But Facts Exist: An Enquiry into Psychoanalytic Theorizing by Thomas Freeman London:  Karnac Books, 1998,  xiii + 183 pp.

In this broad but relatively brief survey of psychoanalytic theory Thomas Freeman has the dual purpose of dealing with epistemological issues relating to psychoanalysis as a science as well as arguing for a number of specific theoretical claims. He takes a strong stand against the radical subjectivism of hermeneutists and constructivists expressed in his distinction between what he calls “clinical facts” versus “psychoanalytic facts.” The former include such phenomena as dreams, parapraxes, and psychotic manifestations that have been verified by repeated observation both inside and outside the analytic relationship. Clinical facts are objective and do not depend on any particular observer. By contrast, psychoanalytic facts only appear in the analytic relationship and do not have the same objective status possessed by clinical facts. Each chapter of this book attempts to relate one or more of Freud's theories to clinical facts using material derived from the author's experience including both neurotic and psychotic patients.

Although I strongly endorse the author's stand on the importance of scientific validation for psychoanalytic theory, it seems to me there are problems with his distinction between clinical versus psychoanalytic facts as well as some of his arguments for specific theoretical claims. The word “fact” is ambiguous because it is sometimes used to refer to the extralinguistic reality represented by true statements and other times used to refer to true statements themselves—that is, those that correctly represent some aspect of extralinguistic reality. Philosophical discussions of this issue are complex, but it is sufficient for our purpose here to regard “facts” simply as true statements. The source of much confusion in psychoanalysis is a tendency for some analysts to infer that there is no such thing as truth from the fact that we can never have absolute certainty that any statement is true.