ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the effectiveness of Freudian therapy to his theories concerning the origins of neurotic symptoms. According to Freud, 'only sexual wishful impulses from infancy are able to furnish the motive force for the formation of psychoneurotic symptoms'. This chapter looks at Freud's theory of the development of the child. It looks at the degree to which Freudian theories can be said to possess a genuinely empirical character. The chapter examines Karl Popper's view that psychoanalysis is a pseudo-science because it does not make falsifiable predictions. Freud's theory of childhood development is, of course, quite well known, but its details may be recounted in brief. What actually happens when a well-trained psychological observer, specially on the look-out for evidence in support of Freudian theories, studies the behaviour and 'all aspects of mental development in childhood up to the age of about 4 or 5', of his own five children.
