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Nagel's Critique of Psychoanalysis Author(s): Burleigh Taylor Wilkins Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Mar., 1964), pp. 383-396Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2104814Accessed: 28-09-2015 04:59 UTC

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DISCUSSION

NAGEL'S CRITIQUE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

I

Ernest Nagel's interest in psychoanalysis is "primarily methodological," and in his brief but important critique of psychoanalysis,' he is concerned with two main problems which, while interrelated, can be treated separately. One involves the logical structure and empirical content of psychoanalytic theory and especially of the metapsychology; the other is concerned with the nature of the evidence used to support the theory of psychoanalysis. While disclaiming any particular competence in the field of psychology, Nagel proposes to ask questions concerning the cognitive worth and logical standing of psychoanalytic theory, by which he means Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Lest this proposal occasion undue alarm, he notes that it would be "absurdly pedantic" to apply to Freudian theory "the yardstick of rigor and precision current in mathematical and experimental physics." He comments also -that there is no substance in those criticisms (perhaps he has in mind B. F. Skinner's) which object to Freudian theory merely on the ground that it employs theoretical notions.

Finding nothing wrong with theory qua theory does not, however, entail the acceptance of any particular theory; and Nagel objects to Freudian theory on two grounds, one having to do with its structure, and one, relating to its basic assumption concerning the nature of human conduct. The objection to the structure of the theory is, in turn, divided into two parts, one concerning the possibility of deducing determinate consequences from the theory, and one concerning the way in which the theoretical notions are related to observable materials by correspondence rules.

One must be able, according to Nagel, "to deduce determinate consequences from the assumptions of theory, so that one can decide on the basis of logical operations, and prior to the examination of any empirical data, whether or not an alleged consequence of the theory is indeed implied by the latter." Also, while "the theoretical notions are not expli-

1 "Psychoanalysis As a Scientific Theory," Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method, and Philosophy, ed., Sidney Hook (New York, 1960 edition), 38-55.

383



384 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

citly defined by way of overt empirical procedures and observable traits of things," some of these notions must be "tied down" to definite observable materials by rules of procedure, i.e., correspondence rules, coordinating definitions, or operational definitions. Furthermore, a consistent theory must not imply two incompatible consequences (Nagel finds psychoanalysis innocent of any wrong doing here, so this point will not be discussed further). Finally a "credible" theory must not only be "confirmed" by observational evidence, but it must also admit of being "negated" by such evidence.

There is in this critique no mention of "law" only of "theory"; and, therefore, we miss the distinction between the two that Nagel attempts to make in detail in his later work, The Structure of Science. Since the distinction between law and theory is a rough one, this may not be too important for Nagel's purposes in "Psychoanalysis as a Scientific The- ory"; but as my criticism of Nagel depends somewhat upon some distinction between the two, I should make it schematically along the fol- lowing lines: Observables suggest to us theories, theories suggest laws, and laws suggest other observables. Theory then is related to observables in two ways: by correspondence rules which account for some but not all the theoretical notions we use; and through the medium of laws, which tell what observable consequences we can anticipate if the theory's assumptions are correct, (and we should note in passing that there may be no sharp dividing line between correspondence rules and laws). Just as a law may suggest more than one observable consequence, so a theory may suggest more than one law; and just as one law may suggest another law so a theory may suggest other theories and other laws beyond those we have at present. This "suggestiveness" of theories, and laws should be construed in two ways: first, in the sense of logically implying other laws or observables; second, in the sense of serving as an incentive or even as a guide in further investigations in a given area. Because of its generally greater complexity and "richness" a theory may be more suggestive or fruitful of further theories, laws, and observations than a law may be; moreover, it can often explain more than one law, and in conjunction with another theory may have an even wider explanatory range.

