Abstract

This chapter examines three main themes: the unconscious; dreams, jokes, and the nature of psychoanalytic explanation; and the relation between psychoanalysis and Wittgenstein's method in philosophy. Of the extraordinary roll call of Viennese cultural celebrities who were Wittgenstein's rough contemporaries, some were certainly far closer to Wittgenstein than Freud was. But though there is no evidence that Freud and Wittgenstein ever met, there were a number of indirect personal connections between them. Eugen Fischer's view, which takes the analogy between philosophy and psychological therapy very seriously, makes for an instructive contrast. Wittgenstein has had a significant influence on philosophical commentary on psychoanalysis, and some influence on the development of psychoanalysis itself. One of the abiding criticisms of Freud has been that his work is not properly scientific, whether in the form of the claim that it is bad science, or that its claims are unfalsifiable and so not science at all.