Is psychoanalysis science?

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Thank you for your provocative question. I don't feel qualified to answer it categorically, but I will try to give some reason why some people have doubted that psychoanalysis is science, and how those doubts might be met. One reason some have doubted that psychoanalysis is science is that claims made by some analysts about the reasons for people's behavior (including slips and dreams) appeal to explanations that don't seem subject to tests. To take one extreme case, Freud claims that any element of a dream that has three parts or is associated with the number three (such as a triangle or a tripod) must symbolize male genitals. Then if one asks him for his evidence to back up this claim, one sometimes finds him or his follower replying not by providing evidence, but rather by suggesting that the person asking the question is exhibiting a "defense mechanism." That does seem like cheating. After all, one could use this technique to "prove" just about anything.

In the last couple of decades many lay people as well as researchers have come to feel dissatisfied with the claims of psychoanalysis precisely because they are not subject to test in the ways that we would expect psychological theories to be. In addition to that, scholars such as Robin Dawes (_House of Cards_) have shown statistically that psychoanalysis is no more effective in helping patients to improve than if they had sought the services of a priest or, for that matter, a shaman.

On the other hand, some defenders of psychoanalysis have argued that if it gives up some of its more questionable tactics and dubious claims, it still offers many interesting, testable claims about the mind. For instance, Drew Weston, in such articles as "The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud" (_Psych Bulletin_ 124 (1998)) has argued that modern psychoanalysis (which he calls "psychodynamic theory"), makes claims about the unconscious that are testable and substantive. If he is right about this, then pshychoanalysis, appropriately "cleaned up" and treated with the same amount of skepticism we would any other theory, is a scientific theory.

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