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studies - Freud's in particular- help all psychoanalysts to identify
the problems posed by their patients, and to proceed in similar
fashion, even though the examples are not always successful. The
familiar case of Dora comes to mind : its practical failure does not
detract from its value as an exemplar .
As important vehicles of the tradition of psychoanalytic knowl–
edge, Freud's case studies still communicate essential knowledge to
psychoanalysts today. It is easier, however, to say what they are not
than to specify what they are and how they work in the discourse of
psychoanalysis. They are all highly detailed investigations of idio–
syncratic cases. Freud seldom claimed for them the value of illustra–
tions of theory, and as time went on he ceased to make such claims
altogether. What psychoanalysts seem to derive from their study of
Freud's cases is a sense of how Freud thought, more particularly,
how he thought with his patients. Even to the nonpsychoanalytic
reader, Freud's case studies seem to communicate how it feels to do
psychoanalysis and to learn from patients. In contrast to his
theoretical writings, Freud's case studies may be the locus of
intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis.
If
this is true, it suggests ,
borrowing now from Michael Polanyi, that Freud's exemplary cases
function as a kind of "personal knowledge ." Studying them,
psychoanalysts tacitly learn to think like Freud.
The foremost question is that of the status Freud accorded his
case studies. This inquiry is given greater significance by the fact
that psychoanalysts have studied Freud's cases as exemplary solu–
tions to problems, and seem to have learned more from the case
studies than from Freud's theoretical propositions. The process of
psychoanalytic education enshrined in the institutes of psychoanaly–
sis suggests that it is largely the case studies - Freud's and those pub–
lished subsequently in the same spirit by his followers - that have
enabled psychoanalysis to maintain its methodological coherence for
so long.
The location of psychoanalytic insight in case studies rather
than in theory suggests that the knowledge peculiar to psychoanaly–
sis is constituted differently than the knowledge of a more thoroughly
theory-based science .
If
so, the great energy expended in trying to
reformulate Freud's theoretical propositions to make them experi–
mentally testable may not, despite the value such efforts may have
for other purposes, contribute much to our understanding of what
psychoanalytic knowledge really is. A fully descriptive account of
psychoanalysis would have to pay more attention to case studies as
