Grünbaum's Tally
Argument
Allen Esterson
(Note: This is a pre-publication
version of the article published in History
of the Human Sciences, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1996, pp. 43-57. ©
1996 SAGE Publications Ltd.)
Adolf Grünbaum contends that he has
discovered in Freud's writings a hitherto overlooked thesis (the Tally
Argument), enunciated by Freud to underwrite his psychoanalytic method of
clinical investigation. [The Foundations of Psychoanalysis 1984:
127-172] He claims that until at least 1917, and possibly up to 1926, Freud
invoked the unique efficacy of analytic therapy to vindicate the Freudian
theory of personality, including the specific aetiologies of the psychoneuroses
and the general theory of psychosexual development. [Foundations: 140-41]
In this article I shall argue (i) that the Tally
Argument itself is defective, and (ii) that Freud did not invoke it as Grünbaum claims. In short, I shall argue that Grünbaum's Tally Argument thesis is untenable and, as a
corollary, that his depiction of Freud as a "sophisticated scientific
methodologist" is misconceived.
1
In Lecture 28
of his Introductory Lectures (1917), [S.E.16:
452] Freud addressed his opponents' contention that the influencing of patients
by "suggestion" may render "the objective certainty of our
findings doubtful". If this challenge were justified, "psychoanalysis
would be nothing more than a particularly well-disguised and particularly effective
form of suggestive treatment..." This would call into question all that
psychoanalysis "tells us about what influences our lives, the dynamics of
the mind or the unconscious" - in short, the whole psychoanalytic
enterprise. More specifically, opponents think that psychoanalysts "have
'talked' the patients into everything relating to the importance of sexual
experiences - and even into those experiences themselves." Freud's
response to this challenge was as follows: "These accusations are
contradicted more easily by an appeal to experience than by the help of
theory." Anyone who has carried out psychoanalyses will have convinced
himself that it is impossible to make suggestions in this way. The analyst has
no difficulty in getting the patient to accept a particular theory, but this
only affects his intelligence, not his illness. "After all, his
conflicts will only be successfully solved and his resistances overcome if the
anticipatory ideas he is given tally with what is real in him." [italics added] Inaccurate conjectures drop out in the course
of the treatment. The analysis is not considered complete until all obscurities
are cleared up, the gaps in the patients memory filled in, and the
precipitating causes of the repressions discovered. Early successes are
regarded as obstacles and the analyst puts an end to them by constantly
resolving the transference on which they are based. It is this characteristic
of working through and resolving the transference in all the shapes it appears
that distinguishes psychoanalytic treatment from every other kind of suggestive
treatment, and which frees the results of analysis from the suspicion of being
successes due to suggestion. If success is achieved it then rests, not on
suggestion, but on the internal change that has been brought about in the
patient.
Grünbaum believes he has discerned a crucial notion embedded in
this passage. He extracts the emphasised sentence quoted above containing the
"tally with what is real" expression, and claims it to be a bold
thesis consisting of two causally necessary conditions: (1) only the
psychoanalytic method of interpretion and treatment
can yield correct insight into the patient's psychoneurosis, and (2) the analysand's correct insight into the aetiology of his
affliction and into the unconscious dynamics of his character is causally
necessary for the therapeutic conquest of his neurosis. [Foundations:
139-40] The conjunction of these two claims he calls Freud's "Necessary
Condition Thesis" (NCT). He then argues that "upon asserting the
existence of...therapeutically successful patients" two conclusions
follow: (1) the psychoanalytic interpretations of the hidden causes of the
patients' behaviour are indeed correct, and (2) only psychoanalytic treatment
could have wrought the conquest of their psychoneuroses. (He labels the two
conditions (NCT) and two conclusions the "Tally Argument".) Finally, Grünbaum draws attention to the assertion a little later in
Introductory Lectures of psychoanalysis's considerable therapeutic
successes, unachievable by other procedures, to demonstrate that Freud had
adduced premise (2). In short, Grünbaum contends,
Freud believed that "if psychoanalytic treatment does have the therapeutic
monopoly entailed by the Tally Argument, then it can warrantedly
take credit for the recoveries of its patients without statistical
comparisons with the results from untreated control groups, or from controls
treated by rival modalities." [142] The point of
the exercise is to purportedly demonstrate that Freud had postulated an
empirically based vindication for his clinical methodology and theories which
was refutable (one which Grünbaum later shows to have
been eventually refuted).
