Psychoanalysis as science. Its boundary problems, special status, relations to other sciences, and formalization
Edelson, M.
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 165(1): 1-28
1977
ISSN/ISBN: 0022-3018 PMID: 327026 Document Number: 120344
Psychoanalysis was examined as science. The following questions were discussed. What is there about psychoanalysis that leads so many of its scholars, and many scholars in other disciplines to take up habitation on the boundaries between it and other disciplines? What are the particular vulnerabilities to which the work of those who reside in border regions is susceptible? What is the source of such boundary difficulties as excessive permeability or excessive impermeability? How can they be mitigated? Does psychoanalysis have a special status among the sciences? Is it science at all-hermeneutics rather than explanation, humanistic rather than mechanistic, private rather than public knowledge? If psychoanalysis is a science, rather than a body of knowledge with a special status freeing it from obligations other sciences share, what are some existing and possible relations of psychoanalysis as science to other sciences? On the basis of the discussion of the previous questions and an examination of the present state of psychoanalysis as science, it was argued that the task of formalizing psychoanalytic theory should receive immediate, high priority; without formalization, further progress seemed unlikely. Some directions such formalization might take were suggested.