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The Foundations of Psychoanalysis

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Language
  
English

ISBN
  
978-0520050174

Author
  
Adolf Grünbaum

Subject
  
Psychoanalysis

4.1/5
Goodreads

Pages
  
310

Originally published
  
1984

Page count
  
310

Country
  
United States of America

The Foundations of Psychoanalysis t3gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcStHvkUClspsbVRa

Series
  
Pittsburgh Series in Philosophy and History of Science

Media type
  
Print (Hardcover and Paperback)

Similar
  
Adolf Grünbaum books, Sigmund Freud books

The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique is a 1984 book by Adolf Grünbaum, in which Grünbaum offers a philosophical critique of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, evaluating the claim that it is a natural science. Grünbaum argues that there are methodological and epistemological reasons to conclude that some central Freudian theories are not well supported by empirical evidence. He also criticizes the hermeneutic interpretation of psychoanalysis propounded by the philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Paul Ricœur. The book was influential and has been considered the most important philosophical critique of Freud.

Contents

Background

According to Grünbaum, the "first impetus" for his critical examination of psychoanalysis came from his questioning of Karl Popper's philosophy of science: he suspected that Popper's "indictment of the Freudian corpus as inherently untestable had fundamentally misdiagnosed its very genuine epistemic defects, which are often quite subtle." Grünbaum acknowledged a debt to several philosophers, including Clark Glymour and Alexander Nehamas. Critic Frederick Crews read the draft of what became The Foundations of Psychoanalysis in 1977 and helped Grünbaum to obtain a publication offer from the University of California Press.

Summary

Grünbaum offers a "philosophical critique of the foundations of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis" and evaluates Freud's claim that psychoanalysis has the status of a natural science. He also criticizes the hermeneutic interpretation of psychoanalysis propounded by the philosophers Habermas and Ricœur, whom he finds guilty both of misreading Freud and misunderstanding the natural sciences. Grünbaum recounts the development of Freud's work, noting that Freud described his theory of repression as "the most essential part" of psychoanalysis, and that when the psychologist Saul Rosenzweig announced that he had experimental evidence for repression, Freud replied that it was superfluous given clinical observations. Grünbaum argues that there are methodological and epistemological reasons to think that some central Freudian doctrines are not well supported by empirical evidence. (For example, Grünbaum is critical of Freud's theory of dreams, which he considers the cornerstone of psychoanalysis).

Despite taking this position, Grünbaum approves of Freud's interpretation of religion and argues against the idea that psychoanalysis is a pseudo-science. He criticizes Karl Popper's view that psychoanalytic propositions cannot be disconfirmed and that psychoanalysis is therefore pseudo-scientific. Grünbaum considers Popper, like many other philosophers who have written about Freud, to be both a poor reader of Freud and a poor logician. Grünbaum observes, for example, that Freud's theory that paranoia results from repressed homosexuality invites the obviously falsifiable prediction that a decline in the repression of homosexuality should result in a corresponding decline of paranoia, thereby disproving Popper's claim that psychoanalytic propositions are unfalsifiable.

In Grünbaum's view, the causal claims of psychoanalysis must be assessed through methodological procedures deriving from the work of Francis Bacon and John Stuart Mill.

Reception

The Foundations of Psychoanalysis was influential. It was seen as a landmark in the debate over the merits of psychoanalysis when it was published, and a number of critics of Freud hailed it as a masterpiece. The book has also been considered the most important philosophical critique of Freud, though the amount of space Grünbaum devotes to criticizing hermeneutic interpretations of Freud (which amounts to a third of his book) has become notorious. Psychoanalysts have given Grünbaum greater attention than other recent critics of psychoanalysis.

Scientific and academic journals

M. A. Notturno and psychiatrist Paul R. McHugh wrote in Metaphilosophy that Grünbaum cogently argues that the clinical evidence held by Freud to provide the empirical basis for psychoanalysis is weak and that the validation of Freud's cardinal hypotheses must come mainly from extra-clinical studies.

Author John Kerr wrote that The Foundations of Psychoanalysis "has come to define contemporary debate over the evidentiary status of Freud's claims." Author Richard Webster, writing in Why Freud Was Wrong (1995), noted that Grünbaum's work has been criticized by Frank Cioffi, who rejects his portrayal of Freud as a philosophically astute investigator of human psychology. Webster argued that while the book contains many insights and much pertinent criticism of Freud's approach, it has been overvalued by critics of psychoanalysis because of Grünbaum's overly theoretical and abstract style of argument, which has distracted attention away from issues such as Freud's character.

Evaluations in books

Psychologist Hans Eysenck, writing in Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1985), deemed The Foundations of Psychoanalysis the definitive work on the subject, praising Grünbaum's "logical rigour and argumentative precision" and "extensive scholarship of both the psychoanalytic literature." Professor of German Ritchie Robertson wrote that The Foundations of Psychoanalysis is the leading scientific critique of Freud's work.

Psychoanalyst Marshall Edelson responded to Grünbaum's arguments in Hypothesis and Evidence in Psychoanalysis (1984). Psychoanalyst Joel Kovel credited Grünbaum with providing the best discussion of the problems surrounding the validation of Freud's theories. In his Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988) historian Peter Gay credited Grünbaum with discrediting Popper's argument that psychoanalysis is a pseudo-science, while philosopher Michael Ruse, writing in Homosexuality: A Philosophical Inquiry (1988), found his discussion of Popper to be definitive. Philosopher James Hopkins argued that Grünbaum's criticism of Freud's theory of dreams is based on a misunderstanding of Freud, and that Mill's methodology is inapplicable to motive and therefore inappropriate to assessing psychoanalysis, a psychology of motive.

Literary critic Frederick Crews commended Grünbaum's critique of Freud, but criticized him for focusing on Freud's clinical theory while neglecting Freud's metapsychology, and for accepting "Freud's after-the-fact professions of methodological sophistication." Grünbaum was criticized by philosopher David Sachs, who argued that Grünbaum focuses too much on passages from Freud's writings taken in isolation, without considering what Freud writes about the same subjects elsewhere in his work. Literary critic Alexander Welsh maintained that since it is not clear which parts of Freud's clinical data were reported and which were invented, Grünbaum's critique of Freud's claims to empiricism is seriously compromised. In his view, defenses of psychoanalysis against Grünbaum, including that of Edelson, suffer from the same problem.

Philosopher Jonathan Lear wrote that Grünbaum effectively criticizes Ricœur and Habermas, but added that despite what is often assumed Grünbaum's arguments "do not undermine the more general possibility of a causal hermeneutic account of human motivation." Philosopher Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen and psychologist Sonu Shamdasani wrote that while Grünbaum maintains that Freud was a "sophisticated scientific methodologist", who was aware of the possible effects of suggestion on his patients and attempted to deal with this issue through the "tally argument", the "tally argument" "presupposes the non-suggestibility rather than proving it." They thus consider his position unjustified. They rejected his view that Freud abandoned his seduction theory because of adverse evidence, claiming, following Cioffi, that Freud could not have had any such evidence.

References

The Foundations of Psychoanalysis Wikipedia