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IN THIS ESSAY I WOULD LIKE to look at Paul Ricoeur's conception of the status of psychoanalysis as a science (Ricoeur 1977), but to look at his argument in the context of intersubjective recognition, what intersubjectivity implies for understanding the symbol-productions of schizophrenic language, and what the scientific claims of psychoanalysis reveal about the origin of psychic facts and their representation in language. In the conclusion, I raise some general issues that a psychoanalytic view of the mind poses for social scientists and political scientists in particular.1
It should be added that much of what Ricoeur argues about truth claims in psychoanalysis, the nature of communication, intersubjectivity, the status of psychic facts (the productions of the inner), and the significance of symbolic language, reflect directions in the writings of Harry Stack Sullivan. It would of course require a considerably more detailed analysis than is possible here to do justice to the full range of thematic parallels. Yet similarities do exist, and I shall on occasion note a few of them.
Ricoeur's argument is more than an analysis of Freudian concepts; it is no less than an attempt to ground psychoanalytic principles