Has Dr. Harley ever stated a position on the air of The Interpretation of Dreams, or Freud?

I don't think so.

Pretty "stormy" discussion perhaps??? lol

A Behavioralist would not put much stock into psychoanalysis, except for curiosity sake or rebuttal.

LTL

Does penis envy (discovered by Freud) play a role in the decision of ww's to pursue affairs?
Will the newly formed Association for Marriage Builders study this matter?

Hmmm??? I had not heard of that Non-Profit entity before, but according to Hoovers, it was founded in the year 2000.

LTL

Info about it:

Association of Marriage Builders, Inc.


I have received many letters and calls from people who wanted to help us in our effort to save marriages by making a tax-free donation. But for a number of years I had to explain that Marriage Builders, Inc. was a for-profit corporation, and as such, was not eligible for tax-free contributions.

However, it did get me thinking about what we could accomplish if we had more money. So I formed a new 501c3 corporation, The Association of Marriage Builders, Inc., whose stated purpose is to save marriages through education and research (see our mission statement).

Beginning soon, the Association of Marriage Builders, Inc. will have it's own website with information regarding past, present, and future projects as well as on-line training programs. When the site is up, it will be acknowledged on this page.

If you would like to contribute to a worthy cause, consider the Association of Marriage Builders, Inc. You can call 1-888-639-1639 to make a donation with a credit card or send a check to: Association of Marriage Builders, Inc., 12568 Ethan Avenue North, White Bear Lake, MN 55110. We will send you an acknowledgment that you can use for your tax return.

More:




Background:

Association of Marriage Builders�, Inc. is dedicated to research and education in the area of strengthening marriages. As I explain the background that led to this Association�s creation and mission, please bear with me as I give you a short course in experimental research.

One of the toughest problems in the science of marriage education is proving one approach to marriage education as better than another. Or, to prove that any type of marital education is effective at all! A Consumers Report study published in 1995 indicated that hardly anyone found marital therapy to be effective, which calls into doubt usefulness of the entire discipline. Part of the problem is that it's very difficult to study marriage and marital therapy scientifically.

The most decisive experiments, in any science, control the variables under investigation and involve randomization of subjects into experimental groups. For example, if you want to know if a particular medicine is having a therapeutic effect, you randomly assign half a group of "average" people to the "medicine condition," where they take the medicine every day, and the other half to a "placebo" condition where they take a similar looking and tasting pill that does not contain the active ingredient. Then you measure the cure rates of each group. A statistical analysis determines if the medicine condition did better than the placebo group by chance, or if the medicine was likely to have the desired effect.

In the social sciences, however, such decisive experiments are much more difficult to arrange. For example, if you wanted to know if having children is a positive or negative factor in marriage, you would find a group of "typical" couples who have not had children yet, and randomly assign some of them to a "having one child" condition, where each couple were required to have only one child, some of them to a "having two children" condition, some of them to a "having three children" condition and, finally, some of them to a "having no children" condition, where each couple were forbidden to have children. Over a 20-year period of time, the martial happiness of the couple would be measured quarterly, and comparisons between the two groups would be made statistically. Aside from the ethical problems of such an experiment, and the tactical problems of forcing couples to have children, or preventing them from having children, it would provide a fairly clear picture of how children affect the quality of marriage.

To make this imaginary experiment more useful, we would add another variable:My Policy of Undivided Attention. Half of the couples in each of our groups would be required to spend 15 hours each week giving each other their undivided attention, and the other half would not be given any advice on how much time to spend with each other (but the time they spend for undivided attention would be measured each week).

I would predict that there would be two main effects and one called an interaction effect. We would find that the more children you have, the worse your marriage becomes (that's one of the main effects). We would also find that those spending 15 hours a week for undivided attention have better marriages than those who are left to their own judgment (the other main effect).

But the most important part of the study would be the interaction effect. It would show that the main effect of children (making marriage worse) is reversed if you always spend 15 hours a week for undivided attention. In other words, children make a marriage better under those conditions. It's only when you leave the time you spend for undivided attention up to each couple that more children create a poorer marriage. That's the interaction effect because main effect of time spent for undivided attention changes the negative influence of the other main effect, having children.

