Why has psychoanalysis progressed more than science without scientific methods?

Why has psychoanalysis
progressed more than science without scientific methods

Nowadays, many prominent neurobiologists believe that there is a large gap lying between the well-understood, thoroughly researched biological structure of the brain and the psyche and thinking. This, of course, is not surprising, because the manifestation of higher psychological functions can hardly be explained through the biological structure of the brain with the help of physics, chemistry, and mathematics.

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Scientists wonder: ‘What else is there at the nexus of cognitive science, neurobiology and physics, all having their own methods of studying consciousness and psyche?’.

Nevertheless, psychoanalysis has a method based on free associations and interpretations. It seems, on the one hand, to have exhausted its power in the form in which it was originally conceived, but, on the other hand, perhaps the time has come for it to develop and adapt.

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Eric Kandel, an American psychiatrist and neuroscientist, said the following about psychoanalysis: ‘Most important, and most disappointing, psychoanalysis has not evolved scientifically. Specifically, it has not developed objective methods for testing the exciting ideas it had formulated earlier. As a result, psychoanalysis enters the twenty-first century with its influence in decline. This decline is regrettable', etc..

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Psychoanalysis seems to be such a field. Yet psychoanalysis, basically, has no scientific basis. There are no objective methods that could be used to verify the psychoanalytic ideas, but at the same time, many scientists believe that psychoanalysis is now the most coherent and intellectually satisfying view of the psyche, including thinking, of course.

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So Anokhin, like many neurobiologists, believes that the alliance of psychoanalysis with biology, and, let’s say, with neuroscience, can still be extended, thus allowing psychoanalysis to develop. Also, the synergy of biology and psychoanalysis, with the methods of the latter, could answer the questions about memory, thinking and perception.

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And the other sciences do not have this most intellectually satisfying coherent view of the psyche, although they do have scientific methods. So how did this happen? And can't we look for something, not an alternative, no, but some bridges between the two approaches, methods, sciences, ways?

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Can we conclude that psychoanalysis in its development has succeeded without scientific methods? And still achieved results? Then what was enough, if the academic psychoanalysts did without scientific methods? Intuition, observation, reasoning? Thinking?

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Let's go back to Einstein's simple conclusion. Obviously, he wasn't the only one who thought this way. That is, first there is some quantum leap into understanding, and then, roughly, there is a translation of that understanding with the help of some language from one individual to another.

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This is where it gets really funny. It turns out that so far everything is going pear-shaped in psychoanalysis, it has no scientific basis, it has not developed anything. But psychoanalysis has been here for more than a hundred years and it is still the most coherent and intellectually satisfying view of the psyche, which suits the most serious scientists, including Eric Kandel.