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Among the controversies which have surrounded psychoanalysis since its beginnings, the dispute over whether this body of data and theory is to be classified as science has occupied a continuing and important place. Obviously, it has proved impossible to settle the issue to the satisfaction of everyone, which raises the question of why this is so. Perusal of the writings both of philosophers of science and psychoanalysts begins to make clear some of the reasons.
To begin with, there are marked differences of opinion about what is required to designate a field of inquiry as science. Concerning psychoanalysis, the difficulties centre around the nature of the data as obtained in the course of doing clinical psychoanalysis. This field of observation has made it difficult or impossible to provide data with the kinds of safeguards that most scientists are used to, e.g. consensual validation, replication, suitable controls, sufficient numbers to allow statistical analysis, simple predictions and opportunities to falsify propositions, etc.
The second major difficulty lies in the marked discrepancies in the accounts of the numerous participants in these controversies concerning what the fundamentals of psychoanalytic theory are which are to be evaluated. Each author seems to pick out and develop his own picture of what the essentials of the theory are, using as a basis very different degrees of breadth of theory. Thus, some restrict their account to early Freud, others to selected aspects of Freud's writings from all his phases of theory development, while still others utilize a broader view encompassing the work of many writers since Freud.
Recently, there seems to have been a surge of interest and work around these problems. Within psychoanalysis itself, a number of authors have taken the position on various grounds that analysis should be considered a hermeneutic discipline rather than one fitting into natural science. On the other hand, from the side of philosophers