I also would predict that if you leave time spent for undivided attention up to each couple, as they had more children, they would spend less time together. These results would be extremely important for married couples because it would demonstrate that children themselves do not create marital problems. Instead, what's known as a "confounding variable," would be responsible. Children would be shown to discourage couples from doing what is essential to their marital happiness, spending time alone with each other so that they can meet each other's important emotional needs. But if they could override the temptation to ignore each other's needs, and spend 15 hours each week for undivided attention regardless of the number of children they had, their quality of marriage would remain high with as many children as they wanted.

Sadly, such definitive studies cannot be done in the social sciences. It is unethical to require couples in control groups to do something that may destroy their marital happiness. And so we are usually stuck with less persuasive research findings. Anecdotes are the most common evidence for therapists in my position: Couples who have 5 children decide to give each other 15 hours of undivided attention each week and, and �voila,� their marriage is greatly improved. They send me an e-mail letter testifying to their success, and as long as such positive reports keep coming in, at least I'm convinced.

All of the methods I use have been either supported or refuted by anecdotal evidence. When couples who use the methods are helped, their positive report encourages me to continue to suggest it to couples. But when negative reports come through, I tend to abandon a method and go back to the drawing board.

The success of my book, His Needs, Her Needs (Revell, 1986, 2011), was based on anecdotal evidence. Over the years, there has been very little publicity about the book. Its sales have been driven by those who read it and recommended it to others. Their own anecdotal evidence was enough to convince their family and friends that it was worth a try. Since its first year of publication right up to this year, over 27 years later, more books have been sold each year than the year before. And its growth in popularity is wholly attributable to anecdotal evidence.

Julie Darlene Braswell, on December 15, 1998, completed a dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Doctor of Psychology degree entitled, "The Impact of Reading a Self-help Book on the Topic of Gender Differences on One's Perceived Quality of Marital Satisfaction." The book she chose to study was none other than, His Needs, Her Needs. The Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) and the Marital Adjustment Test (MAT) were used to assess marital satisfaction before and after exposure to the reading of His Needs, Her Needs.

The data Braswell collected were analyzed both qualitatively, to determine outcomes unique to the couple, and quantitatively using a repeated measures analysis of variance. It was hypothesized that through increasing understanding of their partner's gender differences, each individual's level of marital satisfaction will increase. On the MAT, post-test scores increased significantly for both men and women. On the DAS, significance was found for the men on the dyadic satisfaction sub-scale and the overall dyadic adjustment scale. For the women, significance was found on the dyadic cohesion sub-scale and the overall dyadic adjustment scale of the DAS. In other words, couples who read His Needs, Her Needs are likely to have a happier marriage. It supported the anecdotal evidence that I had been gathering for over 10 years.

What would have made Braswell's study more helpful would have been for her to investigate several books on gender differences. For example, John Gray's, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and Gary Chapman's Five Love Languages also focus attention on gender differences in marriage. Does reading any book on gender differences help? Or, as I would expect, would only His Needs, Her Needs actually improve marriages because it focuses attention on more than just gender differences; it helps couples learn to meet each other's most important emotional needs. If Braswell's thesis were correct, couples would save themselves a lot of time and energy by simply "understanding" each other's differences.

The finding that the reading of one book helped marriages still leaves us wondering why that book helped marriages. Was it the understanding of gender differences, or was it learning how to meet important emotional needs? Or, was it some other factor that we have not yet considered? And it would have been helpful if there had been a control group of couples who read Gone with the Wind each night. Maybe what helped the marriages was the time they spent together.

My reason for taking you through all of this conjecture is to point out the importance of conducting good research to discover what really helps marriages most. It's not only important to those of us who are creating effective therapeutic methods, but it's also important to those who are trying to decide what approach they should take to save their marriage. There's a lot of misinformation out there, and most couples seeking help are bombarded by it. That's why the 1995 Consumer's Report study showed that only 16% of those seeking help for their marriage thought that the help was useful. Most of what is being taught by marital therapists today is useless.

