Abstract
Psychoanalysis has declined in public interest and scientific validity. It has become a “dead science” and an anachronistic system of beliefs. Its goal of total personality reconstruction is frustrating and futile. Psychoanalytic practice became a form of “exclusive salvationism,” and unconscionable, when it excluded the spouse from participation in the total treatment plan. More frequent interviews over a longer period of time do not produce a therapeutic effect that is “deeper,” and there is no reason to believe that fewer interviews are superficial, or temporary, and that prolongation of an analysis is more likely to produce better therapeutic results. Research studies do not produce any clear-cut winners when psychotherapies are compared. Psychoanalytic theories rest more on argument than on scientific evidence. The patient’s needs seldom, if ever, correspond to the therapist’s theoretical preoccupations, system of beliefs, and indoctrination. Research psychologists, philosophers of science, and eclectic psychiatrists have expressed their dissatisfaction with unproven psychoanalytic doctrines and the concept of “mental energy.” Psychoanalysis is not a pseudoscience, but a “half-science,” whose poetic mythology requires translation into the prose of science.
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Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University Medical School; Diplomate, American Boards of Psychiatry, Child Psychiatry and Medical Hypnosis; 1190 W. Northern Parkway, Baltimore, Maryland 21210.
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Conn, J.H. Is psychoanalysis alive and well at 85? A rejoinder. Pav. J. Biol. Sci. 15, 131–134 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03003694
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03003694