Popper's Fundamental Misdiagnosis of the Scientific Defects of Freudian Psychoanalysis and of Their Bearing on the Theory of Demarcation

The first impetus for my philosophical appraisal of Freudian psychoanalytic theory came from K. R. Popper's (1962) report that its edifice had played a pivotal role in his elevation of the empirical falsifiability of a hypothesis by potentially contrary evidence to be the linchpin of its scientific entertainability. Indeed, for Popper, psychoanalysis avowedly served as the centerpiece for the purported superiority of his own falsifiability criterion of demarcation between science and non(pseudo)science to the received inductivist standard for empirical theory validation. Popper fallaciously inferred the nonfalsifiability of Freudian and Adlerian psychology from his own declared inability to imagine logically possible contrary instances of human behavior. Moreover, he tried to buttress this thesis of irrefutability by the incorrect complaint that these 2 psychological theories were always inductively confirmed, come what may. However, as I showed amply (A. Grünbaum, 1984, p. 280): “It is precisely Freud's theory that furnishes poignant evidence that Popper has caricatured the [Baconian] inductivist tradition by his thesis of easy inductive confirmability of nearly every theory.” Alas, Popper's treatment of psychoanalysis as the avowed

anvil of his theory of scientific rationality will turn out to be an intellectual fiasco throughout.