Philosophy, Science, and Psychoanalysis: a critical meeting

Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2007

This article discusses the question of the basis of changes in psychoanalytic concepts, theory, and treatment. Illustrative examples discussed include the "widening scope" of the use of "parameters" in psychoanalytic treatment; the rejection of the "Enlightenment Vision" and the concomitant de-emphasis on the role of insight; the concept of "narrative truth"; and the "totalistic" reconceptualization of the meaning of countertransferase. I then discuss the relationship between research and clinical practice and argue that if it is to grow, psychoanalysis must be open to and attempt to integrate findings from other related disciplines.

2018

© The Author 2018. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work. This paper summarises the core scientific claims of psychoanalysis and rebuts the prejudice that it is not ‘evidence-based’. I address the following questions. (A) How does the emotional mind work, in health and disease? (B) Therefore, what does psychoanalytic treatment aim to achieve? (C) How effective is it?

Table of contents: Braddock & Lacewing, Introduction. Part I. Psychoanalysis. Brearley, What Do Psychoanalysts Do? Budd, Reading and Misreading. Rusbridger, Elements of the Oedipus Complex: A Kleinian Account. Tuckett, Civilization and its Discontents Today. Part II. Philosophy. Cottingham, A Triangle of Hostility? Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Religion. Lacewing, Do Unconscious Emotions Involve Unconscious Feelings? Harcourt, Guilt, Shame, and the ‘Psychology of Love’. Braddock, Psychoanalysis as Functionalist Social Science: The Legacy of Freud’s ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’. III. Perspectives. Rustin, How Do Psychoanalysts Know What They Know? Robertson, Freud’s Literary Imagination. Connors, Force, Figuration, and Repetition in Freud. Fletcher, Gender, Sexuality and the Theory of Seduction.

Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences, 2013

Psychoanalytic theory has great explanatory scope. Hypotheses about psychological mechanisms such as identification and projection, and about the unconscious working of motives, provide explanations for many aspects of development from infancy through adulthood; for symptoms and structures of motivational conflict in mental disorders including schizophrenia, depression and mania; and for the role of unconscious motivation and mental conflict in war and other forms of group conflict. (For italicized terms see Laplanche and Pointalis in the recommended reading below). These hypotheses, in turn, are based upon clinical evidence, that is, the actions, utterances, thoughts, feelings, etc. that emerge during psychoanalysis, in the particular clinical settings devised by Freud and his successors. Accordingly, philosophical discussions of psychoanalysis have frequently focused on two topics: (i) how well psychoanalytic theories can be regarded as evidentially supported by the clinical data they are initially framed to explain, and (ii) how far particularly psychoanalytic conceptions of unconscious mental states and processes should be regarded as viable. The first of these will be the main topic of this entry, and the second will be briefly considered at the close.

Psychoanalytic theory has great explanatory scope. Hypotheses about psychological mechanisms such as identification and projection, and about the unconscious working of motives, provide explanations for many aspects of development from infancy through adulthood; for symptoms and structures of motivational conflict in mental disorders including schizophrenia, depression and mania; and for the role of unconscious motivation and mental conflict in war and other forms of group conflict. (For italicized terms see Laplanche and Pointalis in the recommended reading below).

Philosophy, Psychiatry, Psychology, 2018

For psychoanalysis to qualify as scientific psychology, it needs to generate data that can evidentially support theoretical claims. Its methods, therefore, must at least be capable of correcting for biases produced in the data during the process of generating it; and we must be able to use the data in sound forms of inference and reasoning. Critics of psychoanalysis have claimed that it fails on both counts, and thus whatever warrant its claims have derive from other sources. In this article, I discuss three key objections, and then consider their implications together with recent developments in the generation and testing of psychoanalytic theory. The first and most famous is that of ‘suggestion’; if it sticks, clinical data may be biased in a way that renders all inferences from them unreliable. The second, sometimes confused with the first, questions whether the data are or can be used to provide genuine tests of theoretical hypotheses. The third will require us to consider the question of how psychology can reliably infer motives from behavior. I argue that the clinical method of psychoanalysis is defensible against these objections in relation to the psychodynamic model of mind, but not wider metapsychological and etiological claims. Nevertheless, the claim of psychoanalysis to be a science would be strengthened if awareness of the methodological pitfalls and means to avoid them, and alternative theories and their evidence bases, were more widespread. This may require changes in the education of psychoanalysts.

Behaviour Research and Therapy, 1985

American Imago, 2008

In each chapter there is a discussion of practical, clinical issues. Then the authors exemplify an analytic attitude and possible interventions. This illustrates the attitude of the authors: ''According to our opinion it is the quality of the psychoanalytic space that is decisive for whether the initiated process can be called psychoanalytic' ' (p. 69). The suggested definition of the psychoanalytic space is as follows: ''The psychoanalytic space is constituted by the sum of the psychological qualities that activate, focus, enlarge and maintain the patient's transference to the therapist'' (p. 86). In the chapter about the therapist's interventions there is a short passage about interpretation of dreams. The authors clearly state that they do not give dreams a special place when listening and see the material in the same way as anything else, where the meaning and importance are decided by the actual clinical situation. Then follow two clinical examples. Part Three, 'Theory about Change' describes curative factors in a psychoanalytic tradition and in a short chapter how to validate psychoanalytic processes by the narrative of the patient and by an in-depth interview. The Epilogue ends with the following dictum: ''The narrative of life is inscribed in the form' ' (p. 233). The whole book is rooted in clinical work, the daily relation to the patient, to the analyst and the relation between them. Underteksten can be recommended for the experienced therapist who wants to be challenged by new ways of thinking about classical psychoanalytic thought as well as for the student who wants to understand and experience the spirit of psychoanalytic therapy and how long-term treatment in depth works. The book is written in nuanced and accurate language and is well supplied with a table of contents, references, name index and index. Since its publication the book has been translated into Danish and has found a place in the curriculum in different psychotherapeutic trainings.

Infant Observation, 2020

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.