Psychoanalysis: A Science of the Mind?

摘要

IN his paper on 'The Science of Psychoanalysis,' Lacewing helpfully distinguishes a central psy-chodynamic model of the mind, elaborated in the clinical theory of psychoanalysis, from certain of its metapsychological and etiological theories. Critics who view psychoanalysis as unscientific have tended to focus on the lack of evidential support for certain of its developmental claims or the lack of reliability and validity in its theoretical posits. Lacewing claims, however, that the model contained in the clinical theory is much more scientifically respectable than its critics have made out. The data may not always be in, but Lacewing's argument is that there is nothing pseudoscientific about the central model that precludes it in principle from receiving meaningful and objective confirmation or disconfirmation. I agree about the value of the central and the clinically widely shared psychodynamic model of the mind compared with some of the speculative trajectories or intrapsychic structures posited with too much scientific and dialectical confidence by many early psychoanalysts. I am also convinced by Lacewing's careful and thoughtful disposal of the charges of ineradicable suggestion and confirmation bias in psychoanalysis. In this response, however, I take a step back and offer an alternative take on the best characterization of aspects of the core model.