Those who founded the CBT were the most critical to psychoanalysis. They went through the psychoanalysis them selves and found it long and hard. By a reorientation towards a therapy founded in learning strategies instead of digging through the whole life of a human, they had invented CBT.

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behaviortherapists.org/2020/01/16/cbt-vs-psychoanalysis/

Hello Lisa! I'm pretty sure Catriel Fierro can help you with this. He has written this two articles on the subject (and maybe more but I haven't read them so I wouldn't know):

Article Políticas psicoanalíticas (I): Controversias en la Historiog...

Article Psychoanalytic Politics (II): Controversies in the History o...

Dear Lisa,

in my humble opinion, these questions are really complex. Of course you will find a lot of prejudiced critique on psychoanalysis sometimes from scientifical and philosophical viewpoints, sometimes simply political and antisemitic in nature; mostly mixed. As far as I know there has been critical comments already at the beginnings of psychoanalysis. Some of these critics are even mentioned by Freud in some of his works (e.g. Psychopathology of Everyday Life). But on the other hand there is also psychoanalytic orthodoxy hindering an integration of psychoanalytic theory, practice and methodology in the academic world. But as far as i am informed the largest impact on the international development of psychoanalysis was Nazism. It not only destroyed the psychoanalytic traditions in Austria and Germany but also promoted its international breakthrough by exiling most of the psychoanalysts from these countries to the USA and GB.

About the history in Austria:

Marina Tichy et al: Freud in der Presse. Rezeption Sigmund Freuds und der Psychoanalyse in Österreich 1895-1938

Karl Fallend et al: Der Einmarsch in die Psyche. Psychoanalyse, Psychologie und Psychiatrie im Nationalsozialismus und die Folgen. [Fallend also wrote and edited other books, chapters and articles regarding this topic.]

Johannes Reichmayr: Spurensuche in der Geschichte der Psychoanalyse.

There are also some books about the relationship of psychoanalysis and psychology by Gerhard Benetka that could be of interest for you.

More general and international considerations:

Kurt Eissler: Medical orthodoxy and the future of psychoanalysis

Thomas Köhler: Freud-Bashing. Vom Wert und Unwert der Anti-Freud-Literatur

Eric R. Kandel: A New Intellectual Framework for Psychiatry; American Journal of Psychiatry 1998

Eric R. Kandel: Biology and the Future of Psychoanalysis: A New Intellectual Framework for Psychiatry Revisited; American Journal of Psychiatry 1999

Hi Lisa,

Check out The Paradox of Psychodynamic and Cognitive-Behavioral Psychotherapy by Abrams and Abrams. Hope this helps !

Dear all,

thank you all very much for your relevant and interesting contributions! This helped me a lot! Best wishes,

Lisa

In France, the work of Michel Onfray, a philosopher "Le crépuscule d'une idole"( An idol twilight) had a large audience at the time it was published. Onfray was very critical of Freud in this book.

I think you have to make a distinction between psychoanalysis as a treatment theory/ technique and psychhoanalysis as a philosophical approach to the critique of society.

And do not confound the "psychodynamic" - approach to psychotherapy (influenced by psychoanalysis) - and psychoanalysis as the basis of the "psychoanalytic cure" ( at least 3 sessions per week).

My book "Freud In Der Diskussion" Ein Sachcomic (2017) Tibia Press Verlag GmbH or the English version "Introducing the Freud Wars" (2012) Icon Books, is in comic form but deals with the issues in a very serious way.

You might like to take a look!

Behavior therapy and Person Centred and/or Rogerian therapy historically criticized psychoanalysis and generally offered alternative therapeutic approaches. From theoretical perspectives, behaviorism and phenomenology offered historical critiques. The argument differentiates if we consider the relatedness of approaches, such as existential phenomenology, gestalt, structuralism, functionalism etc.

https://www.psychoanalysis.columbia.edu/research/history-literature-and-applied-psychoanalysis

True, psychoanalysis never won widespread acceptance among academic psychologists. (The story was very different in academic psychiatry, at least here in the USA, where becoming a trained analyst was a ticket to prestige until maybe 20 years ago.) Much of this flowed from the very different research methods and the admittedly 'sloppy' psychoanalytic approach.

