Editorial Comment PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS: NO NEED FOR DESPONDENCY

In a recent issue of the Journal, Bracken (1987) declared the traditional defences of psychoanalysis's scientific aspirations to be scientistic and misguided. Grunbaum (1984) has decided that for psychoanalysis to be scientific, its investigations must leave the clini-cal setting and move into the experimental world of untreated control groups and random assignments. In contrast, Ramzy (1963, p74) suggested that every psychoanalyst who merely follows the method he was taught to follow will discover that he has been doing research, just as Monsieur Jourdain, of Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, "suddenly discovered that he had been speaking prose for forty years without know-ing it". A little removed from these extreme positions, Wallerstein (1986) in his response to the "New Chal-lenges", suggests that there "is sufficient warrant for.. empirical testing in ways that are alert to the subtlety and complexity of subjective clinical phenomena while simultaneously loyal to the canons of the objec-tive scientific method. " (p 446, emphasis his) Against these sure claims, there is Bracken's (1987) view of the scientific enterprise as the "kiss of death " stating that: "Psychoanalysis is a method whereby we can elaborate valuable knowledge about ourselves. Its truths, like the truths of all sciences, are never univer-sally valid but can be of enormous immediate benefit" (p 139). While there is much validity in Bracken's cau-tion that universal validity is not an appropriate ai