ABSTRACT
The extensive efforts of academic psychologists to test psychoanalytic hypotheses, originating in the 1920’s and crystallized into their present form by Sears’ (1943) Survey of Objective Studies of Psychoanalytic Concepts, have proceeded on the assumption that psychoanalysis as developed by Freud was a valuable theory attached to a scientifically worthless method. In this chapter I argue that psychoanalysis represents a valuable method for studying personality that must be properly understood before attempting to assess the validity of its theoretical propositions, and that there are methodological advantages in psychoanalytic clinical procedures that point the way to a more adequate personality psychology than we have at present.
