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This book records one of the few times in the United States that a distinguished group of psychoanalysts met with an equally distinguished group of philosophers of science in a free, critical interchange of view on the scientific status of the field.
This study is a philosophical critique of the foundations of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. As such, it also takes cognizance of his claim that psychoanalysis has the credentials of a natural science. It shows that the reasoning on which Freud rested the major hypotheses of his edifice was fundamentally flawed, even if the probity of the clinical observations he adduced were not in question. Moreover, far from deserving to be taken at face value, clinical data from the psychoanalytic treatment setting are themselves epistemically quite suspect.
Psychoanalysis is often equated with Sigmund Freud, but this comparison ignores the wide range of clinical practices, observational methods, general theories, and cross-pollinations with other disciplines that characterise contemporary psychoanalytic work. Central psychoanalytic concepts to do with unconscious motivation, primitive forms of thought, defence mechanisms, and transference form a mainstay of today's richly textured contemporary clinical psychological practice. In this landmark collection on philosophy and psychoanalysis, leading researchers provide an evaluative overview of current thinking. Written at the interface between these two disciplines, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis contains original contributions that will shape the future of debate. With 34 chapters divided into eight sections covering history, clinical theory, phenomenology, science, aesthetics, religion, ethics, and political and social theory, this Oxford Handbook displays the enduring depth, breadth, and promise of integrating philosophical and psychoanalytic thought. Anyone interested in the philosophical implications of psychoanalysis, as well as philosophical challenges to and re-statements of psychoanalysis, will want to consult this book. It will be a vital resource for academic researchers, psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals, graduates, and trainees.
Researching the Unconscious provides an exposition of key issues in the philosophy and methods of the social sciences that are relevant to psychoanalysis, both as a clinical practice and as a human science. These include the debates initiated by Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions, the "actor-network theory" of Bruno Latour, the ideas of philosophical realism, distinctions between "meaningful" and "causal" explanation, and the relevance of complexity theory and "part–whole analysis" to psychoanalysis. The book goes on to discuss specific forms and methods of psychoanalytical research, including the role of case studies, of outcome research, and of "grounded theory" as a key methodological resource, of which it provides a detailed example. The book concludes by outlining principles and methods for psychoanalytic research in the wider contexts of infant observational studies, society, and culture. Michael Rustin provides a unifying account of the methodological principles that underlie the generation of knowledge in psychoanalysis, in the light of recent developments in the philosophy and sociology of science. In doing so, it provides a coherent rationale for psychoanalytic investigation, which will be of value to those pursuing research in this field. Researching the Unconscious is unusual in its being based both on a deep understanding of and respect for psychoanalytical clinical practice and on its author’s wider knowledge of the philosophy and sociology of science. It is unique in its comprehensive approach to the principles of psychoanalytic research.
What can psychoanalysis, a psychological approach developed more than a century ago, offer us in an age of rapidly evolving, hard-to-categorize ideas of sexuality and the self? Should we abandon Freud's theories completely or adapt them to new findings and the new relationships taking shape in modern liberal societies? In a remarkably prescient series of lectures delivered in the early 1960s, the French philosopher Louis Althusser anticipated the challenges that psychoanalytic theory would face as politics moved away from structuralist frameworks and toward the elastic possibilities of anthropological and sociological thought. Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences translates Althusser's remarkable seminars into English for the first time, making available to a wider audience the origins and potential future of radical political theory. Althusser takes the important step in these lectures of distinguishing psychoanalysis from psychology and especially psychiatry, which long resisted Freud's analytical concepts of the unconscious and overdetermination. By freeing psychoanalysis from this bind, Althusser can then apply these analytical concepts to the social and the political, integrated with Marxist theory. The result is an enlivened methodology for comprehending social organization and change that had a profound influence on the Frankfurt School and scholars who continue to work at the forefront of radical thought today: Judith Butler, Étienne Balibar, and Alain Badiou.
This book is a discussion or debate with Freud. Today we are in search of a comprehensive philosophy of language to account for the multiple functions of the human act of signifying and for their interrelationships.
Although psychoanalytic concepts underlie most forms of psychotherapy practiced today, the basic Freudian theory of mind the metapsychology does not mesh with current scientific views in psychology and related fields. As a result, despite its many strengths, psychoanalysis has been relegated to the periphery by clinicians and researchers alike. Filling a significant void, this book from cognitive scientist and psychoanalytic researcher Wilma Bucci proposes a new model of psychological organization that integrates psychoanalytic theory with the investigation of mental processes. Solidly rooted in current cognitive science, multiple code theory recognizes the focus on meanings and motives that is intrinsic to psychoanalytic clinical work. The theory points to parallel functions underlying free association and dreams, as well as conceptual development in children and creative work in sciences and the arts, and provides a strong foundation for empirical research on the psychoanalytic treatment process.
This book presents a psychoanalysis of technoscience. Basic concepts and methods developed by Freud, Jung, Bachelard and Lacan are applied to case histories (palaeoanthropology, classical conditioning, virology). Rather than by disinterested curiosity, technoscience is driven by desire, resistance and the will to control. Moreover, psychoanalysis focusses on primal scenes (Dubois' quest for the missing link, Pavlov's discovery of the conditioned reflex) and opts for triangulation: comparing technoscience to "different scenes" provided by novels, so that Dubois's work is compared to missing link novels by Verne and London and Pavlov's experiments with Skinner's Walden Two, while virology is studied through the lens of viral fiction.
Freud began university intending to study both medicine and philosophy. But he was ambivalent about philosophy, regarding it as metaphysical, too limited to the conscious mind, and ignorant of empirical knowledge. Yet his private correspondence and his writings on culture and history reveal that he never forsook his original philosophical ambitions. Indeed, while Freud remained firmly committed to positivist ideals, his thought was permeated with other aspects of German philosophy. Placed in dialogue with his intellectual contemporaries, Freud appears as a reluctant philosopher who failed to recognize his own metaphysical commitments, thereby crippling the defense of his theory and misrepresenting his true achievement. Recasting Freud as an inspired humanist and reconceiving psychoanalysis as a form of moral inquiry, Alfred Tauber argues that Freudianism still offers a rich approach to self-inquiry, one that reaffirms the enduring task of philosophy and many of the abiding ethical values of Western civilization.