A Quest to Understand How Memory Works

3/5/12.

INSIDE THE MIND Dr. Eric R. Kandel at Columbia University Medical Center

"...As a student at Harvard in the 1950s, you aspired to be a psychoanalyst. Was this because of your Viennese background?

In part I was drawn to it because it promised much. In the 1950s and early 1960s, psychoanalysis swept through the intellectual community, and it was the dominant mode of thinking about the mind. People felt that this was a completely new set of insights into human motivation and that its therapeutic potential was significant. It was seen as the treatment that solved everything in the world, from schizophrenia to ingrown toenails. It’s amazing how it was oversold. When this turned out to be more hope than reality, things flipped in the other direction. In my case, I didn’t pursue it because I fell in love with research.

Did this overselling discredit psychoanalysis?

I think so. And it’s a shame. There are many fantastically interesting components to it that are worthwhile. The problem of psychoanalysis is not the body of theory that Freud left behind, but the fact that it never became a medical science. It never tried to test its ideas. When you asked, “How come there are not outcome studies?” you were told, “You can’t study this. How are you going to measure it?”

In fact, there were questions it was possible to ask. For instance, under what circumstances does psychoanalysis work better than a placebo? Does it work better than other kinds of therapy? Who are the best therapists for what kinds of patients..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/science/a-quest-to-understand-how-memory-works.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all