mentioned. In the first place, when dealing with therapy rather than theory, it is less easy to accept some parts and reject others; there is a certain all-or-none principle involved. Secondly, it must be confessed that the “holier than thou” attitude of some practicing analysts does not lead toward friendly acceptance of their doctrine.

It is true, however, that psychoanalytic theory and therapy are closely bound up together. Psychoanalysis had its beginnings in a therapy, the so-called cathartic method. This method in the hands of Freud led to the revelation of the hitherto unexplored and almost unrecognized region of the unconscious mind. These discoveries, in turn, modified the method, and so it has gone back and forth until there is found in this methodology of psychoanalysis a unique situation without parallel in other departments of medicine. The procedures of study and of treatment have developed as one. Investigation of the unconscious mind became a means of modifying the mind as a whole. The methods of research and of therapy are the same. Therefore, in the long run, the place found for psychoanalysis in science must depend not only on the soundness of its theoretical formulations and the validity of the data on which they are based, but also on the reliability of its method. These things must stand or fall together.

It will be useful to introduce a discussion of Freudian psychoanalysis in its therapeutic aspects by a thumb-nail outline of psychoanalytic