“What are the alternatives to factor (or component) analysis if one has a correlation whose analysis one cannot escape? There is only one alternative method of analysing a correlation matrix which needs to be mentioned, and that is to LOOK AT IT.”
“Quite the best alternative to factor analysis is to avoid being saddled with the analysis of a correlation matrix in the first place. (Just to collect a lot of people, to measure them all on a lot of variables, and then to compute a correlation matrix is, after all, not a very advanced way of investigating anything.)”
From Andrew S. C. Ehrenberg (1962). Some Questions About Factor Analysis. The Statistician, 12(3), 191-208