ABSTRACT
The indictment is simple and concrete; the defense has to rest on the laborious study and slow integration of all the many psychological insights that psychoanalysis has provided—including the acknowledged incompleteness of the science and its capacity to grow. To be sure, the influence of psychoanalytic thought has maintained itself for some time in the Western world; it appears to be more a persisting cultural style than a quickly passing fashion. While scientific methodology in the field of psychology formerly could be applied only to comparatively simple data concerning the behavioral surface, psychoanalysis undertakes the scientific exploration of the complex and significant dimensions of human life in depth. The depth psychologist, for example, who day in and day out observes the manifestations of the enormous power of unconscious motivations, will naturally be inclined to look upon unconscious psychic factors as the decisive, essential—that is, as the only valid—forces in the life of individuals and of groups.
