The Epistemology Behind The Curtain: Thoughts on The Science of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

This essay is concerned with the epistemological complications of the interface between psychoanalysis and "scientific" disciplines and methodologies-in particular, with respect to theories of knowledge and conceptualizations of subjectivity appropriate to psychoanalysis. The author suggests that there is in such interface the potential for an untheorized scientism in empiricist prescriptions for the reform and rescue of psychoanalysis, and revisits the notion that subjectivity as conceived psychoanalytically, grounded in lived experience, is irreducible in ways that are unique and existentially abiding. The author explores the problem through the lens of philosophical hermeneutics and cautions against merging psychoanalysis, under the guise of a salutary pluralism, with disciplines guided by a systematized empiricism and its attendant epistemological commitments.

The Innate Capacity for Representing Subjective Experience: The Infant’s Mind is Neither Primitive nor Prerepresentational

“…Clarke cites Mayes’s (2005) claim that psychoanalysis and developmental psychology have different but not incompatible epistemologies; the idiopathic methodology of psychoanalysis is not incompatible with the nomothetic methodology of developmental science. Recognizing both the similarities and the differences would help bring psychoanalysis “into active discourse and collaboration with contemporary developmental, social, and brain sciences” (Mayes, 2005, p. 148, quoted in Clarke, 2017, p. 593).…”

“…For instance, the existence of a "normal autistic phase" is simply not plausible in light of the findings of infant observation (p. 75). Clarke (2017) has written that "most everyone agrees that psychoanalysis is not, and should not strive to imitate, a natural science in the strict sense" (p. 576). However, he suggests that most contemporary writers, in speaking of "psychoanalytic science," intend it to be an objective form of reasoned inquiry that is epistemologically compatible with empirical research and perhaps other, more traditional branches of science, such as neuroscience.…”

Freudian naturalism and the assessment of psychoanalysis as a natural science: Psychic phenomenon as process

“…Overall, the challenge is to receive external or internal evaluations allowing the reassessment of the epistemological identity of the discipline while improving its conceptual enterprise and without harming its theoretical–methodological qualities and specificities. This is a tough task that is far from being resolved, as shown by the ongoing literature on the matter (Appelbaum, 2011; Blatt et al, 2006; Boag et al, 2015; Bornstein, 2001; Clarke, 2017; Cohler & Galatzer-Levy, 2007; Dauphin, 2008; Luyten, 2015; Mills, 2015; Schülein, 2007; Solms, 2018; Wallerstein, 2009; Zepf, 2016).…”