CAN SCIENCE HELP PSYCHOANALYSIS

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Psychological Theories podcast. In this podcast, we
take a journey into the human mind with one psychological
theory at a time. So let's begin.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
In An article from Psychology Today explored the tension between
psychoanalysis's focus on individual uniqueness and its potential as a
scientific discipline within psychiatry, written by Mark Rafalo Freud's establishment
of psychoanalysis in the eighteen nineties, it has emphasized idiographic approaches,
which means prioritizing individual experiences within the therapeutic relationship. So

(00:41):
in mid twenty century, efforts, notably by Auto Kernberg, sought
to integrate psychoanalytic theory with psychiatric diagnosis, emphasizing structured approaches
to personality disorders, and Kernberg did a wonderful job with this.
The classic Freudian and object relations models proposed stable interest
psychic structures such as concreous drives, defenses, and internalized representations,

(01:04):
shape by early relationships but enduring within the individual. However,
contemporary American psychoanalysis, influenced by postmodernism, resists the system maganization
of this theory, rejecting stable structures and diagnostic models as
being reductive. This postmodern approach favoring radical subjectivity and real relativism,

(01:25):
risks isolating psychoanalysis from scientific psychiatry and undermining its clinical
coherence by dismissing cumulative knowledge. The article critiques the trend,
arguing the while psychopathology manifested to personally, it resides within
the individual mind. As philosopher John Mills once emphasized, to
remain relevant, psychoanalysis must commit to scientific inquiry, balancing sensitivity

(01:48):
to individual subjectivity with generalizable principles about psychological development and illness.
A scientific psychoanalysis grounded in disciplined observation and theory rebuilding
can bridge clinical practice and psychiatry, fulfilling its promise to
uncover universal laws of inner life while respecting individual uniqueness.

(02:10):
Without this psychoanalyst, psychoanalysis risks becoming a mere philosophical exercise,
detached from treating psychopathology effectively.