Psychoanalysis at the Limit

Description

Psychoanalysis has long been charged as being a pseudoscience. This timely book explores and reexamines the nature of psychoanalysis within contemporary debates about science, epistemology, unconscious experience, and the philosophy of mind. Distinguished scholars and practitioners from diverse backgrounds in psychoanalysis, philosophy, and psychology offer both favorable and critical accounts of psychoanalytic theory and practice from Freud and Lacan through contemporary revisionist philosophical perspectives.

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. The Role of Being and Experience in Freud's Unconscious Ontology
M. Guy Thompson

2. Formulating Unconscious Experience: From Freud to Binswanger and Sullivan
Roger Frie

3. Truth, Mind, and Objectivity
Marcia Cavell

4. Freud and Searle on the Ontology of the Unconscious
David Livingstone Smith

5. Paranoiac Episteme
Jon Mills

6. From Myth to Metaphysics: Freud and Wittgenstein as Philosophical Thinkers
James C. Edwards

7. The Hermeneutic Versus the Scientific Conception of Psychoanalysis
Adolf Grunbaum

8. The Possibility of a Scientific Psychoanalysis
Joseph Margolis

9. Incompleteness and Experimental Untestability in Psychoanalysis
Donald Levy

List of Contributors

Index

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 12 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791485217
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

PSYCHOANALYSIS AT THE LIMIT

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PSYCHOANALYSIS AT THE LIMIT

Epistemology, Mind, and the Question of Science

Edited by JON MILLS

State University of New York Press

Published by S U N Y P , A TATE NIVERSITY OF EW ORK RESS LBANY

© 2004 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, elec trostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY  www.sunypress.edu

Production, Laurie Searl Marketing, Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Psychoanalysis at the limit : epistemology, mind, and the question of science / [edited by] Jon Mills. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN978-0791460658paper) (alk. —978-0-7914-6066-5฀(pbk.฀alk.฀paper) 1. Psychoanalysis—Philosophy. I. Mills, Jon, 1964–

BF173.P7753 2004 150.19'5—dc21

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2003052605

For my mother Rachel:

Yet mothers can ponder many things in their

hearts which their lips cannot express.

—Alfred North Whitehead

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Preface Acknowledgments

CONTENTS

1 The Role of Being and Experience in Freud’s Unconscious Ontology M. Guy Thompson

2 Formulating Unconscious Experience: From Freud to Binswanger and Sullivan Roger Frie

3 Truth, Mind, and Objectivity Marcia Cavell

4 Freud and Searle on the Ontology of the Unconscious David Livingstone Smith

5 ParanoiacEpisteme Jon Mills

6 From Myth to Metaphysics: Freud and Wittgenstein as Philosophical Thinkers James C. Edwards

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CONTENTS

7 The Hermeneutic Versus the Scientific Conception of Psychoanalysis Adolf Grünbaum

8 The Possibility of a Scientific Psychoanalysis Joseph Margolis

9 Incompleteness and Experimental Untestability in Psychoanalysis Donald Levy

List of Contributors

Index

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PREFACE

We are approaching a Freud renaissance within the ivory tower: psycho- analysis is unequivocally in vogue in academe and has become a cardinal focus of contemporary European and North American intellectual life. We may especially observe a resurgence of interest in Freud studies as represented by the humanities and social sciences including philosophy, literature, politi- cal theory, sociology, anthropology, psychobiology, neurocognitive science, theory of culture, history, religion, feminist thought, art and film studies, and the history of ideas. Nevertheless, despite burgeoning interest in psychoana- lytic thought, psychoanalysis today is facing a crisis. Confronted with meth- odological, discursive, epistemological, and empirical challenges to theory and practice, not to mention waning public interest in psychoanalytic treat- ment, psychoanalysis continues to find itself displaced from mainstream scientific and therapeutic approaches within the behavioral sciences. Not only is psychoanalysis questioned on its scientific credibility and therapeutic efficacy from other disciplines, it is even disputed within contemporary psy- 1 choanalysis itself. Criticized for its problematic epistemology, theory of mind, and scientific merit, psychoanalysis is at the limit. Historically within philosophy, psychoanalysis has been labeled “my- thology” by Wittgenstein, “unintelligible” by James, “illegitimate” by MacIntyre, “unscientific” by Grünbaum, and, more recently, “pseudoscience” 2 by Cioffi. Some have even gone so far as to deny the existence of the 3 unconscious altogether, thus making the whole theory and practice of psy- choanalysis a dubious enterprise to begin with. Adding to this controversy, proponents of empirical psychology claim that psychoanalysis as a discipline is withering on the vine mainly due to its lack of empirical and scientific critique, its marginalization among the fields of contemporary psychology and psychiatry, and its tendency toward self-destruction due to mismanage- ment by its adherents. Within psychoanalytic psychology, Bornstein advo- cates that only rigorous scientific and research-based interventions can 4 resuscitate the psychoanalytic corpse. In the end, both analytic philosophy

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