The Structure of Psychic Revolutions: A Psychoanalytic Account of Kuhnian Science

Abstract

The Structure of Psychic Revolutions: A Psychoanalytic Account of Kuhnian Science Scott C. Taylor (bio) Introduction In the wake of Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 publication The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the scientific discipline was forced to rethink not only the way it handles research but the greater history of science itself. In the psychoanalytic discipline, many scholars have made use of Kuhn’s work to justify shifts in psychoanalytic traditions (Knight, 1985; Mitchell, 1993; Forrester, 2007; Elad-Strenger, 2013). However, few have attempted to point out the relation between Kuhnian science and the psychoanalytic process. Before Kuhn and his descriptions of anomalies and crises that bring about paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions, there were the necessary developmental crises and eventual ego restructurings of the psyche given to us by psychoanalytic psychology. In the discussion that follows we will learn how psychoanalysis, through Kuhn’s own psychoanalytic treatment, revolutionized science. For Thomas Kuhn, the structure of scientific revolutions consists of developmental pattern of normal science, an influx of anomalies, a crisis in normal science, and a resulting paradigm shift. During periods of normal science, great strides are made because questions related to the first principles from which the science bases its inquiries are settled, and as a result all phenomena contrary to the established norms are ignored. Kuhn (1962) calls the phase in which normal science is conducted without questions to its foundations or first principles a period of puzzle-solving. The foundation of normal science, as a basic set of concepts and experimental practices, serves as an exemplar or paradigm to successful puzzle-solving (Kuhn, 1962). [End Page 381] But when anomalies become too great and shake the science’s foundations, scientists become unsettled with their paradigm and search for a greater understanding of the anomalous behavior. No longer can the scientist try to complete the puzzle, as the available pieces no longer seem to fit the puzzle itself. Filled with doubts about how to proceed, a crisis occurs. The puzzle and its pieces need restructuring, and for this reason scientists seek “extraordinary” help, sometimes outside of the science in question. Kuhn states, “The proliferation of competing articulations, the willingness to try anything, the expression of explicit discontent, the recourse to philosophy and debate over fundamentals, all these are symptoms of a transition from normal to extraordinary research” (1962, p. 91, emphasis added). Through these symptoms, scientists search the depths of all possible understanding to come to terms with these anomalies, sometimes overhauling all past scientific theory. In so doing, they shift their past understanding of science and the world itself and foster a scientific revolution: a new way to understand ourselves in the world. When viewed psychoanalytically, this process shares many similarities with those individuals who seek therapy. The individual who sees nothing wrong in a symptom—a neurosis that can be dealt with—goes about her life working around, solving the puzzles of some irregular, perhaps unwanted, behavior. It is only when those behaviors become unsettling, incapable of being given meaning, solved, that a personal crisis may occur.1 This crisis may lead the individual to seek help and go into analysis, and in a very general way, to inquire about her growing anomalous behavior. Supposing the analysis were successful, in leaving treatment the individual has changed dramatically with a profound shift in how she views herself and the world. The following is an articulation of why the general developmental process of Kuhn’s scientific revolutions and the individual process of psychic restructuring made intelligible to us by psychoanalytic psychology—particularly that of the theoretical writings of psychoanalyst Hans Loewald—may share more commonalities than we presently afford them. Before discussing the developmental and structural relationships between the psychoanalytic and scientific processes, let us begin with a brief intellectual history of Kuhn’s relationship between the two. [End Page 382] Putting It All on the Record: Kuhn’s Indebtedness to Psychoanalysis Thanks to a publication by historian of science and former student of Thomas Kuhn, John Forrester (2007), we now know Kuhn grew up in an environment that embraced the psychoanalytic discipline. His grandfather, it is believed, spent some time under the analysis of Alfred Adler in Baltimore...