This brief comparison of "laws" and "theories" is necessary for two reasons: (1) it calls attention to the complexity of the last point made by Nagel above, namely that a "credible" theory must admit of being con- firned or negated by evidence. Equipped with some knowledge of' the difference between "law" and "theory" we can better appreciate the likelihood that the evidence for theories will consist of both laws and observable consequences deduced from these laws. (2) Moreover, when we bear in mind the large number of auxiliary assumptions that the testing of the simplest law involves, we can see that the requirement that



NAGEL'S CRITIQUE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 385

a theory or law be testable on the basis of evidence is no small matter. Nagel's telescoping of the two concepts of theory and law in his paper on psychoanalysis, done perhaps for reasons. of space, adds a misleading note of simplicity to the question, 'What evidence have you?' Finally, we must mention the question of what will be admissible evidence. Will we say that whatever does not refute an hypothesis supports it? Here, the question of the range of the hypothesis and of what laws and/or observables are deducible from it seems crucial. Or are we to admit as evidence for an hypothesis only that evidence obtained through sincere efforts to refute it? If this, then I think that the claims of psychoanalysis might collapse on the spot, without furher scrutiny from anyone.

Returning now to Nagel's argument, we find him uncertain as to what, if any, observable consequences can be deduced from Freudian theory (via laws, we might reasonably add). Given in the metapsychology the sexual drive, the aggressive drive, the pleasure principle, the reality principle, et cetera, what can be deduced from these assumptions concerning, for example, the conditions under which the sexual drive will or will not discharge its energies? Here, Nagel insists, and rightly, that the degrees of strength of the various "drives" and the restraining influence of the ego under various conditions be contained explicitly in the premises. Nagel doubts whether such results can be obtained from the theory prior to our knowing just what consequences the theory must have if it is to agree with assumed matters of fact. Nagel admits that "all sorts of things" may, however, be suggested by the theory, because of its "vague" and "metaphorical" language.

While conceding that some metaphors and analogies may be helpful in the various sciences, Nagel pronounces against "metaphors" such as "energy" and "level of excitation." His conclusion is that the texture, the language of Freudian theory, is so open, so loose, as to make it almost impossible to decide what consequences really follow from the theory and what consequences merely happen to be associated with it by "someone" (presumably an analyst). He notes in this connection that the rules, of correspondence for the notion of sex drive are so ambiguous that this drive is often coordinated with almost anything suggesting sensuality. Freud's coordinating definitions for id, ego, and superego also strike Nagel as unsatisfactory. He calls the distinctions between them "vague" and "arbitrary."

Thus far, Nagel's, objections to Freudian theory have, been couched in very general language; a partial exception,his discussion of the sex drive and of the conditions under which it might discharge itself, concerns an exceedingly technical problem, and I am not sufficiently versed in the literature to do justice here either to Nagel or to the theory. However, Nagel next chooses a standard, and for him unfortunate, weapon from




the arsenal of the anti-Freudians. I refer to Freud's acceptance of the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Quoting from Freud's Moses and Monotheism (1939) Nagel cites that famous passage where Freud speaks of "the archaic heritage which a child brings with him into the world, before any experiences of his own, as a result of the experience of his ancestors." While admitting that biologists are now opposed to this idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, Freud confesses that he himself "cannot picture biological development pro- ceeding without taking this into account." 2 Nagel asks whether the statement that some acquired characteristics are biologically inherited "follows from Freudian theory when the latter is conjoined with a number of initial conditions." Pointing out that Freud apparently thought it did, and noting that the statement is considered false by informed scientific opinion, Nagel asks, "why does not this fact constitute a refutation of the premises of the argument?" 3 (my italics)

By phrasing his question in this way, Nagel slips into an elementary mistake in logic which in itself is easily rectified but at the price of reminding us, once more, of the complexity of the relationship between theory and evidence. What Nagel has in mind in asking this question is an argument of modus tollens form: x, therefore y. But not y. Therefore, not x. In the case of Freud's loyalty to the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, if this y followed from a single premise x in Freud's system, Nagel would be on impeccable logical grounds to insist that the negation of y required the abandonment of x; and if x encom- passed Freud's entire system, this. would, logically, lead to the abandonment of psychoanalytic theory. But, unfortunately for Nagel, Freud's system consists of more than one premise (as Nagel's use of premises reminds us); and we must remember also the number of "initial conditions" conjoined with Freudian theory to deduce y. Therefore, we must conclude that, as x consists of more than one premise, the surrender of y does not require us to give up all of x (although, of course, everthing included in x could conceivably be wrong) but only one of the premises. Moreover, the inheritance of acquired characteristics is itself no simple matter but a complex hypothesis about living organisms, and to be sure that this is mistaken - although probably it is - we are again involved in a complex of premises (not to mention the many auxiliary assumptions used in establishing these premises), perhaps even more complex than those contained in psychoanalytic theory itself. Finally, even if the inheritance of acquired characteristics follows from Freud's theory, so do

2 Freud quoted by Nagel, op. cit., 43. 3 Ibid., 44.




a great many other things, a point to be discussed after a brief (histori- cal) digression.

