The author challenges each of Grünbaum's criticisms of psychoanalytic theory (contained in his 1984 book, The Foundations of Psychoanalysis) by tracing the development of such concepts as conflict causality, repression, therapeutic efficacy, and free association. In many cases he shows how Grünbaum's criticisms are actually straw men based on an overly restrictive interpretation of concepts that have multidetermined, complex meanings. For Wurmser, the central question concerns "scientific truth." Should "scientific truth" be approached dogmatically or pragmatically? He feels Grünbaum's approach, that scientific truth is knowable independently from our conditions of knowing, is dogmatic. According to Wurmser and many other philosophers of science, scientific truth is pragmatically knowable only in its usefulness as part of the methods of knowing. Wurmser rejects the logical positivism and neo-Baconian inductivism inherent in Grünbaum's critique as the only scientific method. Philosophically, he identifies three tests of truth: correspondence