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Catharina Engström is a Swedish psychologist, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst and poet. In her newly published book Siktprövningar. Essäer om psykoanalys och skapande we get to follow her thoughts, in a total of 14 essays, on what psychoanalysis is and stands for in today’s society (Engström, 2023).
Throughout Engström’s book, she touches on the scientific foundations of psychoanalysis. ‘Psychoanalysis has always been under pressure from the ideals of natural science’, Engström writes. A recurring theme in Engström’s book is how the psychoanalytic hermeneutic approach challenges what Engström considers to be a positivist discourse or logical empiricism of our time. Engström turns against the ‘mechanical causality’ these latter concepts indicate. As opposed to this mechanistic causality, psychoanalysis strives for understanding of the unconsciousness; an understanding that is always limited, temporary and open. An analyst listens to the unspoken and ‘does not stare straight at the symptoms or the verbal statements’. In psychoanalysis, meaning is sought through what at first is seen as incomprehensible symptoms. In contrast, Engström believes that an open and in-depth conversation is avoided in today’s psychiatry through various diagnostic exclusion procedures and manuals. Concepts such as ‘evidence based’ are even seen by Engström in its modern version as downright representing ‘anti-knowledge’ (‘kunskapsfientlig’).1
Engström’s description that psychoanalysis is under pressure from the ideals of natural science is highly relevant. Last year, Billy Larsson, a psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy, published the book 18 myter om Freud (18 myths about Freud). Larsson argues that Freud fabricated several of his findings and is a wishful thinker (Larsson, 2022). Larsson criticizes Freud for not having based his ideas about child sexuality on observations of children (Larsson, 2022). Since Freud, according to Larsson, m