Pitfalls of a One-Sided Image of Science: Adolf Grünbaum's Foundations of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Adolf Grünbaum's (1984) The Foundations of Psychoanalysis has received extensive attention in psychoanalytic and philosophical circles. Aspects of Grünbaum's argument are reviewed and criticized. While his volume is an important contribution to the epistemological assessment of psychoanalysis, it reflects serious shortcomings in at least four areas: its treatment of the role of suggestion in the analytic enterprise, its scrutiny of the psychoanalytic genetic method, its appreciation of analytic methodology as actually practiced, and, above all, its predication on a unidimensional, positivistic vision of science. Alternative approaches to the philosophy of psychoanalysis are suggested.