[Undated]

The claim of psycho-analysis to be a scientific procedure has often been challenged by scientists of other disciplines. Stirred by a desire to repudiate what seems to be a denial of the analyst’s aspiration to be honest and to state his findings truthfully, psycho-analysts tend either to assume that the criterion is based on a misunderstanding of their work, or else that there is such a thing as scientific method employed by physicists, chemists and others, but that it cannot be used in any valuable way in their own work. The explanation of this attitude probably lies in the nature of psycho-analytic training, which has to cover such an enormous area and is so closely associated with the cure of patients that the would-be analyst can hardly find time to concentrate on the essentials of psycho-analytic theory, let alone investigate metalogic and metatheory. It is likely that if he does so, he will rapidly conclude that they have no relevance to his work and so dismiss both as insignificant.