Another obstacle in trying to determine the scientific value of psychoanalysis is ambiguity. Not clear, for example, what in psychoanalysis qualify as causes - and what as effects.
Consider critical to build from the unconscious. What is the reason - not cause - our behavior, conscious thoughts, and emotions? Does he provide them with the “ratio” (explanation)? Or they just are not the symptoms? Even these basic questions receive no “dynamic” or “physical” treatment in the classical (Freudian) psychoanalytic theory. So much for ambition to be a scientific attempt.
Psychoanalysis is detailed and supported by epistemic accounts, starting with the master himself. Appeal to one of it’s common sense and previous experience. Its form of this statement is: “given X, Y, and Z reported by the patient - it does not stand to (everyday) reason that causes X?” or “We know that the cause of BM, M is very similar to X, and B is very similar to A. isn ‘t it reasonable to assume that the cause of X?”.
In therapy, the patient and the results confirm the reports by those who feel “right” and “correct”, that they epiphanous and revelatory, that they have the power and retrodictive input, and reporting to the reaction to the doctor-interpreter. Acclamation this story die probative value as the basis of (not to say primitive) form of explanation that provides a framework of time, a similar pattern, and the set of teleological aims, ideas and values.
Juan Rivera is right that Freud about coltish demands of life can not be proven, not even with a movie camera Gedankenexperimental, such as Robert Vaelder proposed. This is equally true that the theory’s etiological claims are epidemiologically untestable, as Grunbaum repeatedly says. However, the failure of miss the point and purpose of psychoanalysis: to organize and provide comprehensive, not tendentious, persuasive and narrative human psychological development.
Such as this must be tested and discarded or falsifiable narrative (as the Logical Positivists insist)?
Depending on if we want to handle as science or as a form of art. This is the circularity of the arguments against psychoanalysis. If the work of Freud is considered the modern equivalent of mythology, religion, or literature - is not considered necessary to test for the “correct” in the deepest sense of the word. After all, how much knowledge from the 19th century that survive to this day Anyhow?