Psychoanalysis in Question is a much-needed introduction to the major criticisms of psychoanalysis as a theory and as a practice. Psychoanalysis in Question encourages psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and counsellors to adopt a more balanced view of their own discipline and aims to help students engage in critical debate during their training. David Livingstone Smith, outlining the main criticisms from outside the world of psychotherapy, explores the contentions of philosophers such as Karl Popper and Adolf Grunbaum. He assesses the scientific credibility of psychoanalysis, explaining the difficulty in obtaining evidence, using the experimental methods of research favored by the scientific community. Against this he sets the opposing view that psychoanalysis is not and should not strive to be a science and highlights the philosophical and ethical shortcomings, which accompany this view. Psychoanalysis in Question also examines the contemporary issues facing practitioners and the validity of key psychoanalytic concepts such as the unconscious, free association, transference and counter-transference. The future of psychoanalysis depends on the ability of practitioners to analyze its flaws and to answer its critics. Providing a highly readable Psychoanalysis in Question is an accessible introduction, which will help trainees, and practitioners grasp the key debates.
David Livingstone Smith is Director of the New England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology, University of New England, United States
Introduction Scientific Validity in Focus Scientific Support and Therapeutic Outcomes in Focus Hermeneutics in Focus The Unconscious and Free Association in Focus Transference and Countertransference in Focus Integrity in Focus The Future of an Illusion?
`Psychoanalysis in Focus provides an excellent introduction to the basic problems besetting psychoanalytic theory and practice. David Livingstone Smith's lucid survey of the major strands of the critical debate about psychoanalysis fills an important gap in the literature of a discipline not renowned for examining its own shortcomings at a fundamental level' - Allen Esterson, Author of Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud (Open Court Publishing, 1994) David Livingstone Smith's clearly reasoned iconoclastic account convincingly demonstrates the illusory, quasi-religious status of psychoanalysis unsupported as it currently is by any objective evidence to underwrite the vast bulk of its propositions. If it is to ask meaningful questions about the human mind and find ways to answer them, it will need to evolve into an interdisciplinary science and thereby create links with evolutionary biology, anthropology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience and linguistics' - Ann Casement, Analytical Psychologist, Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute `This is a thought provoking and passionately argued book, it is recommended as a thought provoking introduction to some of the key debates' - Journal of Analytical Psychology
