Hermeneutics versus Science in Psychoanalysis: A Resolution to the Controversy Over the Scientific Status of Psychoanalysis Paul Fusella The controversy over the scientific status of psychoanalysis is investigated and a resolution is proposed. The positions held by the hermeneuticists, conveyed through the hermeneutic interpretation of psychoanalysis put forth by Jurgen Habermas and Paul Ricoeur, are reviewed. The views of psychoanalysis as a science held by the philosopher of science Adolf Grünbaum and by American psychoanalyst Robert S. Wallerstein are also considered. Psychoanalysis remains relevant today because it has situated itself among the other disciplines as a hybrid science, not quite a pure hermeneutic on the one hand, and not quite a pure science on the other, while at the same time having proven to be both these things—and in doing so has revolutionized the way we think about human nature.
Since its inception psychoanalysis has struggled with its identity— whether it is an empirical science or a human science. Its founder, Sigmund Freud, had every intention to create a new science of man using the other physical sciences as his template. More than a century later, psychoanalytic scholars debate the scientific status of the discipline. On the one side are the hermeneuticists, who believe that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic discipline, not capable of being held to the principles of the traditional sciences but instead requiring a more humanistic understanding. On the other side are certain psychoanalysts who believe that psychoanalysis is a science and that its basic theoretical tenets and therapeutic efficacy can be validated by empirical-analytical methods that are akin to those used in the other basic sciences. The present paper aims to review both sides of this debate, Psychoanalytic Review, 101(6), December 2014
© 2014 N.P.A.P.
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evaluating the arguments of the major voices for the hermeneutic conception and the empirical science conceptualization, respectively. The purpose is to provide a resolution to the controversy by making a further argument that psychoanalytic theory and practice in its contemporary form need not choose sides, but instead can situate itself among the other disciplines as somewhat of a hybrid science, not quite a pure hermeneutic and not quite a pure empirical-analytical science, but rather something that draws on both those frameworks and thereby further undergirds its relevance and importance even today. The first sentence of Freud’s Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895) reads, “The intention is to furnish a psychology that shall be a natural science: that is to represent psychical processes as quantitatively determinate states of specifiable material particles, thus making those processes perspicuous and free from contradiction” (p. 295). Thus, Freud’s desire was to account for mental functioning, both conscious and specifically unconscious, in terms of quantifiable matter—in his case that meant neurons and neuronal functioning. He was not able to accomplish this bold project during his lifetime; however, he as well as his successors have found other ways to capture the validity and credibility of the theory that satisfy the empirical criteria of science that he so earnestly sought to accomplish. The development of psychoanalytic theory has gone through many revisions, both during Freud’s lifetime and in the decades following his death. The theoretical emphasis was one of positivism and reductionism in its fledgling years, but it turned to an emphasis on psychological processes and interpretation later on. Because of the dominance and influence of psychoanalysis in both academic and applied settings, establishing the validity of the theory and the efficacy of the therapy became even more pressing in the mid-twentieth century. During this time, psychoanalysts and philosophers of science began to debate the scientific status of psychoanalysis all the more. The main voices in the debate in support of psychoanalysis as an empirical-analytical science are Adolf Grünbaum the philosopher of science who spent a good deal of his academic life studying the scientific validity of psychoanalytic theory. Grün-
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baum (1984) holds the position that all reality is subject to empirical-analytical verification, thus making psychoanalysis a scientific discipline. However, he also believes that psychoanalysts have gone about verifying their hypotheses in the wrong way, using the clinical situation as the milieu for validation. Grünbaum argues that extraclinical controlled studies are called for in order to establish the validity of the theory and the efficacy of the therapy. He believes that until this is accomplished, psychoanalysis is a science with the evidence lacking (Grünbaum, 1984; Terwee, 1990). Another supporter of psychoanalysis as a science is the American psychoanalyst Robert S. Wallerstein. He, like Grünbaum, rejects the hermeneutic interpretation of psychoanalysis and holds the position that psychoanalysis is an empirical-analytical science. Unlike Grünbaum however, Wallerstein (1986b) believes passionately in the traditional methods of testing and validating theoretical tenets within the context of the clinical situation, and argues that although these methods are imperfect, they provide a legitimate way to validate the clinical theory. He holds that the extraclinical studies that Grünbaum proposes also have their logical and methodological pitfalls, and describes a case in point where the traditional methods were used to validate psychoanalysis in an empirical way—the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation. This was a longitudinal study that culminated in Wallerstein’s (1986a) book 42 Lives in Treatment. An alternative to the positivistic and empirical-analytical interpretation of psychoanalytic theory is the hermeneutic one. Hermeneutics is an approach to understanding reality that is the antithesis of empirical-analytical science and substitutes subjectivity, contextualism, and philosophical understanding for objectivity, positivism, and reductionism. It became relevant to psychoanalysis because it developed out of efforts to counteract the positivistic influence in the social sciences in the mid-twentieth century. The principal voices on this side of the debate are Jurgen Habermas and Paul Ricoeur. Habermas (1971) conceptualizes psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic discipline by arguing that it was plagued by a scientistic self-misunderstanding from the very beginning because it was cre-
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ated as an observational science of mental events. Habermas argues that mental events by their very nature are not open to empirical investigation the way natural phenomena are. Perhaps more importantly, Habermas argues that the process of psychoanalysis is one of self-reflection. The discourse between analyst and analysand is the material that is to be interpreted from a hermeneutic frame of reference within the context of the analytic dyad. Ricoeur (1970, 1981) puts forth his hermeneutic interpretation of psychoanalysis by arguing that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutics of suspicion, whereby the work of psychoanalysis is to decipher the disguised meaning of consciousness. Ricoeur (1970) also takes up the argument made by Stephen Toulmin that the statements of psychoanalytic theory are reasons for behavior rather than causes for behavior. In other words, he applies a hermeneutic interpretation of the language of psychoanalysis to establish that it does not account for causality but for motivations for behavior. Ricoeur (1981) also addresses the nature of the question of proof in psychoanalytic theory, as he holds the position that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic discipline. The conclusion that Habermas and Ricoeur draw ultimately characterizes psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic but not a pure hermeneutic discipline. They both agree that the discipline does import some characteristics of a basic science, and thus is not quite a pure science nor a pure member of the humanities. Wallerstein and Grünbaum defend the scientific status of the discipline; however, they conclude that there remain methodological problems in establishing the validity of the theory and the efficacy of the therapy. These scholars and their arguments for and against the scientific nature of psychoanalysis represent a small window into a very complex and long-standing controversy that continues to spark heated debate in the field. Since both sides have consistently been able to put together cogent arguments defending their respective positions, perhaps the resolution of this controversy is to place psychoanalysis within some middle ground, as a hybrid science among the other disciplines. In so doing, psychoanalysis can solidify its place in our culture as both a philosophy and science of human nature and as a form of psychotherapeutic treat-
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ment for mental illness, as it has been in the past, continues to be in the present, and certainly will continue to be for future generations to come. JURGEN HABERMAS: PSYCHOANALYSIS AS SELF-REFLECTION AND THE SCIENTISTIC SELF-MISUNDERSTANDING OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
The work of Jurgen Habermas is closely tied to a form of political philosophy and social criticism known as Critical Theory, which was created by members of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research, established in 1923. Critical Theory was advanced as an alternative to the positivistic social science that dominated much of the early to mid-twentieth century and that presented itself as neutral and value free. Critical social theorists were heavily influenced by psychoanalysis and used psychoanalytic ideas to understand the individual as a member of society. For Habermas, it is not the theoretical content of psychoanalysis that is important, but the dialogic nature of the psychoanalytic process. Habermas points out that Freud created a new type of discipline, one that is governed by different set of principles than the traditional sciences and humanities (Woolfolk, 1998). Knowledge is inextricably linked to social origin and function, according to Habermas. Understanding a body of knowledge is to understand it within its social context. Habermas uses what he refers to as “cognitive interests” to understand the sociocultural context of knowledge. Cognitive interests reflect the human concerns that underlie a particular intellectual discipline. Habermas argues that what humans study and the manner in which we go about studying is determined by the human interests and purposes that a discipline is founded on. Habermas describes three types of cognitive interests (Woolfolk, 1998): the technical, the practical, and the emancipatory, respectively corresponding to the empirical-analytical disciplines (natural sciences), the historical-hermeneutic disciplines, and the empirical-critical. The empirical-analytic disciplines are associated with the technical interest of understanding nature. Quantification, forming general laws, and making predictions of natural
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phenomena using empirical procedures are characteristic of this domain. The historical-hermeneutic disciplines use a fundamentally different kind of methodology. From this perspective, data is generated by understanding human meanings, not through observation of neutral facts. In this domain, the interpretation of texts is the counterpart to verification of natural laws in the empirical- analytic domain. The distinction that is made here by Habermas between the empirical-analytical and the historical-hermeneutic disciplines can be traced to the distinction made by Dilthey between the Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences) and the Geisteswissenschaften (humanities). For Habermas, psychoanalysis is a combination of both the empirical- analytical and the historical- hermeneutic. He argues that, as with the natural sciences, psychoanalysis traces causal connection, attempts to verify its theoretical tenets through observation, and provides explanatory hypotheses. However, psychoanalysis is a form of hermeneutics whereby therapeutic progress is made by the interpretation of the linguistic text that is communicated to the analyst by the patient during the encounter. Because psychoanalysis represents an integration of these two domains it belongs to a third category, according to Habermas. This category, being the empirical-critical, is governed by emancipatory interests, which are human interests that involve reflecting on social, cultural, and political injustice and how and why it comes to exist and how it might be remedied (Woolfolk, 1998). Habermas (1971) conceptualizes psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic discipline by first describing his contention that psychoanalysis is science as self-reflection. He argues that the language that is used within the context of the interactive dialogue between analyst and analysand is the stuff that is to be interpreted from a hermeneutic perspective. He elaborates this idea by contrasting what he refers to as Dilthey’s philological hermeneutics to Freud’s depth hermeneutics, whereby “psychoanalytic interpretation is concerned with those connections of symbols in which a subject deceives itself about itself. The depth hermeneutics that Freud contraposes to Dilthey’s philological hermeneutics deals with texts indicating self-deceptions of the author” (p. 218). Interpretation, whether of parapraxes or the latent content of dreams