Before I
proceed with a critique of Grünbaum's thesis, let us
first note a crucial flaw in the above argument as he states it. He writes that
"upon asserting the existence of such therapeutically successful
patients" his two conclusions follow. But in this context it is not the assertion
of unrivalled therapeutic success that justifies the conclusions, but the demonstration
(to a reasonable degree of credence) of such success. (We are not concerned
here with a discourse in logic, but with a practical situation.) And the
distinction is important, for, as we shall see, in
this context Grünbaum appeals to unsubstantiated
public assertions by Freud to justify his case, rather than to what Freud
really believed as recorded in his private statements (or better still, to what
actually was the case as far as he could reasonably have been expected to have
ascertained).
There are,
however, more basic defects in the Tally Argument itself, as presented by Grünbaum, which cannot be remedied by a change of wording.
He claims that (up to the time it was shown to be invalidated by the
confirmation of the occurrence of spontaneous remission) the Tally Argument
provided a warrant for Freud to conclude that durable therapeutic successes
"vouch for the truth of the Freudian theory of personality, including its
specific etiologies of the psychoneuroses and even
its general theory of psychosexual development". [Foundations:
140-41] But elsewhere he refers to "Freud's successive modifications of
many of his hypotheses throughout most of his life". [117] It is difficult
to see how Grünbaum can reconcile these two
statements, since each time that Freud made a significant change in theory it
would undermine his previous invocation of the Tally Argument to vouch for the
discarded hypotheses, and hence the Tally Argument itself.
But even if
we ignore this difficulty, how could Freud ascertain whether any of his
specific hypotheses underlying interpretations adduced in the course of a
therapeutically successful analysis were
redundant? Or, to put it another way, how could he know which of the many
theoretical notions utilised in the analysis were contributing towards the
cure, and hence being validated?
2
I shall now
consider reasons for doubting that Freud invoked the Tally Argument to
vindicate his theory and practice. In cases for which there was a durable
successful therapeutic outcome, how could Freud (albeit that at an earlier
pre-psychoanalytic period when utilising the Breuer-Freud
cathartic procedure he may have justified aetiological inferences on the basis
of the remission of symptoms) have excluded the possibility that such
favourable results occurred for reasons unrelated to the truth of his
psychoanalytic theories? This point is underscored by the fact that in the
first decade of the century psychoanalysis was only one of many competing
therapies whose exponents were claiming successes. To note just one, Friedländer challenged Freud's analytic claims by reporting
the cases of seven severely hysterical patients who, he asserted, had remained
cured as a result of his treatment for as long as two decades. [Ellenberger
1970: 798] Is there any evidence that Freud examined these, or any other
rival's, claims? What grounds could he have had for asserting that his own
procedures were more successful and achieved more durable results than those of
his competitors, such as Dubois and Vittoz, to
mention two lesser-known physicians whose practices were flourishing (leaving
aside such eminent psychiatrists as
Let us now
consider whether Freud's therapeutic results would have justified his (alleged)
adherence to the Tally Argument during the period specified in Foundations,
i.e., up to at least 1917, and possibly to 1926. In this context Grünbaum points to Freud's claim in Introductory
Lectures of therapeutic successes "second to none of the finest in the
field of internal medicine" (which, Freud added, "could
not have been achieved by any other procedure"). [Foundations: 142]
Grünbaum himself notes that Freud was reiterating a
similar "sanguine" claim he had made in 1895 in regard to his later
disowned pre-psychoanalytic cathartic therapy, implying a degree of scepticism
towards Freud's "complacent" assertions. In fact we know from his private
comments during the earlier psychoanalytic period during which he is supposed
to have relied on the Tally Argument to justify his procedures and
interpretations that Freud's therapeutic results left a great deal to be
desired. But first we shall look at Freud's "Aetiology of Hysteria"
paper of 1896, in which he presented his infantile seduction theory. Does
therapeutic success play a major role in his argument that he had validated his
theory (on which his anticipatory ideas were based) clinically? He claimed that
in a number of cases therapeutic evidence could be brought forward to support
his case, but he also stated that he did not wish "to lay special stress
on the point". The notion that provided the "stronger proof",
that by which Freud became "absolutely certain" of his thesis, was
"the relationship of the infantile scenes to the content of the whole of
the rest of the case history" [S.E.3: 205-6]; in other words, what Grünbaum describes as the consilience
of clinical inductions, i.e., the coherence of the analytic material. So
clearly he was not appealing to the Tally Argument in this instance.[2] After the demise of the seduction theory in 1897 Freud
began developing his psychoanalytic theories; did he look to therapeutic
success in this early period of psychoanalysis to vindicate his current
procedures and interpretations based on his theories? On 9th February
1898 he wrote to Wilhelm Fliess: "The cases of
hysteria are proceeding especially poorly." [Masson 1985: 299] If Freud had
been looking to "the patterns of therapeutic success or failure" at
this period to vindicate his postulated dynamics, as Grünbaum
claims, [Foundations: 148] one might have expected him to conclude from
his poor results that he was on the wrong track. But clearly he decided
otherwise. Let us move on and consider Freud's report to Fliess
on 16th April 1900: "I am beginning to understand that the apparent
endlessness of the treatment is something that occurs regularly..."
