Robert Galatzer-Levy wrote:


> the vigorous rejectors of analytic ideas seem
> remarkably uninterested in the data that is available (which is one of the
> reasons they tend to conflate Freud's writings with the entirity of
> psychoanalysis.).
>
I believe that I am well acquainted with research in psychoanalysis. I
may be wrong. In any case,
I refer to studies which include appropriate controls and statistical
methods-the kind of research common in the field of psychology-when I
refer to research. I do not include literature reviews (as opposed to
meta-analyses) or case histories or the kind of stuff Freud considered
research (one patient's productions used to verify his interpretations
of another patient). With these considerations in mind, I really know of
no body of research studying Mitchell's ideas. There is also virtually
no research investigating the effectiveness psychoanalysis-of whatever
orientation. After all these years!
What little research which does exist investigated Freud's various
theoretical ideas (and could not confirm them) and found that
psychoanalysis as a therapy had only indifferent results.

If there is more research than this (using my definition of research,
the definition commonly accepted as science), please inform me.

Those of us who feel that psychoanalysis has failed to establish itself
as science-to it's great detriment-are not "rejecters" of
psychoanalysis. Many of us are trying to stop it from dying. One rejects
a belief system. Psychoanalysis should be a body of scientifically
obtained DATA, not a system of beliefs.

Howard D. Eisman, Ph.D.