psychoanalytic explanations
-
What Happens When We Forget a Word?
It’s infuriating when you know something and can’t quite call it to mind. Both Wittgenstein and Freud wrote about this situation, but they were interested in different aspects of it, and they went in very different directions. Wittgenstein focused on situations where a word seems to be on the tip of our tongue but we Continue reading
-
Is Psychoanalysis a Science?
Freud saw psychoanalysis as a natural science, but his critics deny that it is scientific. This is a complex issue, but it is worth exploring in detail. Two points seem hard to dispute. Firstly, it is clear that psychoanalysis aims to be a truth-focused undertaking. It puts forward explanations of why people do what they Continue reading
-
Kohut and the Perils of Killing Sacred Cows
Heinz Kohut believed that psychoanalysis should adopt new theories in the light of new evidence. His work with borderline and narcissistic patients led him to question the prevailing Freudian orthodoxy, and, in 1977, he published The Restoration of the Self, in which he put forward a theoretical framework based on a psychology of the self Continue reading
-
Putting Love at the Heart of Psychoanalysis: Suttie’s Critique of Freud
Ian Dishart Suttie was a Scottish psychoanalyst who died in 1935, shortly after completing a powerful critique of Freud, entitled The Origins of Love and Hate. Whereas Freud presents the individual as caught between a hostile external world and a maelstrom of internal excitations, Suttie claims that we are born with a need for love Continue reading
-
Does psychoanalysis reveal the causes of human action or does it provide insights into why we do what we do?
As a scientist, Freud’s aim was to identify the causes of mental illness and, more broadly, the causal processes underlying all mental phenomena. The evidence he gathered came primarily from what his patients told him, but also from his own experiences and from myth and literature. This is not the sort of material from which Continue reading
-
The World is My World – Wittgenstein vs Winnicott
“The world as it presents itself is of no meaning to the newly developing human being unless it is created as well as discovered.” Donald Winnicott How should we think about our relationship with the external world and with other people? Since Descartes, philosophers have started with the experiencing subject and then run into difficulties. Continue reading
Wittgenstein and Freud 