Grünbaum on Hermeneutics

The attention accorded Adolph Grünbaum's The Foundations of Psychoanalysis has focused mainly on the last three sections of the book, those parts which deal with the scientific grounding of psychoanalysis (Laor, 1985). The first part, an extended introduction in which Grünbaum subjects the major proponents of a hermeneutic reading of psychoanalysis to a markedly critical review, has received little attention or been greeted with uncritical approval. In The New York Review Jonathan Lieberson reports that Grünbaum “shows as well how most of their objections to seeing it [psychoanalysis] as science—such as their claim that the concern of psychoanalysis with the ‘meaning’ of symptoms or illnesses excludes it from being a causal science—rest not only on logical mistakes and ignorance about psychoanalysis but on misconceptions about the scope of natural science” (1985, p. 28). Robert Holt reports in a recent article that Grünbaum “takes on Habermas and his claim that psychoanalysis is not a natural science but a ‘critical discipline,’ and makes sausage meat out of it, as well as the position of those like Ricoeur, Steele, Schafer, and Klein, who argue on such grounds as the assumed difference between reasons