Thirty-Nine Theses and Counter-Theses on Psychoanalysis

The classical Freudian doctrines, constructed from 1890 to 1920 during a period of rapidly changing conceptions of man and the world, had their own unresolved internal problems. When the confusions of various contemporary doctrines are added to those of the classical doctrines, the result is a system of intellectual disorder of extensive dimensions. In a discussion of any randomly selected group of psychoanalysts, or a combination of these with psychologists trained in a scientific tradition, or a combination of psychoanalysts, scientifically-trained psychologists, and philosophers, a number of different conceptions of psychoanalytic doctrines inevitably arise. Here is a sample of thirty-nine Theses and Counter-Theses which easily can occur.

Most of these Theses and Counter-Theses are not genuine contradictions but rather are different views of psychoanalysis from various definitions of the nature of the doctrines. To satisfy elementary requirements of logical discourse these Theses and Counter-Theses should be cast in simple declarative sentences. The intellectual distillation of these issues has not proceeded to a point where the writer could provide such precise formulations. What are presented here are first approximations, something between formulations in the usual psychoanalytic dialectics and genuine Theses. Some of these Theses seem trivial, but others are fundamental. A few that are