The Reality-Testing of the Scientist

The establishment of psychoanalysis as an exact science is understandably and inevitably the goal of the analyst. The point has frequently been made, however, that scientific standards themselves are by no means absolute, that they must be refashioned to deal with newly emergent phenomena and, in the end, are largely dependent on psychological assumptions. In physics, the world of Ptolemy gave way to that of Newton, and the world of Newton to that of Einstein, not merely as the result of an accumulation of knowledge, or a perfection of technical methods of observation, but also because of revolutionary changes in thought among men of different epochs. In the choice of subject matter, methodology and validation, the pathways of research bring greater success at one time to the creative imagination, at another to meticulous and even unimaginative recording of data; yet both are scientific in a true sense. A proper perspective calls for recognition of the appropriate problems in the particular stage of development of each science, rather than the application of undiscriminating yardsticks which are as inappropriate, and therefore unscientific, in one setting, as they are useful in another.

From this standpoint, the establishment of exact scientific methods will be the outcome, not merely the test of psychoanalysis. For it becomes increasingly apparent that science is inseparable from the scientist, and that the motives and functioning of the scientist are inseparable from the functions of the personality to which analysis has provided the most useful key. The establishment of psychoanalysis as an exact science will be the outcome of reciprocal studies in which the investigator, in each case, must stand the test of investigation by his subject. The proceedings of various Senate investigating committees come to mind at this juncture.

It has become a truism that modern physics, once the prototype of “exact science”, has, with the principles of relativity and probability, be