[Masson 1985: 409] Complete cures still seem to be elusive. What about over the
next few years during which he was consolidating his therapeutic procedures? On
4th December 1906 Jung reported to him that he was getting poor results with
many of his cases of hysteria, and that he considered it "more cautious
not to put too much emphasis on therapeutic results". In reply Freud wrote
on 6th December: "I can subscribe without reservation to your remarks on
therapy. I have had the same experience and have been reluctant for the same
reasons to say more in public than that 'this method is more fruitful than any
other'...It is not possible to explain everything to a hostile public;
accordingly I have kept certain things that might be said concerning the limits
of the therapy and its mechanism to myself, or spoken of them in a way which is
intelligible only to the initiate." [McGuire 1974: 12] These comments can
hardly be described as a vote of confidence in his therapy; he clearly agrees
with Jung that too much emphasis should not be put on therapeutic results. Move
on a few years. In a paper addressed to analytic practitioners on the prospects
for psychoanalytic therapy, delivered in 1910 at the Second Psychoanalytic
Congress, he observed that the influence of "social suggestion" in
the case of physical methods "does not enable such measures to get the
better of neuroses". He added: "Time will tell whether psychoanalytic
treatment can accomplish more." [S.E.11: 147] Judging by these words, at
that time he did not feel he could safely claim that psychoanalytic treatment
was appreciably more efficacious in the conquest of neuroses than physical
treatments.
Let us be
clear about the situation. Grünbaum would have us
believe that Freud was a sophisticated scientific methodologist on the basis of
the epistemological considerations that supposedly prompted him to enunciate
the Tally Argument to vindicate his procedures and theories. The credibility of
the Tally Argument depends on psychoanalytic therapy achieving appreciable
successes which are durable, unlike those of its rivals. But we know from
Freud's own testimony in regard to psychoanalysis's mediocre therapeutic
results that he was in no position to make such a claim for a considerable
number of years during which Grünbaum asserts he
relied mainly on the Tally Argument to vindicate psychoanalytic theory and practice.
His writings over this period, as later, exhibit his abiding confidence that he
was essentially right in his theory and practice. Clearly, this confidence
cannot have been based on his therapeutic achievements.
To save at
least a vestige of his thesis Grünbaum would have to
argue that over the subsequent years Freud had some reason to believe that he
had started to achieve the durable successes which he was clearly not in a
position to claim in 1910. But on what information could he base such an argument?
All we have is the unsubstantiated claim in Introductory Lectures that
"under favourable conditions we achieve successes which are second to none
of the finest in the field of internal medicine", which Grünbaum himself, with ample justification, regards with
some scepticism,[3] [B.B.S: 275] plus similar unsubstantiated claims in 1923
and 1924. [S.E.18: 250; S.E.19: 202] The dubiousness of these claims is
indicated by the fact that in 1933, his more modest assessment was that
"psychoanalysis is really a method of treatment like others. It has its
triumphs and its defeats, its difficulties, its limitations. its
indications." [S.E.22: 151] True, he also ritually proclaimed that
compared with other therapies psychoanalysis "is beyond any doubt the most
powerful", but in the absence of substantive evidence there is no reason
to be any less sceptical about this than about his earlier more extravagant
claims. Finally, in 1937 he expressed doubts about the durability of
psychoanalytic cures [S.E.23: 220]; as Grünbaum
writes, Freud's words "bordered on a repudiation of therapeutic success. ...[T]he import of this therapeutic pessimism is
shattering." [Foundations: 160] We can only presume he had never
had grounds for believing that his therapy produced uniquely durable cures.
This in itself is good reason for disputing that Freud invoked the Tally
Argument to vindicate his psychoanalytic theory and
practice.
Moreover, we
know that in 1901 Freud was aware of a phenomenon which precluded his appealing
to the second condition of the NCT (that the analysand's
correct insight into the the aetiology of his
affliction is causally necessary for the conquest of his neurosis). In the course
of expounding his Tally Argument thesis Grünbaum
observes that "NCT entails...that there is no spontaneous remission",
[Foundations: 140] and later writes that Freud "gainsaid his
erstwhile NCT in 1926 by conceding the existence of spontaneous remission"
of neuroses. [Foundations: 160; S.E.20: 265] But Freud had acknowledged
the possibilty of spontaneous remission much earlier.
