How secure are Grünbaum's Foundations?

Abstract

As exemplified in Freud's cases, behaviour becomes meaningful as it is situated within a history (narrative). Operating from a Unity of Science orientation, Grünbaum emphasises causal rather than meaningful connections, and selectively follows early Freud: when (and only when) the repressed historical cause is uncovered, the symptom disappears. Since that consequential connection has proven to be not causally invariable Grünbaum discredits psychoanalysis as unscientific. Counterposed to his causal approach is that of philosopher MacIntyre, who contends that identity and moral responsibility must be situated within personal history. Also counterposed is sociologist Max Weber who struggled with parallel issues in the German 'Geisteswissenschaften' of Freud's time. The oedipal complex is akin to Weber's ideal types, as are the various models implicit in analytic discourse. Psychoanalysis must be understood as a normative science. In so far as contemporary psychology and psychiatry emphasise causal relationships, their procedures (experimental, epidemiological) can never hope to encompass psychoanalysis. Like other grand theoretical systems, psychoanalysis has applications in wide arenas--personal, developmental, familial, cultural, religious, historical, ethnological; its development during the last century has come from the interaction of findings from those arenas with those from the consulting room.