Freud's biographer, Ernest Jones, insists that Freud's "baffling" per- sistence in believing in the inheritance of acquired characteristics lies outside the mainstream of Freud's thought, apologizes for Freud's obstinacy, explains it psychologically: "Was an ineffaceable mark left on his [Freud's] mind when he learned as a child that God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generation?" - and then concludes that Freud's contributions to biology, while incidental to the whole of his work, "will prove increasingly valuable." 4 Edward Glover in Freud or Jung? asserts that "The whole structure of Freudian metapsychology is unaffected by his incursion into the region of phlogen- etic speculation." 5 All of which suggests that as a matter of fact Nagel (and possibly Freud) might be wrong in believing that psychoanalytic theory requires the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Let us return to Nagel who, perhaps sensing that his question as to whether the premises of Freud's argument should be abandoned was wrongly put, observes next that "It may indeed be impossible to say which of those premises are thus shown to be false, since Freud piled hypothesis upon hypothesis, for each of which the available independent evidence, if any, seems to be equally precarious. But in any event, Freud did not think that his conclusion, though regarded by all competent biologists as false, refuted any of his premises." 6 The latter sentence is a curious locution restating the fact that Freud believed his conclusion true and hence could not (logically) believe that it refuted any of his premises. But leaving this aside, let us assume what is probably false, that much of Freudian theory does suggest the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, and what is probably true, that this idea is false. Should we then give up the theory or that portion of it which leads to this false conclusion?

One reason for refusing to do so was suggested above, namely, that a good many things, besides the inheritance of acquired characteristics, are deducible from psychoanalytic theory. But before using this argument, it is necessary to call renewed attention to the Nagelian Doubt as to whether, in view of the vague structure and loose language of psychoanalytic theory, anything can really be deduced from this theory. Such extensive doubt suggests that Nagel has come, despite his wishes to the contrary, to apply to this theory the "yardstick of rigor and precision

4 Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York, 1957), III, 311-314.

5 Glover, Freud or Jung? (New York, 1959), 43. 6 Nagel, op. cit., 44.




current in mathematical and experimental physics." Certainly the theory would seem to suggest laws of both the universal and probabilistic varieties. Rough examples of these two might be respectively, 'Whenever human societies of certain types (a, d, f) occur, you will find Oedipal conflict.' (Kluckholn says that this is true of all societies without qualifi- cation.) and 'Male offspring with fathers who reject them and mothers who dominate them will tend probably toward overt homosexual behavior.' These might be called, with apologies to Freud, Freudian Laws. Unlike Freudian theories they do not contain notions for which observable correlatives cannot, or have not, been found. These laws appear to follow from the theoretical notions in Freud's thought; and when taken in conjunction with initial conditions, these laws enable us to deduce certain observables from them. When we find or fail to find those observables which the law teaches us to look for, what we come up with surely will count as evidence for or against the law, and ultimately the theory itself.

Bearing in mind the oft repeated warning that induction is not a demonstrative form of inference like deduction and Russell's paradox of induction where induction is shown to resemble formally the Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent, is there any good reason to say, when we find the observables which theory cum law has advised us we would find, that these observables do not count as evidence for the theory cum law? One might counter, as S. Toulmin does, and say that statements about observables are not meant to confirm laws but to determine their scope - but should their scope be nil I think we would then want to call the laws false or fruitless. I myself am not convinced that it is as important to say whether a theory is true or false, or confirmed or negated, as it is to say this about observation statements. 'He has shot himself' seems to me best described in 'true' - 'false' terms or their equivalent rather than as 'fruitful' or 'fruitless', but this seems less obviously so in the case of theories. In any event, if we picture theories, laws, and observables on a scale as it were, one cannot ascend the scale deductively as one descended it. Rather we ascend it inductively and speak of theories being more or less confirmed or fruitful as we assemble and evaluate the evidence - which they helped instruct us to collect. But this is true, if at all, equally of all the sciences.

