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Review of Paul Rosenfels'
Freud and the Scientific Method
by D. F. Lawden

I suppose it is fairly generally accepted in scientific circles today that Freud's psychoanalysis is not a scientific theory, whose truth can be tested by observation and experiment, but a scientific myth whose effect on those who believe it can be as profound as the consequences of conversion to a religious faith and assent to the religious myth it encapsulates. In both cases, it is possible for the psychical change to be beneficial to the person involved, who will claim that he has been cured of a mental or spiritual illness and this claim will then be cited by believers in the myth as evidence for its validity. By indicating how all Freud's ideas can be interpreted as a compensatory reaction against the natural submissiveness of his temperament to the conventional values of the society in which he grew up, Dr. Rosenfels establishes the arbitrariness of the psychoanalytic view of individual neuroses and of social malaise. Psychoanalysis, Dr. Rosenfels argues, tells us a lot about Freud, but very little about human nature in general; this part of his thesis is entirely convincing.

The anti-scientific cast of Freud's mind is clearly indicated by his attempt to bolster his fantasy of the Oedipus complex by a pseudo-scientific theory of the inheritance of impulses from primitive ancestors who murdered their tribal father to acquire his harem of females. When it was pointed out to him that the Lamarkian theory of acquired characteristics was entirely discredited, he querulously replied: "We can't bother with the biologists. We have our own science." How reminiscent of the theologians' reaction to Galileo's science! Other indications of his antagonism towards the scientific method are the many precautions he took to ensure that none of his theories was refutable. For example, he insisted that alternative interpretations of a set of symptoms would always be possible, since the truth was many-faceted.

However, although Dr. Rosenfels' prime concern is to discredit Freudian psychoanalysis as a scientific theory, he also advances many ideas of his own to account for disturbances from healthy functioning of the psyche, which he has encountered as a practicing psychiatrist in the United States. But having alerted the reader to the strongly determining influence of his social milieu upon Freud's views, he cannot complain if the thought occurs that his own views may be similarly influenced by the American dream. Whereas Freud's experience of a claustrophobic, rigid and hierarchical Austrian society gave birth to a small, elitist clique of fanatical psychoanalysts, Rosenfels is the authentic voice of intellectual, liberal permissive America and to us his psychoanalysis seems well-balanced, open and in accord with common sense. It could be that his success rate with patients suffering from neuroses is superior to that of Freud but, as Rosenfels himself remarks, favourable therapeutic results are no evidence of scientific validity. Indeed, all such myths probably have the same relevance for the theory of psychophysical systems that the classical myths of Apollo, Selene and the earth mother have for astronomy and geophysics.

-- reprinted from Psychoenergetics:
The Journal of Psychophysical Systems,
Volume 4, Number 1, 1981