For historic critiques, you must start with John Watson and the behaviorist school of thought he founded. The source paper of behaviorism (Watson, 1913) does not mention psychoanalysis per se, but Watson and his followers were unsparing in their derision of the theory in the years that followed. (An exception was Clark Hull, who famously remarked that "there's something to that theory.") Anyway, that would cover the experimental part of the field.

Within the individual differences tradition, psychometricians always preferred a more, well, measured approach to personality. And the few personality tests that linked up with psychoanalysis (so-called projective measures) were never the most psychometrically sound in the examiner's toolkit. I'd say to look at the work of Hans Eysenck here, as he was highly critical of psychoanalysis and its cousins.

For your purposes I would not bother with the heavy philosophical critiques (like Grunbaum's "Foundations of Psychoanalysis" or Popper's famous claim that it is just a pseudoscience) because those aren't really the source of the academic hostility - they simply gave the already hostile academics intellectual ammunition. But they are important critiques nonetheless.

Stephen Joy

I think the psychoanalytical "analytical psychology" approach is right, although Freud's theory of the stage of sexual development is too one-sided(He extended a few of the causes of mental disorders resulting from abnormal sexual development to all humans, that's not right), he was right to dig inward into the cause. On the contrary, scientific psychology uses experiments and statistics. I think there is no future. I don't think the truth is found by statistical and experimental methods.

It is well known that psychology is now divided into two camps. One is the "psychology of science" faction with experimental and statistical methods. One is a psychotherapist, this faction is applied psychology, and many of them support psychoanalysis, CBT, and other therapies. It can be said that one is for academic research and the other is for application.

The two factions are now in a divided state, academic theories are often difficult to apply, psychotherapists' therapies are often dismissed as unscientific. Freud's theory clearly belongs to the applied school, so which side do you support?

Stephen Joy

Personally, I think college psychologists are wrong. Their "scientific psychology" is not scientific and not as good as psychoanalysis.

Stephen Joy

Watson's behaviorism and Freud's are not actually contradictory. New behaviourism includes implicit behavior, which is difficult to observe from the outside because it is running within the body. So, what is the way to "see" the implicit behavior?Use "analysis". And Freud's psychoanalysis is exactly the "analysis" used. Hyperbole, psychoanalysis is used to find implicit behavior, and Watson's explicit behavior is actually an external manifestation of implicit behavior. So, in fact, psychoanalysis and behaviorism can be unified.

Dear Dr. Xian Xiang,

I was simply responding to the original poster's request for references relating to the academic critique of psychoanalysis, not engaging in a personal critique.

Lisa Malich

It is not only a theoretically antagonistic approach to psychoanalysis. It is also a political-economic conflict.

When Freud first postulated his theories, the academic study or the profession of psychology did not yet exist. In the USA psychoanalysis was only allowed to be practised by medical doctors. When psychology developed as a science and psychologists wanted to treat patients, they were forced to create a large distance between their work and Freud’s, and from that came the accusation of non-science. In the 1980s universities took the medical association to court on the basis of their creating an illegal cartel, and they won. Now universities can train psychoanalysts. In many other countries universities still cannot train psychoanalysts and only the PA-societies can do that themselves. This is still a source of frustration, also because psychoanalysts enjoy a high reputation, higher status than a psychotherapist. Professional envy is the resulting dynamic, unfortunately.

Lisa Malich - Your perspective is interesting and has merit. Please note, however, that the academic/scientific study of psychology did exist when Freud first introduced his theories. Yes, it was in its infancy, but then, so was psychoanalysis. In fact, an important milestone for Freud - a moment when he felt vindicated or at least appreciated by academia - came when Stanley Hall invited him to deliver a series of talks at Clark University in 1909.

