Chapter II. Psychology as a Prescribed and as a Proscribed Subject1 (1939)

When I received the invitation to open a discussion at this meeting of the St. Andrews University Philosophical Society with a short controversial paper, it occurred to me that it would be a suitable occasion to raise the question why certain specific systems of psychological thought should be more or less taboo in academic precincts when psychology itself is a subject approved for study in all our universities, and even made compulsory for students of education. The present occasion seemed to me particularly appropriate for this purpose, since it is not so long ago that a meeting of psychologists at St. Andrews University was made the scene of an attempt to deny the status of psychological science to a psychological system in which I happen to be specially interested—viz. psychoanalysis. This particular attempt to discredit psychoanalytical theory is of no significance for our present purpose except in so far as it reflects a widespread tendency in university circles to exclude psychoanalytical theory from the field of academic study. This tendency is not, of course, everywhere equally strong; but, in general, it is sufficiently marked to make it little exaggeration to say that, so far from being a prescribed subject in the psychological curriculum, psychoanalytical theory is actually a proscribed subject. I shall, accordingly, make it my business on this occasion to consider what it is that leads to the inclusion of psychoanalytical psychology in the academic Index Expurgatorius.

Even already enough has been said to enable you to anticipate the reply which we shall receive when we ask the compilers of the academic black list why psychoanalysis should be relegated to the