We can return now to the problem of what to do when something we have deduced from our theory cum law is false while other things deduced from it appear true. We have, I think, shown that only one premise or even one auxiliary assumption need be in error to account for this faulty deduction; and we have suggested, too, that in psychoanalysis apparently "credible" theories and/or laws can be said to follow from that system.




The theories of this system may be said to be fruitful - certainly they have multiplied prodigiously as Nagel complains. Because theories, contain some terms (as Nagel points out in The Structure of Science) for which there can be no observable correlatives and because induction is not deduction we, can never speak of a theory as completely confirmed. Because of the complexity of the major theories and laws of the sciences and of what might be called their interlocking directorates., and because of the presence in every test for observables of many auxiliary assumptions, one also cannot speak of theories, as being conclusively refuted by any modus tollens argument. Thus, James, Conant's conclusion that a theory is not overthrown by a fact but only replaced by another theory is shown to be not merely a reflection of some conservative psychology among scientists but a logical necessity arising from the nature of scientific procedures. And when we add laws to the picture so that we have laws, theories, and observables the inclination to patch up old theories, even Freudian ones, rather than discard them, becomes the sign of a logical mind.

II

Nagel's second major objection to Freudian theory concerns the theory's "cardinal assumption that all conduct is motivated or wish-fulfilling." Since it is not true that most of our conduct is consciously motivated, the theory postulates a complex mental apparatus of unconscious motives or wishes.

The Freudian use of concepts such as 'unconscious motives', 'drives', 'wishes', 'urges', and 'intentions' depends, as Nagel points out, upon there being a strong analogy between these unconscious activities and the activities of consciousness, especially since they are reported as being goal-directed activities. According to Nagel, this analogy breaks down because of "the enduring character and tenacious attachment to specific objects" that unconscious drives - unlike conscious motives and wishes - exhibit; unconscious drives may be repressed, they may so to speak go underground, but still they are said to continue to exist in the unconscious. Whether in fact the analogy between unconscious activities and conscious ones does break down at this point is hard to say. Certainly some conscious wishes may be less enduring and less tenacious than some unconscious "wishes," but surely some conscious wishes (such as Henry Clay's wish to become President) endure tenaciously, almost embarrass- ingly so. Also, we speak of 'men of fixed ideas', 'five year plans', twenty year plans', 'a lifelong ambition', et cetera; and this suggests strongly that there are some conscious wishes that endure for a long time, tenaciously fixed to specific objects. We need not say that all conscious wishes are




like this in order to establish a strong analogy between some conscious wishes and unconscious "wishes" (some of which, incidentally, seem to remain repressed and thus to resemble those conscious wishes, which, for various reasons, do not endure and which we may ignore or slight in making decisions, or acting).

Because of the alleged failure of this analogy it follows, according to Nagel, that "it is only by a radical shift in the customary meanings of such words as 'motive' and 'wish' that Freudian theory can be said to offer an explanation of human conduct in terms of motives and wish- fulfillments." 7 This, is an important argument and deserves consideration, regardless of whether one believes that the analogy between conscious and unconscious wishes has, in fact failed. First, let us note that it is not clear from the above whether Nagel's plural phrase 'the customary meanings' is adopted because of the plurality of his example 'motive and wish' or because he recognizes that these words have more than one "customary" meaning.

