Eric Lindblom

INTRODUCTION:

       This introduction shall attempt to compare and contrast two leading history and systems viewpoints within Psychology: Science and Psychoanalysis.

A BEHAVIORIST SCIENTIFIC VIEWPOINT:

       Is the self immersed in the brain?        
anything more than the computed result        
of the brain's software?        
Is the mind anything more        
than the computational activities        
of that brain?"        
(Lilly, John, The Scientist, J.B. Lippincott Company        
New York, 1978)

       
The Beginnings of a Scientific Movement:

Wilhelm Wundt (and his students: Tichner and Witmer) was credited with opening the first psychological laboratory (Germany, 1879).  From Wundt's, Tichner's and Witmer's beginnings in Scientific Psychology, further work using the Scientific Method was possible in the relatively new field of Psychology. The method was to begin with a hypothesis, just as in traditional Science, find Subjects, manipulate dependent and independent variables, gather data (using experimental and control groups) and correlate the results using established statistical procedure.  

Wundt's orientation was toward such scientific structures as atoms, molecules and cells.  In the case of human behavior, the structures, for Wundt and his student E.B. Tichner (and Tichner's student: Lightner Witmer), were in the gage of subject's reactions in terms of the structures of excitement, pleasure, relaxation, sensations and feelings based on memory images and emotions.  "Tichner listed 44,000 different sensory qualities..." (Ibid. from Tichner, E.B., An Outline of Psychology, McMillan and Co., New York, 1896.) Witmer, Tichner's student, is credited with founding the first formal psychological laboratory for children in 1896.
Wundt believed that just as concepts could be broken-down into component parts in the sciences (biology, physics and chemistry) the person's personality could be broken-down into component structures in psychology. (McMahon, Frank B. and Judith W. McMahaon, Psychology: The Hybrid Science, The Dorsey Press, Chicago, 1986.)

The accomplishments of Wundt et al. set the stage for Scientific Psychological study.  The function had some legitimacy.  In 1906, Ivan Pavlov (Russia) "was able to demonstrate that through the simultaneous presentation of an unconditioned stimulus (meat paste) and a conditioned stimulus (sound from a tuning fork), the conditioned stimulus would eventually come to elicit a response (salivation)..." (Hall, Calvin S. and Gardner Lindzey, Theories of Personality, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1957.) What Pavlov was able to show is that objective psychology (an essential to Scientific study) was possible.  Here-to-fore, the study of Psychology was vague at best even with Wundt's best efforts.  With Pavlov's study, the results were reproducible as well by other scientists such as the American Psychologists J. B. Watson (Behaviorism) and Edward L. Thorndike (The Law of Effect) who formulated Stimulus-Response Theory (S-R), the first solidly scientific study of Psychology (1911, 1916).  

From Pavlov's beginning, Watson and Thorndike were able to formulate Scientific study which stimulated others (i.e.: Tolman (cognitive map latent learning), Hull (reinforcement), Guthrie (association), and later: Skinner (operant conditioning) to create "Learning Theory".  Where Pavlov demonstrated that psychology could be an objective science, Watson/ Thorndike et al. showed that living beings respond to observable and measurable physical law.  The Science of Psychology was born and was a Physical Science.  

It wasn't clear, however, how well the infant science of psychology described human beings.  Mowrer and Sears (1938), and Dollard and Miller (1939), provided a remedy.   The group published "Frustration and Aggression". (Dollard, J., L.W.Doob, N.E.Miller, O.H. Mowrer and R.R. Sears, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1939.) Later work (1951) confirmed that Psychological determinants could be studied scientifically.  (An example is in the Miller study on approach-avoidance behavior.)

Neil Miller used what he called the approach avoidance tendency in human beings.  Such study had been shown earlier but only in other animals.  Miller was able to demonstrate using scientific means that "the avoidance tendency may be higher or more intense than the approach response near to the goal...but when the subject has moved away a certain distance (in the diagram to a point beyond the intersection of the gradients) the approach response will be stronger than the avoidance response..." (Hall, Calvin S. and Gardner Lindzey, Theories of Personality, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1957.)