In the Dora case history he wrote: "[T]he barrier erected by repression
can fall before the onslaught of a violent emotional excitement produced by a
real cause; it is possible for a neurosis to be overcome by reality. But we
have no general means of calculating through what person or what event such a
cure can be effected." [S.E.7: 110] By Grünbaum's
own criterion, in 1901 Freud was aware of a fact which invalidated the Tally
Argument.
In the
relevant chapter in Foundations Grünbaum looks
for "clues" in Freud's writings to suggest that he championed the NCT
until at least 1917. [148] To this end he searches for
indications deriving from Freud's responses to patterns of therapeutic success
and failure. This enterprise retains plausibility for the period during which
Freud practiced the Breuer-Freud cathartic method
(roughly prior to 1896), but indications that Grünbaum's
account in this section is overdependent on
tendentious supposition come from the fact that he has to resort repeatedly to
presumption to justify his case. In the course of his attempting to demonstrate
that Freud had habitually appealed to the NCT the following expressions occur:
"presumably" [149, 151]; "it would seem that" [148, 152, 171]; "I submit that" [153]; "could he
be...?" [154]; "seems to have" [154]; "very probably"
[170]; "would have" [171]. That he has so frequently to resort to
presumption to bolster his case is indicative of the weakness of his attempts
to demonstrate directly that the Tally Argument played a "pivotal"
[135] role in vindicating Freud's method of clinical investigation.[4]
3
I shall now
adduce further reasons for doubting that Freud ever gave therapeutic efficacy
the key role in regard to psychoanalysis implicit in the Tally Argument thesis.
By 1901 Freud was consolidating his psychoanalytic methodology and wanted to
publicise his procedures to show how he arrived at his clinical theories,
[S.E.7: 7-8] and to this end he wrote up his case history of Dora. But the
notable thing about the case history from our present perspective is that it
finished prematurely, and that it resulted in "no noticeable
alteration" in the patient's condition. [S.E.7: 115] Nor
is this untypical. Fisher and Greenberg remark on the
"striking" fact that "Freud chose to demonstrate the utility of
psychoanalysis through descriptions of largely unsuccessful cases". [1977:
285] It seems unlikely that he would have done so if the Tally Argument played
the pivotal role in vindicating his methodology and theories that Grünbaum claims. (All the case histories fall into the
period during which Freud was supposed to have adhered to the Tally Argument.)
As Grünbaum acknowledges, in Introductory Lectures
there is a statement which is clearly inconsistent with the Tally Argument:
"Even if psychoanalysis showed itself as unsuccessful in every other form
of nervous and psychical disease as it does in delusions, it would still remain
completely justified as an irreplaceable instrument of scientific
research." [S.E.16: 255] Grünbaum dismisses this
as "a gratuitous piece of salesmanship", [Foundations: 141]
but there seems no reason why we should not take Freud to have been absolutely
serious in this assertion. (In the very section in which the Tally Argument is
purportedly enunciated Freud affirms as an "irreproachable source"
the sufferers from dementia praecox and paranoia who provide
"confirmations" of a large number of findings of analysis. [S.E.17:
453]) In the same paragraph Grünbaum has to resort to
assumption ("presumably") of what was in Freud's mind in
defence of his position, though why we should prefer his presumption to Freud's
explicit statement is not clear. His argument here, invoking the observation
that Freud gave the same epistemic sanction to curable and incurable
psychoneuroses, is as consistent with a rejection of his thesis as it is with an
acceptance of it. It is the 1917 claim (later disowned) of unique therapeutic
efficacy that Grünbaum should have dismissed as
"salesmanship".
An odd aspect
of Grünbaum's thesis is that he has to put together
two separately stated assertions from Introductory Lectures to formulate
the Tally Argument. As he writes, the suggestibility challenge is a
"portentous" and "mortal" one. [Foundations: 133,
135] Yet in the face of a challenge of such "devastating import" [Grünbaum 1980: 320] Freud supposedly adduces his NCT but
fails to supply at that point the validatory
statement he needs to complete his argument for the vindication of his
psychoanalytic procedures and theories, leaving it to the reader to appreciate
that it occurs elsewhere in the book - something which Grünbaum
alone in the whole history of Freud scholarship has accomplished. Elsewhere he
writes that it was enunciated by Freud somewhat "cryptically" (though
he makes no attempt to explain why such a crucial thesis should have been
presented in this fashion), and has had to be "teased out" by himself
[B.B.S: 222, 221], and claims that the NCT sentence in Introductory Lectures
is a "terse enunciation of the thesis" which had been "more
explicitly" formulated in the 1909 case history of Little Hans as follows:
In a psychoanalysis the physician always gives his patient
(sometimes to a greater and sometimes to a less extent) the conscious
anticipatory ideas by the help of which he is in a position to recognize and
grasp the unconscious material. For there are some patients who need more of
such assistance and some who need less, but there are none who get through
without some of it. Slight disorders may perhaps be brought to an end by the
subject's unaided efforts, but never a neurosis - a thing which has set itself
up against the ego as an element alien to it. To get the better of such an
element another person must be brought in, and in so far as that other person
can be of assistance the neurosis will be curable.[5] [S.E.10:
104; quoted in Foundations: 139]
At this point
Grünbaum states that being invoked here are
assumptions which he expresses in the form of the two causally necessary
conditions which constitute the NCT (as expressed above at the start of this
paper). However, earlier in the same paragraph Freud acknowledged that Hans
"had to be presented with many things that he could not say himself",
and that this "detracts from the evidential value of the analysis".
