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Since its inception more than a hundred years ago, psychoanalysis has been intermittently accompanied by ambivalence about its relationship with philosophy. Whether to continue the confrontations of the past or seek to reorient our mutual perspectives about the other is my question. In lieu of reductionist critiques and disputes about hegemony, I propose a nurturing dialogue as psychoanalysis and philosophy move forward, keeping in mind that while we are not necessarily bound by the past neither can we ignore that which in many ways defines the present.
The relationship between psychoanalysis and philosophy had its roots in Freud's early interest in philosophy that began even before commencing his medical education. Although the requirement to take a philosophy course had been dropped, Freud nevertheless attended philosophical lectures from 1874 to 1875, given by the eminent Viennese philosopher Franz Brentano, a noted Aristotle scholar at the University of Vienna. Inspired by Brentano, Freud read Aristotle and wrote to his boyhood friend Eduard Silberstein: “under Brentano's fruitful influence I have arrived at the decision to take my Ph.D. in philosophy and zoology” (Freud to Silberstein on March 7, 1875, p. 95). Later in life Freud also read other philosophers, such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, although he remained ambivalent about the intellectual debt he owed to Nietzsche (Kramer, 2012, p. 346).
Philosophical critiques of psychoanalysis abound. For the most part, they seek to convince the practitioners of psychoanalysis about the shortcomings not only of their theoretical foundations but also of the validity of their practice. These critiques have come for the most part from philosophers of science (i.e., Earnest Nagel, 1961; Karl Popper, 1963 and Alfred Grünbaum, 2006). Even philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Thomas Nagel who are not philosophers of science have borrowed arguments from the philosophy of science to critique psychoanalysis.
Critiques have also