Stephen Black wrote: > Bailey titles his piece "Sigmund Freud: Scientific Period (1873- > 1897)". (Note that "The Interpretation of Dreams" was published in > 1900.) In a discussion appended to his paper, Bailey was asked why > he stopped at 1897 in Freud's career. He responded: > > "If you will accept the term science in the sense of > Naturwissenschaft, or _natural_ science, Freud didn't do any more > "natural scientific" research after 1897. He ended there. After that > what he did was speculate. He never tried to subject any of his ideas > to experimental tests, and furthermore, he was quite hostile to the > suggestion that they be subjected to experimental tests. He > maintained that they were self-evident and did not need any > demonstration. So I stopped at 1987 because that was the last time >
That's all well and nice, but not really very good history. First of all, experiment and science (even Naturwissenschaft) weren't synonymous then (and, indeed, are not today). There is and was lots of perfectly acceptable natural science that doesn't (usually becaue it can't) rely on experiment, but rather on less-controlled and less-contrived forms of observation (I give you virtually all of deep space astronomy, for isntance.) The main problem from an historian's point of view, however, is that the account quoted above is highly anachronistic. Freud's model was medicine. It was then perfectly acceptable practice in medical research (and, indeed, well into the 20th century) to present case studies, and that's what Freud did during most of his career. Now, if you want to argue that *all* of medicine at the time wasn't "scientific" because of its reliance on case studies, you're free to do so, but that only puts Freud in line with the medical conventions of his day. This is by no means to argue that Freud was correct. But surely that debate is long over. Questions about his historical influence are much more relevant. At the very least, he launched the psychodynamic approach to psychotherapy that dominated the whole of the 20th century. Even those flavors of psychodynamics that were vigorously opposed to him, such as "humanism," would not have been possible without him. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 phone: 416-736-5115 ext.66164 fax: 416-736-5814 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
