ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis is at liberty to adapt concepts or empirical findings, methods, or methodological rules in its own special way, in order to make them applicable to its own purposes. As Ros Edgcumbe points out in a systematic overview on the history of the term "concept" in Western philosophy, three views of what concepts are have achieved some prominence in history of science. Three views are those originating in classical antiquity, based on Plato's thoughts on "ideas"; modern views, based on Kant's concept of reason; and the contemporary view, in line with Wittgenstein's idea of language games and human life forms. Psychoanalytic concepts must look for justification both in practice and in discourse. The justification in discourse will become important especially when there is dissent in any form about the use of a concept. Empiricists tend to maintain that, in a research process, only the context of justification can be rationally reconstructed in a systematic way.
