On the scientific standing of psychoanalysis.

This paper speaks for the claim that psychoanalysis qualifies as a scientific enterprise. It will derive from the conceptual and evidential structure of psychoanalysis a causal empirical hypothesis that admits of scientific intraclinical testing. Relevant topics from the philosophy of science (especially the nature of causal explanation and the work of Grünbaum) and the psychoanalytic theories of pathogenesis and therapeutic action are discussed in a preliminary way to create a framework for the demonstration.

The real unconscious: psychoanalysis as a theory of consciousness.

Inquiries into hallucinatory wish fulfillment and the unconscious converge and, by distinguishing the concept of the unconscious in psychoanalysis from that of cognitive psychology, serve to bring out what is most essential to the psychoanalytic conception. Freud's topographical model is used to stress that the psychoanalytic unconscious can be understood only in relation to theories of consciousness and wishing. Moreover, in contrast to the cognitive conception, psychoanalysis holds that the processing of thought in the human mind is inseparable from the activity of desire.

On the drive-rootedness of psychoanalytic ego psychology.

This paper attempts, hypothetico-deductively, to conceptualise psychoanalysis on the level of fundamental theory. I begin by exploring the relevance for psychoanalytic theory of recent developments in the brain and cognitive sciences. Their site of articulation is identified as the concept of consciousness.

Drive theory and the metapsychology of experience.

This paper begins by examining the current conflicting points of view about metapsychology--its status, usefulness and explanatory power. The drive concept, the source of psychic dynamism, is identified at the core of the controversy. As a solution, the paper proposes a conceptual intensification afforded by the integration of consciousness into Freud's theory of the drive.