Oatley K
Br J Med Psychol. 1982 Mar;55(Pt 1):1-11. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8341.1982.tb01475.x.
It is important in psychoanalysis to retain Popper's emphasis on theories that can be mistaken, and which therefore can be improved. This idea about the value of mistakes should not be rejected, as Will has done in his recent article. The main problem about the status of psychoanalysis is not, as Will argues, to understand science in such a way that psychoanalytic theories will be seen to be scientific. A prior question is whether the implicit personal theories of clients in therapy, the practical theories by which they live, can be effectively tested and improved in the psychoanalytic setting. The value of bringing to bear ideas from the philosophy and sociology of science is that they provide us with metaphors for the growth and change of theories in general. So if the psychoanalytic session has value, it is as a setting in which we can learn from mistakes, just as the experiment is a setting in which theories of natural science can be improved by refutations. Therapists' theories describe the implicit personal theories of their clients, rather as metatheories in the philosophy and sociology of science describe theories in physics and other sciences. Making these distinctions allows the question of the status of psychoanalytic theory and practice to be seen more clearly.
在精神分析中，保留波普尔对可能出错、因而能够改进的理论的强调很重要。关于错误的价值这一观点不应像威尔在其近期文章中那样被摒弃。精神分析地位的主要问题并不像威尔所主张的那样，是以一种能使精神分析理论被视为科学的方式去理解科学。一个先于它的问题是，治疗中来访者的隐性个人理论，即他们赖以生活的实践理论，在精神分析情境中能否得到有效检验和改进。运用科学哲学和科学社会学的观点的价值在于，它们为我们提供了关于一般理论的发展和变化的隐喻。所以，如果精神分析疗程有价值，那是因为它是一个我们能从错误中学习的情境，就如同实验是一个自然科学理论能通过反驳得到改进的情境一样。治疗师的理论描述其来访者的隐性个人理论，这类似于科学哲学和科学社会学中的元理论描述物理学及其他科学中的理论。做出这些区分能让精神分析理论与实践的地位问题看得更清楚。
