Subsequently its opponents did their utmost to explain why psychoanalysis didn’t meet the criteria of a scientific field of enquiry. It was labeled a ‘narrative’, a ‘mythology’, a drug of the masses’. Despite this, and in the absence of significant empirical findings to support most of its leading theories, psychoanalysis demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of criticism, alongside significant resurgence over the course of the last years.
The key question which this lecture attempts to answer is: What are the mechanisms of sociology within the psychoanalytic community which have enabled it to withstand the censure and hostility leveled at it and to nonetheless flourish as an intellectual and pragmatic endeavour?