Précis ofThe Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique

Abstract

This book critically examines Freud's own detailed arguments for his major explanatory and therapeutic principles, the current neorevisionist versions of psychoanalysis, and the hermeneuticists' reconstruction of Freud's theory and therapy as an alternative to what they claim was a “scientistic” misconstrual of the psychoanalytic enterprise. The clinical case for Freud's cornerstone theory of repression – the claim that psychic conflict plays a causal role in producing neuroses, dreams, and bungled actions – turns out to be ill-founded for two main reasons: (a) Even if clinical data were valid, the method of free association has failed to support the psychoanalytic theory of unconscious motivation; (b) Clinical data tend in any case to be artifacts of the analyst's self-fulfilling expectations, thus losing much of their evidential value. The hypothesis that psychoanalytic treatment is in reality a placebo poses a serious challenge to the assumption that insight is a key causal factor when therapy is successful. This challenge has yet to be met by psychoanalysts. Similar conclusions undermine the neorevisionist versions of psychoanalysis. The most influential hermeneuticists, on the other hand, are shown to have imposed an alien philosophy on psychoanalysis, partly through their reliance on gross misconceptions of the natural sciences. Karl Popper's criticism of the Freudian corpus as empirically untestable has misjudged its evidential weaknesses, which are more subtle. If there exists empirical evidence for the principal psychoanalytic doctrines, it cannot be obtained without well-designed extraclinical studies of a kind that have for the most part yet to be attempted.

Seeking Security in the New Age: On Attachment and Emotional Compensation

“…[is] waning in credibility" (p. 126). Although the imprecise nature (e.g., "type of theorising," "such theories") of that accusation hints at the possible existence of a "straw-man," we believe that the authors are essentially correct to the extent that some psychoanalytic propositions are in practice nearly unfalsifiable (see, e.g., Granqvist 1998;Popper 1962) and that others have been less than optimally supported (e.g., Grünbaum 1984Grünbaum , 1986) by controlled empirical research (however, see Fisher and Greenberg 1996;Westen 1998). However, many developments within psychodynamic theorizing and research have occurred during the last century, some of which have taken the philosophical demands of an empirical natural science quite seriously (e.g., Bowlby 1969Bowlby , 1988.…”

Fear and Phobia: A Critical Review and the Rational-Choice Theory of Neurosis

“…However, this method is not sufficient to substantiate psychoanalytic hypotheses, because case studies are given to subjective interpretation (McNally, 2003;McNally, Clancy, & Barrett, 2004;Piper, 1999). Furthermore, Grünbaum (1986) showed, in his thorough critique of Freud's work, that "clinical data tend in any case to be artifacts of the analyst's self-fulfilling expectations, thus losing much of their evidential value" (p. 217).…”

How Does Our Brain Constitute Defense Mechanisms? First-Person Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis

“…One main point of criticism is that defense mechanisms cannot be validated in the same way as other scientific data (see for example Gruenbaum [25] in the ‘Introduction’ section). Our answer to this is the development of first-person methods such as the operationalization of first-person data.…”

“…They claim that the complexity and richness of subjective human experience can become lost in empirical neuroscientific investigation. Another argument, as put forward by Gruenbaum [25], is that possible psychodynamic processes cannot be attributed causal relevance in the same way as other scientifically investigable processes. This makes it rather difficult to empirically test and validate psychodynamic processes such as defense mechanisms.…”