Pour un échange entre psychanalyse et sciences de l'esprit

Abstract

The debate concerns the commun object of psychoanalysis (PA) and neurosciences (NCS). PA and NCS constitute different methods of description, analysis and comprehension of a single reality, but each approach constructs a different representation of it because each is based upon a different methodology. Is PA a science or, to which kind of science does PA belong ? This point concerns the nature of the knowledge derived from its practice, the conditions of its validation. Indeed, we should accept Popper’s (non-falsifiability) and Grünbaum’s (tally argument) critiques and recognize in them then properties of PA theory in as much as it is a theory derived from a specific practice and not from experimentation nor even of observation in the strict sense. The impossibility of demonstration of the absence of the influence of the analyst on the object is no longer a critique if we accept that the analyst is not an observer of the psychic activity of his patient, but a participant actor (with the patient) in the construction of a new specific object : a common mental elaboration which could be the specific object of PA. This perspective relativizes the importance of the historical truth of the PA construction, or of the verifiability of the interpretation, which is the focus of Grünbaum's critique. Indeed, sciences based on the accumulation of knowledge derived from a practice, like economics, education or clinical sciences, belong to the category of inductive sciences which do not satisfy the truth conditions of experimental sciences (classical criteria of falsifiability and scientific legitimacy). We can speak of “sciences of a practice”, empirical or clinical sciences. None of these sciences relies on knowledge of basic mechanisms (here, knowledge of brain function) nor use causal explanations in the physical sense. PA concepts have a more descriptive power than an explanatory one and refer to clinical objects. The adoption of a realistic position supposes that PA, as a practice, could constitute itself an object for objective science, whether it concerns the mechanisms of PA practice (on what mechanisms it depends at a “physiological” level), or of its results. Finally, PA could contribute to a general psychology with NCS, to the extent that “PA psychology” (the theory of mental functioning which is extrapolated from PA practice) defines natural objects of study (properties of mind) for a multidisciplinary approach. We suggest that the PA level of explanation is mostly that of intentionality, that is of the meaning of mental acts, and not of production. This distinction is too often forgotten when one brings together PA and Biology. Moreover, the so-called “naturalization” of PA concepts does not mean reduction of these concepts to biology, but the search for compatibility between PA concepts and NCS description. This does not mean naive “psychobabble” in an individual framework, because we should ask ourselves what is PA theory about – what is the object of its knowledge : the mental functioning of the patient, or the inter or co-action f two mental functionings?