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Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal

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Commentaries on Paul Whittle (Vol. 1, No. 2, 1999):

Crossing the Psychoanalytic-Experimental Divide
via a Neuropsychological Perspective: Commentary
by Nancy S. Foldi. Adam M. Brickman. and Joan C.
Borod (New York)
a

Nancy S. Foldi Ph.D. , Adam M. Brickman & Joan C. Borod

a

Department of Psychology, Queens College CUNY, 65-30 Kissena Boulevard, Room NSBE318, Flushing, NY 11367, e-mail:
Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Nancy S. Foldi Ph.D., Adam M. Brickman & Joan C. Borod (2000) Commentaries on Paul Whittle (Vol.
1, No. 2, 1999): Crossing the Psychoanalytic-Experimental Divide via a Neuropsychological Perspective: Commentary by
Nancy S. Foldi. Adam M. Brickman. and Joan C. Borod (New York), Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for
Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 2:2, 219-222, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2000.10773310
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15294145.2000.10773310

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219

Ongoing Discussion: Paul Whittle

Commentaries on Paul Whittle (Vol. 1, No.2, 1999)

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Crossing the Psychoanalytic-Experimental Divide via a Neuropsychological Perspective

Commentary by Nancy S. Foldi, Adam M. Brickman, and Joan C. Borod (New York)

Whittle's presentation on the divide between psychoanalysis and experimental psychology describes a true
disparity in the field of psychology. It is a phenomenon
obvious to anyone in the field, yet his challenge is
for all of us to attempt to understand why these two
disciplines are so separate and why individuals fallon
one side or other of the divide. Our response to Whittle's paper comes from the perspective of clinical neuropsychology. That is, we are trained from the
experimental psychology perspective, and in reading
this paper, we are well aware that our own defenses
are at work. In addition, as clinicians, we also recognize the value of looking across the abyss to the other
side in an effort to enlighten our own field and reevaluate the contribution of psychodynamic mechanisms
in clinical work and research as neuropsychologists.
Certainly, Whittle succeeds in making us (and all readers) review and scrutinize our own position, and appreciate whether we are at the edge of that divide or
far from it.
Whittle enumerates appropriate reasons why
members of each camp do not share their wor k and
research. In our commentary, we want to briefly discuss five different issues that are relevant to the separate ideas of the two perspectives.

Nancy S. Foldi is Associate Professor, Department of Psychology,

Queens College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New
York.
Adam M. Brickman is a doctoral student, Neuropsychology Subprogram, Department of Psychology, Queens College and the Graduate Center
of the City University of New York.
Joan C. Borod is Professor, Department of Psychology, Queens College and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York; Adjunct
Associate Professor, Department of Neurology, Mount Sinai School of
Medicine, New York.
Paul Whittle's paper is posted on the Journal's website at www.neuropsa.com in the <archives> section.

Overlapping Information
Experimental psychology and psychoanalysis each has
its own vocabulary to describe human behavior. But
at one level, the success of psychoanalysis has been
that much of the vocabulary and many of the concepts
have transcended the field of psychology and fallen
into everyday usage. Also, so many analytic terms
are incorporated into the vernacular of all fields of
psychology; in that way, the two different perspectives
do share some information. No experimental psychology student in the United States emerges from a graduate program without exposure to concepts of the
"unconscious" and "repression," even if they have
never read a paper by Freud. Thus, in areas such as
posttraumatic stress disorder and abuse (Herman,
1992) the development of predictive models is largely
based on psychodynamic, deterministic concepts even
though research treatment efficacy has come from an
experimental approach.
In clinical neuropsychology, there is a great tradition regarding the importance of observation. Here
too, psychoanalysis has influenced clinical practice.
Freud, in the tradition of other masters in neurology,
was an astute observer and a keen listener, and carried
those behaviors into the practice of psychoanalysis. It
is that level of observation and description that underlies the process approach (Milberg, Hebben, and
Kaplan, 1996) of clinical neuropsychology. For example, the process of inquiring about the qualitative nature of a response (not just whether it is right or
wrong) is deeply embedded in this neuropsychological approach.

