You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Can psychoanalysis be a science, and if so, of what kind? Though contemporary psychoanalysts give at least a half dozen different answers, modern philosophers of science generally do not exclude the possibility in principle. No important methodological issues
depend on where psychoanalysis is classified among the sciences. Its methods resemble those of both natural and social science. The logical structure of empirical inquiry and theory construction is much the same in all the sciences. Each typically has a domain, a language, theories, and a model or models. Metapsychology is in part a language, partly a set of theoretical propositions, and at least one explicit attempted model. Much of it seems to be an attempt to model clinical propositions by physical concepts, which however amounts to no more than a set of metaphors. Two recommendations are made for psychoanalysis: to concentrate on clarifying, developing, and organizing clinical theory; and to explore the possibility that systems theory may provide a model satisfying both clinical psychoanalytic theory and much of human biology including neurophysiology, thus attaining the unity for which Freud strove.