Psychotherapy and Science

Robert Langs is a practising psychoanalyst, Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York and Honorary Visiting Fellow of Regents College, London. He is the author of over 40 books, including a full-length play entitled Freud′s Birds of Prey, and some 150 papers on psychotherapy and related topics in which the quest for a science of psychotherapy and its integration with other sciences has taken a prominent place.

`This book issues a challenge to anyone in the field of psychotherapy who is resigned to seeing psychotherapy as solely a service activity or an art or craft. Instead, Langs invites us to see that psychotherapy, clinical technique and practice may have intricate and fundamental conditions to the scientific laws of nature and the universe. This work will also be of value to those psychotherapists who are interested in asking research questions about the process and technique of psychotherapy. It is also a refreshing read in a post modern era where the pursuit of validity and fundamental laws seems to have gone out of fashion′ - New Therapist

• PART ONE: PREPARING THE WAY TO SCIENCEWhy ScienceThe Call to SciencePsychotherapy as a SciencePsychotherapy as a ServiceThree Theories of PsychoanalysisResisting SciencePART TWO: MODEL-MAKINGModel-Making in Science and PsychoanalysisPreparing for a New Model of the MindThe Perceptual-Analyzing CenterThe Processing CentersThe Two System MindThe Output CenterPART THREE: A FORMAL SCIENCE FOR PSYCHOTHERAPYThe Move toward ScienceThe First Models and the First ResultsA Cross-Correlational StudyA Science Derived from Classical PhysicsA First Law of Human CommunicationThe Lawfulness of Communicative WorkMeasuring Mental EnergyPART FOUR: JOINING FORCES WITH OTHER SCIENCESEvolutionThe Mainstream ViewpointSome Fresh Evolutionary PerspectivesAn Evolutionary Scenario for the Emotion-Processing MindUniversal Darwinism and the Emotion-Processing MindThe Emotion-Processing Mind and the Science of ImmunologyCognitive Science and Neuroscience