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PSYCHOANALYSIS, IN ADDITION TO WHATEVER else it may be, is a process of knowing and understanding oneself. This self-knowledge is the means to help us become free from the psychic constrictions that impede our living. What is the nature of this self-knowledge
though, and when it is ("truth") achieved? I would like to propose a schema which suggests that psychoanalysis has undergone several periods, each of which is marked by a central theme concerning how psychoanalytic knowledge and truth are to be understood. I will describe the manner in which these periods are reflective of larger philosophical developments in the history of ideas and of views of truth in general.
My focus here is on the practice or doing of psychoanalysis as a process of knowing—less so on a "body of knowledge" or a "theory of man". I offer the schema not for the purposes of classification per se, rather as an expository device to describe some significant epistemological trends in the field. My characterization therefore is with a rather broad brush stroke without explicating in detail the particular elements of larger themes.
A brief overview of what I'll more fully describe is that Freud launched psychoanalysis under the umbrella of a pervasive view of knowledge and truth in which truth is reified. According to this view, knowledge and truth are found by locating the correct representation in the mind to correspond to an essence out there. One of the legacies of this has been the importance of metapsychology within psychoanalysis. Developments in several directions of 20th century thinking have converged toward a fundamental critique of this view of knowledge. As these critical ideas have impacted on psychoanalysis, there has been a general epistemological trend away from the preeminence of metaps