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communicated to the analyst by the analysand, is characteristic of this process of self-reflection that is psychoanalysis, according to Habermas; it is thus more appropriately categorized as a hermeneutic endeavor than a traditional scientific enterprise. Using language as his focus, Habermas argues that symptoms transform themselves into symbols that are incomprehensible. The goal of psychoanalysis is to make these symbols understandable and to replace them with better adjusted ways of thinking and behaving. This argument that language is the window into the psychological world of the patient is at the center of what it means for psychoanalysis to be a depth hermeneutics. The analysis and interpretation of faulty language that gives rise to symptom formation is what frees the patient from his or her pathology and helps that patient to develop better ways of dealing with past and present. Habermas (1971) continues his argument that psychoanalysis is a science of self-reflection by stating that it is inherent in the psychoanalytic process that the patient becomes more self- conscious. Habermas explains that the interpretation of language as text does not suffice; the breaking through of repression and the process of self-reflection constitute the atmosphere in which transformations take place in the analytic relationship. According to Habermas, the analyst is akin to an archeologist, using the language of the patient, the text that is communicated, to rebuild a past that the patient has forgotten. It is through this process of rebuilding the past that the patient begins to remember, which, as a result, allows for self-reflection. Habermas (1971) continues his hermeneutic conceptualization of psychoanalysis by describing that psychoanalytic metapsychology is one of self-misunderstanding: The birth of psychoanalysis opens up the possibility of arriving at the dimension that positivism closed off. . . . For the scientific self- misunderstanding of psychoanalysis inaugurated by Freud himself, as the physiologist that he originally was . . . however, this misunderstanding is not entirely unfounded. For psychoanalysis joins hermeneutics with operations that genuinely seemed to be reserved to the natural sciences. (p. 214)
Here Habermas argues that from the beginning Freud modeled his theory of human psychology on the natural sciences, and in its
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early stages he passionately believed conscious, and especially unconscious, mental life would be confirmed to have neurobiological undergirdings. This intention was largely abandoned in Freud’s later writings, which were based more on psychological processes, according to Habermas. Freud was caught up in what Habermas describes as a scientistic self-understanding from the very beginning. It is from this position that Freud progressed from objectivism and positivism to a depth hermeneutic via the interpretation of dreams and interpretive approaches to other pathological symptoms. Because this is so, psychoanalysis is not a reductionistic and empirical science, but a process of self-reflection and interpretation. Habermas draws a distinction between the metahermeneutics of psychoanalysis and its metapsychology. He argues that the tripartite structural model of id, ego, and superego allows for the abstraction of language abnormalities and behavioral pathology that is open to interpretation during an analytic encounter. Freud’s creation and elaboration of this model allow for the interpretive process of language and behavior to be understood from a hermeneutic perspective. However, interpretation must be distinguished from the theoretical model. It is the experiences of early life—object choice, identification with caregiver, and the introjection of lost objects—that make comprehensible the circumstance surrounding ego formation and function. This process of making the incomprehensible nuances of narrative understandable is the essence of self-reflection, which is at the center of the analytic process as a hermeneutic enterprise. This distinction between metahermeneutics and metapsychology is key to Habermas’s assertion of the scientific self- misunderstanding of psychoanalysis. Originally, elements of the psychoanalytic metapsychology such as the psychical apparatus and the theory of the instincts were embedded in a positivistic framework. This is in contrast to the interpretive work that is done during the analytic process of self-reflection and self-discovery that allows for healing to take place. Habermas argues that this contrast between metapsychological positivism and practical hermeneutic interpretation reveals that psychoanalysis is built on a scientistic self-misunderstanding.
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PAUL RICOEUR: PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A HERMENEUTICS OF SUSPICION, A HERMENEUTIC ANALYSIS OF THE LANGUAGE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND THE QUESTION OF PROOF IN PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
Paul Ricoeur, like Habermas, conceptualizes psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic discipline. Ricoeur was a philosopher best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation, and this is conveyed in his work with psychoanalysis. In his words, psychoanalysis is a hermeneutics of suspicion, and he argues that Freud belongs to the school of suspicion in a tradition of philosophers that include Marx and Nietzsche. While Marx is relegated to economics and Nietzsche to existentialism and phenomenology, Freud deals with psychiatry and consciousness. According to Ricoeur (1970), psychoanalysis deals with having to reconcile two separate forms of interpretation. On the one hand there is recollection of meaning, and on the other the reduction of the illusions and lies of consciousness. A hermeneutics of suspicion aims to decipher the truth of consciousness when truth is lying. In other words, what one thinks and how one behaves is the result of censorship by the unconscious. It is the task of psychoanalysis to make meaningful that which is censored; this is done through interpretation. Ricoeur (1970) writes, “Understanding is hermeneutics: henceforward, to seek meaning is no longer to spell out the consciousness of meaning, but to decipher its expressions” (p. 33). Ricoeur (1970) continues his analysis by describing how psychoanalysis seeks not only to decipher the illusions of consciousness, but to extend consciousness. He argues that for Freud it was not enough to uncover meaning through interpretation; in doing so he hoped to enlarge the patients’ consciousness about themselves and their world with the aim that they would lead healthier and happier lives. According to Ricoeur, “one of the earliest homages paid to psychoanalysis speaks of ‘healing through consciousness.’ The phrase is exact—if one means thereby that analysis wishes to substitute for an immediate and dissimulating consciousness a mediate consciousness taught by the reality principle” (p. 35).
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Ricoeur (1970) includes as part of his hermeneutic analysis of psychoanalysis a description of philosopher Stephen Toulmin’s work, which provides an analysis of the language of psychoanalysis. Ricoeur explains that in Toulmin’s account of psychoanalytic language as text analogues, the latter do not represent causes for statements, but rather are statements that provide reasons for behavior. Causal explanations are the stuff of the natural sciences and consist of statements that account for causality in the natural world. The language of psychoanalysis consists of statements of motives for behavior, and therefore is better accounted for by hermeneutic interpretation than an empirical-scientific interpretation. Ricoeur is in agreement with Toulmin’s position but argues that what happens in psychoanalytic theory is something of a mixed discourse that combines cause and effect statements embedded in the language of the structural model. Ricoeur extends his position on this matter to suggest that psychoanalytic discourse falls outside the cause-and-effect paradigm. Like Habermas, Ricoeur wants to put psychoanalysis in a position where it is not a pure empirical science, on the one hand, but not essentially one of the humanities, on the other (Woolfolk, 1998). In addition to his conceptualization of psychoanalysis as a hermeneutics of suspicion and an analysis of psychoanalytic- language text analogues as statements of motives for behavior, Ricoeur uses epistemological dialectics to demonstrate that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic discipline. The dialectic divide he points out is between scientific psychology and psychoanalytic phenomenology. Ricoeur (1970) lays out competing accounts of psychoanalytic theory as an observational science versus psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic discipline by describing the argument of logicians such as Ernest Nagel, who argues against the position that it is an observational science. Nagel argues that psychoanalysis lacks empirical verification because the theory does not consist of operational definitions that are connected to unambiguous facts about human psychology in the way that scientific psychology (i.e., behaviorism) does. In addition, psychoanalytic theory, according to Nagel and other logicians, lacks logic of proof. Psychoanalysis uses interpretations as
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its source of empirical validation, and Nagel argues that this is insufficient because there are too many variables that go into having an interpretation meet the criteria of validation. Nagel completes his argument by stating that psychoanalysis has been unable to demonstrate the effectiveness of itself as a form of therapy because of its inability to satisfy the aforementioned criteria for an empirical science; as a result, it has been unable to construct controlled studies to demonstrate efficacy. On the other side of this debate outlined by Ricoeur (1970) are psychoanalysts, such as David Rapaport and Heinz Hartmann, who have attempted to counter the attack by the logicians and have gone so far as to reformulate some of the basic theoretical tenets of psychoanalysis in so doing. The argument consists of a variety of positions that suggest that psychoanalysis is an empirical science. The first part of the argument states that the focus of psychoanalysis is behavior, which puts it in agreement with the empirical point of view save that it also emphasizes latent behavior. Second, psychoanalysis is guided by the gestalt point of view that is shared by academic psychology. Therefore, psychoanalytic entities such as the id, ego, and superego are aspects of behavior and as a result are open to empirical investigation. Third, the various models of psychoanalysis, (i.e., the topographic model of the psychical apparatus, the economic model of the instincts, and the model of fixation and regression in psychosexual development) are able to be combined in one overarching metapsychology, which satisfies the organismic point of view, or the view that Freud’s theory can be viewed holistically as a unified theory, and sidesteps challenges of psychoanalysis as a body of disparate theories of human behavior that are marked by atomism versus mechanism (Ricoeur, 1970). Ricoeur (1970) writes, “Psychology is an observational science dealing with the facts of behavior; psychoanalysis is an exegetical science dealing with relationships of meaning between substitute objects and the primordial (and lost) instinctual objects. The two disciplines diverge from the very beginning, at the level of the initial notion of fact and of inference from facts” (p. 359). Ricoeur resorts to the analysis of psychoanalytic language that Toulmin proposed to illuminate the dialectic of psychoanalytic epistemology. Again, what is found is that psychoanalytic lan-
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guage presents a set of statements providing motives for behavior rather than causes for behavior. But Ricoeur is divided on the epistemological controversy that exists between scientific psychology and psychoanalysis. On the one side is Toulmin’s argument for psychoanalysis providing reason and motives for behavior rather than causality for behavior. On the other side of the controversy, motive-for and cause-for statements are argued to be one and the same, both part of the psychoanalytic discourse that Ricoeur refers to as a semantics of desire. Again, Ricoeur argues that psychoanalytic theory provides a mixed discourse that is not part of the motive–cause paradigm, which “is enough to make the split between psychoanalysis and the observational sciences operative from the beginning” (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 363). When one proposes that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic discipline and not a scientific discipline and therefore its tenets cannot be grounded in the empirical validation that is used in the natural sciences, the question that arises is how does one validate the theoretical premises of psychoanalysis? Ricoeur (1981) addressed this problem because he recognized the importance of resolving the epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis. He outlined criteria for facts in psychoanalytic theory, then evaluated the investigatory procedure and how that relates to the method of treatment and theoretical terms, and finally turned to the question of truth and verification in the theory. Ricoeur (1981) writes, What sort of verification and falsification are the statements of psychoanalysis capable of? To ask about the procedures of verification and falsification is to ask which means of proof are appropriate to the truth claims of psychoanalysis? My thesis here is as follows: if the ultimate truth claim resides in the case histories, the means of proof reside in the articulation of the entire network: theory, hermeneutics, therapeutics, and narration. (p. 268)
Ricoeur concludes by outlining four criteria in evaluating an interpretation: (1) A good interpretation must be consistent with the basic tenets of the theory; (2) it must be in accord with the psychoanalytic rules for decoding the text of the unconscious; (3) it must form an intelligible narrative; and (4) it must be therapeutically effective when used in a therapeutic context (Woolfolk, 1998).
