The validation of variables implicated by psychodynamic theories poses a formidable challenge to the researcher. Most of the variables are private; many of them are complex, abstract and difficult to operationalise or test with precision. Psychodynamic accounts focus on very remote etiological variables which are unlikely to be readily encompassed within an empirically based psychological model. Even when constructs are apparently operationalisable, they are rarely formulated with sufficient exactness so that they could be submitted to disproof. For example, concepts such as splits in the ego, masochism and omnipotence, are rarely defined with the exactitude necessary for operationalisation. There is a further major logical problem with the reconstructionist stance adopted by most clinicians (see Perron’s overview). At the simplest level, clinical theories of development are based on the accounts of currently symptomatic individuals who attempt to recall events that occurred during early childhood, the most relevant part of which covers the pre-verbal stages of development. Psychoanalysis has contributed significantly to our current sophistication about sources of bias that can distort memories of early experience (see Brewin, Andrews, & Gotlib, 1993). The clear danger is of a logical fallacy of assuming that something must have gone amiss during childhood, otherwise these individuals would not be in such difficulties. Thus most psychoanalytic developmental theories make recourse to various errors of omission or commission on the part of the mother that would be hard to verify. The converse is also true; the presence of “healthy” aspects in an otherwise severely disturbed individual, may lead clinicians to postulate moderating factors such as the presence of "a good object" in an otherwise devastated interpersonal environment. As we have seen, there is a confirmatory bias inherent to enumerative inductivism, which clinical theories of development find hard to circumvent. Clinical illustrations have enormous value in summarising central and recurrent themes emerging in a particular patient group. They are also useful in generating hypotheses that can be examined through more formal investigative techniques. Clinical insight, however, is unlikely to be helpful in resolving theoretical differences concerning developmentally remote variables that are considered to place an individual at risk of a disorder. The reason for this, as we hope this chapter has illustrated, is that the observations of perceptive and experienced clinicians do not always converge on common interpretations. It should not, however, be too readily assumed that the empirical data which are most useful in the context of justification, which allow optimal control of variables, minimise threats to internal validity and maximise the possibility of causal inference, are also most helpful in the construction of a psychological theory. Westen (1991) points to the relative paucity of rich theories within current psychiatry and psychology that are based on controlled studies. Indeed, many psychological theories of psychopathology explicitly acknowledge their indebtedness to psychoanalytic ideas, which have inspired specific lines of empirical investigation. Clinical data clearly offer a fertile ground for theory building, but not for distinguishing good theories from bad or better ones. The proliferation of clinical theories currently in use is the best evidence that clinical data are more suitable for generating theories and hypotheses than for evaluating them. The convergence of evidence from several data sources (clinical, experimental, behavioural, epidemiological, biological etc.) will provide the best support for the theories of mind proposed by psychoanalysis (Fonagy, 1982). Thus, future psychoanalytic work should move away from enumerative inductivism and develop closer links with alternative data gathering methods available in modern social and biological science. To gather such data, without obliterating the phenomena which such investigations aim to scrutinise, is an important challenge to the current generation of analysts. Z"<)+L&!#"$&LB"M@B&,"&(:%?)!)?&?"+(,#>?,(&
Speaking broadly, psychoanalytic constructs lack specificity. For example, psychoanalytic developmental models have aimed at a level of abstraction where a one-to-one relationship could be
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