ABSTRACT
The relationship of hypothesis and evidence in psychoanalytic case reports has never satisfied the canons of eliminative inductivism. Grünbaum’s (1984) critique of the epistemology of psychoanalysis aimed to show that the clinical data of psychoanalysis were irretrievably contaminated by persuasive suggestions to a patient in a vulnerable regressed state under the influence of strong positive transference. Many, including some psychoanalysts, have accepted that the psychoanalytic situation is not capable of providing evidential support for psychoanlytic hypotheses according to the generally accepted criteria of modern science and have abandoned Freud’s claim for psychoanalysis to have a legitimate place in the domain of natural sciences (Fonagy 1982).
