ABSTRACT

In these varied evaluations of Freud's views on reality, several standards have been used. Historically, the significance of the issue was most often linked with the desire either to include or to bar psychoanalysis from the esteemed status of science (as opposed to the more recent desire of some to distinguish the roots of psychoanalysis from today's spreading hermeneutic branches). Consequently, it is understandable that virtually all these standards for measuring psychoanalysis's commitment to the possibility of an objective view of an objective reality are drawn from the natural sciences. Freud's own efforts to construct a reductionist theory in a manner consonant with 19 th-century physics and biology fall seriously short of their mark (Griinbaum, 1984; Sulloway, 1979). Robinson (1993) expresses a less demanding, though also widely held position. Robinson's position is noteworthy here because it potentially leads to a recognition of Freud's commitment to history as a central issue in the evaluation of psychoanalysis as a science. Robinson's view is that psychoanalysis need not model itself on physics to be a science. He proposes that "science is in fact a continuum, with psychoanalysis occupying an honored place toward the Darwinian end" (pp. 262-263). Darwin's work, which holds an indisputably hallowed place in the history of science, was largely theoretical speculation based on uncontrolled observations in the field. Robinson's position honors the more speculative metapsychological approach to observed data often taken by Freud and his followers and suggests the more realistic analogy of field observation-rather than the more pristine, hypothesis testing laboratory procedures once envisioned as the sole basis for physics-as an acceptable standard of scientific rigor for the psychoanalytic session. More specifically, if we accept Robinson's view, Griinbaum's (1984) description of Freud's failure to empirically validate psychoanalytic treatment (the "tally" argument) and Popper's (1963) concern with the refutability of Freud's hypotheses move from potentially devastating to the scientific status of psychoanalysis to merely interesting critiques. Center stage in evaluating psychoanalysis's membership in the scientific community is then left to establishing that psychoanalysis shares physic's most basic commitment-to an ultimately objectifiable reality-and the eventual goal of its empirical verification of its observations and hypotheses.