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ADOLF GRÜNBAUM’S DISPUTATION OF HABERMAS’S AND RICOEUR’S HERMENEUTIC CONCEPTUALIZATION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Adolf Grünbaum is a philosopher of science who dedicated a good deal of his professional life to evaluating the scientific validity of psychoanalysis. In his 1984 work titled The Foundations of Psychoanalysis, he provides an elaborate and comprehensive critique of psychoanalytic theory and therapy. Grünbaum begins this voluminous work with a lengthy introduction that is in essence a piecemeal disputation of the hermeneutic view of psychoanalysis. A good deal of the disputation is focused on the hermeneutic conceptualization of psychoanalysis put forth by Habermas and Ricoeur. Grünbaum (1984) argues that Habermas’s construal of psychoanalysis as a science of self-reflection and as a result a depth hermeneutic is based on certain misassumptions regarding the psychoanalytic process and the nature of attributions of causality being made within the context of the analytic relationship. Habermas supported his claims by arguing that the process of self- reflection that psychoanalysis offers is the process that allows pathological symptoms to be cured. He explains that when a symptom is overcome by self-reflection, the causal link between the two is dissolved. Moreover, this type of causal link does not exist in the natural world because it lives in the process of self-reflection; therefore, he terms it the “causality of fate” opposed to the “causality of nature.” Ultimately, it is the patient’s self-reflection that makes interpretations meaningful and allows for pathological symptoms to be resolved in this way, according to Habermas. Grünbaum (1984) argues that this process of self-reflection that Habermas describes is based on a misrepresentation of what goes on in the analytic relationship and the role that is played by both the analyst and the analysand. According to Grünbaum, the analyst plays a more objective role, observing the patient’s behavior and language as an empirical scientist would observe some natural phenomenon. In contrast to Habermas’s account of the analytic process, Grünbaum describes a situation wherein the patient reports symptoms through what he says and does, and the
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analyst objectively interprets what the patient conveys. It is not important what the patient feels to be the appropriate interpretation through self-reflection, as Habermas claims. Grünbaum points out that if Habermas adhered to an accurate reading of Freudian theory, he would recognize the role of repression and the other defense mechanisms and the part that they would play in clouding this process of self-reflection that he leads to the dissipation of symptoms, in Habermas’s description. Grünbaum (1984) argues that the analyst is equipped with a body of knowledge (i.e., psychoanalytic theory) that guides his or her observations and interpretations of the patient. In addition, Grünbaum points out that contrary to what Habermas suggests, it is frequently the analyst, not the patient, who develops the appropriate interpretation, which, furthermore, is often resisted by the patient, indicating that his or her defense mechanisms are at work and his or her insight regarding the pathology is minimal. Thus, Grünbaum here exposes a weakness in Habermas’s account of psychoanalysis as a process of self-reflection, pointing out that it does not take into account some very basic concepts such as repression and resistance, which adulterate the pure process of self- reflection that Habermas portrays. Grünbaum (1984) criticizes another aspect of Habermas’s hermeneutic conceptualization of psychoanalysis—the latter’s argument that psychoanalysis has a scientistic self-misunderstanding with regard to its metapsychology. Habermas argues that Freud modeled much of his theory on the physical sciences (i.e., physics) and in so doing created a paradox wherein the theory purports to account for mental events based on a positivistic and reductionistic model of psychic functioning, whereas those mental events are not available to nomothetic understanding by their very nature, instead requiring an idiographic interpretation that only a hermeneutic discipline could provide. An essential part of Habermas’s logic in this argument lies in his belief that nomothetic accounts are ahistorical and need not be based within a context, while idiographic accounts, which include hermeneutical conceptions, require a contextual and historic understanding. In the case of psychoanalysis this would be a historically contextual understanding of behavior and thought.
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Grünbaum (1984) argues that Habermas’s formulation of the dependence of ideographic accounts on a contextual and historical framework represents an epistemological misunderstanding of the natural sciences. He proceeds to give examples of phenomena from physics that are dependent on context and history, as in the behavior of electrically charged particles under certain conditions. Trying to understand the behavior of electrically charged particles by taking them out of context and making evaluations without taking into account where those particles have been in a temporal sense and what they are in relation to other particles in the environment would be a mischaracterization of what it means to be a natural law. Grünbaum argues that the behavior and nature of these particles is analogical to the behavior and nature of the individual; in developing hypotheses in both accounts one needs to take into consideration history and context. Thus, Habermas’s claim that the physical sciences are ahistorical and noncontextual is unfounded, according to Grünbaum. Therefore, because observations made by the analyst regarding the patient are happening within the context of the patient’s life history does not preclude psychoanalysis from being an empirical science. Grünbaum proceeds to further dismantle the hermeneutic view of psychoanalysis by turning to Ricoeur’s argument. Throughout much of his account, Ricoeur puts forth a dialectical argument where scientific psychology is put in opposition to psychoanalytic phenomenology. The academic or scientific psychology that Ricoeur uses is behaviorism, rather than, for example, cognitive psychology, and Grünbaum (1984) points this out as a mistake in logic. He refers to it as a “crude observation-theory dichotomy in which a reductively behaviorist psychology rather than say, a cognitive psychology that countenances intrapsychic states serves as the paradigm of a ‘scientific psychology’” (p. 44). Grünbaum argues that modern cognitive psychology, which has established empirical research methodology, would provide a more appropriate comparison with psychoanalytic phenomenology. A dominant theme in Ricoeur’s account is the distinction between the reason for and the causes of behavior in the language of psychoanalysis. Grünbaum addresses this issue by pointing out that while in his earlier writings Ricoeur took up Toulmin’s argu-
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ment that psychoanalytic explanations are not causal but motivational, he later recanted this position and maintained that psychoanalytic explanation are indeed causal explanations in most cases. As Grünbaum puts it, “Ricoeur [1981] did have second thoughts in his later work and, commendably enough, repudiated the ordinary language approach to Freudian explanations along with the ‘dichotomy between reason and cause’” (p. 73). Ricoeur (1981) discussed how one goes about validating psychoanalytic theory given the hermeneutic nature of the discipline. Grünbaum (1984) attempts to demonstrate that Ricoeur’s assumptions regarding psychoanalytic theory are misguided and lead to improper conclusions about validating the clinical theory. One of the assumptions, as mentioned earlier, is the comparison between behaviorism and psychoanalysis in Ricoeur’s dialectical argument. Ricoeur’s assertion that the material of investigation is the speech of the patient is misguided, according to Grünbaum, because it discounts the speech of the analyst, which is essential to the process and should be taken into account when determining the validity of an interpretation, for example. These assumptions, among others, lead Ricoeur to make contradictions about what psychoanalysis is and ought to be, asserts Grünbaum (1984). In his words, [Ricoeur] does concede that this purported “proof apparatus of psychoanalysis . . . is . . . highly problematical.” Yet the fact remains that we are left completely in the dark as to how any one of his criteria of validation can be met at all within the avowed confines of (1) the purely verbal intraclinical “facts” countenanced by him as constituting the purview of Freud’s theory, and (2) the renunciation of natural science modes of causal validation in favor of purely hermeneutic devices of some sort. Hence, it would seem that, under these restrictions, his criteria are, collectively no less than severally, quite unhelpful. It emerges that Ricoeur’s hermeneutic construal of psychoanalysis is no more cogent than the one offered by Habermas. (p. 69) ADOLF GRÜNBAUM’S CONSTRUAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AS AN EMPIRICAL-ANALYTICAL SCIENCE WITH THE METHOD OF VALIDATION LACKING
Adolf Grünbaum’s disputation of the hermeneutic interpretation led to a situation where it was not clear whether psychoanalysis
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would be considered unscientific (or pseudoscientific), on the one hand—which was the claim of the so-called logical positivists and their leading voice Karl Popper—or an empirical science, on the other hand, which is the position of Grünbaum, who as a philosopher of science views all reality as subject to the methods of empirical-analytical science. Grünbaum (1984) supports his defense of psychoanalysis as a full-fledged empirical science with a critique of Karl Popper’s argument. However, Grünbaum adds that the clinical setting, where psychoanalytic concepts should be confirmed, is not set up to do so, thereby leaving psychoanalysis in a position where it has a theory that was developed to be falsifiable but currently lacks the methodology to accomplish this goal (Grünbaum, 1984; Terwee, 1990). Popper draws a line between the scientific and the unscientific by attempting to identify whether a discipline has the ability to develop tests of falsifiability. Popper’s claim, in short, is that psychoanalysis does not meet this criterion of what it is to be a proper science. Grünbaum (1984) responds to this claim by pointing out that throughout its development psychoanalytic theory has undergone several major transformations due to the falsification of original theories. A major example includes Freud’s shift from the original traumatic theory of the neuroses to his emphasis on the inner psychology of the individual and the vicissitudes of instinct and drive, which was the result of his discovery that sexual seductions reported in treatment were often fantasies and not facts. Grünbaum summarizes this point by stating that “upon looking at the actual development of Freud’s thought, one finds that, as a rule, his repeated modifications of his theories were clearly motivated by evidence and hardly idiosyncratic or capricious. Why, I ask, were Popper and his followers not given pause by their obligation to carry out some actual exegesis of Freud?” (Grünbaum, 1979, p. 135). Indeed Grünbaum’s position (Terwee, 1990) is that Freud created an empirical-analytical science in psychoanalysis, but what is missing is a methodological approach to validate the theory within the only context that Freud and his followers heretofore created—the analytical relationship. Grünbaum’s argument regarding this point revolves around Freud’s Tally Argument. The Tally Argument is something that Freud (1917) used to ward off
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the criticism that psychoanalysis is nothing more than a sophisticated form of suggestive treatment. In his words, “Anyone who has himself carried out psycho-analyses will have been able to convince himself on countless occasions that it is impossible to make suggestions to a patient in that way . . . his conflicts will only be successfully solved and his resistances overcome if the anticipatory ideas is given tally with what is real to him” (Freud, 1917, p. 452). Freud goes on to say that what differs between analytic and suggestive therapy is the working through of transference and the resultant achievement of overcoming internal conflict. Grünbaum (1984) argues that the entire edifice of psychoanalysis rests on the Tally Argument. He writes, It is of capital importance to appreciate that Freud is at pains to employ the Tally Argument in order to justify the following epistemological claim: actual durable therapeutic success guarantees not only that the pertinent analytic interpretations ring true . . . to the analysand but also that they are indeed veridical. . . . Freud then relies on this bold . . . contention to conclude nothing less than the following: collectively, the successful outcomes of analyses do constitute cogent evidence for all that general psychoanalytic theory tells us about the influences of the unconscious dynamics of the mind on our lives. In short, psychoanalytic treatment successes as a whole vouch for the truth of the Freudian theory of personality, including its specific etiologies of the psychoneuroses. . . . As a further corollary, the psychoanalytic probing of the unconscious is vindicated as a method of etiological investigation by its therapeutic achievements. Thus, this method has the extraordinary capacity to validate major causal claims by essentially retrospective inquiries, without the burdens of prospective longitudinal studies employing (experimental) controls. (pp. 140–141)
