ABSTRACT
The greatness of Sigmund Freud's scientific thinking is that it is so different from his over-imaginative speculations. Much of his logical scientific reasoning, even though incomplete, can be accepted and some of the gaps partly filled in by modern neuroscience. The influence of neuroscience is presented as threatening to damage the pure gold of psychoanalysis. One of the ideas which may throw some light on why it seems to have been so difficult for neuroscience and psychoanalysis to cooperate amicably is the well-known thesis of the scientific philosopher Thomas Kuhn who believed that there was often an incompatibility in the scientific world between the first accepted paradigm of a theory and a later idea. There are many other psychologists, therapists, and psychoanalysts who feel that the embers of Freud’s original intuition can be re-kindled by the input of new ideas from the neurosciences.