He continued: "For a psychoanalysis is not an
impartial scientific investigation, but a therapeutic measure. Its essence is
not to prove anything, but merely to alter something." The implication of
these sentences would seem to be that a successful treatment outcome cannot
necessarily be taken to prove that the interpretations are true. This means
that conclusion (1) above which Grünbaum derives from
the NCT [that the psychoanalytic interpretations of the hidden causes of the
patient's behaviour are correct] is not necessarily vindicated by therapeutic
success. Moreover, as Levy [1988: 197] points out, condition (2) of the NCT
[the analysand's correct insight into the aetiology
of his affliction and into the unconscious dynamics of his character is
causally necessary for the therapeutic conquest of his neurosis] is hardly
likely to have been applicable in the case of a five-year-old boy. (Freud
certainly claimed a complete and durable cure in this case. [S.E.10: 142,
148-49]) In the light of these two points, whatever Freud was intending by his
words in the quoted passage it seems he cannot have meant them to have the
implications Grünbaum takes them to have. If the
passage in question is, as he says, a more explicit presentation of the NCT
that is postulated more cryptically in the relevant Introductory Lectures
passage, one can only conclude that his thesis is doubtful.
4
If
therapeutic efficacy did not have the pivotal role ascribed to it by Grünbaum, as seems clear from the above analysis, how did
Freud generally vindicate his procedures and interpretations? It is by no means
apparent that Freud attempted anything like a blanket justification of his
psychoanalytic methodology and theories in general on the lines that Grünbaum attempts to demonstrate (up to 1917 or 1926).
Perhaps the nearest he came to it was in his last major work An Outline of
Psychoanalysis (1939), where he wrote that "the relative certainty of
our psychical science is based on the binding force" of "plausible
inferences" postulated utilising the psychoanalytic methodology. [S.E.23:
159] This is a generalised version of the main
justification he gave in relation to his infantile seduction theory claims in
1896 [SE 3: 205 (see above)]. He repeated this argument, appealing to the
coherence of the analytic material, on several occasions, e.g., in 1914
in the Wolf Man case history [S.E.17: 52 (published 1918)]; in 1914 with
respect to the validity of analytic inferences pertaining to infancy [S.E.12:
149]; in 1900 and 1933 in relation to his dream theory [S.E.5: 528; S.E.22: 7];
and on numerous occasions when he was invoking (explicitly and implicitly) his
claim that "applications of analysis are always confirmations of it"
[S.E.22: 146]. This is perhaps the most common reason he gave to justify his
psychoanalytic theses, but there were others according to the context. For
instance, he occasionally adduced therapeutic success in relation to specific
interpretations, such as those supposedly revealing the underlying cause of a
somatic symptom [e.g., S.E.16: 266, 280; S.E.17: 76]. He also appealed to
direct observation of children to vindicate his theories of infantile
sexuality, asserting on several occasions that such observation confirmed what
had been divined by analytic inference [S.E.16: 310; S.E.20: 39, 213-14]. In
1910 he not only stated that the infantile sexuality theories were confirmed by
direct observations, but invoked this claim to vindicate "the
trustworthiness of [the psychoanalytic] method of research" [S.E.7:
193-94n].
In his
Author's Response in B.B.S. [272], in reply to Cioffi
[231], Grünbaum states he did not say in Foundations
that if challenged as to the grounds for his theory of infantile sexuality
Freud would have appealed to his Tally Argument. (Cioffi
had pointed out that on occasion Freud appealed to direct observation of
children.) However, on page 171 of Foundations, in relation to a short
passage quoted from Fisher and Greenberg referring specifically to the
validation of the theory of infantile sexuality, Grünbaum
does write that Freud "would have pointed to his Tally Argument" in
that context, as Cioffi says. Grünbaum
asserts [B.B.S: 272] that he had depicted the Tally Argument as primarily an
attempt to support the scientific validity of psychoanalytic methods and
evidence in general, rather than as support for specific theories. But in the
first sentence of the key 'tally argument' paragraph Freud is explicit that his
concern is with the question of the validity of psychoanalytic findings,
in other words, corroborations of his theories. In the 'tally' sentence itself
his concern is with the correctness of the "anticipatory ideas" given
to the patient, which of course derive from specific theories. There is no
justification for viewing the 'tally argument' passage in the Introductory
Lectures as primarily a defence of Freud's methodology rather than of the
validity of his specific theories.