It is Grünbaum’s (1984) argument that due to the epistemological dependence of the whole of psychoanalytic theory on the Tally Argument, there is no place for the validation or testing of the basic tenets of the theory. He does believe that the theory does have and will continue to have speculative and investigative value regarding human psychology, but it does not have any viable value in terms of establishing conceptual proof. He goes on to claim that since the Tally Argument is “the epistemic underwriter of clinical validation” (p. 170), any related psychoanalytic concept, related to therapy or not, is ultimately “epistemically para-
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sitic” (p. 167). Further, because all of the theory is laden by its dependence on the Tally Argument that scientific validity is dependent on therapeutic success, Grünbaum argues that “the menacing suggestibility problem, which . . . [Freud] had held at bay by means of this argument, comes back to haunt data from the couch with a vengeance” (p. 172). ROBERT S. WALLERSTEIN’S RESPONSE TO THE CHALLENGES OF THE SCIENTIFIC STATUS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Robert S. Wallerstein is a prominent American psychoanalyst who has been president of the International Psychoanalytic Association and has headed the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation, among other positions. Wallerstein (1986b) provides what he refers to as a response to the challenges made by the hermeneuticists, by Karl Popper and the logical positivists, and by Adolf Grünbaum regarding the scientific status of psychoanalysis. His position is in agreement with Grünbaum’s as far as the hermeneutic and Popperian construals are concerned; however, he disagrees with Grünbaum regarding the ability of psychoanalysis to clinically validate itself. Wallerstein (1986b) proposes that an effective response to Grünbaum will have to address his two main theses regarding psychoanalytic theory: that (1) psychoanalytic status as a science rests on the Tally Argument, and that (2) if the Tally Argument does not hold up, the entire psychoanalytic edifice collapses as a science and becomes forever epistemically flawed by the influence of suggestion. Wallerstein notes that Grünbaum claims that the only way to rescue the status of psychoanalysis as science would be theoretical validation from extraclinical testing, controlled experimental studies, and epidemiological studies, and in fact discusses the possible designs for such studies. Wallerstein (1986b) begins by arguing that, in short, psychoanalysts long ago realized that the Tally Argument does not hold up. He writes that “the entire Tally Argument represents (in today’s terms) a simplistic theory of neurosogenesis, as per psychoanalysis circa 1895–1905. Psychoanalysis has long since ceased to rest on a theory of neurosogenesis on specific repression of spe-
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cific traumatic events or on concomitant theory or therapy based on uncovering those repressions, i.e. making the unconscious conscious” (p. 439). Contemporary etiologies of neurosis and theories of neurotic character and symptom formation from a psychoanalytic perspective reflect a more complex developmental process, as Wallerstein (1986b) explains. The origins of pathology are in the life history of the individual, the performance of developmental tasks combined traumatic experiences. He writes, The psychoanalytic ameliorative and curative process is no longer viewed simply as the successive lifting of repression through correctly timed veridical interpretations . . . it is much more complexly configured in terms of repetitive interpretive working over of endlessly recurrent themes linked to infantile pathological resolutions of the individual’s preoedipal and oedipal vicissitudes—the process that we call working through. (pp. 439–440)
Ultimately, what Wallerstein is arguing is that Grünbaum’s attack on the scientific validity of psychoanalysis by utilizing the Tally Argument as the cornerstone of his argument is moot, because that argument has long ago since been abandoned by psychoanalysts. Wallerstein (1986b) addresses the second thesis of Grünbaum’s argument by simply stating that the psychoanalytic situation has built-in qualities that guard against the contamination of suggestibility. Wallerstein cites the arguments of a variety of analysts, but Marshall Edelson’s in particular seemed to counteract the criticism lodged by Grünbaum quite nicely: It might be possible to . . . reduce the adulteration of data by suggestion in the psychoanalytic situation—perhaps to a vanishingly small degree, or at least to a degree it ceases to be a plausible alternative explanatory candidate. Many features of the psychoanalytic situation, in contrast to those of other psychotherapies, are in fact designed to control extraneous external influences on the analysand’s productions. (Edelson, 1984, pp. 129–130)
Thus, Wallerstein was able to challenge each of Grünbaum’s theses by arguing, first, that the Tally Argument is irrelevant, and, second, that the degree to which suggestibility influences clinical data can be limited. He then addresses the final notion that Grün-
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baum put forth: that psychoanalysis needs to conduct clinically controlled experimental trials in order to validate itself as a theory. This would mean abandoning the clinical situation as the place where hypotheses are tested and theories are validated in psychoanalysis. Wallerstein points out that while the psychoanalytic situation has its methodological problems in testing its propositions, the more empirical controlled experimental studies also have their flaws. Ultimately, Wallerstein argues that the clinical situation continues to offer the maximum of ecological validity for testing and validating psychoanalytic propositions. Wallerstein (1986b) briefly mentions a study that he led that used the traditional research methods available within the clinical situation to demonstrate, as he puts it, not only the “heuristic” but the “probative” value of psychoanalytic theory and therapy. This endeavor was called the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation, a longitudinal study of the efficacy of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. It culminated in his book 42 Lives in Treatment (Wallerstein, 1986a). CONCLUSION
The controversy surrounding the scientific status of psychoanalysis is a complicated one that is embedded in the historical development of the discipline. Contemporary psychoanalysis has a variety of schools, or orientations, and each has its own take on epistemological concerns. The neo-Freudians and ego psychologists attempt to carry on the tradition of the founding father with the theory and methods of validation unaltered. The relational movement in psychoanalysis is perhaps the most dominant in terms of contemporary theory and practice. Drive has been replaced with organization of experience as primary motivator, scientific objectivism superseded by a hermeneutic perspectivism, and a status as a basic science altered to being a science among the humanities and human sciences (Orange, 1995). Orange, Stolorow, and Atwood (1998) argue that the distinction between natural sciences and the humanities has disappeared due to advances made in late twentieth-century philosophy of science (Hesse, 1980; Suppe, 1977). They argue that science, since
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the rise of relativity and quantum theory, has become an interpretive discipline where the mutual influence of observer and the observed is found everywhere in scientific theory. Thus, if science is now considered an interpretive discipline and hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, the result is that the line between the traditional sciences and the humanities disappears. The role that subjectivity plays in the development of scientific theories is taken more seriously, and some argue that there is really no such thing as pure objectivity even in the case of science. Thus, in this sense, the controversy over the scientific status of psychoanalysis has been resolved by drawing on and building on the formulations made by both sides of the controversy; that is, the advances of late twentieth century philosophy of science have resolved the controversy. Psychoanalysis can now continue to emphasize objective and empirical work done in the discipline while extending the responsibilities of those who refer to themselves as psychoanalysts to interpretive and subjective matters. This fusion of observation and interpretation and of objectivity and subjectivity allows for the resolution to the controversy that I described at the start of the paper. That is, the lines that Dilthey drew between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) in the nineteenth century have been dissolved, allowing for a hybridization of elements from both those traditions, which complement each other in a newer construal of what it means for psychoanalysis to be a science. This construal moves beyond a postmodernist to a more posthumanist conceptualization of the status of science, allowing psychoanalysis to reemerge in this new century undergirded all the more by its theoretical tenets and methodological practices. It stands among the other disciplines as a hybrid discipline, simultaneously satisfying all the prerequisites of a scientific discipline and a hermeneutic one. What this new conceptualization of psychoanalysis as a posthumanist twenty-first-century hybrid science means for the practicing psychoanalyst is a departure from clinical practice approaches used in earlier stages of psychoanalytic development, over the course of history of the discipline. In this new formulation, the analyst is both a passive and objective scientific observer
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of the psychic contents revealed in the analytic dialogue between analyst and analysand, while at the same time the analyst is actively and subjectively interpreting—hermeneutically—those same contents. The analyst thereby helps the analysand come to a better self-understanding of how his or her psychic forces play a role in shaping the quality of his or her life for better or worse. In this way, the role of the analyst in the clinical realm is one of empirical- analytical observer as well as intersubjective interpreter, undergirded by traditional empirical science and the hermeneutical perspective together, helping the analysand on the road to self- understanding and freedom from the maladaptive invariant organizing principles that led to suffering and brought the analysand to analysis in the first place. Ultimately, psychoanalysis need not choose to which side it belongs in order to remain a viable theory of human nature and form of therapeutic treatment for psychopathology. Perhaps a testament to its validity is the manner in which psychoanalysis has influenced the world. It has transformed the way we understand the nature of mind, and the way we view the things that humans do and the things that we make. It has been simultaneously embraced and reviled by scholar and laypeople alike from its beginnings to this day. The fact remains that it has revolutionized the way we understand human psychology, and that makes it relevant even today, perhaps all the more now, as the controversy over its status as a science can finally be put to rest.
References
Edelson, M. (1984). Hypothesis and evidence in psychoanalysis. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press. Freud, S. (1895). Project for a scientific psychology. In J. Strachey, ed. and trans., The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols. London: Hogarth Press, 1953–1974. 1:281–391. ______ (1917). Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. Standard ed., 16:241– 463. Grünbaum, A. (1979). Is Freudian psychoanalytic theory pseudo-scientific by Karl Popper’s criterion of demarcation? Amer. Philos. Quart., 16(2):131–141. ______ (1984). The foundations of psychoanalysis: A philosophical critique. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interests. Boston: Beacon Press.
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Hesse, M. (1980). Revolutions and reconstructions in the philosophy of science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Orange, D. (1995). Emotional understanding: Studies in psychoanalytic epistemology. New York: Guilford Press. ______, Stolorow, R. D., & Atwood, G. E. (1998). Hermeneutics, intersubjectivity theory, and psychoanalysis. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assoc., 46 :568–571. Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. ______ (1981). The question of proof in Freud’s psychoanalytic writings. In J. B. Thompson, ed., Paul Ricoeur: Hermeneutics and the human sciences (pp. 247– 273). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Suppe, F. (1974). The structure of scientific theories. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Terwee, S. J. S. (1990). Hermeneutics in psychology and psychoanalysis. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Wallerstein, R. S. (1986a). Forty-two lives in treatment: A study of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. New York: Guilford Press. ______ (1986b). Psychoanalysis as science: A response to the new challenges. Psychoanal. Quart., 55:414–451. Woolfolk, R. (1998). The cure of souls: Science, values, and psychotherapy. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.
