A relational model of inquiry and truth: The place of psychoanalysis in human conversation

A challenge is offered to the characterization of psychoanalysis as suffering from potentially fatal epistemic flaws and needing to ground itself in the language of hermeneutics, neuropsychology, or infant observation in order to survive. Psychoanalytic truth is neither made up nor discovered. Psychoanalytic propositions are true in the important sense of being the most useful statements we can make right now about the nature and functioning of the human unconscious. Psychoanalytic theories evolve through rational critical discourse just as theories evolve in all fields of science and scholarship.     

Historiography and psychoanalysis

Abstract

The act of writing the history of psychoanalysis poses crucial questions with regard to the openness of society. This article examines the fundamental issues faced by researchers when they set about writing the history of psychoanalysis in a specific country. The significance of reconstructing features of the psychoanalytical practice is discussed. The opposition that exists between the current academic ideals and those of the psychoanalytic societies is outlined with reference to the changes that society has undergone, particularly during the past 30 years. In this context, the stance maintained by psychoanalysts with regard to psychiatry, academic psychology, and the university education of psychotherapists is defined. Government accreditation processes for psychologists and psychotherapists are likewise illustrated in the light of the opinions held by psychoanalysts at different moments in time.     

Ethology and psychoanalysis

Ethology has sometimes been considered a distant, perhaps quaint discipline which on occasion has peripherally enriched psychoanalysis. In contrast to this, it is suggested that the evolution of ethology, which is barely seventy years old, has, to a remarkable extent, mirrored the development of psychoanalysis. A comparison is made between the classical instinct concept in psychoanalysis and the classical ethological concept of instinct; and a parallel between the fate of the concept in each discipline is drawn. It is further suggested that the dialectical relationship and complementary evolution between ethology and psychoanalysis stems from both disciplines having introduced into an explanatory model of human behavior an element that was innate, instinctual, genetic—in short, biological.