A remarkably
forthright statement made in the context of the vindication of his sexual
theories is quoted by Grünbaum from Freud's History,
in response to a challenge from Cioffi in B.B.S.
[231, 272]: "The fact of the emergence of transference in its crudely
sexual form, in every treatment of a neurosis...has always seemed to me the
most irrefragable proof that the source of the driving forces of neurosis lies
in sexual life." Grünbaum responds by saying
that this quotation is grist for his mill in the context of the Tally
Argument thesis, for the transference relates to therapeutic considerations.
However, he is clearly in error here, since in the quotation Freud makes plain
that the occurrence of transference is a feature of every
treatment (of the transference neuroses), irrespective of success or failure.
As it happens, Freud himself confirms that Grünbaum
is mistaken in claiming support for his position, for in the same letter to
Jung in 1906 (above) in which he agreed that it would be better not to put much
emphasis on therapeutic results because they were not very good, he wrote that
"transference provides the most cogent, indeed, the only unassailable
proof that neuroses are determined by the individual's love life".
Clearly, he is saying again that the ocurrence of
transference (in every case, as he says in his History) is the proof in
question, and that this is so regardless of the results of the therapy
(these in fact being somewhat disappointing). Grünbaum's
argument that "it is precisely the formation of the artificial
transference neurosis - whose resolution
is regarded as a major ingredient of successful therapy - that Freud cites as
his 'irrefragable proof'" does not meet the situation. What we have here
is a clear statement from Freud that the sexual factors which, using the
psychoanalytic methodology, he has inferred to be at the core of neuroses, are
confirmed, not by therapeutic success, but by the mere "emergence" of
transference. In this same letter Freud wrote: "Attaching no importance to
frequency of cure, I have often treated cases verging on the psychotic or
delusional..., and in doing so learned at least that the same mechanisms go far
beyond the limits of hysteria and obsessional
neurosis." Clearly, this letter shows that in 1906 he was not relying on
therapeutic success for vindication of his analytic procedures and theories,
and consequently, not on the Tally Argument either.
Grünbaum writes that Freud defended his method of dream
interpretation by observing that his procedure was identical to that "by
which we resolve hysterical symptoms", and that in the latter case the
correctness of his method was warranted by the remission of symptoms. [Grünbaum 1993: 24-25; S.E.5: 528] However, one should note
that at the beginning of this same paragraph in The Interpretation of Dreams
Freud first appealed to the coherence of the analytic material to
justify his method of interpreting dreams, and only then went on to say
"[w]e might also" point to the identity of the procedure with that
for the resolution of hysterical symptoms. Against this quotation indicating
that Freud justified his interpretation of symptoms by their subsequent
remission one may place his statement in 1910: "I need not rebut the
objection that the evidential value in support of our hypotheses is obscured in
our treatment as we practise it today; you will not forget that this evidence
is to be found elsewhere." [S.E.11: 142] But trading quotations in this
way only serves to indicate that, as already noted, Freud invoked different
justifications at different times for his analytic procedures and theories,
depending on the context.
In presenting
the above evidence and arguments it should be clear that I am not disputing
that on occasion Freud adduced claims of therapeutic success to lend support to
his methodology and theories. What I have demonstrated is that he did not rely
on therapeutic efficacy to underwrite his psychoanalytic enterprise.
Let me sum up
this critique of Grünbaum's thesis. He claims to have
discovered a proposition which, in spite of its being absolutely
"pivotal" in Freud's psychoanalytic enterprise, he has had to
"tease out" because it was enunciated somewhat
"cryptically"; which is clearly inconsistent with a statement in the
very book in which it was supposedly adduced; and which had hitherto been
completely overlooked by all other Freud scholars. Moreover, to support his contention
he has to take some thirty pages almost entirely devoted to this purpose in the
course of which he has to resort repeatedly to supposition of Freud's
rationale to justify his case. [Foundations: 130-59] And most important
of all, he has failed to take into account some major objections to his thesis,
most notably the documentary evidence that Freud was always aware that the
therapeutic achievements of psychoanalytic treatment were unsatisfactory,
whatever he (misleadingly) claimed in his public pronouncements. Taken as a
whole, I believe the evidence and arguments adduced above constitute good
reason for rejecting Grünbaum's Tally Argument
thesis.