It looks, however, as if Nagel has in mind something like 'the customary meaning' for each of these terms considered separately. If this is so, his argument runs counter to the thesis, that the meaning of a term is to be found in its uses; and unfortunately for Nagel, Freud's use (or misuse) of words such as 'motive' and 'wish' has in part been taken over by ordinary usage, so that if these words once had meanings incompatible with those assigned to them by Freud, this is no longer apparent in much (nonphilosophical, i.e., nontechnical) discourse. Because of this successful take over by psychoanalysis, with the resulting extension of these terms 'motive' and 'wish' to refer to a far greater portion of human activity of a goal-directed nature, it looks as if it would be more difficult to criticize Freud along these lines than it would be, for example, to criticize Hegel for his misuse of 'freedom' or Aristotle for his misuse of 'actuality'. (These examples represent, I think innovations which contrast, with con- siderable clarity, with ordinary ways of speaking and which have, for the most part, caught on only in philosophical literature.) If on the other hand, Nagel recognizes that a word such as 'motive' or 'wish' has more than one "customary" (pre-Freudian) meaning, it seems a hasty generali- zation to state that "a radical shift" in all such meanings would be required to accomodate Freud's employment of these words.

For my part, I want to argue, that, because the analogy between unconscious and conscious activities has not been shown conclusively by Nagel to have failed, it is not necessary as yet for philosophers to discuss whether any radical shifts in "meaning" are required to accommodate

7 Ibid., 45.




Freud's way of speaking about unconscious activities with the language "customarily" used to describe conscious activities, or to bemoan the fact that psychoanalysis has muddied the (previously clear?) waters of ordinary language. Rather, arguing against Nagel, that useful analogies between unconscious and conscious wishes, motives, urges, and intentions do not collapse; because of the tenacity and endurance that distinguish some unconscious drives, I would say that Freud's application of the concepts of consciousness to the activities of the unconscious is (in its better moments) a successful piece of analogical reasoning. The unconscious behaves like consciousness, it is as if it had motives, wishes, and intentions; and this, I think, is a useful heuristic device. When, moreover, we think of the unconscious as. a depository for 'wishes' that may at one time have been conscious but which are now repressed or forgotten, and when we think of how irrational or absurd our allegedly conscious decisions may sometimes appear and of how this irrationality or absurdity may be attributable to these repressed wishes, it looks as if Freud's use of metaphors and of analogical reasoning and his stirring of the waters of ordinary speech have presented us with testable causal hypotheses concerning human behavior. The problem remains: how can they be tested, and here, too, Nagel, as we shall see, has penetrating objections.

While criticizing Freud on the ground, admitted by Freud himself, that the idea of unconscious mental activity might remind one of primitive animism, Nagel does concede that there is a sense in which one could construe Freud's motivational explanations as similar in kind to teleological explanations of "feed-back" systems, such as an engine provided with a governor or the human body as a self-regulative structure for the main- tenance of its internal temperature. Two principal obstacles stand in the way, however, of Nagel's being able to regard Freud's explanations in this manner. First, there is Freud's characterization of many drives as immutably fixed to certain objects, and second there is Freud's ascription of causal powers to the theoretical entities used in his explanations.

Under critical scrutiny neither of these seems to be an insurmountable obstacle. Concerning the first, the fact that a particular drive seems fixed upon a certain object is not sufficient reason to rule out a teleological explanation of this "fixedness," but seems rather to justify our seeking a teleological explanation of such behavior. Whether this kind of "fixedness" is best explained in terms of "feed-back" mechanism as Rosen- blueth, Wiener, and Bigelow might propose, or in terms of the history of the organism's learning process as Israel Sheffler suggests (or whether there is any major difference between these two approaches), such "fixedness" is one of the kinds of "goal-directedness" that teleological explanations are especially suited for. Whether we seek to explain a cat's




apparent "determination" to catch a mouse or a young man's determination to marry "a girl just like the girl that married dear old Dad," it seems that either is an appropriate problem to place before the teleologist. That the teleologist may also consider drives that are not so "fixed" upon specific objects is readily apparent; what requires emphasis, however, is that it is not the "fixedness" (or lack thereof) of the drive that occasions teleological explanations but the "goal-directedness" of the behavior in question.

