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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSIONS
A. Critique of the M-FDS as a Scientific Paradigm
1. The Old View
2. Methodology
Part of the problem with the "data" that Lake's sets forth as foundational for the entire M-FDS is that it is riddled with difficulty as to how it was obtained and how it should be interpreted. While Lake wants his theories to be accepted as "scientific" and towards that end uses the "terminology of science -- evidence, hypothesis, syndrome," he seems to gloss over the necessary distinction that the M-FDS is, at its very root. incapable of being tested experimentally in the sense of being able to relate cause and effect.30 The M-FDS is a theory which Lake has formulated which attempts to make sense of the data31 collected through the residential primal workshops.
When Lake writes that the hypothesis of the M-FDS "continues to resist attempts to nullify it"32 the question inevitably arises: "How could one nullify it?" The M-FDS is a theory partially made up of impossible-to-substantiate or refute tenets. For example, Lake infers a perceptual capability to the first trimester fetus that is sophisticated enough to be able to
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29Campbell, "Review of Tight Corners in Pastoral Counseling" 25.
30Lake addresses the issue of replicability in "Mutual Caring": "The immediate "scientific" question is, "Is it replicable elsewhere?" The answer is, "Yes, so long as you don't try to cut any corners". It would be fatal to replication to omit, for instance, the deep togetherness that happens in the group, as a result of the two days of leisured introductions, in which each person has had opportunity to speak of the life-problem that brought them here, with total freedom to be emotionally honest, and then to recollect and speak of the bodily sensation patterns and specific feelings which take hold of them when the ancient affliction strikes. . . .
To say to a group of scientific workers, totally unused to having that quality of intimacy and mutual openness with the subjects of their highly "controlled" experiments, "you cannot cut this corner or you are falling to replicate the ground rules of the workshop," is to state firmly a limitation they probably would find difficult to overcome. . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
If there are serious investigators, honestly concerned to know whether these things are as we have reported, I would advise against trying to replicate this in a "scientific establishment." It simply would not be a replication of the experiment, but something totally lacking in too many respects, But there is nothing to prevent their joining, as an unpretentious member of a workshop, open to the same constraints on loose criticism, and fully ready to share themselves and grow through the basis of this, coming to a scientifically reliable validation or refutation. To be scientific in these fields requires a stringency which the "Scientific method", as practiced in laboratories, has always strenuously evaded. I would guess that 'unconscious' roots to do with foetal experiences that have made 'knowing-by-emotional commitment' too painful and hazardous, and ~ the only tolerable stance, have a decisive part In determining that deliberate subjective impoverishment that calls itself 'scientific', but is not. [emphasis mine] (Lake, "Mutual Caring," 73-75.)
31David Macinnes,"Response to 'The Work of Christ in the
Healing of Primal Pain',"Theological Rewal 71 (Oct/Nov 1977): 12.
32Lake, Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling, 38.
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distinguish his mother's recognition or lack of it, regard or disregard, notice or lack of it.33 Lake writes elsewhere: "Before she knows that she is pregnant, the foetus knows what sort of person this is."34
This cannot be "proved" or ''disproved''. The fact that some persons "relive" these subtle perceptions as adults in a simulated primal experience of sorts is not "proof." Too many other variables potentially intervene, including fantasy, imagination, projection, and suggestion.
Thus, Lake states as "scientific fact" what cannot be verified as such. He writes, regarding the M-FDS, "These are not theories, they are facts."35 Lake seems to shade the difference between an observable verifiable "fact" which can be corroborated by others with an assumption based upon such a "fact." This is the difference between a statement such as "the fetus responds with increased movement to music" and the statement "the fetus attributes a badness of the unbearable situation to some inexplicable but indelible badness in his own very being."36 Many of Lake's "scientific facts" are in fact unsubstantiable assertions such as these.
Thus, Lake's M-FDS ends up being somewhat of a self-authenticating system37 not unlike Freud's, whereby the theories set forth to explain behavior are buttressed with "evidence" of whatever sort available. Speaking of Freud but also applicable to Lake, F.V. Smith describes this fundamental flaw:
The picture is one of continued searching for an explanation of behaviour and any field of subject matter or analogical device which rendered the behaviour
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33Lake, "Studies in Constricted Confusion," C41.
34Lake, Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling, 15.
35Lake, "The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain,"' 232.
36Peter Hutchinson, "Response to "The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," TheoIogical Renewal 71 (Oct/Nov 1977): 18.
Lake writes regarding the newborn: "The newborn may be left alone long enough to be nudged to the edge of the abyss of non-being, trembling through the phase of separation anxiety, eventually to fall, in a moment of horror, over the edge into nothingness which is the abandonment of hope, love, desire for life, and expectation of access to humanity. . . .
These are not theories, they are facts." (Lake, "The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," 232).
37 Hutchinson, "Response to 'The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," 17.
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comprehensible could be used.38
Those who question or refuse to accept the "evidence" are categorized as deluded. Lake writes that many, "particularly among the members of the helping professions, do experience deep, emotionally charged resistances even to considering this as a possibility, for themselves or others."39 One critic of Lake makes the point that the problem with such
untestable "grand theories" is that "they can easily become a kind of religion or metaphysic which positively inhibits the practitioners openness to re-examine them."40 Certainly this could be said of Lake.
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38F. V. Smith, Explanation of Human Behavior, quoted by Hutchinson, "Response to 'The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain,"' 18.
39Lake, "The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," 12.
40David Macinnes, "Response to 'The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain,"' 12.
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