Psychoanalysis Defended and Critiqued

Sigmund Freud was dubbed "the central imagination of our age" by Harold Bloom, but his critics focus on his scientific pretensions. It is widely accepted that psychoanalysis is a system of ideas, even though some of its tenets are testable and have been experimentally tested and invariably found to be false or uncorroborated. Freud is also accused of generalizing his own perversions and reinterpreting his patients' memories to fit his preconceived notions of the unconscious. 

Feminists accuse Freud of casting women as "defective" (naturally castrated and inferior) men, and culture scholars mock and condemn his suffocating authoritarianism and frequent and convenient conceptual reversals. Psychologists are mocked for their profession's lack of rigor, its literary and artistic qualities, the lack of empirical support for its assertions and foundations, the ambiguity of its terminology and ontology, and the scorn of "proper" scientists in the field.

Psychological "theories" do not account for the world, and are more concerned with "healing" than with predictive feats. Therapies are concerned with function, order, form, and ritual, and the interaction between the patient and the therapist is a microcosm of society. Both psychological and scientific theories are products of their times, and are influenced by contemporary values, mores, events, and interpellations. 

Psychoanalysis was a Kuhnian paradigm shift when it was elaborated, and its failure to generate a wealth of testable hypotheses and account for neurology discoveries does not diminish its significance. In terms of their subject matter, physics, both relativity theories and string theories were and still are in the same position.

Karl Jaspers distinguished between the scientific activities of Erklaren and Verstehen in 1963. Psychoanalysis is a branch of psychology, not a theory, and is ambiguous and self-contained. It is based on circumstantial evidence and is supported by epistemic accounts, beginning with the master himself. The ambiguity of psychoanalysis is another barrier to establishing its scientific value, as it is unclear what constitutes a cause and what constitutes an effect. Juan Rivera is correct that Freud's claims about infantile life cannot be proven, and Grunbaum repeatedly asserts that the theory's etiological claims are epidemiologically untestable.

However, this misses the point and goal of psychoanalysis: to provide an organizing and comprehensive narrative of human psychological development that is non-tendentious and persuasive. It depends on whether we want to treat it as science or as an art form.

"In fact, I am not a scientist at all... By temperament, I am nothing more than a conquistador, an adventurer."

(Sigmund Freud, letter to Friedrich Fleiss, 1900)

"If you bring forth that which is in you, that which you bring forth will be your salvation".

(From St. Thomas' Gospel)

"No, our science is not a mirage. But it would be an illusion to believe that what science cannot provide us with cannot be obtained elsewhere."

"The Future of an Illusion" by Sigmund Freud

Freud was dubbed "the central imagination of our age" by Harold Bloom. It has long been established that psychoanalysis is not a scientific theory in the strictest, most rigorous sense of the term. However, the majority of Freud's critics (including Karl Popper, Adolf Grunbaum, Havelock Ellis, Malcolm Macmillan, and Frederick Crews) focus on his - long-debunked - scientific pretensions.

Today, it is widely accepted that psychoanalysis is a system of ideas, even though some of its tenets are testable and have been experimentally tested and invariably found to be false or uncorroborated. It is a cultural construct as well as a (possible) deconstruction of the human mind. Despite its aspirations, psychoanalysis is not and has never been a value-neutral physics or dynamics of the psyche.

Freud is also accused of generalizing his own perversions and reinterpreting his patients' memories to fit his preconceived notions of the unconscious. Psychoanalysis as a form of therapy has been chastised as a crude form of brainwashing in cult-like settings.

Feminists accuse Freud of casting women as "defective" (naturally castrated and inferior) men. Culture scholars reveal the Victorian and middle-class origins of his theories about suppressed sexuality. Historians mock and condemn his suffocating authoritarianism and frequent and convenient conceptual reversals.

Many of these diatribes would have been attributed by Freud to his critics' defense mechanisms. Projection, resistance, and displacement all appear to be important. Psychologists are mocked for their profession's lack of rigor, its literary and artistic qualities, the lack of empirical support for its assertions and foundations, the ambiguity of its terminology and ontology, the scorn of "proper" scientists in the "hard" disciplines, and the constraints imposed by their experimental subjects (humans). These are the very flaws that they attribute to psychoanalysis.

Indeed, psychological narratives, particularly psychoanalysis, are not "scientific theories" by any stretch of the imagination. They are also unlikely to become ones in the future. Instead, they are organizing principles, similar to myths, religions, and ideologies.

Psychological "theories" do not account for the world. They describe reality and give it "true", emotionally-resonant, heuristic, and hermeneutic meaning at best. They are more concerned with "healing" - the restoration of harmony among people and within them - than with predictive feats.