Nagel's second objection, that Freud ascribed causal powers to his "theoretical entities" must be met with the admission that Freud himself was not always clear as to the status of his theoretical entities. At times he seemed to regard them as a fagon de parler, at times as being somehow "real." While admitting the difficulties that plague words like "real," one could argue in partial defense of Freud that the question of whether the unconscious, for example, is real has as analog in the question of whether the electron is real, a question which no longer causes the physicist to blush and stammer. Also, it seems that if a science is ever to go beyond the reporting of ordinary experiences, beyond recording that one billiard ball has struck another, it will at some point in its development invoke theoretical entities and ascribe causal efficacy to them. Whether as the science becomes more sophisticated it will come to depend less and less upon the concept of causality need not concern us here, provided we acknowledge, as Nagel does in principle, that one science may be less sophisticated than another and still deserve the name of science.

One can appreciate better Freud's intention (if not his achievement) in speaking of the "realness" of his theoretical entities when one finds Nagel accusing Freud in Rylian language of postulating a "ghost in the machine" that does work which a "biologically oriented psychology might be expected to assign to the body." 8 While psychoanalysis admits that human behavior has its "roots" in the biophysical and biochemical organi- zation of the body, its explanation of this behavior in terms of unconscious psychic processes seems to Nagel "nonsense." Here it is relevant to recall that Freud allowed for the possibility that someday his explanations in terms of the unconscious might be superseded by physiological explanations. How to reconcile this with his belief that the "unconscious" was nevertheless "real" is an interesting problem, but it is important to remark here on the contrast between his scientific openness to this possibility and his obstinacy concerning the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

8 Ibid., 47.




In fairness to Nagel, however, it should be noted that Freud's "proofs" for the existence of the entities he postulates have grave weaknesses. When Freud argues that because "the assumption of the unconscious helps us to construct a highly successful practical method, by which we are enabled to exert a useful influence upon the course of conscious processes, this success will have won us an incontrovertible proof of the existence of that which we assumed," 9 one must reply that things are not so simple as this.

In this "proof" of Freud's for the existence of the unconscious, two things appear to be lumped together, one being the construction of a practical method, the other being the therapeutic uses of this, method in affecting the processes of consciousness. If by a practical method Freud meant a method for deducing "observables" from theory via law the success of this method would admittedly supply some evidence for the theory which might be construed as partial proof of the existence of the entities, or of the things "represented" by the entities, of the theory. But it is not clear whether Freud had this in mind, and certainly the emphasis of the above quotation is upon the therapeutic aspects of his theory of -the unconscious. Therapy, however, brings in a wide range of considerations, some of which have nothing to do with Freud's theory or any theory for that matter. Such considerations include the personality of the therapist, the confidence the patient has in the therapist, the conditions which bring the two together, the extent of the patient's disorder, and many other things far removed from questions concerning theoretical entities. There is always the possibility that a professional or business success can do more for a patient than psychoanalytic theory and therapy could ever accomplish.

In passing it is important to note Freud's use of the future tense in this paper written in 1915, when he speaks, of how the success of his method and therapy "will have won us an incontrovertible proof of the existence of that which we assumed." Today the future tense must still be used, the claims of psychoanalysis must still be construed in large part as futuristic just because, as, Nagel points out, there is a shocking lack of statistics as to what has been achieved by Freudian theory and therapy. Exactly what success does it have in predicting human behavior - as distinct from offering ad hoc explanations of events? How do its therapies compare with other forms of therapy? Here the, youth of psychoanalysis cannot be used as an excuse; for once, its age counts against it. One

9 "The Unconscious," Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud (New York, 1959), IV, 99.




cannot use either the youth of the science or the hard labors of its practitioners as excuses for the delay in assembling and correlating data which would seem to be a sine qua non of continued public confidence in either psychoanalytic theory or therapy.

III

Nagel's concern with what is to count as evidence for Freudian psychology is centered upon the unusual nature of psychoanalytic practices, how they depend almost exclusively upon what transpires between the analyst and the patient, how the analyst's interpretation of the patient's troubles apparently depends in large measure upon the patient's memory of events that often happened many years in, the past, and how it looks as if the analyst were in a position to influence - however unconsciously - the "free associations" made by the patient so that both the patient's memory and interpretation of events seem especially subject to the desires of the analyst as to what the patient will discover and how he will regard it.

