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Starting with three examples showing different kinds of external barriers which meet a woman in her professional life, the author examines how they are related to internal elements. She points out power as a common factor, and proposes that Freud, as well as many succeeding male and female psychoanalysts, wishfully described women as suffering from deficiencies, while the unconscious image of Mother in children and adults of both sexes is the very opposite of this: a potentially dangerous or ideally good, powerful creature. She argues that both men and women out of fear for this power try to restrict and belittle the capabilities of women. This thesis is further delineated by references to Greek mythology and clinical examples.
This essay proposes to examine a limited number of critical assessments regarding the scientific status of psychoanalysis with reference to intents and purposes, claims and disclaimers, contrasting views of what constitutes a science and the nature of scientific thinking and how these might apply to psychoanalysis epistemologically. It assumes a certain degree of familiarity with criticisms that have been leveled against psychoanalysis from those who insist on absolutist testing for what some call true science, particularly on the part of those who are not practitioners of the art. It wonders about the concern with scientizing by those who actually practice it, or value it in some way or another. It suggests an open minded approach without premature or even warranted closure on the subject of human beings and of ways of getting to know them, let alone understanding them and perhaps being of help to them.
The process of healing in psychoanalysis is considered from a holistic point of view instead of the usual scientific and medical models. The revolution in thinking represented by the sciences of complexity is discussed as a basis for a holistic concept of healing. An example is given of clinical change achieved by non-psychoanalytic means in order to suggest new ways of thinking about how healing occurs in psychotherapy.
Although Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswick, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Stanford promised to later review the theoretical contributions that guided their work when they published The Authoritarian Personality in 1950, this was never done. Nor have any of the 1,200+ subsequent studies on authoritarianism focused explicitly on the theoretical ideas that resulted in the nine subsyndromes introduced in the original study: conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, antiintraception, superstition and stereotype, power and toughness, destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and concern with sex. Assessed here, therefore, are the theoretical and methodological contributions that were eventually incorporated into the classical conception of authoritarianism, particularly those of Erich FROMM, who had been working on a similar concept since the late 1920s.