ABSTRACT
An interdisciplinary consideration of problems of methodology in psychoanalysis presumes that a knowledge of the psychoanalytic method is shared in common among the discussants. Therapeutic efficacy is a related but not a central aspect of the problem of psychoanalytic methodology. Many forms of psychotherapy and other experiences may affect mental illness in a beneficent way, but only psychoanalysis has the methodological tools to investigate and attempt to explain these effects. Although the analytic situation corresponds most closely to the experimental laboratory of other sciences, psychoanalytic methodology is hardly comparable to that of chemistry or physics. Psychoanalytic concepts concerning the existence of the oedipal phase are of one order of validity. It corresponds to a description, a summary of observed data, not to any reconstruction or hypothesis. Psychoanalytic therapy is a meticulously painstaking investigation into human mental processes.
