You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Freud once wrote that the copper of suggestion would contaminate the pure gold of psychoanalysis. He realized that this was an inevitable sequence, but, nevertheless, he regretted the construction of such an alloy. Analogously, this book represents another attempt to intermingle psychoanalysis with other scientific disciplines, a searching for a scientific parent, as Grotstein comments on the jacket.
The purity of psychoanalysis and its contamination have both entailed beneficial as well as destructive consequences. In its classical heyday, there was an elegance to the analytic conceptual framework, perhaps accompanied by an arrogant independence. It did not need help or the support of other disciplines. It could be compared to the queen of sciences, mathematics, which is completely self-sufficient and not only supports other sciences, but, in many ways, defines them. In a similar fashion, psychoanalysis has contributed considerably to behavioral sciences and the arts, which is the field known as applied psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis cannot remain pure if it wants to remain viable as a conceptual system and a clinical endeavor. Still, the inroads it has suffered from those who try to immerse it in philosophical systems and the interpersonal arena have threatened to collapse its bulwarks. It is apparent that its former, esoteric stance that concentrated primarily on unconscious processes and energic balance even to the exclusion of ego processes, such as the self-observing function, has weakened its clinical importance and intellectual impact. Surely, something has to be done to reinstate psychoanalysis, but often the remedy is worse than the ailment.
Freud's original edifice served its purpose, but the cultural milieu in which he made his momentous formulations has radically changed, and it is desirable that his theories also have to change correspondingly. PsychoAnalysts, however, have to be cautious not to abandon the