5
It still
remains for me to give my own interpretation of the key "tally with what
is real" sentence in Introductory Lectures. (The sentence is quoted
in full at the beginning of this paper, together with a detailed summary of the
rest of the paragraph in which it is embedded.) In my view, this sentence
cannot be taken out of its context and treated as if it is a separate
proposition (let alone one which is part of a thesis whose complement is not
explicitly identified). The paragraph taken as a whole comprises Freud's main
argument to counter the charge that psychoanalytic therapy is nothing other
than a particularly well-disguised form of suggestive treatment, and that
consequently any theoretical conclusions arrived at on the basis of analysis
are of doubtful value. Now this is an objection which he had great difficulty
in refuting. In the Wolf Man case history he observed that it is difficult to
induce in others the "sense of conviction" which results from
conducting an analysis oneself. [S.E.17: 13] As he effectively acknowledged in
relation to his central thesis in that case, his justification for his
explanations and theories frequently relied essentially on what amounts to
intuitive feeling (based on his subjective experiences in analytic practice,
and, more specifically, on the coherence of the analytic material), and in the
absence of this he concedes it is impossible to arrive at a decision on the
issue of validity. [S.E.17: 52] So what is he to do? There is no question that
he had absolute faith in the unique value of his therapeutic procedures and the
validity of his analytic findings. The problem was that he found this difficult
to demonstrate to sceptics (which is why he had so often to accuse them of
irrational resistance). What gave him his conviction was the subjective feeling
of certainty he experienced when he was deriving his analytic explanations from
his clinical (and non-clinical) inferences. The point is, his methods always worked,
in the sense that he was always able to come up with comprehensive explications
to cover whatever he was dealing with. (That is why he could claim to have
confirmed by direct observation his analytic inferences in relation to
infantile sexuality derived from the treatment of neurotics "fully and in
every detail" even when he was on the point of making a major emendation
of those inferences! [Esterson 1993: 206n]) As
already noted, he did on occasion appeal to the subjective "sense of
conviction", and invoke the "powerful impression", ensuing from
undertaking an actual analysis [S.E.17: 13; S.E.15: 300], but he knew that such
an appeal would, by itself, be unavailing in the face of the suggestibility
challenge. Nevertheless, he does start off by making a passing reference to his
habitual source of conviction: "These accusations are contradicted more
easily by an appeal to experience than by the help of theory." The rest of
his argument consists of debatable assertions stated as facts combined with a
plausible description of the analytic procedure and of the working through of
the transference. (He adds subsidiary arguments in the following paragraph, but
these are unconvincing to the non-Freudian.) There is little doubt that this
exposition made sense to Freud, because he was absolutely sure of the unique
utility of his analytic procedures. But is it true, for instance, that
"Whatever in the doctor's conjectures is inaccurate drops out in the
course of the analysis"? Judging by some of the unlikely, not to say
outlandish, conjectures Freud made (and retained) in the case histories of Dora
and the Wolf Man, one must have grave doubts in regard to this confidently made
assertion. [Esterson 1993: 39, 43, 68-9, 74-5] It is
in this light that one should approach the celebrated "tally with what is
real" sentence. It is an assertion, and nothing more, made with the
confidence Freud frequently displayed in regard to pronouncements which are
actually highly debatable. There is no need to read into it anything more than
a statement of Freud's belief, pronounced with characteristic assurance. The
fact that this statement is assuming the point at issue, and that the whole
argument begs the question under discussion - in other words, has failed to
meet the suggestibilty
challenge - does not invalidate this interpretation. For it was absolutely
characteristic of Freud to counter objections to his ideas and procedures with
explications which either assume or evade the point at issue, though they may
be so brilliantly presented that this fact is obscured. [Esterson
1993: 161, 164-5, 179-80, 188-89, 207-09] What he is giving us in this passage
are the genuine (though essentially subjective) reasons why he was
convinced that his procedures and supposed analytic findings were valid. There
is no reason to presume that his arguments should necessarily seem anywhere
near adequate to meet the challenge from the point of view of an informed
critic.
Grünbaum's error arises in part from his mistaken assumption that
Freud was a "sophisticated scientific methodologist", who
"squarely" and "brilliantly" (albeit unsuccessfully) faced
up to the suggestibilty challenge. Neither of
these is true, though the Freudian rhetoric which created this false impression
certainly deserves to be described as brilliant. The truth is that not for one
moment could Freud dispassionately entertain the suggestibility challenge, for,
as he acknowledged in the passage in question, if valid it would undermine his
whole psychoanalytic enterprise. To counter it he needed to dig deep into his
formidable armoury of rhetorical skills, and in this respect, at least, he was
highly successful.
