The identity of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts.

Psychoanalysis has been in a constant uninterrupted debate about its identity as a discipline and as a social institution. This article considers the place of science in psychoanalysis, on the one hand, and the hermeneutic nature of our discipline, on the other. The aim is to articulate a typology of psychoanalytic knowledge that characterizes psychoanalysis as a form of therapy, an intellectual movement, and a theoretical system. This typology considers psychoanalysis as a thought collective that influences its members by exchanging and maintaining ideas. To be a well-rounded psychoanalytic thinker or practitioner one must be able to move easily among three realms of knowledge--the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. Each realm has its own criteria of truth and the challenge is to know when to employ which criteria. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)