Freud's Dream: A Complete Interdisciplinary Science of Mind

Abstract

By examining the rise and fall of psychoanalysis, Dream provides an extended case study of the appeal and potential dangers of the interdisciplinary approach to theory construction now guiding cognitive science as well as a novel interpretation of Freud's own programme. Kitcher argues that Freud's grand scheme for psychoanalysis was nothing less than a blueprint for a complete interdisciplinary science of mind, that many of its strengths and weaknesses derived from that fact, and that Freud's errors are instructive for current work in cognitive science. In particular, Kitcher maintains that Freud's metapsychology was not a dispensible theoretical superstructure but a set of directives for constructing a science of mind that would be firmly grounded in then current results in neurophysiology, evolutionary biology, psychology, psychiatry and the social sciences. The collapse of psychoanalysis, Kitcher asserts, was due in large measure to fundamental changes in the sciences out of which Freud constructed his theories and his refusal to recognize the degree to which he had made psychoanalysis dependent on the results and assumptions of 19th-century science.

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