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The Explanatory Value of the Unconscious
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Abstract
It is common knowledge that the notion of the unconscious is an essential part of psychoanalytic theory. In recent years, however, Arthur Pap and A. C. MacIntyre have argued that Freud's theory of the unconscious is not explanatory. But a close examination of Pap's and MacIntyre's arguments reveals that they are invalid. If one wishes to show that the theory of the unconscious is unexplanatory, different arguments will be necessary.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1964
References
1 Arthur Pap, “On the Empirical Interpretation of Psychoanalytic Concepts,” Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method and Philosophy (New York: New York University Press, 1959), ed. S. Hook, pp. 283–304.
2 A. C. MacIntyre, The Unconscious (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958).
3 Pap here presupposes Hempel and Oppenheim's “Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” Philosophy of Science, XV, 1948.
4 Pap, op. cit., p. 290.
5 Ibid.
6 Heinz Hartmann, Die Grundlagen der Psychoanalyse (Leipzig, 1927), p. 11. This sentence was translated by Muller-Braunschweig in a review of Hartmann's book in International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 10, 1929, pp. 451–465.
7 MacIntyre, op. cit., p. 67.
8 Ibid., p. 69.
9 Pap, op. cit., p. 287.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., p. 288.
12 Ibid., p. 284.
13 In ancient astronomy, to name an obvious example, “spheres” where hypothetical constructs that were used in explanation. See T. S. Kuhn, The Copernician Revolution (New York: Random House, 1959).
14 O.E.D., 1933, XII, pp. 196–197; II, p. 1233.
15 Pap, op. cit., p. 293.
16 Ibid., p. 294.
17 S. Freud, “The Unconscious,” Collected Papers (New York: Basic Books, 1959), IV, p. 106.
18 Carl Hempel, “Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science,” International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. II, No. 7, p. 49.
19 Pap seems aware of the fact that Freud used, e.g., the term “unconscious wish,” to refer to wishes that became conscious only under therapy. Yet he concludes from this, quite inconsistently I think, that unconscious wishes are “dispositional states.” To be consistent Pap would also have to conclude that wishes one can become aware of through ordinary introspection, although one is not aware of them at the time, are “dispositional states.” But he argues instead that these wishes “causally determine human behavior,” while unconscious wishes do not. See Pap, op. cit., pp. 288–289.
20 John Wisdom, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1956), p. 271.
21 S. Freud, “The Unconscious,” Collected Papers, IV, p. 100.
22 MacIntyre, op. cit., p. 46.
23 Ibid., p. 48.
24 “The theory must not merely be such that statements concerning the regularities which it was originally introduced to explain are deducible from it. We must also be able if the explanation of the regularities with which we were originally concerned is correct, to deduce further statements of a testable kind, the verifying of which constitutes the confirmation of the hypothesis.” Ibid., p. 47.
25 “Concepts which refer to unobservables will have a place on the higher steps of the deductive ladder if by using them we can formulate assertions from which observation statements can be deduced which are true and which could not be deduced from the theory unless such assertions were included.” Ibid., pp., 47–48.
26 Ibid., pp. 71–72.
27 See Heinz Hartmann, “Ichpsychologie und Anpassungsproblem,” Internat. Zeitschrift Fur Psychoanalyse und Imago, 1939, 24, pp. 62–135.
28 See for example John W. M. Whiting and Irvin L. Child, Child Training and Personality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953); Herbert Barry “Relationship Between Child Training and Pictorial Arts,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1957, pp. 380–383; M. A. Straus, “Anal and Oral Frustration in Relation to Sinhalese Personality,” Sociometry, 20, 1957, pp. 21–31; M. Spiro and R. G. D'Andrade, “A Cross-Cultural Study of Some Supernatural Beliefs,” American Anthropologist, 60, pp. 456–466.
29 See for example W. Sewell, “Infant Training and the Personality of the Child,” American Journal of Sociology, 58, 1952–1953, pp. 150–159; Stanley M. Friedman, “An Empirical Study of the Castration and Oedipus Complexes,” Genetic Psychology Monographs, 46, pp. 61–130; Gerald S. Blum, “A Study of the Psychoanalytic Theory of Psychosexual Development,” Genetic Psychology Monographs, 39, 1949, pp. 3–103; J. R. Thurston and P. H. Müssen, “Infant Feeding Gratification and Adult Personality,” Journal of Personality, 1950–1951, pp. 447–457.
30 William Craig, “On Axiomatizability Within a System,” Journal of Symbolic Logic, XVIII, 1953, pp. 30–32; see also William Craig, “Replacement of Auxiliary Expressions,” Philosophical Review, LXV, 1956, pp. 38–55.
31 See C. G. Hempel, “The Theoretician's Dilemma,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, II, ed. H. Feigl, M. Scriven and G. Maxwell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958), pp. 57–81; Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt Brace and World Inc., 1961), pp. 134–137; I. Scheffler, “Theoretical Terms and a Modest Empiricism,” Philosophy of Science, ed. A. Danto and S. Morgenbesser (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), pp. 167–173.
32 P. Madison, Freud's Concept of Repression and Defense, Its Theoretical and Observational Language (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1961).