A follow-up to Miguel's citing of the obituary for Robert Ader: The Wittgenstein and Freud scholar Frank Cioffi died suddenly a few days ago:
http://simplycharly.squarespace.com/blog/2012/1/2/philosopher-frank-cioffi-dead-at-83.html Cioffi had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Freud's writings and the early literature on Freud. He approached Freud studies from a unique angle, reflected in his book of collected articles *Freud and the Question of Pseudoscience* (1998), notably in the ninety page original essay "Why are we still arguing about Freud?" which opens the book. In his previously published chapter "Psychoanalysis, Pseudoscience and Testability" (1985) he argued, contrary to Popper, that when Freud is putting forward unfalsifiable theses he is being proto-scientific rather than unscientific: "It is when he insists he had confirmed (not just instantiated) them that he is being pseudoscientific." Cioffi was the first modern-day scholar to challenge the traditional account (following Freud's misleading retrospective reports) of the seduction theory episode of 1895-1897 that led to Freud's developing psychoanalysis proper. He did so in a BBC radio talk, provocatively titled "Was Freud a Liar?", in late 1973, published shortly afterwards (1974) in the BBC magazine "The Listener". Little (if any) notice was taken of his well-documented thesis at the time, but it has since become a classic of the literature on the seduction theory. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [email protected] http://www.esterson.org ------------------------------------------ From: MiguelRoig <[email protected]> Subject: Robert ader obit Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2012 12:58:10 +0000 (UTC) I am usually a few days behind in my reading of the paper, but this morning I noticed the obituary of psychologist Robert Ader in the NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/science/robert-ader-who-linked-stress-and-illness-dies-at-79.html. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=15107 or send a blank email to leave-15107-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
