Reference no: EM133222952

Psychoanalysis was a therapeutic practice devised by Sigmund Freud at the very end of the 19th century. Central to the practice was the 'talking cure': a patient suffering from an ailment or ailments would lie on a couch and say whatever came to mind to the therapist (the 'analyst'), who was listening. The aim of this technique was to have the patient remember and work through trauma which they had 'repressed' (hence remembering it was a feat: repressed trauma was not supposed to be accessible to the conscious mind). Freud maintained that it was repressed trauma that was manifesting itself in the form of the patient's ailment or ailments (or, we can say, the patient's symptoms).

Freud thought of himself as proceeding in a fairly scientific manner as a practitioner of psychoanalysis, though he also felt free to advance 'speculations' at times: his claims about the 'causes' of his patient's symptoms corresponded, he thought, to the best explanations for these symptoms. His claims were anchored in his practice of observing his patients, too. At least a set of his more specific claims about the traumas at the heart of his patients' illnesses were quite outlandish, though. Freud is often ridiculed, for instance, for suggesting that infants bear the scars of falling in love with their parents and having to give them up (at least as love objects) as a result of society's norms, which prohibit incest. Psychoanalysis's claim to a scientific status was challenged and rejected towards the end of the 20th century, partly because Freud's observations were based on a small sample of people, most of whom were privileged with respect to class (they were elite).

Using only the information about psychoanalysis provided above, as well as your knowledge of the material we've studied for this class, explain in as much detail as possible (while observing the word-limit) the ways in which psychoanalysis might have been adjusted so as to be more properly scientific. Why would these adjustments help? Also make sure to explain whether there is ever room for speculation of the kind Freud indulges in in scientific work.