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The Psychoanalytic Review Vol. 101, No. 6, December 2014
Since its inception psychoanalysis has struggled with its identity— whether it is an empirical science or a human science. Its founder, Sigmund Freud, had every intention to create a new science of man using the other physical sciences as his template. More than a century later, psychoanalytic scholars debate the scientific status of the discipline. On the one side are the hermeneuticists, who believe that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic discipline, not capable of being held to the principles of the traditional sciences but instead requiring a more humanistic understanding. On the other side are certain psychoanalysts who believe that psychoanalysis is a science and that its basic theoretical tenets and therapeutic efficacy can be validated by empirical-analytical methods that are akin to those used in the other basic sciences. The present paper aims to review both sides of this debate, Psychoanalytic Review, 101(6), December 2014
© 2014 N.P.A.P.
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evaluating the arguments of the major voices for the hermeneutic conception and the empirical science conceptualization, respectively. The purpose is to provide a resolution to the controversy by making a further argument that psychoanalytic theory and practice in its contemporary form need not choose sides, but instead can situate itself among the other disciplines as somewhat of a hybrid science, not quite a pure hermeneutic and not quite a pure empirical-analytical science, but rather something that draws on both those frameworks and thereby further undergirds its relevance and importance even today. The first sentence of Freud’s Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895) reads, “The intention is to furnish a psychology that shall be a natural science: that is to represent psychical processes as quantitatively determinate states of specifiable material particles, thus making those processes perspicuous and free from contradiction” (p. 295). Thus, Freud’s desire was to account for mental functioning, both conscious and specifically unconscious, in terms of quantifiable matter—in his case that meant neurons and neuronal functioning. He was not able to accomplish this bold project during his lifetime; however, he as well as his successors have found other ways to capture the validity and credibility of the theory that satisfy the empirical criteria of science that he so earnestly sought to accomplish. The development of psychoanalytic theory has gone through many revisions, both during Freud’s lifetime and in the decades following his death. The theoretical emphasis was one of positivism and reductionism in its fledgling years, but it turned to an emphasis on psychological processes and interpretation later on. Because of the dominance and influence of psychoanalysis in both academic and applied settings, establishing the validity of the theory and the efficacy of the therapy became even more pressing in the mid-twentieth century. During this time, psychoanalysts and philosophers of science began to debate the scientific status of psychoanalysis all the more. The main voices in the debate in support of psychoanalysis as an empirical-analytical science are Adolf Grünbaum the philosopher of science who spent a good deal of his academic life studying the scientific validity of psychoanalytic theory. Grün-
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baum (1984) holds the position that all reality is subject to empirical-analytical verification, thus making psychoanalysis a scientific discipline. However, he also believes that psychoanalysts have gone about verifying their hypotheses in the wrong way, using the clinical situation as the milieu for validation. Grünbaum argues that extraclinical controlled studies are called for in order to establish the validity of the theory and the efficacy of the therapy. He believes that until this is accomplished, psychoanalysis is a science with the evidence lacking (Grünbaum, 1984; Terwee, 1990). Another supporter of psychoanalysis as a science is the American psychoanalyst Robert S. Wallerstein. He, like Grünbaum, rejects the hermeneutic interpretation of psychoanalysis and holds the position that psychoanalysis is an empirical-analytical science. Unlike Grünbaum however, Wallerstein (1986b) believes passionately in the traditional methods of testing and validating theoretical tenets within the context of the clinical situation, and argues that although these methods are imperfect, they provide a legitimate way to validate the clinical theory. He holds that the extraclinical studies that Grünbaum proposes also have their logical and methodological pitfalls, and describes a case in point where the traditional methods were used to validate psychoanalysis in an empirical way—the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation. This was a longitudinal study that culminated in Wallerstein’s (1986a) book 42 Lives in Treatment. An alternative to the positivistic and empirical-analytical interpretation of psychoanalytic theory is the hermeneutic one. Hermeneutics is an approach to understanding reality that is the antithesis of empirical-analytical science and substitutes subjectivity, contextualism, and philosophical understanding for objectivity, positivism, and reductionism. It became relevant to psychoanalysis because it developed out of efforts to counteract the positivistic influence in the social sciences in the mid-twentieth century. The principal voices on this side of the debate are Jurgen Habermas and Paul Ricoeur. Habermas (1971) conceptualizes psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic discipline by arguing that it was plagued by a scientistic self-misunderstanding from the very beginning because it was cre-
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ated as an observational science of mental events. Habermas argues that mental events by their very nature are not open to empirical investigation the way natural phenomena are. Perhaps more importantly, Habermas argues that the process of psychoanalysis is one of self-reflection. The discourse between analyst and analysand is the material that is to be interpreted from a hermeneutic frame of reference within the context of the analytic dyad. Ricoeur (1970, 1981) puts forth his hermeneutic interpretation of psychoanalysis by arguing that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutics of suspicion, whereby the work of psychoanalysis is to decipher the disguised meaning of consciousness. Ricoeur (1970) also takes up the argument made by Stephen Toulmin that the statements of psychoanalytic theory are reasons for behavior rather than causes for behavior. In other words, he applies a hermeneutic interpretation of the language of psychoanalysis to establish that it does not account for causality but for motivations for behavior. Ricoeur (1981) also addresses the nature of the question of proof in psychoanalytic theory, as he holds the position that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic discipline. The conclusion that Habermas and Ricoeur draw ultimately characterizes psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic but not a pure hermeneutic discipline. They both agree that the discipline does import some characteristics of a basic science, and thus is not quite a pure science nor a pure member of the humanities. Wallerstein and Grünbaum defend the scientific status of the discipline; however, they conclude that there remain methodological problems in establishing the validity of the theory and the efficacy of the therapy. These scholars and their arguments for and against the scientific nature of psychoanalysis represent a small window into a very complex and long-standing controversy that continues to spark heated debate in the field. Since both sides have consistently been able to put together cogent arguments defending their respective positions, perhaps the resolution of this controversy is to place psychoanalysis within some middle ground, as a hybrid science among the other disciplines. In so doing, psychoanalysis can solidify its place in our culture as both a philosophy and science of human nature and as a form of psychotherapeutic treat-
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ment for mental illness, as it has been in the past, continues to be in the present, and certainly will continue to be for future generations to come. JURGEN HABERMAS: PSYCHOANALYSIS AS SELF-REFLECTION AND THE SCIENTISTIC SELF-MISUNDERSTANDING OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
The work of Jurgen Habermas is closely tied to a form of political philosophy and social criticism known as Critical Theory, which was created by members of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research, established in 1923. Critical Theory was advanced as an alternative to the positivistic social science that dominated much of the early to mid-twentieth century and that presented itself as neutral and value free. Critical social theorists were heavily influenced by psychoanalysis and used psychoanalytic ideas to understand the individual as a member of society. For Habermas, it is not the theoretical content of psychoanalysis that is important, but the dialogic nature of the psychoanalytic process. Habermas points out that Freud created a new type of discipline, one that is governed by different set of principles than the traditional sciences and humanities (Woolfolk, 1998). Knowledge is inextricably linked to social origin and function, according to Habermas. Understanding a body of knowledge is to understand it within its social context. Habermas uses what he refers to as “cognitive interests” to understand the sociocultural context of knowledge. Cognitive interests reflect the human concerns that underlie a particular intellectual discipline. Habermas argues that what humans study and the manner in which we go about studying is determined by the human interests and purposes that a discipline is founded on. Habermas describes three types of cognitive interests (Woolfolk, 1998): the technical, the practical, and the emancipatory, respectively corresponding to the empirical-analytical disciplines (natural sciences), the historical-hermeneutic disciplines, and the empirical-critical. The empirical-analytic disciplines are associated with the technical interest of understanding nature. Quantification, forming general laws, and making predictions of natural
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phenomena using empirical procedures are characteristic of this domain. The historical-hermeneutic disciplines use a fundamentally different kind of methodology. From this perspective, data is generated by understanding human meanings, not through observation of neutral facts. In this domain, the interpretation of texts is the counterpart to verification of natural laws in the empirical- analytic domain. The distinction that is made here by Habermas between the empirical-analytical and the historical-hermeneutic disciplines can be traced to the distinction made by Dilthey between the Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences) and the Geisteswissenschaften (humanities). For Habermas, psychoanalysis is a combination of both the empirical- analytical and the historical- hermeneutic. He argues that, as with the natural sciences, psychoanalysis traces causal connection, attempts to verify its theoretical tenets through observation, and provides explanatory hypotheses. However, psychoanalysis is a form of hermeneutics whereby therapeutic progress is made by the interpretation of the linguistic text that is communicated to the analyst by the patient during the encounter. Because psychoanalysis represents an integration of these two domains it belongs to a third category, according to Habermas. This category, being the empirical-critical, is governed by emancipatory interests, which are human interests that involve reflecting on social, cultural, and political injustice and how and why it comes to exist and how it might be remedied (Woolfolk, 1998). Habermas (1971) conceptualizes psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic discipline by first describing his contention that psychoanalysis is science as self-reflection. He argues that the language that is used within the context of the interactive dialogue between analyst and analysand is the stuff that is to be interpreted from a hermeneutic perspective. He elaborates this idea by contrasting what he refers to as Dilthey’s philological hermeneutics to Freud’s depth hermeneutics, whereby “psychoanalytic interpretation is concerned with those connections of symbols in which a subject deceives itself about itself. The depth hermeneutics that Freud contraposes to Dilthey’s philological hermeneutics deals with texts indicating self-deceptions of the author” (p. 218). Interpretation, whether of parapraxes or the latent content of dreams
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communicated to the analyst by the analysand, is characteristic of this process of self-reflection that is psychoanalysis, according to Habermas; it is thus more appropriately categorized as a hermeneutic endeavor than a traditional scientific enterprise. Using language as his focus, Habermas argues that symptoms transform themselves into symbols that are incomprehensible. The goal of psychoanalysis is to make these symbols understandable and to replace them with better adjusted ways of thinking and behaving. This argument that language is the window into the psychological world of the patient is at the center of what it means for psychoanalysis to be a depth hermeneutics. The analysis and interpretation of faulty language that gives rise to symptom formation is what frees the patient from his or her pathology and helps that patient to develop better ways of dealing with past and present. Habermas (1971) continues his argument that psychoanalysis is a science of self-reflection by stating that it is inherent in the psychoanalytic process that the patient becomes more self- conscious. Habermas explains that the interpretation of language as text does not suffice; the breaking through of repression and the process of self-reflection constitute the atmosphere in which transformations take place in the analytic relationship. According to Habermas, the analyst is akin to an archeologist, using the language of the patient, the text that is communicated, to rebuild a past that the patient has forgotten. It is through this process of rebuilding the past that the patient begins to remember, which, as a result, allows for self-reflection. Habermas (1971) continues his hermeneutic conceptualization of psychoanalysis by describing that psychoanalytic metapsychology is one of self-misunderstanding: The birth of psychoanalysis opens up the possibility of arriving at the dimension that positivism closed off. . . . For the scientific self- misunderstanding of psychoanalysis inaugurated by Freud himself, as the physiologist that he originally was . . . however, this misunderstanding is not entirely unfounded. For psychoanalysis joins hermeneutics with operations that genuinely seemed to be reserved to the natural sciences. (p. 214)
Here Habermas argues that from the beginning Freud modeled his theory of human psychology on the natural sciences, and in its
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early stages he passionately believed conscious, and especially unconscious, mental life would be confirmed to have neurobiological undergirdings. This intention was largely abandoned in Freud’s later writings, which were based more on psychological processes, according to Habermas. Freud was caught up in what Habermas describes as a scientistic self-understanding from the very beginning. It is from this position that Freud progressed from objectivism and positivism to a depth hermeneutic via the interpretation of dreams and interpretive approaches to other pathological symptoms. Because this is so, psychoanalysis is not a reductionistic and empirical science, but a process of self-reflection and interpretation. Habermas draws a distinction between the metahermeneutics of psychoanalysis and its metapsychology. He argues that the tripartite structural model of id, ego, and superego allows for the abstraction of language abnormalities and behavioral pathology that is open to interpretation during an analytic encounter. Freud’s creation and elaboration of this model allow for the interpretive process of language and behavior to be understood from a hermeneutic perspective. However, interpretation must be distinguished from the theoretical model. It is the experiences of early life—object choice, identification with caregiver, and the introjection of lost objects—that make comprehensible the circumstance surrounding ego formation and function. This process of making the incomprehensible nuances of narrative understandable is the essence of self-reflection, which is at the center of the analytic process as a hermeneutic enterprise. This distinction between metahermeneutics and metapsychology is key to Habermas’s assertion of the scientific self- misunderstanding of psychoanalysis. Originally, elements of the psychoanalytic metapsychology such as the psychical apparatus and the theory of the instincts were embedded in a positivistic framework. This is in contrast to the interpretive work that is done during the analytic process of self-reflection and self-discovery that allows for healing to take place. Habermas argues that this contrast between metapsychological positivism and practical hermeneutic interpretation reveals that psychoanalysis is built on a scientistic self-misunderstanding.