Divides in Other Areas of Study

Whittle's concern about the gap needs to be put in
context as other areas of academia are vulnerable to

220
and experience a similar rift. Indeed, there are many
examples of opposing, or at least alternate perspectives, that separate domains of study. For example, in
anthropology and sociology, there are divergent methods and approaches, one side more methodologically
based and the other side more descriptive. Indeed, we
do not have to look further than our own field of neuropsychology for proponents of the more quantitative,
score-based approach to assessment in contrast to the
more qualitative, process approach.

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Discovery of Underlying Intent

Whittle's reference to the work of Labov and Fanshel
(1977) is another area that is relevant for a comparison
of the two approaches. Labov and Fanshel, seminal
writers in the areas of sociolinguistics and pragmatics,
investigated the importance of the intent of an utterance in the communicative and psychotherapeutic settings. Within pragmatics, the speaker-oriented
approach (e.g., Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) is contrasted with the functionalist, speaker-listener dyad
approach (Halliday, 1970). The speaker-oriented theory attempts to establish and verify the "true" intent
of an utterance and thus parallels the psychoanalytic
search for a "true" underlying meaning. The functionalist theory takes a different route: it avoids the pitfall
of verifying the unanswerable question of "what the
speaker really meant to say," and chooses, instead,
to focus on the listener's response as the observable
variable. That is, functionalists assume that all pragmatic and sociolinguistic cues, together with
speaker-listener interactions, contribute to the success
of the utterance. The speaker-oriented approach is difficult to construe within an experimental paradigm.
The functionalist approach has been used, for instance,
to investigate the effect of brain damage or pragmatic
skill, and provides a method to test hypotheses about
an individual's impaired (or spared) ability to communicate (Holland, 1980; Foldi, Cicone, and Gardner,
1983; Paradis, 1998; Borod et aI., 2000). Thus, the
reference to Labov and Fanshel raises interesting parallel approaches: one perspective has the objective of
seeking an underlying meaning of an utterance, and
the other seeks to evaluate the effect of that utterance.
In that way, they parallel the debate between psychoanalysis and experimental psychology. Naturally, the
types of questions raised depend on which perspective
is taken, but both have their value in the literature of
pragmatics and sociolinguistics.

Foldi-Brickman-Borod

Using Psychoanalysis in New Ways

Recently, Eric Kandel (1999) has revisited concepts
from psychodynamic theory as they intersect with
those from cognitive neuroscience. An important assumption in cognitive neuroscience is that complex
cognitive and behavioral phenomena can be explained
by articulating the underlying neural mechanisms.
This approach has had success in experimental psychology, for example, in developing cognitive constructs, such as declarative and nondeclarative
memory, which have been linked to neuroanatomical
regions and systems.
Kandel provides a way of operationally defining
a number of psychoanalytic constructs. For example,
he suggests that the preconscious unconscious can be
equated with the cognitive neuroscientific construct of
prefrontal lobe functions. What Kandel is offering is
one way of empirically testing psychoanalysis. Kandel's ideas exemplify a prominent trend in experimental psychology-in order to understand complex
behaviors, we must study the underlying neural
systems.
One caution about Kandel's approach is that it
could be criticized as being reductionistic (for discussion, see Sachdev, 1999). The philosophical underpinning of reductionism maintains that complex
phenomena are nothing more than manifestations of
their underlying physical or chemical laws. Indeed,
Kandel uses reductionism to explain complex psychoanalytic ideas as processes that occur at biological and
neuroanatomical levels. The success of Kandel's approach for the experimental psychologist, as well as
for the analyst, can only be weighed if, and only if,
the relationship between the constructs and the anatomicallevels is maintained. Kandel's approach does
have an appeal for experimentalists, since the analytic
constructs can now be tested and equated with underlying neurologic systems. We would imagine that from
a psychoanalytic perspective, Kandel's propositions
are exciting because they present different and new
ways to approach the psychoanalytic ideas (e.g., how
neuroscience can be guided by concepts of psychoanalysis, and how psychoanalytic theory can be directed by neuroscience). Kandel's important efforts
highlight that, in many ways, the gap that separates
psychoanalysis and experimental psychology may not
be as large as we typically assume, or at least the gap
can be reduced by sharing some common constructs.

