On the Epistemology of Psychoanalysis

How is it possible to discuss the epistemology of psychoanalysis? We should first try to delimit the term's field of reference, since there is likely to be disagreement in this matter. Epistemology is the science of knowledge. As such, it attempts to answer the questions: how, within a given discipline, does cognition function? By what means is knowledge established for a particular domain? What procedures are used by a science or a discipline to constitute its object or objects? What degree of certainty is possible within a discipline, given its methodological strengths and weaknesses? What kind of truth does the discipline propose? When the word epistemology is applied to psychoanalysis, we are thus confronted with questions of method, of object, and of validity. These are formidable questions, since pyschoanalytic discourse has become so familiar we hold it to be the discourse of self-evident truth. We use a Freudian, Kleinian, Bionian or Lacanian vocabulary without questioning the legitimacy of its application. The foundations of our knowledge remain scrupulously unexamined. Our task, or so we believe, is simply to assimilate, reproduce and, possibly, develop a discourse we have always considered as the truth, whether it be that of Freud, Lacan or Klein. In a sense we are constantly turning our backs on epistemology

Cognitive science · Epistemology · Psychoanalysis · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Semiotics and Representation Studies

• Freud

  Open Access•Terri Conley, Tom Conley•Paragraph•1991

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