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PAUL RICOEUR: PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A HERMENEUTICS OF SUSPICION, A HERMENEUTIC ANALYSIS OF THE LANGUAGE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND THE QUESTION OF PROOF IN PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
Paul Ricoeur, like Habermas, conceptualizes psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic discipline. Ricoeur was a philosopher best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation, and this is conveyed in his work with psychoanalysis. In his words, psychoanalysis is a hermeneutics of suspicion, and he argues that Freud belongs to the school of suspicion in a tradition of philosophers that include Marx and Nietzsche. While Marx is relegated to economics and Nietzsche to existentialism and phenomenology, Freud deals with psychiatry and consciousness. According to Ricoeur (1970), psychoanalysis deals with having to reconcile two separate forms of interpretation. On the one hand there is recollection of meaning, and on the other the reduction of the illusions and lies of consciousness. A hermeneutics of suspicion aims to decipher the truth of consciousness when truth is lying. In other words, what one thinks and how one behaves is the result of censorship by the unconscious. It is the task of psychoanalysis to make meaningful that which is censored; this is done through interpretation. Ricoeur (1970) writes, “Understanding is hermeneutics: henceforward, to seek meaning is no longer to spell out the consciousness of meaning, but to decipher its expressions” (p. 33). Ricoeur (1970) continues his analysis by describing how psychoanalysis seeks not only to decipher the illusions of consciousness, but to extend consciousness. He argues that for Freud it was not enough to uncover meaning through interpretation; in doing so he hoped to enlarge the patients’ consciousness about themselves and their world with the aim that they would lead healthier and happier lives. According to Ricoeur, “one of the earliest homages paid to psychoanalysis speaks of ‘healing through consciousness.’ The phrase is exact—if one means thereby that analysis wishes to substitute for an immediate and dissimulating consciousness a mediate consciousness taught by the reality principle” (p. 35).
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Ricoeur (1970) includes as part of his hermeneutic analysis of psychoanalysis a description of philosopher Stephen Toulmin’s work, which provides an analysis of the language of psychoanalysis. Ricoeur explains that in Toulmin’s account of psychoanalytic language as text analogues, the latter do not represent causes for statements, but rather are statements that provide reasons for behavior. Causal explanations are the stuff of the natural sciences and consist of statements that account for causality in the natural world. The language of psychoanalysis consists of statements of motives for behavior, and therefore is better accounted for by hermeneutic interpretation than an empirical-scientific interpretation. Ricoeur is in agreement with Toulmin’s position but argues that what happens in psychoanalytic theory is something of a mixed discourse that combines cause and effect statements embedded in the language of the structural model. Ricoeur extends his position on this matter to suggest that psychoanalytic discourse falls outside the cause-and-effect paradigm. Like Habermas, Ricoeur wants to put psychoanalysis in a position where it is not a pure empirical science, on the one hand, but not essentially one of the humanities, on the other (Woolfolk, 1998). In addition to his conceptualization of psychoanalysis as a hermeneutics of suspicion and an analysis of psychoanalytic- language text analogues as statements of motives for behavior, Ricoeur uses epistemological dialectics to demonstrate that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic discipline. The dialectic divide he points out is between scientific psychology and psychoanalytic phenomenology. Ricoeur (1970) lays out competing accounts of psychoanalytic theory as an observational science versus psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic discipline by describing the argument of logicians such as Ernest Nagel, who argues against the position that it is an observational science. Nagel argues that psychoanalysis lacks empirical verification because the theory does not consist of operational definitions that are connected to unambiguous facts about human psychology in the way that scientific psychology (i.e., behaviorism) does. In addition, psychoanalytic theory, according to Nagel and other logicians, lacks logic of proof. Psychoanalysis uses interpretations as
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its source of empirical validation, and Nagel argues that this is insufficient because there are too many variables that go into having an interpretation meet the criteria of validation. Nagel completes his argument by stating that psychoanalysis has been unable to demonstrate the effectiveness of itself as a form of therapy because of its inability to satisfy the aforementioned criteria for an empirical science; as a result, it has been unable to construct controlled studies to demonstrate efficacy. On the other side of this debate outlined by Ricoeur (1970) are psychoanalysts, such as David Rapaport and Heinz Hartmann, who have attempted to counter the attack by the logicians and have gone so far as to reformulate some of the basic theoretical tenets of psychoanalysis in so doing. The argument consists of a variety of positions that suggest that psychoanalysis is an empirical science. The first part of the argument states that the focus of psychoanalysis is behavior, which puts it in agreement with the empirical point of view save that it also emphasizes latent behavior. Second, psychoanalysis is guided by the gestalt point of view that is shared by academic psychology. Therefore, psychoanalytic entities such as the id, ego, and superego are aspects of behavior and as a result are open to empirical investigation. Third, the various models of psychoanalysis, (i.e., the topographic model of the psychical apparatus, the economic model of the instincts, and the model of fixation and regression in psychosexual development) are able to be combined in one overarching metapsychology, which satisfies the organismic point of view, or the view that Freud’s theory can be viewed holistically as a unified theory, and sidesteps challenges of psychoanalysis as a body of disparate theories of human behavior that are marked by atomism versus mechanism (Ricoeur, 1970). Ricoeur (1970) writes, “Psychology is an observational science dealing with the facts of behavior; psychoanalysis is an exegetical science dealing with relationships of meaning between substitute objects and the primordial (and lost) instinctual objects. The two disciplines diverge from the very beginning, at the level of the initial notion of fact and of inference from facts” (p. 359). Ricoeur resorts to the analysis of psychoanalytic language that Toulmin proposed to illuminate the dialectic of psychoanalytic epistemology. Again, what is found is that psychoanalytic lan-
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guage presents a set of statements providing motives for behavior rather than causes for behavior. But Ricoeur is divided on the epistemological controversy that exists between scientific psychology and psychoanalysis. On the one side is Toulmin’s argument for psychoanalysis providing reason and motives for behavior rather than causality for behavior. On the other side of the controversy, motive-for and cause-for statements are argued to be one and the same, both part of the psychoanalytic discourse that Ricoeur refers to as a semantics of desire. Again, Ricoeur argues that psychoanalytic theory provides a mixed discourse that is not part of the motive–cause paradigm, which “is enough to make the split between psychoanalysis and the observational sciences operative from the beginning” (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 363). When one proposes that psychoanalysis is a hermeneutic discipline and not a scientific discipline and therefore its tenets cannot be grounded in the empirical validation that is used in the natural sciences, the question that arises is how does one validate the theoretical premises of psychoanalysis? Ricoeur (1981) addressed this problem because he recognized the importance of resolving the epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis. He outlined criteria for facts in psychoanalytic theory, then evaluated the investigatory procedure and how that relates to the method of treatment and theoretical terms, and finally turned to the question of truth and verification in the theory. Ricoeur (1981) writes, What sort of verification and falsification are the statements of psychoanalysis capable of? To ask about the procedures of verification and falsification is to ask which means of proof are appropriate to the truth claims of psychoanalysis? My thesis here is as follows: if the ultimate truth claim resides in the case histories, the means of proof reside in the articulation of the entire network: theory, hermeneutics, therapeutics, and narration. (p. 268)
Ricoeur concludes by outlining four criteria in evaluating an interpretation: (1) A good interpretation must be consistent with the basic tenets of the theory; (2) it must be in accord with the psychoanalytic rules for decoding the text of the unconscious; (3) it must form an intelligible narrative; and (4) it must be therapeutically effective when used in a therapeutic context (Woolfolk, 1998).
