Psychoanalysis and Philosophy

Psychoanalysis is concerned with the process of change from more primitive and contradictory to more developed and integrated and—essentially—from less human or less capable of responsibility to more human or more responsible. Philosophy has very similar interests. While philosophy pursues its goal in a variety of ways, psychoanalysis does it in the framework of the analytic situation, in which the variables are fewer and more accessible to an evaluation.

For both analyst and patient, the analytic experience offers a possibility for better understanding of the “emotional” factors which make it difficult for the individual to accept certain evidence as convincing. Propaganda methods, on the other hand, show how easily people accept false propositions as valid evidence, again because of “emotional” reasons. From both these examples, the need that emerges is that of telling the whole truth. Analysis creates a situation in which this is made possible. Analysis can do this only if it works with a concept of man which does justice to all of his capacities.

Both psychoanalysis and philosophy have been criticized as not being scientific. In an effort to be very scientific, some psychoanalysts narrowed their interest to phenomena that can be recorded in the laboratory and that can be expressed in biological terms. Similarly, in an effort to be scientific, some philosophers have limited their interest to the economic forces in society, to the exclusion or subordination of everything else. Consciously or unconsciously such limitations will lead to a philosophy of cynicism or to a worship of force. The alternative is a more inclusive view of both philosophy and psychoanalysis. The easiest way to decline responsibility for participation in psychoanalytic and in philosophical thinking is to declare them non-scientific. There is