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Many psychodynamic theories were not built with neurodivergent minds in view, but still get applied to them.

A theory that can explain everything, Karl Popper argued, explains nothing.

Neither the therapist's reading nor the client's self-report should be taken as hard fact.

An interpretation offered as a possibility, not as certainty, can be useful.

One of the most pointed critiques of psychoanalysis came from Karl Popper, writing in Conjectures and Refutations(1963). When he looked at psychoanalysts' work, he found that he was looking at something resembling "astrology rather than astronomy" (Popper, 1963). Studying these theories, he wrote, had the effect of an "intellectual conversion or revelation": once your eyes were opened, you saw confirming instances everywhere, and the world seemed full of verifications. Anyone who failed to see what you saw was either blinded by class interest or suffering from repressions that had not yet been analysed (Popper, 1963).

His main point is that Freud had built a theory that could not really be tested. A theory is meaningful, Popper argued, only if it tells you what would prove it wrong. Freud's theory, on Popper's account, cannot be falsified, and rules nothing out. For any behaviour a patient might present, and for its opposite just as readily, an interpretation is already waiting, so nothing the patient does could ever count against the theory. A theory that sets out to explain everything ends up, on Popper's view, explaining nothing.

Say you come in and say you feel sad about a friend who has pulled away. The therapist........

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