The Microstructure of Free Association
- 1 August 1986
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
- Vol. 34 (4) , 763-798
- https://doi.org/10.1177/000306518603400402
Abstract
The author's purpose is threefold: first, to demonstrate the redundancy in the events of the complex life of a patient as told to a psychoanalyst; second, to show two novel ways to represent those events simply; and third, to suggest that the field of psychoanalysis, under assault from philosophers of science and hermeneuticists alike for either not being or for trying to be a science, can in principle be reclaimed for science. It can be done by abandoning a widely held belief that human behavior is simply too complex, too malleable, too rooted in ineffable experience to permit of systematic scientific capture.Keywords
This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
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- Subjective story structure?Discourse Processes, 1979
- Theories of Object Relations: A Metapsychological AssessmentJournal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1979
- The Question Of Proof In Freud's Psychoanalytic WritingsJournal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1977