Psychoanalysis as an Applied Science

The term “applied science” has two connotations. The first has to do with a science applied to the interpretation of empirical findings in another science. In this connotation, psychoanalysis is a reductionistic science, reducing empirical data obtained in other sciences such as history, anthropology and sociology to psychoanalytic propositions. The second meaning of “applied science” indicates application to practical sciences such as medicine, political science, or education. Such applied or praxiological sciences deal with problems of “what ought to be done” and “how to do it.” Psychoanalysis as a therapeutic technique belongs to praxiological disciplines.

A discussion of psychonaalysis as an applied science in the first sense may profit from a clarification of the term “reduction.” There are three types of reductionism in scientific theories. The first type is represented by radical reductionism. Here the science to be reduced is actually superflous, since its phenomena are regarded as mere appearances, illusions, or duplications, and should be substituted by the terms of the “reducing” science. Radical reductionism assumes an identity of the reducing and the to-be-reduced sciences.

The history of psychology is full of such radical-reductionistic theories. For example, J. F. Herbart assumed the human soul to be one of the physical units of the universe (Das Reale) and believed that psychological processes have to be reduced to mechanical processes. Herbart's metaphysical materialism was more or less in accord with the laws of Newtonian physics. Herbart's “soul” was represented in terms of matter and force, as a unit of matter and its actions as units of force. Herbart's system was mechanistic-association-istic, using a great deal of mathematical operations (Cf. Herbart, ; Frischeisen-Köhler,; Wolman, 1942).

No less reductionistic, although less mechanistic, were the ideas of Vogt (), for whom thought was related to