Abstract

I examine previous philosophical studies of the scientific status of psychoanalytic theory and argue that these analyses have assessed psychoanalytic theory against the wrong epistemological model. I take as my point of departure Adolf Grunbaum's recent book, The Foundations of Psychoanalysis. Grunbaum criticizes the scientific status of psychoanalysis as discussed by Karl Popper and the hermeneuticists, Paul Ricoeur and Jurgen Habermas, and stakes out his own methodological position. Like Grunbaum, I take issue with the position of Popper and the hermeneuticists, but my position is not coincident with Grunbaum's. The debate over the scientific status of psychoanalytic theory centers on the fact that Freud, himself, described psychoanalysis as a natural science. I argue that the preceding debate has failed to locate Freud's notion of natural science, because it has assumed philosophical, methodological paradigms of the natural sciences that give the methodology of physics central status. I propose that Freud originally assumed that medicine was the natural science that provided the epistemological and methodological background for his work and that the scientific status and epistemology of medicine needs to be brought explicitly into the discussion of the scientific status of psychoanalysis. Although I maintain that medicine is the appropriate epistemological model against which the scientific character of psychoanalysis ought to be assessed, I recognize that psychoanalysis involves an extension of medical thinking into new domains, forcing breaks with many features of an originating medical model