Since 1976 Adolf Grünbaum has published a series of articles on the philosophy of psychoanalysis; in 1984 they were collected in his book The Foundations of Psychoanalysis. Grünbaum is primarily concerned with the question of whether psychoanalysis is a science, though one could also say that he is trying to show that the inductivist criteria for science that he favors may be fruitfully applied to psychoanalysis. Put very briefly, his conclusions are that Freud's psychoanalytic theory is scientific (contrary to Popper's claim) but that, alas, empirical evidence to support its truth is still lacking at this moment. In a lengthy introduction to the book (94 pages), Grünbaum criticizes another conception of the nature of psychoanalytic theory; that is, the hermeneutic interpretation of psychoanalysis.

The aim of this paper is to show that Grünbaum's critique of the hermeneutical conception rests on basic misunderstandings and very significant errors in interpretation. For brevity's