ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud stands confidently in the nineteenth-century German tradition of empirical psychology, stemming from Johann Friedrich Herbart and Hermann von Helmholz. Sartre's assault on psychoanalysis is a restatement of the anti-naturalistic humanistic libertarian standpoint of classical German philosophy. His criticisms are consequently of a different order from those of, say, Karl Popper, and they reveal more of the philosophical significance of Freud's ideas. The philosophical controversies surrounding psychoanalysis with which people are familiar concern its scientific standing or, as its most vociferous detractors allege, lack thereof. Scientificity provides a fruitful set of terms for evaluating psychoanalysis, however, only if Freud's ideas are understood as inductively grounded hypotheses to which the usual sorts of quantified empirical testing are appropriate. In a recent paper, Jonathan Lear makes a suggestion for how we might think about the psychological unification of Freedom and Nature.
