Psychoanalytic Epistemology: Kant and Freud

“Critical realism,” as I use the term, refers primarily to psychoanalytic epistemological issues and more generally to observational and experimental natural science and ordinary experience. I have only very recently become aware of the philosophy of critical realism advocated by Roy Blaskar. My philosophical orientation is not Blaskar’s critical realism but scientific philosophy, which consists of working out the implications of scientific discoveries for philosophical epistemology, ontology, ethics, and aesthetics. A well-known exposition of this philosophy is Reichenbach’s (1951) The Rise of Scientific Philosophy. Accordingly, I shall argue that, although Erik Stänicke, Anders Zacrhisson, and Arne Johan Vetlesen and I share an epistemological perspective, I remain persuaded that critical realism has distinct advantages over critical idealism as an epistemology for psychoanalysis (see this issue). At issue is the question “what is the philosophically and psychoanalytically most sound epistemology for psychoanalysis.” Stänicke, Zacrhisson, and Vetlesen have argued that the critical idealism epistemology originated by Kant is an improvement on critical realism, with which they otherwise agree, as did Kant. They argue that Freud was, at least implicitly, an epistemological Kantian. I would like to be able to reciprocate their appreciation of critical realism in my assessment of critical idealism but as you will find as you follow the arguments, the

scholarly, philosophical, scientific, and psychoanalytic reasons why I cannot, reasons with which you may agree or disagree. But, let me first clarify my use of the idea of critical realism.

“Critical realism,” as I use the expression, is grounded in two affirmations. The “realism” part assumes that patients, along with their neuroses, exist independent