Copyright © 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Though a number of key issues have been clarified, there is no more agreement now than there was half a century ago concerning the status and objectivity of psychoanalysis. Controversy in the understanding and evaluation of psychoanalysis has its origin in the multifaceted character of Sigmund FREUD's theorizing -- the plurality of other disciplines with which Freud allied it, and the mix of methodologies that he employed -- but it is also a function of several other variables, including the diversity of schools (Kleinian, Jungian, ego-psychological, etc.) within the psychoanalytic movement itself, the uncertainty as to whether psychoanalysis is fundamentally a theory or a practice, and the variety of philosophical outlooks that have had an interest in either assimilating or repudiating psychoanalytic ideas.
It is helpful to distinguish in the diversity of schools two modes of approach to psychoanalysis: those that locate discussion of psychoanalysis firmly in the context of scientific methodology, and those that give priority to issues in the philosophy of mind. There is a tendency for this distinction to be correlated with contrasting estimates -- respectively negative and positive -- of the objectivity of psychoanalysis.
In the first group, the two landmark writings are Karl Popper 1963 (ch. 1) and Adolf Grünbaum 1984. Popper's enormously influential attack on psychoanalysis, in the context of a general rejection of inductivism in the philosophy of science, consists of the claim that psychoanalysis fails to open itself to refutation and so does not satisfy the condition of falsifiability that (in his account) supplies the only alternative to inductive support. On account of its alleged immunity to counter-evidence, psychoanalysis is classified as a "pseudoscience." Popper's criticisms (which in part stand independently of his own philosophy of science) had the effect of making untenable the naive view of psychoanalysis as a set of hypotheses unproblematically grounded in experience, and of provoking attempts -- the results of which have been markedly inconclusive -- to test psychoanalytic hypotheses experimentally in controlled, extra-clinical contexts (see Eysenck and Wilson 1973).
In direct opposition to Popper, Grünbaum maintains that psychoanalysis can be evaluated scientifically, and has elaborated a highly detailed critique of psychoanalysis centered on Freud's avowed aspiration to provide a theory of the mind that is successful by the canons of natural science, these being inductive, in Grünbaum's view. Grünbaum argues that Freudian theory reposes on claims that only psychoanalysis can give correct insight into the cause of neurosis, and that such insight is causally necessary for a durable cure. Grünbaum then proceeds to underline the empirical weakness of psychoanalysis' claim to causal efficacy, and presses the familiar objection that the therapeutic effects of psychoanalysis may be due to suggestion. Furthermore, Grünbaum argues that even if the clinical data is taken at face value, the inferences that Freud draws are unwarranted. (For further discussion of psychoanalysis' scientificity, see Hook 1964 and Sachs 1991.)
Discussion of psychoanalysis was initiated by philosophers sensitized by Wittgenstein's work in the philosophy of psychology to a set of issues independent from scientific methodology. They addressed the more basic conceptual question of whether psychoanalytic explanations are causal or rationalizing in form -- the common assumption being that these are exclusive modes of explanation -- and on this basis formulated different views of psychoanalysis' cogency, some of them positive (see MacDonald 1954: pt. VI). In response to the perceived problem of mechanism in Freudian metapsychology, Schafer (1976) undertook to translate its terms into those of "action language," an approach found attractive by many psychoanalytic theorists.
Contemporary developments in this vein bear witness to the subsequent explosion of work in the philosophy of mind, particularly to the influence of Donald Davidson's compatibilism of reasons and causes, and his ANOMALOUS MONISM. The significance of Davidson's work is to allow a reading of psychoanalysis that is consistent with physicalism and does justice simultaneously to psychoanalysis' commitment to search for meaningful connections among mental phenomena and its claim to provide causal explanation, while freeing it from the obligation to come up with strict causal laws. Against this background it becomes possible to argue that psychoanalysis is an extension of commonsense FOLK PSYCHOLOGY, arrived at by modifying the familiar "belief-desire" schema of practical reason explanation, for which it substitutes the concepts of wish and fantasy. (Melanie Klein's development of Freud's theories assumes, in this approach, special importance.) In such a view, psychoanalysis does not, contra Grünbaum, repose logically on therapeutic claims, and the specific inductive canons of the natural sciences are inappropriate to its evaluation; the grounds for psychoanalysis lie instead in its offering a unified explanation for phenomena (DREAMING, psychopathology, mental conflict, sexuality, and so on) that commonsense psychology is unable, or poorly equipped, to explain. (Defending this broadly circumscribed approach, see above all Wollheim 1984, 1991, and 1993, Hopkins 1988, 1991, and 1992; and also Davidson 1982; Lear 1990; Cavell 1993; and Gardner 1993.) This approach can be vindicated only if there is a determinate interpretative path from the attributions of commonsense psychology to those of psychoanalysis, a matter that can be decided only by examining clinical material. The central philosophical difficulty facing this approach is to show that psychoanalysis can extend commonsense psychology at the same time as revising it, that is, that the modifications psychoanalysis makes to commonsense psychology are not so radical as to effectively cut it loose from the latter. Thus two important questions for this approach, which continue to generate controversy, concern the intelligibility of postulating mental states that are unconscious (see Searle 1992: ch. 7) and mental content that is prelinguistic, unconceptualized, or nonpropositional (see Cavell 1993).
