Explanation in Psychoanalysis

Philosophers who have paid attention to psychoanalysis have often contrasted its concepts and methods with those of the exact sciences, the result being that psychoanalysis has come in a poor second—if it remains in the race at all—from the standpoint of precision, general scope, predictive capacity, and many other factors. This outcome may be reinforced by the even more familiar criticisms that empirical support is lacking and that what is taken to be evidence is ambiguous.* In defense of the scientific standing of psychoanalysis, I hope to show that its accounts proceed in accordance with a prevalent model of scientific explanation, Carl Hempel's “covering-law” analysis. I shall also defend what I call a second condition of intelligibility in psychoanalysis, the particular structure and function of the narrative form appropriate to the case history.

The objection on empirical grounds seems to have entered philosophical literature with Wittgenstein, who remarked that “what [Freud] says sounds as if it were science, when in fact it is only a ‘wonderful representation.’”9 But such criticism was not entirely un-appreciative and had the effect of encouraging a number of the philosopher's followers to look to psychological explanation, scientific or not, as a topic worthy of analysis. Thus Stephen Toulmin, in Wittgensteinian terms, has directed attention to the “forms of life” or “broader constellations” within which explanation functions as the “placing” of behavior that has seemed anomalous. We resolve