The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud

Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science

Bibliographic Data

ID4424802
AuthorsDrew Westen (Harvard University, corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume124
Issue3
Pages333-371
Publication date1998-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePsychological Bulletin (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0033-2909 • E-ISSN: 1939-1455
PublisherAmerican Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1037//0033-2909.124.3.333
OpenAlexW4248763589
LanguageEN
Citations received89
References cited133

Although commentators periodically declare that Freud is dead, his repeated burials lie on shaky grounds. Critics typically attack an archaic version of psychodynamic theory that most clinicians similarly consider obsolete. Central to contemporary psychodynamic theory is a series of propositions about (a) unconscious cognitive, affective, and motivational processes; (b) ambivalence and the tendency for affective and motivational dynamics to operate in parallel and produce compromise solutions; (c) the origins of many personality and social dispositions in childhood; (d) mental representations f the self, Others, and relationships; and (e) developmental dynamics. An enormous body of research incognitive, social, developmental, and personality psychology now supports many of these propositions. Freud's scientific legacy has implications for a wide range of domains in psychology, such as integration of affective and motivational constraints into connectionist models in cognitive science. Freud, like Elvis, has been dead for a number of years but continues to be cited with some regularity. Although the majority of clinicians report hat hey rely to some degree upon psychody-namic I principles in their work (Pope, Tabachnick, & Keith

Psychoanalysis · Psychological science · Psychological Theory · Psychotherapist · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology · Social Representations and Identity

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