ABSTRACT
Adolf Grunbaum has used the Tally Argument as representative of the best defence of psychoanalysis against the suggestibility charge. As Grunbaum himself points out, Sigmund Freud has repeatedly asserted that the results of suggestive treatment were capricious. Grunbaum has largely relied on textual evidence and the relevance of the argument for Freudian theory. Grunbaum formulates the Tally Argument on the basis of a lecture given in 1917 and ascribes a change of belief to Freud later than 1917. The chapter shows that the logical consequences of the Necessary Condition Thesis (NCT) are incompatible with some of the logical consequences of the psychoanalytic theory. It also shows that even if Freud subscribed to NCT, the argument cannot be applied to evaluate the status of psychoanalysis in general. Freud considered constitutional factors to be one of the most important causal factors in neuroses. Freud even asserts that bringing about such changes may be considered the true causal therapy of neuroses.