Lisa Malich

• I suggest Stephen Joy guidelines, also I would recommend Hans Eysenck's book "The Experimental Study of Freudian Theories", which is a beautiful book with a collection of experiments that corroborate that Freud's hypothesis, at best, are false and in the rest of cases just impossible to prove.
• It is reasonable to think that psychoanalysis is not being considered anymore in most countries, since it does not work, psychoanalysis is to psychology the equivalent of homeopathy to medicine.

Diego Vaca-Quintana

There are many who would disagree.

What I have seen in the careers of many psychotherapists is the following: a person starts off with studying and practising Behavioural Therapy. When they see how many patients/clients come back with new problems like new phobias, they go on to study and practice Cognitive therapy, looking not only at behaviour but also the limiting beliefs. When in a few years time they see how many patients come back with unhappiness and problems despite their reinforcing new beliefs, the therapist has to dig deeper and explore what caused this kind of limiting beliefs and unsuccessful coping strategies. Then they find that psychoanalytic practice helps them to help the patient. Only it takes a while. Often therapists feel that if they had started off with psychoanalysis, then it would have helped the patient earlier and better.

It is not right to study only 150 year old books and judge PA from that. Many more theories have been added and the practice has developed. But to study PA and to practice it, a person needs to be able to think abstractly, defer the gratification of a quick fix and be patient. Not everyone can do this and not at age 20+.

Insurances don’t like a lengthy treatment either.

Diego Vaca-Quintana

As long as the inquiry into the causes of the patient's mental illness needs, similar methods to psychoanalysis must be needed. Psychoanalysis is very valuable, and the "analytical" approach that it proposes is extremely valuable. It is just wrong to think that all mental and psychological problems are "sexual problems",Using a few individuals on behalf of the entire human population is extreme, but its pioneering methods and direction are extremely valuable.

Diego Vaca-Quintana

The mistake of psychoanalytic theory is to explain all problems with a "cause", such as Freud explaining all causes with "blocked psychosexual development" and Adler using "inferiority" to explain everything. The same goes with the later new psychoanalysis, which also tried to explain everything with their own theories. But this is not right, human individuals are different, each individual needs to be analyzed separately to find the cause. Some people do have psychology illness because of sexual mental development disorders, and some people do cause psychological disorders because of the inferiority complex, but they can not be used to summarize all human beings.

The value of psychoanalysis lies in the "analysis of human psychology". The "analysis" of the method of mining psychological activities is its value. The specific explanation of the cause of mental illness is secondary.

The biggest problem in psychology today is all looking for specific "reasons, explanations" for a certain psychological problem or psychological phenomenon, But such explanations are endless, and each individual is different, and the causes of his psychological problems are also different. We need to look for ways to explore this explanation, rather than a concrete explanation. Finding a specific explanation is equivalent to collecting stamps, and there is no way to collect them.(Experiments and statistics are doing this, but these methods are not appropriate.But the "analysis" of psychoanalysis is a appropriate approach.）

Lilian Hupkens

I´m sorry but I need you to show me some evidence of this process you are talking about, otherwise, your comment is just your opinion, and science does not advance based on opinions but facts.

The thing with insurance companies is that they like to invest in treatments with solid scientific evidence of their effectiveness.

If Psychoanalysis wants to be taken seriously, it has to show empirical evidence of what it claims.

Duan Xian Xiang

I'm so sorry, but you sound like a psychoanalytic apologist. I am sure that you do not know in depth the methodological and statistical processes that are used in the "Psychology of science" that you criticize so much, an absurd division by the way surely created by you. There is just Psychology and is based in the scientific method, period. I can see that you do not have a solid knowledge of psychology, you are criticizing something that you know very little about. Sorry but I'm done with your apologetics

Diego Vaca-Quintana

So-called "scientific psychology" is not scientific. Statistics can only count the commonality of groups, not the psychology of individuals. But psychology is mainly for individual research, so statistics is not suitable for studying psychology.

Duan Xian Xiang

You´ve clearly never heard of individual differences, how it works, its methodological framework, and its results. This is my point, you clearly don´t know about psychology but you dare to criticize it based on your passion for Psychoanalysis. Please stop making that mistake