228 CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE 



Though lacking in frills, the method is not without its 

 practical compensations. One need not be irresistible to 

 be a psychoanalyst. In psychoanalysis "personality " is no 

 asset. The method places no premium on the personal 

 charms of the physician. 



The misconception concerning psychoanalysis which 

 seems to me of all the most unfortunate is the view that 

 there exists an inherent opposition between the principles 

 of psychoanalysis and those of experimental psychology. 

 On the contrary, the psychoanalyst of far perspectives can 

 hardly fail to recognize the possibilities of mutual gain in 

 the complementary positions which these two departments 

 of research occupy in relation to one another, nor can 

 he fail to see the opportunity he has in the objective con- 

 trols of the experimental method for the substantiation of 

 his results. Nothing, it seems, to me, can more certainly 

 cripple the researches of the psychoanalyst than this very 

 fundamental misapprehension. 



I believe William James once said that when any dis- 

 covery is newly given to science the cry at first is that it 

 is not true, but that later, as the truth of the new theory 

 becomes manifest, this attitude is replaced by the admis- 

 sion, " Yes, it is true, but / discovered it." Now that 

 psychoanalysis is entering this latter phase of its career, 

 there begin to appear various bogus psychoanalytic pro- 

 cedures which are in truth mere travesties on the original 

 method by Freud, and we need be on our guard against 

 the cunning decoys of such spurious artifices. 



We shall do well, therefore, to discriminate between 

 psychoanalysis as represented in the systematic, laborious, 

 time-consuming method of psychotherapeutic research in- 

 troduced by Sigmund Freud a method imbued through- 

 out with the spirit and ideals of the laboratory and the 

 pseudopsychoanalytic substitutes which pervert Freud's 

 method to sensational uses. Psychoanalysis proper is 

 wholly incompatible with the business of medicine. The 

 hurrying practitioners who say that they use psychoanaly- 