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Ongoing Discussion: Paul Whittle

The Scientific Inquiry

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Finally, Whittle raises the nagging question that has

confronted psychoanalysis for many years; namely, is
psychoanalysis a science? This critique was, as Whittle brought up, the cornerstone of Popper's challenge.
It was also clearly of concern for Freud himself in his
early years. In his Clark University lecture series,
Freud (1910) acknowledged this uphill battle and was
aware of the fact that his Worcester, Massachusetts
audience, as well as his European skeptics, were challenging this very question of how one could verify the
process and inner workings of mental activity.
You will perhaps be surprised to hear that in Europe
we have heard a large number of judgements on psycho-analysis from people who know nothing of this
technique and do not employ it; and who go on to
demand with apparent scorn that we shall prove to
them the correctness of our findings. Among these
adversaries there are no doubt some to whom a scientific model of thought is not as a rule alien, who, for
instance, would not reject the results of a microscopic
examination because it could not be confirmed on the
anatomical preparation with the naked eye, but who
would first form a judgement on the matter themselves with the help of a microscope. But, where psycho-analysis is concerned, the prospects of
recognition are in truth less favourable [Freud, 1910,
p.39].

As a physician, with a dual focus on patient treatment

and on his theory of psychoanalytic investigation,
Freud was appealing to those who were both clinicians
and scientists. That is, treating a patient with a method
and fully understanding the underlying scientific
mechanisms of that method was his goal; but as we
know, even today, that objective can remain elusive.
No experimentalist would challenge the need for intellectuals who have the creativity to devise a theory
and a method. Further, whether or not psychoanalytic
theory can meet every criterion of being a science,
experimentalists can contribute to the task of determining what and how that theory can be operationalized.

Concluding Comments
Whittle's call to us to consider the gap between psychoanalysis and experimental psychology is a valuable

one. Ryle (1949) reminded us that it was odd for all

areas of psychology to be considered one discipline
and he suggested referring to psychology as a "federation of inquiries and techniques." This debate encourages those of us sitting on the experimental
psychology side to learn about and consider the significant psychoanalytic contributions and to understand how psychoanalytic terms and concepts are used
in the language of psychology. Both theories coexist
and share the idea that there are underlying mental
processes that result in behavior. That common ground
should keep us listening to each other.

References
Austin, J. L. (1962), How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Borod, J. C., Rorie, K. D., Pick, L., Bloom, R. L., Andleman, F., Campbell, A., Obler, L. K., Tweedy, J. R., Welkowitz, J., & Sliwinski, M. (2000), Verbal pragmatics
following unilateral stroke: Emotional content and valence. Neuropsychology, 14:112-124.
Foldi, N. S., Cicone, M., & Gardner, H. (1983), Pragamatic
aspects of communication in brain-damaged patients. In:
Language Functions and Brain Organization, ed. S. J.
Segalowitz. New York: Academic Press, pp. 51-86.
Freud, S. (1910), Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Standard Edition, 11: 1-55. London: Hogarth Press, 1957.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1970), The users and uses of language.
In: Readings in the Sociology of Language, ed. J. Fishman. The Hague: Mouton.
Herman, J. (1992), Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books.
Holland, A. (1980), Communicative Abilities in Daily Living. Baltimore: University Park Press.
Kandel, E. (1999), Biology and the future of psychoanalysis: A new intellectual framework for psychiatry revisited. Amer. J. Psychiatry, 156:505-524.
Labov, W., & Fanshel, D. (1977), Therapeutic Discourse:
Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York: Academic
Press.
Milberg, W. P., Hebben, N., & Kaplan, E. (1996), The
Boston Process approach to neuropsychological assessment. In: Neuropsychological Assessment of Neuropsychiatric Disorders, ed. J. Grant & K. M. Adams. New
York: Oxford University Press, pp. 58-80.
Paradis, M. (1998), Pragmatics in Neurogenic Communication Disorders. Oxford: Elsevier.
Ryle, G. (1949), The Concept of Mind. New York:
Barnes & Noble.