There is one
final point to be considered. In his discussion of the Tally Argument thesis in
his paper responding to Foundations, Levy voices suspicion of Grünbaum's motivation for attributing the highly debatable
NCT to Freud, with so heavy a burden of significance, and asks, could it be because the NCT is so eminently refutable?
[1988: 198] If he is suggesting that Grünbaum did so
as part of his critique of psychoanalysis, then he is surely mistaken. For in
relation to the Tally Argument Grünbaum merely
refutes Freud's supposed thesis for the vindication of his method of clinical
investigation. If he were interested simply in refuting the psychoanalytic
methodology per se, which would be consistent with the general aim of
the book, he could have completely by-passed the Tally Argument and adduced
only the arguments necessary for that purpose. (As Erwin
[1993: 416] observes, Grünbaum's case against Freud's
methodology presented elsewhere in Foundations would not in any way be
weakened if the Tally Argument thesis was omitted.) However, there are
some clues as to why he entered into a digression (concerned with a
hypothetical notion) not strictly necessary for his explicit purposes. The
thirty pages devoted to elucidating and justifying the thesis follow
immediately after two paragraphs which criticise Popper in relation to
psychoanalysis. [Foundations: 129] Now in this section Grünbaum utilises the word "bold" in relation to
the Tally Argument on no less than five occasions [127; 139; 140; 152; 159;
also "daring": 140; 152] But is "bold" (by implication, if
not directly, also associated with Freud's attitude) really the appropriate
word to use in this context? It is difficult to reconcile Grünbaum's
characterisation of the Tally Argument as bold with the fact that it
(supposedly) lay unnoticed in Freud's writings for some sixty years before he
drew attention to it. But it is precisely the word "bold" that Popper
uses to characterise genuinely scientific conjectures. It is difficult to
resist the suspicion that Grünbaum is contrasting the
supposed thesis, and Freud's attitude, with Popper's designation of
psychoanalysis as non-scientific. How else is one to explain what Wachtel describes as his "virtual ode to the Tally
Argument" [B.B.S: 264], and his somewhat cryptic description of the latter
as "Magnificent, if true!" [Foundations: 141] while affirming
he was not countenancing Freud's purported reasoning? [ibid: 149; B.B.S: 275]
What Grünbaum has 'discovered' in the Tally Argument
is a critical psychoanalytic thesis which is refutable, in other words, a major
weapon in his philosophical dispute with Popper in relation to the latter's
demarcation criterion for scientific theories. His commitment to that challenge
would seem to have led him to overestimate the evidence for his thesis, and
neglect some telling evidence against it.
NOTES
1. Grünbaum dismisses Wachtel's
objection along the above lines by stating that he is explaining Freud's
position, not justifying it. [B.B.S: 274-75] He points to Freud's
"complacent" attitude in 1917 in regard to the question of the
therapeutic monopoly of psychoanalysis, and to his rejection of the use of
statistical assessments of treatment outcome in the light of the difficulties
involved. [S.E.17: 461] But one would have thought that Freud's words in
respect to the latter imply he was well aware that he had no sound basis for
asserting the superiority of analytic treatment compared to rival therapies.
2. Though
lack of therapeutic success certainly played a role in his subsequent
abandonment of the seduction theory, close scrutiny of the episode indicates
that the reasons were more complex than this. [Esterson
1993: 28; 56n]
3. In his
relevant quotation [Foundations: 142] Grünbaum
omits Freud's significant reservation "under favourable conditions".
[S.E.17: 458] And this is important, because in a more candid
later passage Freud discussed several difficulties encountered in
practising analytic therapy and painted a considerably less rosy picture,
concluding with the remark: "This presents a gloomy prospect for the
effectiveness of psychoanalysis as a therapy - does it not? -
even though we are able to explain the great majority of our failures by
attributing them to interfering external factors." [S.E.17: 461]
4. Even in
1895, in Studies on Hysteria, Freud stressed the logical coherence of
his clinically-based inferences, [S.E.2: 300-01] as well as the
intensification, then remission, of symptoms as the treatment penetrated deeper
into the presumed pathogenic memories. [S.E.2: 296-97] Certainly in advocating
his seduction theory in 1896 he put greater emphasis on the coherence of the
analytic material. (See above.) But whether or not up to 1895 he utilised
anything akin to the Tally Argument to judge the validity of his theories, we
have seen he was in no position to apply such a principle to vindicate his
(post-1897) psychoanalytic theories.
5.
This passage seems to contradict the assertion made in the Dora case history
(above). In the relevant passage in the latter Freud used the word
"neurosis", and did not suggest his comments applied only to slight
disorders. Such inconsistency was not untypical of Freud; he occasionally
contradicted previous assertions, depending on the context of his remarks. [Esterson 1993: 215-16]
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