Psychoanalysis and the Sciences: Epistemology-History

Abstract

ANDRE HAYNAL: and Sciences: Epistemology-History. (trans. by E. Holder from original French). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, 290 pp., $30.00. and Sciences, written by a member of our International Editorial Board, deals with an enormous variety of issues in psychoanalysis and is written by a competent and qualified author. After having digested narcissistic wound that my 13 books and innumerable papers on these topics are unmentioned in his work, I am able to recommend present volume to all readers interested in current issues in field. Haynal is up to date on recent thought in field, and presents a view of psychoanalysis that emphasizes not only interpretation but interaction between analysand and analyst as well as communication both explicit and implicit in both interpretation and interaction. I agree with him entirely on this central focus, as well as in his efforts to locate psychoanalysis historically and culturally and to distinguish psychoanalysis as it is practiced today from Freud's original system. Readers will have some problems with Haynal's effort to locate psychoanalysis somewhere between and hermeneutics, a vast topic that is treated somewhat superficially in this book, and made to sound easier than it is. He is basically hopeful (p. 84, pp. 169-172ff) that modern computer and research technology will make it possible to sharpen up scientific aspects of psychoanalysis, an optimism I do not share. But he is certainly correct (p. 163) that attacks by philosophy-of-science purists that are based on their consideration of interpretation as sine qua non of psychoanalysis are naive and reductionistic. And he is also correct that for a long time psychoanalysis was carried along by a movement characteristics of which were utopian, with a religious undertone (p. 135). He gets into deep water, however, with such pronouncements as, Psychoanalysis is therefore not only a hermeneutic of text, or even of context, nor of verbal or non-verbal language. It is also founded on an anthropology of Other through accumulated and formulated experience. In other words it is a science (p. 89). United States pragmatic readers will have a lot of difficulty with such reasoning, but they will certainly agree with him that it is not a good idea to replace proof in psychoanalysis with the consensus of a majority of initiates already convinced--especially in local groups--with development of local orthodoxies ... (p. 86). I do not think this tendency has yet disappeared, unfortunately, much to detriment of our field. Other comments such as Freud opened way to post-modernity (p. 49) are, to say least, controversial, and do not add to Haynal's basic thesis and his interesting descriptions of how he thinks and fantasies while he works with a patient, and how psychoanalysis has developed. His stress, a la Ferenczi, on emotional encounter between patient and analyst is very much au courant, and is worth careful attention from clinicians. The greatest weakness of book is in editing. His publisher failed Haynal by allowing book to have a number of repetitious sentences and at times an annoying list of names and name-dropping. All this, plus an overabundance of parenthetical phrases interrupting main narrative, tend to distract reader and cause a loss of thread of discussion. I hope next edition of book will be given proper editorial attention. The translation seems readable enough except for some howlers that would cause problems in English 101, e.g., Myself, I would prefer to call it 'realistic' . (p. 228) and an occasional sentence lacking a verb (e.g., p. 239). In summary, for those willing to put up with a bit of distraction, Haynal's book is worthwhile, and better than most that are cluttering up literature these days. Evanston, IL RICHARD D. …