Certainly the psychoanalytic method of procedure is in many respects different from that of other disciplines, as can be shown by a brief comparison with history which also depends heavily upon memory as a source of information. Let us imagine an historian or biographer of Napoleon who consults only Napoleon's memoirs and reads closely just those portions dealing with the early years of Napoleon. Certainly he is a long way from considering the total evidence available in this case, and he can expect to be severely criticized on this score. Suppose, too, that in the course of a week he considers not only Napoleon's memoirs, but those of Edward Bok, Catherine the Great, and Ernest Jones, and that besides he must attend board or faculty meetings and hold conferences with his publishers. Even if his exposure to the memoirs of Napoleon is spread out over several years (let us imagine that he reads slowly and with utmost attention), still his critics would of necessity point to documents which he has neglected. How is it that a neglect that would be fatal in one discipline is held to be salutary in another? The analyst might reply that he, unlike the historian, can listen as his patient "free-associ- ates," can question him repeatedly at points where his resistance to questions seems unduly high, and can detect nuances and subtleties that no one else, least of all an historian, or even an harassed social worker, has been trained to spot and to evaluate.

I am more satisfied by this kind of reply than Nagel would apparently be. Although the incompleteness of psychoanalytic inquiry seems in part a reflection of arbitrariness on the part of the profession and not always,




as is usually the case with history, a necessity arising from the nature of the evidence, I should be willing here to trust, tentatively at least, to the expert. Because psychoanalysis in general asks questions different from those raised by historians or sociologists, one must, I think, trust psychoanalysis to work out a methodology appropriate to these questions. Perhaps the most valuable feature of Nagel's critique of psychoanalysts' methods of treating evidence is that he has reminded us of how great a trust we would bestow upon psychoanalysis. Surely of all the sciences the procedures of psychoanalysis, the relationships in psychoanalysis between theory and therapy, and between analyst and patient, are the least open to public scrutiny. Of course, we do not want "the public" to sit in on analytic sessions any more than we do on surgical operations, but we need more public information as to the procedures that are followed in these sessions and more formalized accounts of the complex interactions of theory and practice that contribute to a "successful" therapy.

Here I might observe parenthetically that recordings of psychoanalytic interviews and written amounts of selected cases, while helpful, are not sufficient unless they are supplemented with precise explanations as to why certain procedures are employed and as to how certain "observables" can be deduced from Freudian theory instead of merely being conjoined with it. In particular, that celebrated moment of truth in psychoanalytic sessions when the patient achieves "insight" into his own case needs more careful analysis than it has yet received.

One other valuable service which Nagel has performed is to raise questions concerning the reliability of memory and introspection in general. Freud, of course, saw this problem when he wrote that "The mental, like the physical, is not necessarily in reality just what it appears to us to be,." But to see a problem is not always to solve one, as Freud's next sentence demonstrates: "It is, however, satisfactory to find that the correction of inner perception does not present difficulties so great as that of outer perception - that the inner object is less hard to discern truly than is the outside world." 10 One could quickly dismiss the whole idea of "inner perception" as a bad metaphor arising from a bad tradi- tional (Cartesian) way of thinking about perception. One could even more quickly point out that if the correction of inner perception is so easily done why do we need psychoanalysis - who has ever heard of a person's requiring three years to correct a mistake in outer perception? Are trees more difficult than memories "to discern truly"? To proceed so rapidly, however, is to risk losing sight of the complexity of the problems raised by Freud's concept of "inner perception."

10 Ibid., 104.




Space does not permit further discussion of the nature of the evidence used in psychoanalytic theory and therapy. Philosophers of science, I suspect, may soon tire of asking whether psychoanalysis is a science. However we answer that question I doubt that this will affect greatly the philosophy of science taken as a whole. On the other hand, the question of the meaning and use of "inner perception" in psychoanalysis seems of crucial importance to practically every problem traditionally considered by the philosophy of mind.

BURLEIGH TAYLOR WILKINS.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carl G. Hempel, "The Theoretician's Dilemma," Minnesota Studies in the Philos- ophy of Science, II (Minneapolis, 1958).

A. Rosenblueth, N. Wiener, and J. Bigelow, "Behavior, Purpose, and Teleology," Philosophy of Science, X.

I. Scheffler, "Thoughts on Teleology," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, IX.



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