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Far too many psychotherapists are ignorant of Adolf Grunbaum's contributions to psychoanalytic thought. Grunbaum is a philosopher of science, initially a specialist in the philosophy of space and time, who has turned his attention to the subject of psychoanalysis. A series of papers on psychoanalysis culminated in the publication of The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique in 1984. In Foundations, Grunbaum pulled together the various strands of his criticism of psychoanalysis in a philosophical tour de force.
Grunbaum believes that Freud was a brilliant although ultimately unsuccessful scientific methodologist with much more penetrating insight into the problems inherent in the validation of psychoanalytic theory than his psychoanalytic contemporaries and heirs. Grunbaum therefore draws extensively on Freud's own reflections on the scientific status of psychoanalysis.
Grunbaum demonstrated in Foundations that there is precious little reason to believe in psychoanalysis. His arguments are elegant, impeccably logical and informed by a profound knowledge of Freudian theory. Grunbaum's first psychoanalytic book should have resulted in a tearing of hair and a gnashing of teeth throughout the world of psychotherapy. If psychoanalytic theory has no sound basis - if it is little more than a particularly compelling story - psychoanalytic practitioners should be very worried about what they are doing in their consulting rooms. They should be very worried about the interpretations they are giving and the fees they are collecting. In fact, very few psychoanalytic writers have realised the importance of Grünbaum's critique and engaged seriously with his arguments (e.g. , 1986; , 1988; Smith 1991a, 1991b).
Psychotherapists professing a non-Freudian faith may be tempted to applaud at this point. They have in reality no such cause for schadenfreude. Grunbaum seizes on Freud as a sort of paradigm case. Freud had the guts and the brilliance to concern himself with fun