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In this book, philosopher Alfred I. Tauber takes up the sometimes fraught but also—at least for some philosophers and psychoanalysts—inescapable topic of the intersection and border territories of psychoanalytic theory and philosophical reflection. I say fraught because past encounters of the two disciplines have not infrequently been characterized by experiences of mutual incomprehension.
This occurred, for example, when Karl Popper brought a sharp philosophy of science critique emphasizing “falsifiability” to psychoanalytic methodology, and when Adolf Grünbaum (1984) marshaled an anti-Popperian philosophy of science critique on the epistemic standing of psychoanalytic inferences. These philosophical encounters with psychoanalysis have at times seemed to offer no more than a conversation-stopping stalemate, and perhaps support for psychoanalysts' musings on the wisdom of Freud's comments on resistances to the acceptance of psychoanalytic understanding. At other times, it seems inevitable that we must place psychoanalysis in a perspective that goes beyond its apparently unique and sui generis quality. I remember having thoughts to that effect on reading Simon (1980) and others on Plato and Freud, John