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Building Out Into The Dark: Theory and Observation in Science and Psychoanalysis

Author(s) : Robert A. Caper

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Roselyn Abbott on 09/10/2012 18:12:50

(4 out of 5)

Robert Caper's book `Building Out into the Dark' is a neat, wise and readable volume, dropped with care like a still point in our contemporary maelstrom re the `measurability' of the analytic talking therapies. Caper articulately argues for an acknowledgement of Freud's mistake in his attempt to package the talking cure as an experimental science rather than a technical art.
This technical art that we practice as psychoanalytically based therapists has always been a `building out into the dark'. Unlike science, psychoanalysis has not been able to combine its fundamental premise of the unconscious and defense mechanisms with observations to produce a theory that is accepted as fact. In reality, psychoanalysis is a complementary discipline to the more naturally reductionist sciences. Each may be valid but they probably cannot be observed simultaneously because they require quite different states of mind. What emerges through science is the persistent and careful use of human senses to develop testable knowledge. What emerges through psychoanalysis is the persistent attempt to replace knowing with mystery. Caper recommends a radical return to Freud's original meaning for psyche and so re-coins the term psychoanalysis as `soul treatment'.
Although the latter chapters lack something of the more poetic clarity of the first half of the book, the few pages Caper offers on `techne' seem to be the fulcrum of his argument. He describes the analytic psychotherapist as an improvising artist using the technique of interpretation as a means of `depth sounding' the soul of the client. Caper reminds us that what is vital is not what the therapist says but observing with our honed sensibilities just how the client responds.
A `must-read' for all budding technicians of the human psyche.