David Smith Replies

Thank you for granting me the opportunity to respond to Mr Singh's recent letter. In spite of our sharp philosophical differences, Mr Singh and I possess something important in common. We are both concerned with the philosophical underpinnings of psychoanalysis and the intellectual status of psychoanalytic claims about mental life.

Although it may sound strange, I think that these philosophical issues should be of particular concern to clinicians. Psychoanalytic clinicians find themselves in a morally grave situation. If, as GrUnbaum and others claim, there are good reasons to doubt the veracity of the theories upon which psychoanalytic practice is based we are morally obliged to consider this deeply and seriously, to moderate our views accordingly and make sure that the public is aware of these reasonable doubts. Unfortunately, this is rather difficult to put into practice. The difficulty stems from the complex emotional relationship of psychoanalysts to their discipline, the autocratic and intellectually irresponsible attitudes of professional and training institutes, the absence of any tradition of institutionalised self-criticism within the profession and, last but not least, psychoanalysts' economic dependence upon the very ideas and methods upon which doubt is being cast. Notwithstanding the pervasive (and to my mind, selfcongratulatory) rhetoric of ‘not-knowing’ and ‘negative capability’, it seems to me that institutional psychoanalysis encourages doubt only within very narrow parameters. I think that this situation provides a rather telling example of the convergence of knowledge and human interests to which Mr Singh alludes in his letter. As Grunbaum himself puts it:

Very understandably, those who see their doctrine in jeopardy may find it more difficult to be receptive to my demurrer than it is for me to issue it… After all, whatever the fortunes of my polemic against Freud's clinical arguments and against post-Freudian variants on them (GrUnbaum, , chap. 7