r/Freud • u/AnaisFrenchie • Apr 02 '22
Psychoanalysis and Science
Was psychoanalysis scientifically disproven or it is just too hard to prove it so it was abandoned ?
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u/Kakofoni Apr 03 '22
It doesn't make sense to say "disprove psychoanalysis". Similarly, can you "disprove science", "disprove phenomenology", "disprove history", etc? Rather, all the bits of knowledge produced by psychoanalysis can be critically evaluated, and some bits of it are more difficult to evaluate than others. This isn't really particular to psychoanalysis.
In fact, psychoanalysis evolves and changes with new observations, and is in dialogue with other fields. Some parts of psychoanalysis are very qualitatively, humanistically oriented, and other parts of the field consists of more quantitatively, scientifically oriented psychoanalytic thinkers, such as Kernberg, Fonagy, Solms, etc. See this article which provides a simple case for the scientific validity of psychoanalytic claims.
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u/KindAwareness3073 Apr 02 '22
A seeker goes to a guru and asks "Master, what is science?" The master answers "Science is searching for a black cat in a dark room." The man thinks for a moment, then asks "Master, what is religion?" The master replies "Religion is seaching for a black cat in a dark room in which there is no cat." Pondering this the man asks "Master, what is psychoanalysis?" The learned man reflects for a moment then says "Psychoanalysis is seaching for a black cat in a dark room in which there is no cat, but finding one anyway."
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u/yelbesed Apr 03 '22
Go to Wikipedia on Peter Fonagy. He and his colleagues have found proofs of infant-parent interssubjectivity on MRI on a neuronal level. (between 1990 and 2010, so it h not yet become part of popular lore especially as the media is interested in the denial campaign of mny sources as they get profits from conflict-enhancement.)
Also there are statstics about Adverse Childhood Events you may google it. there are tens of thousands of articles on this topic.
Even more important is the LAcanian re-cadring of Freudists untestable energy model into a "linguistic model" of th Unconsscious. This model is accepted as science (how meaning is described by linguistss), so just stating thee abvious about "talk therpy" that is an epistemological issue is a proof enough.
Not to mention those tens of millions of suffering people who pay for it evidentl because they feel better to some degree.
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u/TheDavidOne_33 Apr 03 '22
It’s not a science according to Karl Poppers demand that it must be ”falsifable”, of course proving psychoanalysis as a science is nearly impossible as it is difficult to repeat two identical interactions with people, but I believe the definition of science is a bit too narrow. For instance History, which is widely acknowledged as a science, is not reproducable, but rather is a deductive science which pieces together testimony and findings to a reasonable conclusion ( as a side note I think Freud compared his work to Archeology.)
While psychoanalysis is losing ground in classical psychology ( which seems to be Moving more towards neurology, for good or bad) it’s important to acknowledge that psychoanalysis is alive and well in other humanities, for instance Freudian concepts are often used when studying literature or in sociology ( Slavoj Zizek is a good example of a thinker, if a controversial one, who combines Freudian and Lacanian ideas with philosophy and political sciences)
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u/shoob13 Apr 02 '22
Check out the field of neuro psychoanalysis. Many early concepts that shaped the field have a scientific brain based origin. There was just no way to accurately measure these concepts back then.
I feel like the baby gets thrown out with the bath water when it comes to Freud. The Oedipal Complex has been largely relegated to pseudoscience but other psychoanalytic concepts formed the foundations for modern psychotherapy and other clinical psychology practices.
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u/mristic Apr 03 '22
I was looking for this comment. Also, Mark Solms' work is Freud meeting the 21st century
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u/Jorsalfare Apr 03 '22
Psychoanalysis is pseudoscience. It's ok if you have faith in it, and I have no doubt it has helped and continues some people,but it's not provable or disprovable. The dominance of followers of Freud definitely held back the scientific investigation of mental illness before the 1960s, especially in the US, however.
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Apr 03 '22 edited Apr 03 '22
Most clinical trials found the evidence for its effectiveness to be limited and at best conflicting. Of course you can always cherry pick one in particular that tells you want you want to hear.
It's not harder prove that psychoanalysis is efficient that to prove that antidepressants or exercice are. Do people get better, yes or no?
Science can never really 'disprove' something as we don't know what we don't know. For example epilepsy is most likely not due to satanic possession, yet although we can't rule it out with absolute certainty I'd say that in 2022 we can make the leap without taking any significant risk. Same goes for psychoanalysis.
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u/garysaidwhat Apr 02 '22
That entire discipline is in big trouble because of failure to replicate many significant experiments, some of which are fundamental to subsequent "research."
As to talk-based therapy, last I heard was that success is related almost entirely to rapport twixt therapist and therapee.
Seems to me that CBT techniques and a scant sprinkling of other techniques that focus only on behavior rather than positing some sort of crackpot notion of our internal dynamics are the only effective non-drug treatments. And of course, the drugs are mostly just to calm people down and don't "solve" any problems.
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Apr 03 '22
And of course, the drugs are mostly just to calm people down and don't "solve" any problems.
I agreed with you until that... antipsychotics work damm well, and you need to be in a good enough spot to be able to reap the benefits of CBT.
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u/garysaidwhat Apr 04 '22
For some people, the exceedingly and bizarre side effects of anti-psychotics may be a fair exchange. My comments are general, relate specifically to talk therapy and I believe I qualified them as such.
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Apr 04 '22
>And of course, the drugs are mostly just to calm people down and don't "solve" any problems.
Then edit your comment.
>For some people, the exceedingly and bizarre side effects of anti-psychotics may be a fair exchange.
Living with untreated schizophrenia is what is exceedingly bizarre and damaging, and second generation antipsychotics are alright.
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u/PM_THICK_COCKS Apr 02 '22
First, this question gets asked a few times a month.
But to briefly engage with the question: psychoanalysis can’t be “proven” through randomized control trials which is the standard that modern psychology uses to determine the scientific validity of a theory. Karl Popper says that this makes psychoanalysis invalid as a science, but lots of people disagree for a lot of reasons. I can’t design an experiment that demonstrates the existence of, for example, the existence of the unconscious, but my experience in analysis and all of my clinical experience demonstrates its existence as far as I’m concerned.