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ADOLF GRÜNBAUM’S DISPUTATION OF HABERMAS’S AND RICOEUR’S HERMENEUTIC CONCEPTUALIZATION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Adolf Grünbaum is a philosopher of science who dedicated a good deal of his professional life to evaluating the scientific validity of psychoanalysis. In his 1984 work titled The Foundations of Psychoanalysis, he provides an elaborate and comprehensive critique of psychoanalytic theory and therapy. Grünbaum begins this voluminous work with a lengthy introduction that is in essence a piecemeal disputation of the hermeneutic view of psychoanalysis. A good deal of the disputation is focused on the hermeneutic conceptualization of psychoanalysis put forth by Habermas and Ricoeur. Grünbaum (1984) argues that Habermas’s construal of psychoanalysis as a science of self-reflection and as a result a depth hermeneutic is based on certain misassumptions regarding the psychoanalytic process and the nature of attributions of causality being made within the context of the analytic relationship. Habermas supported his claims by arguing that the process of self- reflection that psychoanalysis offers is the process that allows pathological symptoms to be cured. He explains that when a symptom is overcome by self-reflection, the causal link between the two is dissolved. Moreover, this type of causal link does not exist in the natural world because it lives in the process of self-reflection; therefore, he terms it the “causality of fate” opposed to the “causality of nature.” Ultimately, it is the patient’s self-reflection that makes interpretations meaningful and allows for pathological symptoms to be resolved in this way, according to Habermas. Grünbaum (1984) argues that this process of self-reflection that Habermas describes is based on a misrepresentation of what goes on in the analytic relationship and the role that is played by both the analyst and the analysand. According to Grünbaum, the analyst plays a more objective role, observing the patient’s behavior and language as an empirical scientist would observe some natural phenomenon. In contrast to Habermas’s account of the analytic process, Grünbaum describes a situation wherein the patient reports symptoms through what he says and does, and the
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analyst objectively interprets what the patient conveys. It is not important what the patient feels to be the appropriate interpretation through self-reflection, as Habermas claims. Grünbaum points out that if Habermas adhered to an accurate reading of Freudian theory, he would recognize the role of repression and the other defense mechanisms and the part that they would play in clouding this process of self-reflection that he leads to the dissipation of symptoms, in Habermas’s description. Grünbaum (1984) argues that the analyst is equipped with a body of knowledge (i.e., psychoanalytic theory) that guides his or her observations and interpretations of the patient. In addition, Grünbaum points out that contrary to what Habermas suggests, it is frequently the analyst, not the patient, who develops the appropriate interpretation, which, furthermore, is often resisted by the patient, indicating that his or her defense mechanisms are at work and his or her insight regarding the pathology is minimal. Thus, Grünbaum here exposes a weakness in Habermas’s account of psychoanalysis as a process of self-reflection, pointing out that it does not take into account some very basic concepts such as repression and resistance, which adulterate the pure process of self- reflection that Habermas portrays. Grünbaum (1984) criticizes another aspect of Habermas’s hermeneutic conceptualization of psychoanalysis—the latter’s argument that psychoanalysis has a scientistic self-misunderstanding with regard to its metapsychology. Habermas argues that Freud modeled much of his theory on the physical sciences (i.e., physics) and in so doing created a paradox wherein the theory purports to account for mental events based on a positivistic and reductionistic model of psychic functioning, whereas those mental events are not available to nomothetic understanding by their very nature, instead requiring an idiographic interpretation that only a hermeneutic discipline could provide. An essential part of Habermas’s logic in this argument lies in his belief that nomothetic accounts are ahistorical and need not be based within a context, while idiographic accounts, which include hermeneutical conceptions, require a contextual and historic understanding. In the case of psychoanalysis this would be a historically contextual understanding of behavior and thought.
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Grünbaum (1984) argues that Habermas’s formulation of the dependence of ideographic accounts on a contextual and historical framework represents an epistemological misunderstanding of the natural sciences. He proceeds to give examples of phenomena from physics that are dependent on context and history, as in the behavior of electrically charged particles under certain conditions. Trying to understand the behavior of electrically charged particles by taking them out of context and making evaluations without taking into account where those particles have been in a temporal sense and what they are in relation to other particles in the environment would be a mischaracterization of what it means to be a natural law. Grünbaum argues that the behavior and nature of these particles is analogical to the behavior and nature of the individual; in developing hypotheses in both accounts one needs to take into consideration history and context. Thus, Habermas’s claim that the physical sciences are ahistorical and noncontextual is unfounded, according to Grünbaum. Therefore, because observations made by the analyst regarding the patient are happening within the context of the patient’s life history does not preclude psychoanalysis from being an empirical science. Grünbaum proceeds to further dismantle the hermeneutic view of psychoanalysis by turning to Ricoeur’s argument. Throughout much of his account, Ricoeur puts forth a dialectical argument where scientific psychology is put in opposition to psychoanalytic phenomenology. The academic or scientific psychology that Ricoeur uses is behaviorism, rather than, for example, cognitive psychology, and Grünbaum (1984) points this out as a mistake in logic. He refers to it as a “crude observation-theory dichotomy in which a reductively behaviorist psychology rather than say, a cognitive psychology that countenances intrapsychic states serves as the paradigm of a ‘scientific psychology’” (p. 44). Grünbaum argues that modern cognitive psychology, which has established empirical research methodology, would provide a more appropriate comparison with psychoanalytic phenomenology. A dominant theme in Ricoeur’s account is the distinction between the reason for and the causes of behavior in the language of psychoanalysis. Grünbaum addresses this issue by pointing out that while in his earlier writings Ricoeur took up Toulmin’s argu-
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ment that psychoanalytic explanations are not causal but motivational, he later recanted this position and maintained that psychoanalytic explanation are indeed causal explanations in most cases. As Grünbaum puts it, “Ricoeur [1981] did have second thoughts in his later work and, commendably enough, repudiated the ordinary language approach to Freudian explanations along with the ‘dichotomy between reason and cause’” (p. 73). Ricoeur (1981) discussed how one goes about validating psychoanalytic theory given the hermeneutic nature of the discipline. Grünbaum (1984) attempts to demonstrate that Ricoeur’s assumptions regarding psychoanalytic theory are misguided and lead to improper conclusions about validating the clinical theory. One of the assumptions, as mentioned earlier, is the comparison between behaviorism and psychoanalysis in Ricoeur’s dialectical argument. Ricoeur’s assertion that the material of investigation is the speech of the patient is misguided, according to Grünbaum, because it discounts the speech of the analyst, which is essential to the process and should be taken into account when determining the validity of an interpretation, for example. These assumptions, among others, lead Ricoeur to make contradictions about what psychoanalysis is and ought to be, asserts Grünbaum (1984). In his words, [Ricoeur] does concede that this purported “proof apparatus of psychoanalysis . . . is . . . highly problematical.” Yet the fact remains that we are left completely in the dark as to how any one of his criteria of validation can be met at all within the avowed confines of (1) the purely verbal intraclinical “facts” countenanced by him as constituting the purview of Freud’s theory, and (2) the renunciation of natural science modes of causal validation in favor of purely hermeneutic devices of some sort. Hence, it would seem that, under these restrictions, his criteria are, collectively no less than severally, quite unhelpful. It emerges that Ricoeur’s hermeneutic construal of psychoanalysis is no more cogent than the one offered by Habermas. (p. 69) ADOLF GRÜNBAUM’S CONSTRUAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AS AN EMPIRICAL-ANALYTICAL SCIENCE WITH THE METHOD OF VALIDATION LACKING
Adolf Grünbaum’s disputation of the hermeneutic interpretation led to a situation where it was not clear whether psychoanalysis
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would be considered unscientific (or pseudoscientific), on the one hand—which was the claim of the so-called logical positivists and their leading voice Karl Popper—or an empirical science, on the other hand, which is the position of Grünbaum, who as a philosopher of science views all reality as subject to the methods of empirical-analytical science. Grünbaum (1984) supports his defense of psychoanalysis as a full-fledged empirical science with a critique of Karl Popper’s argument. However, Grünbaum adds that the clinical setting, where psychoanalytic concepts should be confirmed, is not set up to do so, thereby leaving psychoanalysis in a position where it has a theory that was developed to be falsifiable but currently lacks the methodology to accomplish this goal (Grünbaum, 1984; Terwee, 1990). Popper draws a line between the scientific and the unscientific by attempting to identify whether a discipline has the ability to develop tests of falsifiability. Popper’s claim, in short, is that psychoanalysis does not meet this criterion of what it is to be a proper science. Grünbaum (1984) responds to this claim by pointing out that throughout its development psychoanalytic theory has undergone several major transformations due to the falsification of original theories. A major example includes Freud’s shift from the original traumatic theory of the neuroses to his emphasis on the inner psychology of the individual and the vicissitudes of instinct and drive, which was the result of his discovery that sexual seductions reported in treatment were often fantasies and not facts. Grünbaum summarizes this point by stating that “upon looking at the actual development of Freud’s thought, one finds that, as a rule, his repeated modifications of his theories were clearly motivated by evidence and hardly idiosyncratic or capricious. Why, I ask, were Popper and his followers not given pause by their obligation to carry out some actual exegesis of Freud?” (Grünbaum, 1979, p. 135). Indeed Grünbaum’s position (Terwee, 1990) is that Freud created an empirical-analytical science in psychoanalysis, but what is missing is a methodological approach to validate the theory within the only context that Freud and his followers heretofore created—the analytical relationship. Grünbaum’s argument regarding this point revolves around Freud’s Tally Argument. The Tally Argument is something that Freud (1917) used to ward off
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the criticism that psychoanalysis is nothing more than a sophisticated form of suggestive treatment. In his words, “Anyone who has himself carried out psycho-analyses will have been able to convince himself on countless occasions that it is impossible to make suggestions to a patient in that way . . . his conflicts will only be successfully solved and his resistances overcome if the anticipatory ideas is given tally with what is real to him” (Freud, 1917, p. 452). Freud goes on to say that what differs between analytic and suggestive therapy is the working through of transference and the resultant achievement of overcoming internal conflict. Grünbaum (1984) argues that the entire edifice of psychoanalysis rests on the Tally Argument. He writes, It is of capital importance to appreciate that Freud is at pains to employ the Tally Argument in order to justify the following epistemological claim: actual durable therapeutic success guarantees not only that the pertinent analytic interpretations ring true . . . to the analysand but also that they are indeed veridical. . . . Freud then relies on this bold . . . contention to conclude nothing less than the following: collectively, the successful outcomes of analyses do constitute cogent evidence for all that general psychoanalytic theory tells us about the influences of the unconscious dynamics of the mind on our lives. In short, psychoanalytic treatment successes as a whole vouch for the truth of the Freudian theory of personality, including its specific etiologies of the psychoneuroses. . . . As a further corollary, the psychoanalytic probing of the unconscious is vindicated as a method of etiological investigation by its therapeutic achievements. Thus, this method has the extraordinary capacity to validate major causal claims by essentially retrospective inquiries, without the burdens of prospective longitudinal studies employing (experimental) controls. (pp. 140–141)