Therapies are more concerned with function, order, form, and ritual than with essence and replicable performance. The interaction between the patient and the therapist is a microcosm of society, encapsulating and reifying all other forms of social interaction. It is more structured, to be sure, and it is based on a body of knowledge gleaned from millions of similar encounters. Nonetheless, the therapeutic process is nothing more than a well-attested insightful and informed dialogue.

Both psychological and scientific theories are products of their times, offspring of the civilizations and societies from which they arose, context-dependent and culture-bound. As a result, their credibility and longevity are always in doubt. Contemporary values, mores, events, and interpellations influence both hard-edged scientists and thinkers in the "softer" disciplines.

The distinction between "proper" dynamics theories and psychodynamic theories is that the former asymptotically aspire to an objective "truth" "out there," whereas the latter emerge and emanate from an inner, introspective truth that is immediately familiar and serves as the bedrock of their speculations. Scientific theories, unlike psychological "theories," must be tested, falsified, and modified because their truth is not self-contained.

Nonetheless, psychoanalysis was a Kuhnian paradigm shift when it was elaborated. It completely and dramatically broke with the past. It created an abnormally large number of new, unsolved problems. It proposed new methodological procedures for accumulating empirical evidence (research strategies). It was established through observations (however scant and biased). In other words, it was experimental rather than theoretical. It served as a frame of reference, a conceptual sphere within which new ideas could emerge.

Its failure to generate a wealth of testable hypotheses and account for neurology discoveries does not diminish its significance. In terms of their subject matter, physics, both relativity theories and string theories were and still are in the same position.

Karl Jaspers distinguished between the scientific activities of Erklaren and Verstehen in 1963. Erklaren is about matching up causes and effects. Verstehen is the ability to grasp connections between events intuitively and non-causally. Psychoanalysis is about understanding, not explaining. It is a hypothetico-deductive method for gathering information about events in a person's life and generating insights about their relevance to his current state of mind and functioning.

So, is psychoanalysis a science, a pseudo-science, or something else entirely?

Psychoanalysis is a branch of psychology, not a theory. It's full of neologisms and formalism, but it, like Quantum Mechanics, has many incompatible interpretations. As a result, it is ambiguous and self-contained (recursive). Psychoanalysis determines which hypotheses can be tested and what constitutes its own falsification. In other words, it is a meta-theory in psychology: a theory about generating theories.

Furthermore, psychoanalysis theory is frequently confused with psychoanalysis therapy. Conclusively demonstrating that the therapy works does not establish the veridicality, historicity, or even usefulness of the theory's conceptual edifice. Furthermore, therapeutic techniques evolve much faster and more significantly than the theories that ostensibly yield them. They are "moving targets" that self-modify, rather than rigid and replicable procedures and rituals.

The ambiguity of psychoanalysis is another barrier to establishing its scientific value. It is unclear, for example, what constitutes a cause in psychoanalysis - and what constitutes an effect.

Consider the unconscious critical construct. Is it responsible for our behavior, conscious thoughts, and emotions? Is there a "ratio" (explanation) provided? Or are they simply manifestations of inexorable underlying processes? Even these fundamental questions are not addressed in classic (Freudian) psychoanalytic theory. So much for claiming to be a scientific endeavor.

Psychoanalysis is based on circumstantial evidence and is supported by epistemic accounts, beginning with the master himself. It relies on common sense and prior experience. It makes statements like, "given X, Y, and Z reported by the patient, doesn't it stand to (everyday) reason that A caused X?" or "We already know that B causes M, that M is similar to X, and that B is similar to A. Isn't it reasonable to believe that A is the cause of X? ".

Later in therapy, the patient confirms these insights by feeling "right" and "correct," that they are epiphanous and revelatory, that they have retrodictive and predictive powers, and by reporting his reactions to the therapist-interpreter. This acclaim confirms the narrative's probative value as a basic (if not primitive) form of explanation that provides a time frame, a coincidental pattern, and sets of teleological aims, ideas, and values.

Juan Rivera is correct that Freud's claims about infantile life cannot be proven, even with a Gedankenexperimental film camera, as suggested by Robert Vaelder. It is also true, as Grunbaum repeatedly asserts, that the theory's etiological claims are epidemiologically untestable. However, these failures miss the point and goal of psychoanalysis: to provide an organizing and comprehensive narrative of human psychological development that is non-tendentious and persuasive.

Should such a story be testable and falsifiable, or should it be rejected (as the Logical Positivists insist)?

It depends on whether we want to treat it as science or as an art form. This is the circularity of the anti-psychoanalysis arguments. If Freud's work is regarded as the modern equivalent of myth, religion, or literature, it does not need to be tested to be considered "true" in the most profound sense. After all, how much of nineteenth-century science has survived to this day?