Another Kind of Evidence: Studies on Internalization, Annihilation
Anxiety, and Progressive Symbolization in the Psychoanalytic Process
Book description
In our current professional climate, with calls for 'evidenced-based
treatment', and in light of the prestige accorded to this emblem, we can
ask: for what purpose do we seek evidence? For our students? For the
public at large? For an inner sense of feeling supported by science?
Most disciplines are concerned with cumulative knowledge, aimed toward
self-affirmation and self-definition, that is, establishing a sense of
legitimacy. The three parts of this volume are directed toward the goal
of affirming a public and private sense of the legitimacy of
psychoanalysis, thereby shaping professional identity. In each
contribution we adhere to the precepts of 'scientific inquiry', with a
commitment to affirming or disconfirming clinical propositions,
utilizing consensually agreed upon methods of observation, and arriving
at inferences that are persuasive and have the potential to move the
field forward. Beyond this, each part of this book describes distinct
methodologies that generate evidence pertaining to public health policy,
the persuasiveness and integrity of our psychoanalytic concepts, and
phenomena encountered in daily clinical practice.
