The Tension between Realism and Relativism in Psychoanalysis

Realism is a point of view that considers the world as composed of a variety of things that we sooner or later come accurately to know as matters of fact. That is to say, we learn of the existence of a real world by way of our sense organs and scientific instruments. In its naive form realism is the host of commonsense impressions of the constituents of the world—its apples, tables, and people being exactly what we perceive. Scientifically, however, we agree that a table is “really” a mass of electrons or other basic and more fundamental elements, features, and forms by which we specify our ordinary impressions of it. Scientific realism is thus the effort to determine with exactness the make-up of the world in both its past and present forms (Putnam, 1981).

Relativism is a point of view that considers the world as variable having no inherent composition save as we choose to categorize it. Our sense organs and scientific instruments guide and direct all our observations and, in so doing, determine just what the world is capable of being to us. Kant (1781) was eloquent in insisting that our brains allow us to categorize the world in particular, circumscribed ways, and thus direct a formulation of reality according to that inherent program or design.