Hornstein G A
Department of Psychology, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075.
Am Psychol. 1992 Feb;47(2):254-63. doi: 10.1037//0003-066x.47.2.254.
When psychoanalysis first arrived in the United States, most psychologists ignored it. By the 1920s, however, psychoanalysis had so captured the public imagination that it threatened to eclipse experimental psychology entirely. This article analyzes the complex nature of this threat and the myriad ways that psychologists responded to it. Because psychoanalysis entailed precisely the sort of radical subjectivity that psychologists had renounced as unscientific, core assumptions about the meaning of science were at stake. Psychologists' initial response was to retreat into positivism, thereby further limiting psychology's relevance and scope. By the 1950s, a new strategy had emerged: Psychoanalytic concepts would be put to experimental test, and those that qualified as "scientific" would be retained. This reinstated psychologists as arbiters of the mental world and restored "objective" criteria as the basis for making claims. A later tactic--co-opting psychoanalytic concepts into mainstream psychology--had the ironic effect of helping make psychology a more flexible and broad-based discipline.
当精神分析首次传入美国时，大多数心理学家都对其不予理会。然而，到了20世纪20年代，精神分析已经极大地激发了公众的想象力，以至于有完全取代实验心理学之势。本文分析了这一威胁的复杂本质，以及心理学家应对它的种种方式。由于精神分析恰恰蕴含着那种被心理学家斥为不科学的激进主观性，关于科学意义的核心假设受到了威胁。心理学家最初的反应是退回到实证主义，从而进一步限制了心理学的相关性和研究范围。到了20世纪50年代，一种新策略出现了：精神分析概念将接受实验检验，那些符合“科学”标准的概念将被保留。这使心理学家重新成为心理世界的仲裁者，并恢复了“客观”标准作为提出主张的基础。后来的一种策略——将精神分析概念纳入主流心理学——产生了具有讽刺意味的效果，即帮助心理学成为一门更灵活、基础更广泛的学科。
