128 Psychodynamic Models of Personality
understanding of ourselves and our culture. In these final sec-
tions, I discuss the place of psychoanalysis in contemporary
psychology and speculate about its future.
Testing Psychoanalytic Theories
Within the psychoanalytic community, few issues are as
controversial as the nature of evidence in psychoanalysis
(see Grunbaum, 1984, for a detailed discussion of this issue).
Because psychoanalysis focuses on the in-depth understand-
ing of individuals, many of the theory’s adherents argue that
research aimed at confirming general principles of human
functioning is of little value (e.g., see Gedo, 1999). Others
maintain that without a strong nomothetic research base, psy-
chodynamic theory can never be refined and updated based
on our evolving understanding of brain, mind, and behavior
(Bornstein, 2001).
The controversy regarding the nature of psychoanalytic
evidence dates almost to the inception of the theory itself.
Although Freud started his career as a researcher, his attitude
toward traditional scientific methods became increasingly
dismissive as time went on (Fisher & Greenberg, 1996;
Masling & Schwartz, 1979). By the 1920s, psychoanalytic
theory had become quite distant from its roots in the natural
sciences. With this distancing came an increasing discomfort
with traditional nomothetic research methods and a shift
toward idiographic data, which most theorists and practi-
tioners saw as being ideally suited to both testing and refin-
ing psychoanalytic hypotheses via close analysis of clinical
material.
Psychoanalytic theories of personality continue to be
strongly influenced by data obtained in the treatment setting.
The case reports of psychoanalytic practitioners are still used
to formulate general principles of psychopathology, after
which these case-derived general principles are reapplied to
new cases. Although for many years psychoanalytic psycholo-
gists accepted the heuristic value of case studies with little out-
ward resistance, this situation is changing, and contemporary
theorists and researchers have begun to question the near-
exclusive emphasis on case material in psychoanalytic theory-
building (Bornstein, 2001; Bornstein & Masling, 1998).
Although psychodynamic theorists have tended to place
the greatest value on material derived from the psychoana-
lytic treatment session, other forms of idiographic evidence
(e.g., anthropological findings, literary records) have also
been used to assess psychoanalytic ideas. Needless to say,
psychodynamic theorists’ devotion to idiographic methods
has led to widespread criticism from within and outside
psychology. Proponents of the nomothetic approach maintain
that idiographic data—especially those obtained behind
closed doors—are neither objective nor replicable, and pro-
vide little compelling evidence for the validity of psychoana-
lytic concepts or the efficacy of psychoanalytic treatment
(Crews, 1998; Macmillan, 1996).The Researcher-Practitioner SplitA noteworthy difference between psychoanalysis and other
models of personality becomes apparent when one contrasts
the theoretical orientations of practitioners with those of
academics. Although there are few practicing psychoanalysts
outside large metropolitan centers, a sizable minority of
clinical psychologists acknowledge the impact of psychody-
namic principles on their day-to-day clinical work (Norcross,
Karg, & Prochaska, 1997). In contrast, few personality re-
searchers are openly psychodynamic despite the fact that
many concepts in contemporary nonanalytic models of per-
sonality are rooted to varying degrees in psychodynamic
ideas (Bornstein, 2001).
This researcher-practitioner divide is in part political.
During the 1960s and 1970s, behavioral, cognitive, and hu-
manistic personality theorists deliberately distanced them-
selves from psychoanalytic theory. For behaviorists, this
distancing was a product of their core assumptions and be-
liefs, which clearly conflict with those of psychoanalysis. For
cognitivists and humanists, however, the split with psycho-
analysis was aimed at enhancing the status of their theories.
During this era, it was important for these burgeoning models
to distinguish themselves from long-standing psychoanalytic
principles in order to assert the uniqueness of their perspec-
tives. Even when parallel concepts arose in these models, the-
orists emphasized the differences from psychoanalysis rather
than focusing on their commonality.
The situation has changed somewhat in recent years:
Now that the cognitive and humanistic perspectives are
well-established, there has been a slow and subtle reconcilia-
tion with Freudian ideas. In the case of humanistic psy-
chology, there has even some explicit acknowledgment of
the discipline’s Freudian roots. Even contemporary trait
approaches—which have historically been strongly bound to
the biological and psychometric traditions—have begun to
integrate psychodynamic principles into their models and
methods (e.g., see Pincus & Wilson, 2001).Freud’s Cognitive RevolutionThe theory that upended mainstream neuroscience a century
ago has had a significant impact on cognitive psychology
within the past two decades. Although the synergistic inter-
change between these two fields dates back at least to the