Response from Arlene Kramer Richards

Sent to the Email list of the American Psychoanalytic Society 22.i.97

Date sent:        22 Jan 97 21:33:34 EST
From:             Arlene Richards <73441.3427@compuserve.com>
To:               bbs 
Subject:          Stone article

While Stone and others regress to the argument that all science must be a search for causes, I recall Aristotle's including final causes among the possible causes of events. Final causes are equivalent to what we call reasons in everyday life. It is important to remember that people are unlike inanimate entities in that people can envision the outcome of acts and behave in ways that will enhance the liklihood of desired outcomes. In his excellent book WITTGENSTEIN READS FREUD (recommended by Frederick Crews no less) Jaques Bouveresse reminds us that Wittgenstein recognized this as a fundamental tenet of all behavioral sciences and saw that in these sciences a reason can be a cause.

Psychoanalysis as a science and as a therapeutic modality has the distinction of being the best, and perhaps even the only, systematic way of investigating human motivation. In addition, our methodology has the unique position of respecting the patient's communications, scrutinizing them in sometimes agonizing detail and linking them over time into a coherent narrative that allows the patient to take control over his or her own life and taking responsibility for his or her own destiny.

Psychoanalysis is far from perfect. But, like democracy, it is less bad than any alternative we have devised so far. Analysts have a responsibility, I think, to tell people about the unique benefits to be derived from the method of therapy we practise. It is to their benefit to know about it.

Arlene Kramer Richards, Ed. D.