It is Grünbaum’s (1984) argument that due to the epistemological dependence of the whole of psychoanalytic theory on the Tally Argument, there is no place for the validation or testing of the basic tenets of the theory. He does believe that the theory does have and will continue to have speculative and investigative value regarding human psychology, but it does not have any viable value in terms of establishing conceptual proof. He goes on to claim that since the Tally Argument is “the epistemic underwriter of clinical validation” (p. 170), any related psychoanalytic concept, related to therapy or not, is ultimately “epistemically para-
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sitic” (p. 167). Further, because all of the theory is laden by its dependence on the Tally Argument that scientific validity is dependent on therapeutic success, Grünbaum argues that “the menacing suggestibility problem, which . . . [Freud] had held at bay by means of this argument, comes back to haunt data from the couch with a vengeance” (p. 172). ROBERT S. WALLERSTEIN’S RESPONSE TO THE CHALLENGES OF THE SCIENTIFIC STATUS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Robert S. Wallerstein is a prominent American psychoanalyst who has been president of the International Psychoanalytic Association and has headed the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation, among other positions. Wallerstein (1986b) provides what he refers to as a response to the challenges made by the hermeneuticists, by Karl Popper and the logical positivists, and by Adolf Grünbaum regarding the scientific status of psychoanalysis. His position is in agreement with Grünbaum’s as far as the hermeneutic and Popperian construals are concerned; however, he disagrees with Grünbaum regarding the ability of psychoanalysis to clinically validate itself. Wallerstein (1986b) proposes that an effective response to Grünbaum will have to address his two main theses regarding psychoanalytic theory: that (1) psychoanalytic status as a science rests on the Tally Argument, and that (2) if the Tally Argument does not hold up, the entire psychoanalytic edifice collapses as a science and becomes forever epistemically flawed by the influence of suggestion. Wallerstein notes that Grünbaum claims that the only way to rescue the status of psychoanalysis as science would be theoretical validation from extraclinical testing, controlled experimental studies, and epidemiological studies, and in fact discusses the possible designs for such studies. Wallerstein (1986b) begins by arguing that, in short, psychoanalysts long ago realized that the Tally Argument does not hold up. He writes that “the entire Tally Argument represents (in today’s terms) a simplistic theory of neurosogenesis, as per psychoanalysis circa 1895–1905. Psychoanalysis has long since ceased to rest on a theory of neurosogenesis on specific repression of spe-
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cific traumatic events or on concomitant theory or therapy based on uncovering those repressions, i.e. making the unconscious conscious” (p. 439). Contemporary etiologies of neurosis and theories of neurotic character and symptom formation from a psychoanalytic perspective reflect a more complex developmental process, as Wallerstein (1986b) explains. The origins of pathology are in the life history of the individual, the performance of developmental tasks combined traumatic experiences. He writes, The psychoanalytic ameliorative and curative process is no longer viewed simply as the successive lifting of repression through correctly timed veridical interpretations . . . it is much more complexly configured in terms of repetitive interpretive working over of endlessly recurrent themes linked to infantile pathological resolutions of the individual’s preoedipal and oedipal vicissitudes—the process that we call working through. (pp. 439–440)
Ultimately, what Wallerstein is arguing is that Grünbaum’s attack on the scientific validity of psychoanalysis by utilizing the Tally Argument as the cornerstone of his argument is moot, because that argument has long ago since been abandoned by psychoanalysts. Wallerstein (1986b) addresses the second thesis of Grünbaum’s argument by simply stating that the psychoanalytic situation has built-in qualities that guard against the contamination of suggestibility. Wallerstein cites the arguments of a variety of analysts, but Marshall Edelson’s in particular seemed to counteract the criticism lodged by Grünbaum quite nicely: It might be possible to . . . reduce the adulteration of data by suggestion in the psychoanalytic situation—perhaps to a vanishingly small degree, or at least to a degree it ceases to be a plausible alternative explanatory candidate. Many features of the psychoanalytic situation, in contrast to those of other psychotherapies, are in fact designed to control extraneous external influences on the analysand’s productions. (Edelson, 1984, pp. 129–130)
Thus, Wallerstein was able to challenge each of Grünbaum’s theses by arguing, first, that the Tally Argument is irrelevant, and, second, that the degree to which suggestibility influences clinical data can be limited. He then addresses the final notion that Grün-
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baum put forth: that psychoanalysis needs to conduct clinically controlled experimental trials in order to validate itself as a theory. This would mean abandoning the clinical situation as the place where hypotheses are tested and theories are validated in psychoanalysis. Wallerstein points out that while the psychoanalytic situation has its methodological problems in testing its propositions, the more empirical controlled experimental studies also have their flaws. Ultimately, Wallerstein argues that the clinical situation continues to offer the maximum of ecological validity for testing and validating psychoanalytic propositions. Wallerstein (1986b) briefly mentions a study that he led that used the traditional research methods available within the clinical situation to demonstrate, as he puts it, not only the “heuristic” but the “probative” value of psychoanalytic theory and therapy. This endeavor was called the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation, a longitudinal study of the efficacy of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. It culminated in his book 42 Lives in Treatment (Wallerstein, 1986a). CONCLUSION
The controversy surrounding the scientific status of psychoanalysis is a complicated one that is embedded in the historical development of the discipline. Contemporary psychoanalysis has a variety of schools, or orientations, and each has its own take on epistemological concerns. The neo-Freudians and ego psychologists attempt to carry on the tradition of the founding father with the theory and methods of validation unaltered. The relational movement in psychoanalysis is perhaps the most dominant in terms of contemporary theory and practice. Drive has been replaced with organization of experience as primary motivator, scientific objectivism superseded by a hermeneutic perspectivism, and a status as a basic science altered to being a science among the humanities and human sciences (Orange, 1995). Orange, Stolorow, and Atwood (1998) argue that the distinction between natural sciences and the humanities has disappeared due to advances made in late twentieth-century philosophy of science (Hesse, 1980; Suppe, 1977). They argue that science, since
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the rise of relativity and quantum theory, has become an interpretive discipline where the mutual influence of observer and the observed is found everywhere in scientific theory. Thus, if science is now considered an interpretive discipline and hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, the result is that the line between the traditional sciences and the humanities disappears. The role that subjectivity plays in the development of scientific theories is taken more seriously, and some argue that there is really no such thing as pure objectivity even in the case of science. Thus, in this sense, the controversy over the scientific status of psychoanalysis has been resolved by drawing on and building on the formulations made by both sides of the controversy; that is, the advances of late twentieth century philosophy of science have resolved the controversy. Psychoanalysis can now continue to emphasize objective and empirical work done in the discipline while extending the responsibilities of those who refer to themselves as psychoanalysts to interpretive and subjective matters. This fusion of observation and interpretation and of objectivity and subjectivity allows for the resolution to the controversy that I described at the start of the paper. That is, the lines that Dilthey drew between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) in the nineteenth century have been dissolved, allowing for a hybridization of elements from both those traditions, which complement each other in a newer construal of what it means for psychoanalysis to be a science. This construal moves beyond a postmodernist to a more posthumanist conceptualization of the status of science, allowing psychoanalysis to reemerge in this new century undergirded all the more by its theoretical tenets and methodological practices. It stands among the other disciplines as a hybrid discipline, simultaneously satisfying all the prerequisites of a scientific discipline and a hermeneutic one. What this new conceptualization of psychoanalysis as a posthumanist twenty-first-century hybrid science means for the practicing psychoanalyst is a departure from clinical practice approaches used in earlier stages of psychoanalytic development, over the course of history of the discipline. In this new formulation, the analyst is both a passive and objective scientific observer
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of the psychic contents revealed in the analytic dialogue between analyst and analysand, while at the same time the analyst is actively and subjectively interpreting—hermeneutically—those same contents. The analyst thereby helps the analysand come to a better self-understanding of how his or her psychic forces play a role in shaping the quality of his or her life for better or worse. In this way, the role of the analyst in the clinical realm is one of empirical- analytical observer as well as intersubjective interpreter, undergirded by traditional empirical science and the hermeneutical perspective together, helping the analysand on the road to self- understanding and freedom from the maladaptive invariant organizing principles that led to suffering and brought the analysand to analysis in the first place. Ultimately, psychoanalysis need not choose to which side it belongs in order to remain a viable theory of human nature and form of therapeutic treatment for psychopathology. Perhaps a testament to its validity is the manner in which psychoanalysis has influenced the world. It has transformed the way we understand the nature of mind, and the way we view the things that humans do and the things that we make. It has been simultaneously embraced and reviled by scholar and laypeople alike from its beginnings to this day. The fact remains that it has revolutionized the way we understand human psychology, and that makes it relevant even today, perhaps all the more now, as the controversy over its status as a science can finally be put to rest.
References
Edelson, M. (1984). Hypothesis and evidence in psychoanalysis. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press. Freud, S. (1895). Project for a scientific psychology. In J. Strachey, ed. and trans., The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols. London: Hogarth Press, 1953–1974. 1:281–391. ______ (1917). Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. Standard ed., 16:241– 463. Grünbaum, A. (1979). Is Freudian psychoanalytic theory pseudo-scientific by Karl Popper’s criterion of demarcation? Amer. Philos. Quart., 16(2):131–141. ______ (1984). The foundations of psychoanalysis: A philosophical critique. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. Habermas, J. (1971). Knowledge and human interests. Boston: Beacon Press.
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Hesse, M. (1980). Revolutions and reconstructions in the philosophy of science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Orange, D. (1995). Emotional understanding: Studies in psychoanalytic epistemology. New York: Guilford Press. ______, Stolorow, R. D., & Atwood, G. E. (1998). Hermeneutics, intersubjectivity theory, and psychoanalysis. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assoc., 46 :568–571. Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. ______ (1981). The question of proof in Freud’s psychoanalytic writings. In J. B. Thompson, ed., Paul Ricoeur: Hermeneutics and the human sciences (pp. 247– 273). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Suppe, F. (1974). The structure of scientific theories. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Terwee, S. J. S. (1990). Hermeneutics in psychology and psychoanalysis. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Wallerstein, R. S. (1986a). Forty-two lives in treatment: A study of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. New York: Guilford Press. ______ (1986b). Psychoanalysis as science: A response to the new challenges. Psychoanal. Quart., 55:414–451. Woolfolk, R. (1998). The cure of souls: Science, values, and psychotherapy. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.
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The Psychoanalytic Review Vol. 101, No. 6, December 2014
