Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Psychology: Retrospect and Prospect 1291960s, the impact of Freud’s cognitive revolution only be-
came widely accepted with the publication of Erdelyi’s
(1985) landmark analysis of the interface between cognitive
psychology and psychoanalysis. Erdelyi’s work demon-
strated that many psychoanalytic concepts dovetailed well
with prevailing models of perception, memory, and informa-
tion processing, and set the stage for an increasingly produc-
tive interchange between psychodynamic researchers and
cognitive psychologists (e.g., see Bucci, 1997; Horowitz,
1988; Stein, 1997).
The language of the topographic model—conscious, un-
conscious, and preconscious—continues to be used to a sur-
prising degree, even by researchers unaffiliated with (and
often unsympathetic to) Freudian ideas. Moreover, recent re-
search in perception without awareness, implicit learning,
and implicit memory draws heavily from psychodynamic
concepts (Bornstein & Masling, 1998; Bornstein & Pittman,
1992). Despite psychoanalysts’ long-standing resistance to
nomothetic research methods, psychoanalytic principles have
undeniably been affected by laboratory research in these
other related areas.
Although it was largely unacknowledged at the time, the
integration of psychoanalysis and cognitive psychology was
central to the development of object relations theory and re-
sulted in substantive reconceptualization of such traditional
psychoanalytic concepts as transference, repression, and
screen (or false) memories (Bornstein, 1993; Bowers, 1984;
Eagle, 2000; Epstein, 1998). As cognitive psychology contin-
ues to integrate findings from research on attitudes and emo-
tion (resulting in the study of hot,or affect-laden cognitions),
the psychodynamics of perception, memory, and information
processing are increasingly apparent.
A likely consequence of this ongoing integration will be
the absorption of at least some psychodynamic principles
into models of problem solving, concept formation, and
heuristic use. Studies confirm that systematic distortions and
biases in these mental processes are due in part to constraints
within the human information-processing system (Gilovich,
1991), but this does not preclude the possibility that motiva-
tional factors (including unconscious motives and their asso-
ciated implicit memories) may also influence psychological
processes that were once considered largely independent of
personality and psychopathology factors (McClelland,
Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989).
Developmental Issues
A second domain of contemporary psychology that has been
strongly influenced by psychodynamic models is the study of
human development. There is a natural affiliation between
developmental psychology and the psychodynamic emphasis
on stages of growth, familial influences, and the formation of
internal mental structures that structure and guide behavior
(Eagle, 1996; Emde, 1992; Stern, 1985). Theorists in both
areas have built upon and deepened this natural affiliation.
In contrast to cognitive psychology, the exchange between
psychoanalysis and developmental psychology has been
openly acknowledged from the outset (see Ainsworth,
1969, 1989). Moreover, the psychoanalysis–developmental-
psychology interface is synergistic: Just as models of child
and adolescent development have been affected by psycho-
dynamic concepts, psychoanalytic models of personality for-
mation and intrapsychic dynamics have been affected by
developmental research on attachment, emotions, and cogni-
tive development (Emde, 1992). At this point in the history of
psychology, the proportion of developmental psychologists
receptive to psychoanalytic ideas is probably higher than that
found in any other subdiscipline of psychology (with the pos-
sible exception of clinical psychology).
Ironically, although Freud denied the existence of person-
ality development postadolescence, there has been a surpris-
ing amount of empirical research on the psychodynamics of
aging. Beginning with Goldfarb’s (1963) work, theoreticians
and researchers have explored myriad aspects of the psycho-
dynamics of late-life development (e.g., see Ainsworth,
1989; Galatzer-Levy & Cohler, 1993). With the advent of
more sophisticated multistore models of memory, the links
between psychodynamic processes and injury- and illness-
based dementia have also been delineated.Psychoanalytic Health PsychologyOver the years, psychoanalysis has had an ambivalent rela-
tionship with health psychology (Duberstein & Masling,
2000). In part, this situation reflects Freud’s own ambivalence
regarding the mind-body relationship. After all, the great in-
sight that led Freud to develop his topographic and structural
models of the mind—in many ways, the raison d’être of psy-
choanalysis itself—was the idea that many physical symp-
toms are the product of psychological conflicts rather than of
organic disease processes (Bowers & Meichenbaum, 1984;
Erdelyi, 1985). Freud’s early interest in conversion disorders
and hysteria set the stage for a psychoanalytic psychology
that emphasized mental—not physical—explanations for
changes in health and illness states.
Beginning in the 1920s, however, Deutsch (1922, 1924)
and others argued that underlying psychodynamic processes
could have direct effects on the body’s organ systems. The no-
tion that unconscious dynamics could influence bodily func-
tioning directly was extended and elaborated by Alexander