The 1951 Miller work confirmed that which had been suspected earlier beginning with the groundbreaking Miller and Dollard et al. monograph, "Frustration and Aggression". The scientists had said that "The learner must be driven to make the response and rewarded for having responded in the presence of the cue.  This may be expressed in a homely way by saying that in order to learn one must want something, notice something, do something, and get something." (Ibid.) The factors toward that end are drive, cue, response and reward but the groundbreaking difference in Miller and Dollard et al. is that other factors such as "wanting, noticing, doing and getting" are incorporated into Science.  

The objective criteria Miller and Dollard made was history making.  Science had never treated such issues.  Prior, such issues were considered unobservable and unempirical and, therefore, could not be studied in any scientific way.  Miller and Dollard changed that stance forever.  

What Miller and Dollard had done was to combine Science with Psychoanalysis. John Dollard was not only an Experimental Psychologist but also a member of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society.  Dollard was a Freudian and a Scientist.  Miller was also analytically trained (Vienna Institute of Psychoanalysis).  "This work not only illustrates the integration of s-r concepts, psychoanalytic formulation , and anthropological evidence but it also provides evidence for the fruitfulness of this union, as it has led to a host of related empirical studies." (Ibid.)

If Miller and Dollard showed Science and Psychoanalysis can be combined then just what is the Psychoanalytic viewpoint?

A PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT:

       "And every chambered cell,        
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell...        
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!"        
Oliver Wendell Holmes        
"The Chambered Nautilus"        
(Ellmann, Richard (ed.)        
The New Oxford Book of American Verse        
Oxford University Press, New York, 1976)

Sigmund Freud was born in Moravia on May 6, 1856 but is known, primarily, for his work in Vienna.  Freud's background began in neurology, especially in child anatomy.  Sigmund Freud was a Scientist and a Medical Doctor.  As Freud became more exposed to the developing field, he became interested in nervous disorders and began to speculate upon the origns.  To that end, Freud went to France to study. Freud studied, for example, with the noted French psychiatrist for a year: Jean Charcot.  Later, Freud collaborated with a friend and collegue in Vienna, Joseph Breuer, in developing a technique following some of Charcot's thinking regarding hypnosis and a technique of "talking" about problems (1895). (Freud, Sigmund, Collected Papers, Hogarth Press, London, 1909.) Sigmund Freud started to become well known in 1900 with the publication of his work: The Interpretation of Dreams. With that work, the psychoanalytic revolution began.

It may be, also, that in Freud's work with Breuer (especially in the case of their patient Anna O.) that Freud's theoretical start was stimulated by uality conflicts. There is an alternative story, perhaps even true, that when Freud saw the Greek play Oedipus Rex he began wondering how the persoanlity structure of Oedipus was formulated.  From that series of insights, Freud began to formulate a theory. It may be that in Oedipus Rex, were the beginnings of Freud's theory.  It could be there were several kinds of beginnings. Whatever the very beginning, a notable theory was being recognized.

Freud's Theory

Freud, an anatomicist in his early career, recognized that there is a personality structure (perhaps similar to an anatomical structure, he thought) which is a mediator between an individual and reality.  When there is a mediator breakdown (ie: similar to the medical of physical illness), there is also a breakdown between an individual and reality or, rather, an Ego breakdown. (The word "ego" is greek for "I".)

Specifically, the breakdown of the Ego is in the presence of a noxa, an injurious agent or noxious introject (again, similar to a medical conception where a foreign organism invades the body).  In some cases, the noxa can provoke neurosis which could manifest as the psychical disorders of: actual neuroses (neurasthenia),    
transference (hysteria, obsession and compulsion),    
narcissistic neuroses (schizophrenias and manic-depressive         psychoses) and traumatic neuroses. (Ibid.)

Freud was, also, interested in the less extreme case where the patient could be treated in a clinic (such as Freud's office) rather than in a full service hospital where the patient would be incarcerated.  This interest was practical in Freud's case as the larger hospitals were not always available to a man of a Jewish ethnic background as was Freud's. (Vienna, unfortuantely, was extremely racist.) Thereby, it was a natural progression for Freud to be interested in the more subtle and less extreme case which would not be assigned, most likely, to one of Vienna's large institutions controlled by the racist majority.

In those cases, the noxa can produce various Defense Neuro-Psychoses in the repression (or other defense mechanism) of an intolerable idea painful to the individual Ego.

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