Word: grunbaum
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Dates: during 1993-1993
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These defenders must now confront Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psychoanalysis (International Universities Press; $50) by Adolf Grunbaum, a noted philosopher of science and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh. The book, which builds on Grunbaum's 1984 critique of psychoanalytic underpinnings, is a monograph (translation: no one without a Ph.D. need apply) and a quiet, sometimes maddeningly abstruse devastation of psychoanalysis' status as a science. Grunbaum dispassionately examines a number of key psychoanalytic premises: the theory of repression (which Freud called "the cornerstone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests"), the investigative capabilities offered by free...
...page, Grunbaum is able to make his critique a little more accessible to lay people. Of the presumed link between childhood molestation and adult neurosis, he remarks, "Just saying the first thing happened and the second thing happened, and therefore one caused the other, is not enough. You have to show more." Grunbaum finds similar flaws in the importance Freud attached to dreams and bungled actions, such as so-called Freudian slips: "All three of these tenets -- the theory of neurosis, the theory of why we dream and the theory of slips -- have the same problem. All are undermined...
...wobbly? Interestingly, Grunbaum himself thinks all is not lost, although his verdict is not entirely cheering: "I categorically don't believe Freud is dead. The question is, Are they trustworthy explanations? Have the hypotheses been validated by cogent, solid evidence? My answer to that...
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