The ascent of cognitive science has encouraged the formulation of a further set of positions on psychoanalysis, which stand midway between the two groups just described. Freud's very early "Project for a scientific psychology" (1950/1895), an attempt at a general neurological theory of mental functioning, allows itself to be recast in more contemporary, computational terms (see Gill and Pribram 1976), and subpersonal reconstructions of Freud's properly psychoanalytic theories, implying their fundamental continuity with the "Project," have been offered (see Erdelyi 1985). Kitcher (1992) has made a detailed case for the stronger thesis that Freud should be interpreted as seeking to establish an interdisciplinary science of the mind of the sort that cognitive science now aims at. Cummins (1983: ch. 4) offers an understanding of psychoanalysis as striving to coordinate an interpretive level of description of the mind with an underlying functional story. Assuming psychoanalysis and cognitive science to be both empirically well grounded, some degree of fit between their functional delineations of the mind is almost certain. Whether any substantial theoretical integration of psychoanalysis with cognitive science can reasonably be expected is moot, however, and arguably stands or falls with the success of cognitive science in analyzing higher-level, propositional attitude-involving cognitive capacities.
The positions indicated above are far from exhaustive, and a comprehensive survey would include also Continental developments. One particularly influential early contribution is Jürgen Habermas's (1971/1968) hermeneutic reading, which seeks to separate psychoanalysis wholly from the natural sciences -- this association being attributed to a naturalistic and scientific misconception of psychoanalysis on Freud's part -- and integrate it with communication theory. Later Continental writers, having Lacanian psychoanalysis as a model, have tended to develop theories of psychoanalysis strongly oriented toward purely philosophical themes of representation and subjectivity.
Collections discussing psychoanalysis from various philosophical angles include Wollheim and Hopkins 1982, Clark and Wright 1988, and Neu 1991.
Cavell, M. (1993). The Psychoanalytic Mind: From Freud to Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Clark, P., and C. Wright, Eds. (1988). Mind, Psychoanalysis and Science. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cummins, R. (1983). The Nature of Psychological Explanation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Davidson, D. (1982). Paradoxes of irrationality. In R. Wollheim and J. Hopkins, Eds., Philosophical Essays on Freud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 289-305.
Erdelyi, M. (1985). Psychoanalysis: Freud's Cognitive Psychology. New York: Freeman.
Eysenck, H., and G. Wilson, Eds. (1973). The Experimental Study of Freudian Theories. London: Methuen.
Freud, S. (1950/1895). Project for a scientific psychology. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 24 vols. Translated by J. Strachey, Ed., in collaboration with A. Freud, assisted by A. Strachey and A. Tyson. London: Hogarth (1953-74), vol. 1, pp. 281 - 397.
Gardner, S. (1993). Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gill, M., and K. Pribram. (1976). Freud's "Project" Re-Assessed. London: Hutchinson.
Grünbaum, A. (1984). The Foundations of Psychoanalysis. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Habermas, J. (1968/1971). Knowledge and Human Interests. Translated by J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon.
Hook, S., Ed. (1964). Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method and Philosophy. New York: New York University Press.
Hopkins, J. (1988). Epistemology and depth psychology: Critical notes on "The Foundations of Psychoanalysis." In P. Clark and C. Wright, Eds., Mind, Psychoanalysis and Science. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 33-60.
Hopkins, J. (1991). The interpretation of dreams. In J. Neu, Ed., The Cambridge Companion to Freud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 86-135.
Hopkins, J. (1992). Psychoanalysis, interpretation, and science. In J. Hopkins and A. Savile, Eds., Psychoanalysis, Mind and Art: Perspectives on Richard Wollheim. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 3-34.
Kitcher, P. (1992). Freud's Dream: A Complete Interdisciplinary Science of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lear, J. (1990). Love and its Place in Nature: A Philosophical Reconstruction of Psychoanalysis. London: Faber.
MacDonald, M., Ed. (1954). Philosophy and Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
Neu, J., Ed. (1991). The Cambridge Companion to Freud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Sachs, D. (1991). In fairness to Freud: A critical notice of "The Foundations of Psychoanalysis," by Adolf Grünbaum. In J. Neu, Ed., The Cambridge Companion to Freud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 309-338.
Schafer, R. (1976). A New Language for Psychoanalysis. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Searle, J. (1992). The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wollheim, R. (1984). The Thread of Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wollheim, R. (1991). Freud. 2nd ed. London: Fontana Collins.
Wollheim, R. (1993). Desire, belief and Professor Grünbaum's Freud. In The Mind and Its Depths. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 91-111.
Wollheim, R., and J. Hopkins, Eds. (1982). Philosophical Essays on Freud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Copyright © 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology