ABSTRACT
This chapter considers why many Anglo-American students of psychology either know little of psychoanalysis or they may have been exposed to it as a dire warning of scientific implausibility. Although psychoanalysis was marginalised in mainstream psychology it retained a globally recognised cultural and intellectual relevance. Hans Eysenck’s attempt at a contemptuous deletion was only a very partial success within the discipline of psychology, where many adherents remained in its clinical wing or rejected methodological behaviourism in a range of other ways. Eysenck was correct in the assertion, nonetheless by 1958 and in a major U-turn he commended that psychologists should treat neurosis but only with behaviour therapy. Eysenck’s dubious mandate as a leader of a new form of psychological therapy. The scientism of the behavioural tradition, begun after the Second World War, deflected mainstream psychology from considering properly the strengths and weaknesses of the older tradition of psychoanalysis.
