Abstract
As the title suggests, this book looks at research and traces psychoanalytic research from the single clinical case to the systematic empirical research of today. It is in the nature of this work that every component in research is carefully defined and dissected.
In a debate about research in psychoanalysis Andre Green made the point that the great contributors (Freud, Abraham, Ferenczi, Rank, Klein, Bion, Winnicott, Lacan, Hartmann etc.) did so from their own individual minds and from their own work with their patients. Clinical concepts like transference, resistance and interpretation make psychoanalysis what it is. Dreher does a systematic study of such concepts. Conceptual research in psychoanalysis involves the origin and development, current use, the clarification and differentiation of concepts.
Other analysts, Luborsky in the US and Kachele in Germany, look at experimental approaches for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy to find evidence to use as a database for relevant research. Freud's original research tool examined concepts and checked clinical events. The new world is about experiments, empirical results, statistics, questionnaires etc.
Dreher makes telling points about the different territories of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy to do with research. Because one is derived from the other the differences are sometimes blurred. Dreher's question here is whether the essence of psychoanalysis can appear in the empirical research process.
Psychoanalysis has always been more than therapy. It has troubled many because of concepts like ‘unconscious’. Here is something which is not observable, not quantifiable, lacks objectivity and has insufficient empirical justification. For many this has meant psychoanalysis, and such concepts, are unscientific. But this proceeds from understanding science as based on principles of natural sciences.
This book contrasts empirical and conceptual research, looks at how theories change and how intertwined conceptual and empirical dimensions of research are. It opens up questions that clinicians are interested in, such as, how should research and cure be linked? Even here, how research is understood and the different ways research unfolds, are examined. Dreher distils complex material into neat but dense aphorisms (e.g. ‘The philosophy of science without the history of science is empty, history of science without the philosophy of science is blind’). Readers will appreciate her exposition on research with and without numbers and in particular ‘measuring’ transference. Not that this is just a book for analysts, it is much more about concepts, how they are used in clinical proposals and then in research proposals.
The book highlights how ill defined and variable psychoanalytic concepts are and, by extension, those in the wider psychiatric field. The description of conceptual research allows us to appreciate how the author's efforts are vital in the ongoing work of both sharpening and promoting the development of understanding.