[The individual case study as a psychoanalytic research instrument]

The attacks mounted by Grawe, Donati and Bernauer on the individual case study as an instrument of research in psychoanalytic studies has had major political repercussions, not least with regard to professional corporate identity. The author takes the opportunity of inquiring into the quality and the advantages of scientific inquiry into the individual case. She proceeds in this from a discussion of the familiar quandary posed by the fact that the necessarily idiosyncratic nature of the individual case will by definition resist generalization. The very definition of inquiry that qualifies for the term "scientific" is, however, precisely that it should be able to make statements with a claim to general validity. The line taken by Leuzinger-Bohleber is that the internal (narrative) coherence of psychoanalytic interpretations should be supplemented by an external form of coherence in such a way as to ensure that genuinely psychoanalytic interpretations and concepts do not stand at odds with accepted knowledge in other scientific disciplines. With special reference to Moser's arguments, she demonstrates that a trial-and-error research approach with an inbuilt suspicion of and resistance to orthodox tenets, professions of faith and ultimate truths is quite definitely in a position to proceed from individual cases to subsequent generalizations, from data to metaphors, concepts and finally theories susceptible of validation by further new data. By referring theoretical models back to new practical situations (the therapeutic situation, the experimental situation, computer simulation) the author feels that it is entirely possible to at least sustain, if not resolve, the tension between individual case study and scientific claims of general validity. This is entirely in line with the view of psychoanalysis as a "science between the sciences", an approach reconciling "understanding" and "explanation", hermeneutics and hardcore science.