Chapter 1. The Psycho-Analytical Method and its Theories

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In a volume of this sort I can hardly aspire to present a comprehensive picture of what must surely be the most complex problem in science, one to which nearly every branch of science and the humanities may be expected to make some contribution, each unique according to its methods and materials. While interests and training as biologist, doctor and psychiatrist may extend my range, I must yet admit that my only field of special knowledge and wide experience is in psycho-analysis. I wish you to see in the apology a reference to the narrowness of psycho-analysis, its methods and its discoveries.

Since the value of the findings of any scientific discipline can only be judged on the basis of an understanding of its methods and materials, I wish to outline briefly the history of the psycho-analytic method for investigating the workings of the human mind. By differentiating between psycho-analytical discoveries and psychoanalytic theories, one can adopt a reasonable position of judgement as to the validity of what follows under two distinct categories: (a) evaluation of the reliability of the data for the reconstruction of the developmental history of individual patients; (b) critical judgement on the quality of thought which has entered into the construction of theories about child development from these clinical findings.

I do not intend to discuss the many avenues outside clinical psycho-analysis that trained psycho-analysts have pursued in their legitimate desire to enrich, corroborate or extend psycho-analytic findings. The fields of infant observation, ethology, psychological testing, work in nurseries or special schools, anthropology—these and many others have played a role in the evolution of psychoanalysis, but are not considered here.

Sigmund Freud, working in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Vienna, coming from a non-orthodox and relatively assimilated Jewi