From Mary Target
We were disappointed by Mario Bunge’s piece on the scientific status of psychoanalysis (2 October, p 22). As a senior philosopher of science, he could have offered interesting arguments, but instead he founded his criticism of the discipline on factual errors.
Psychoanalysis has developed greatly since Freud’s time, producing substantial research and productive connections to other branches of science. Many basic psychoanalytic propositions have been widely accepted, such as the formative impact of early childhood relationships on adult personality. Some of Freud’s specific propositions have been eclipsed by later formulations – as you would expect for bodies of knowledge evolving for more than a century, and certainly for any science. The basic idea of a dynamic unconscious that actively shapes conscious experience and relations with others has made productive connections with disciplines such as neuroscience.
Psychoanalysts have been testing the outcomes of psychoanalytic therapies for decades, using randomised controlled trials and systematic follow-up studies, as called for by Bunge in his article. Most trials have found good evidence of the effectiveness of psychoanalytic therapies, when tested in the same way as other approaches. Contrary to Bunge’s assertion, studies included in Jonathan Shedler’s review of meta-analyses of therapeutic outcomes of psychoanalytic therapy did, of course, have control groups (American Psychologist, vol 65, p 98).
The 54 signatories to this letter include distinguished researchers in psychoanalysis in the science faculties of leading world universities, who have acquired major public grants and have published papers in high-impact, peer-reviewed scientific journals. This level of scientific contribution compares very well with that in other clinical professions.
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Readers expect contributors to their debates to be informed as to the facts, and scientific progress requires a respect for evidence. In this spirit we respectfully offer some facts to reassure those concerned by Bunge’s entertaining jibes.
Full list of signatories:
Mary Target, Peter Fonagy, Anthony Bateman, Peter Hobson, University College London, UK
Falk Leichsenring, University of Giessen, Germany
Sidney Blatt, Linda Mayes, Yale University, New Haven Connecticut, US
Robert Michels, Barbara Milrod, Steven Roose, David Olds, Frank Yeomans, Columbia University, New York City, US
Joseph Schachter
Mark Solms, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Jonathan Shedler, University of Colorado, Denver, US
Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Sigmund Freud Institute and University of Kassel, Germany
Mardi Horowitz, George Silberschatz, University of California, San Francisco, US
Diana Diamond, Eric A. Fertuck, Elliot Jurist, City University of New York, US
Helmut Thomä, Horst Kächele, University of Ulm, Germany
Raymond Levy, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, US
Stephan Hau, Andrzej Werbart, Stockholm University, Sweden
Anna Buchheim, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Jeremy Safran, The New School for Social Research, New York City, US
Stijn Vanheule, Ghent University, Belgium
Geoff Goodman, Long Island University, Brookville, New York, US
Lewis Aron, New York University, US
Joel Weinberger, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York, US
Nancy McWilliams, Rutgers University, New Jersey, US
Allan Abbass, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Joseph Masling, State University of New York at Buffalo, US
Kenneth N. Levy, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, US
Golan Shahar, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva. Israel
John Auerbach, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, US
Henning Schauenburg, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Dorothea Huber, Technical University of Munich, Germany
Stephen Soldz, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, US
Bethany Brand, Towson University, Maryland, US
Karin Ensink, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada
Clara López Moreno
Alessandra Lemma, University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Saskia de Maat, Mentrum Institute for Mental Health, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Patrick Luyten, Catholic University of Leuven (KUL), Belgium
Margaret R. Zellner, The Rockefeller University and The Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation, New York City, US
Mary Beth Cresci, Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association, Washington DC, US
William H. Gottdiener, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City, US
David Taylor, Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK
Sherwood Waldron, Psychoanalytic Research Consortium, New York City, US
Paolo Migone, Editor, Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane, Parma, Italy
Henriette Löffler-Stastka, Medical University of Vienna, Austria
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From Jim Hopkins, department of philosophy, King’s College London, and research department of clinical, educational and health psychology, University College London
Anyone inclined to credit Bunge’s claim that psychoanalysts are “foreign to the scientific community” should consider examples. The psychoanalyst John Bowlby founded the burgeoning field of attachment research partly to test hypotheses inspired by psychoanalysis about the role of parents.
The psychoanalyst Mark Solms has contributed to the neuroscience of dreaming with research indicating that REM sleep and dreaming are dissociable, and that dreams are caused not by the REM mechanisms themselves but by basic motivational systems which are common to all mammals and which arguably form the core of emotion and emotional experience in human beings.
Programmes linking psychoanalysis and neuroscience were initiated by analysts 20 years ago, and the journal Neuropsychoanalysis was established in 1999 with an editorial board including leading neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and psychoanalysts. For the past 10 years there have been yearly conferences at which neuroscientists and psychoanalysts have presented research and discussed areas of overlapping interest (video proceedings and other information available at neuropsa.org.uk/npsa).
Psychoanalytic journals publish contributions involving psychoanalysts and neuroscientists. Leaders in neurophysiological research on depression have recently put forward an explicitly Freudian model in the Annals of General Psychiatry (vol 7, p 9). This year in Brain, neuroscientists Karl Friston and Robin Carhart-Harris undertake to “demonstrate consistencies between key Freudian ideas and recent perspectives on global brain function that have emerged in imaging and theoretical neuroscience” to show “construct validity” for Freudian concepts and enable “dialogue between psychoanalysts and neurobiologists” (vol 133, p 1265).
Such collaboration may, of course, contradict rather than confirm psychoanalytic hypotheses, but it is enough to falsify Bunge’s claim that psychoanalysis should be seen as pseudoscience. Or rather, it would be enough, if Bunge’s claim itself were subject to evidence, rather than abuse masquerading as philosophy.
London, UK
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From Allen Esterson
Robert Bud attempts to justify the Psychoanalysis Exhibition at the Science Museum (2 October, p 22). It is clear from the publicity material, and presentations in association with the Institute of Psychoanalysis, that the exhibition is devoted to the promotion of Freud’s ideas and of psychoanalysis. It should not be a function of the Science Museum to take a blatantly partisan stance on a system of ideas and practice that has little in common with science, and which has been subjected to increasingly penetrating criticism since its inception.
London, UK
London, UK, and 53 others