222

Peter Fonagy

Sachdev, P. (1999), Is the reduction of mental phenomena

an attainable goal? J. Neuropsychiatry & Clin. Neurosci., 11 :274-279.
Searle, J. R. (1969), Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, MA.: Cambridge University Press.

Nancy S. Foldi, Ph.D.

Department of Psychology
Queens College CUNY
65-30 Kissena Boulevard
Room NSB-E318
Flushing, NY 11367
e-mail: nsfoldi@qc.edu

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On the Relationship of Experimental Psychology and Psychoanalysis

Commentary by Peter Fonagy (London)

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill

luck, people understood each other, they would never agree
[Charles Baudelaire, Intimate Journals, 1877].

The Obvious Misunderstanding

I gradually realized that I must have totally misunder-

stood Paul Whittle's superb, elegant essay, filled to the

brim with wisdom, humor, and staggering cultural and
historical perspective. I surmised that I must have misunderstood him because I found myself in almost total
agreement with everything he wrote. Yet I thought I
held the diametrically opposite view.
I chuckled at his description of psychologists and
psychoanalysts reading each other's papers, the implausibility of a debate, the profound misunderstandings that are inevitably entailed in critiques,
psychoanalysts' naIve and misinformed perceptions of
psychologists, and psychologists' incredulity that such
things as psychoanalysts still existed. I shuddered with
painful recognition when, describing exceptions to his
rule, he accurately diagnosed that the individuals who
attempt to bridge the divide "are disregarded or
thought of as 'unsound' by one or both sides." He is
so obviously right that the overwhelming situation is
still one of separation.
His metaphor of the gulf, gap, or chasm between
psychoanalysis and psychology generated associations
to dreams I used to have as a child where, standing on
an elevated, unstable surface, I suddenly found myself
falling and aware of the inevitability of a disastrous
end. "Do I know about the 'fault line'?" I have been
living on it for the last 25 years! Just as the life he
Peter Fonagy is Freud Professor of Psychoanalysis, Sub-Department
of Clinical Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK;
Director, Child and Family Center, Menninger Clinic, Topeka, Kansas.

describes, mine has been split between different discourses. Also, I too have long worked in an academic
department of psychology, one with equal claims to
having participated in the creation of the discipline in
the United Kingdom, with both experimentalists and
psychoanalysts in leadership positions throughout its
early history. I believe Flugel, Spearman, and Burt all
had substantial exposure to psychoanalytic ideas, and
more recently, De Monchaux and Sandler were active
on the faculty, all living the kind of dual existence that
Whittle so clearly elaborates.
I totally agree with his claims that the demonstration of therapeutic efficacy by itself cannot validate
the theory, nor do laboratory tests of psychoanalytic
ideas have the power to confirm or refute (Fonagy,
1982). That is not to say, of course, that experimental
tests of psychoanalytic therapy should not be performed, just that we should be clear that the need for
this is by and large administrative rather than theoretical, rooted in the way that psychoanalysis is intertwined with publicly funded mental health services.
Whittle's dichotomy of the subject matter of experimental psychology as being mental process, while that
of psychoanalysis is mental content, is a challenging
and true statement of a perceived state of affairs,
though perhaps less than totally accurate in terms of
a deeper scrutiny. Colleagues and I have attempted to
broaden psychoanalytic conceptualization of pathology from that dominated by distorted mental representations to a more comprehensive model of pathology
that also takes account of dysfunctional mental processes (Fonagy, Moran, Edgcumbe, Kennedy, and
Target, 1993). When Kleinian analysts talk of thought
as antagonistic to fantasy, being fervently resistive,
they are in fact discussing the vulnerability of mental
processes to unconscious dynamic forces (Segal,
1972).