I taught statistics and research methods at colleges and universities for ten years before I went into full-time clinical practice. I know how to design and execute good research. As Director of Research for the Association of Marriage Builders, Inc., I would help develop experiments that would guide us to improved methods of marital therapy. And all of the funds raised would go to the actual costs of the experiments. I will not be drawing a salary from the Association.

A psychologist that I have come to respect, John M. Gottman (University of Washington), conducts research in marital therapy that has led him to reject his own pet theory. "Active listening," which is a very popular method of conflict resolution in marriage that John Gottman helped create, was demonstrated in his own laboratory to be ineffective in improving marriages ("Predicting Marital Happiness and Stability from Newlywed Interactions," Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 60 (1998), p. 5-22). I've known for some time that active listening didn't go far enough in helping resolve conflicts, but my experience with most theorists is that they are too wrapped up in their theories to see their mistakes. John Gottman is one of the rare exceptions who is objective enough about his field to correct his errors.

I want couples to have healthy and happy marriages more than I want to be proven right. Like Gottman, I may find a part of my program that really doesn't help couples, and I want to know what that is. But I also want to be able to prove the value of other parts of my program that really do help couples.

If you would like to support this organization�s quest for improving methods to strengthen marriage education, please send your tax-free contribution to: Association of Marriage Builders, Inc., 12568 Ethan Avenue North, White Bear Lake, MN 55110.

------------------------------


ANSWER:

Seems to me Dr. Harley is saying Freud's anecdotes are not supported by a broad empirical analysis (mental health studies/statistics).

Psychology is pretty fascinating stuff to me as a science because it seems there's less of a material aspect to it than other clinical disciplines. My mother's background is in psychology and my older brother's is in psychiatry so I have sort of seen both sides of the coin (treating mental issues with therapy vs treating them with drugs). You can't as readily examine a brain for biological markers the way someone treating a leg or an arm can, so there's more speculation.

I wouldn't think the choice here on Freud is nearly as binary as "either he was right or he was a liar".

It's certainly possible that he established coincidence or correlation without establishing correct causation for the issues his patients were experiencing. If a doctor prescribed only bedrest for patients with minor bacterial infections (flu, sinus infections, strep throat) for example, most of the reasonably healthy ones would eventually recover without any additional treatment. But that doesn't mean the mechanism causing those was a lack of rest, and certainly that approach wouldn't be as effective (or accurate in identifying cause) as prescribing them antibiotics.

My $.02.

This is interesting though, thank you for posting.

axe,

If you read his cases you will see it is not possible for coincidence to play a role otherwise it would be doing it, as Harley said, in modern experiments.

I don't think being a practitioner of bad science makes one a "liar."

Rather, some supporters of quacky theories and practices are absolutely honest; they believe in what they are doing, evidence be damned.

And the placebo effect is not something to be ignored. Neither is a lack of opposing evidence.

I don't think Frued is any more a liar than the scientist that started the whole frenzy over a supposed link between vaccines and autism; I think the intentions were genuine and pure, but the execution emphasized the goals over the evidence.

Not dishonesty, just bad science.

I thought that researcher was found to have falsified data.

Oh, he was thoroughly discredited for sure. With allegations of fraud and financial incentive, as well as allegations of abuse of handicapped youth r\t unnecessary diagnostic procedures.

However, I still think it's more bad science than being an outright liar; the desired outcome was favored over the methodology and the evidence.

A broader example may be homeopathy and/or naturopathy.

Homeopaths and naturopaths, and those they serve genuinely believe in those methods, despite the lack of evidence.

Or, atheists; to make an absolute statement that gods can't/don't exist is to refuse to examine evidence.

You have to remember that our current methods for statistical analysis and data collection weren't available to Freud. So some of what he said was insightful but much was incorrect (sample size alone could account for some of it.)