[The dispute between searching and healing in psychoanalysis]

In the age-old dispute as to whether psychoanalysis is a science or belongs rather to the humanities, the author favours a scientific stance. He sees interpretation in the analytic situation as providing scope for reasoned hypotheses which can be validated by empirical examination. In terms of interpretive technique this implies that interpretations must not only be framed in brief and simple terms but also in such a way as to lend themselves less to the verification of theoretical psychoanalytic truths than to the clarification of the truth specific to the given dyadic constellation. Etchegoyen claims that it is then possible for the analysand to confirm or refute an interpretation by the analyst. A successful interpretation, where the analysand finds the hypothesis convincing, is both a scientific discovery and a healing factor.