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Psychoanalysis is no more effective in curing a neurosis than are sedatives, tonics, or custodial care. Regardless of the kind of treatment used, two out of every three neurotics recover.
This is one of three major charges now used to attack psychoanalysis as science. Each finds vigorous support among behavioral psychologists and philosophers of science. Yet all, upon analysis, prove fallacious.
In Uses and Abuses of Psychology, 6 psychologist H. J. Eysenck compares the number of successes psychoanalysts report in treating neurotics with the recovery rate of
neurotics given sedatives, tonics, encouragement, or reassurance by general practitioners;
neurotics given simple custodial care in state mental hospitals.
He discovers that in each category two out of every three neurotics recover. He concludes that the failure of psychoanalysis to prove more effective than these other methods casts grave doubt upon its being a science.
But is Eysenck's comparison really valid? Many of the patients psychoanalysts work with are those whom general practitioners have failed to help; and patients sent to state mental institutions usually suffer from psychoses rather than neuroses. Also, Eysenck's comparison ignores the inability of doctors to agree on exactly what neurotic behavior is—or for that matter, on what normalcy menas. Most