Freud, bullshit, and pseudoscience.

This paper critically examines the validity of Freudian psychoanalysis within the framework of Moberger's characterisation of pseudoscience as bullshit with scientific pretensions. The central question addressed is whether Freudian psychoanalysis qualifies as "bullshit," following Moberger's guideline of looking for systematic fallacies. The analysis centres on two fundamental critiques against psychoanalysis: one posited by Popper, contending that psychoanalytic interpretation is excessively flexible, and another by Glymour, asserting that Freud's interpretative method baselessly posits associations as causes.

Psychoanalytic proof: Revisiting Freud's Tally Argument.

This paper explores the notion of proof in clinical psychoanalysis by reconsidering an argument Freud made concerning the relation between successful psychoanalytic treatment and truth, dubbed the "Tally Argument" by the philosopher Adolf Grünbaum. I first reiterate criticisms of Grünbaum's reconstruction of this argument, which bring out the degree to which he has misunderstood Freud. I then offer my own interpretation of the argument and the reasoning that underlies its key premise.

Unconscious Emotion and Free-Energy: A Philosophical and Neuroscientific Exploration.

Unconscious emotions are of central importance to psychoanalysis. They do, however, raise conceptual problems. The most pertinent concerns the intuition, shared by Freud, that consciousness is essential to emotion, which makes the idea of unconscious emotion seem paradoxical.

Self-insight.

Insight is an important notion in psychoanalysis, as it is regarded as the main mediator of psychic change in therapy. In this article I provide an account of a specific kind of insight, which I call self-insight. Self-insight is that which lies at the roots of what Bell and Leite (Bell, D.

Clinical Reasoning, Grünbaum, and Freud's "Cleverest Dreamer" Dream Interpretation.

The philosopher Adolf Grünbaum has repeatedly criticized Freud's reasoning, claiming that much of it is overtly fallacious. One such criticism that has gone without reply concerns Freud's controversial response to the counterwish objection to his theory of dreams, that the reason some dreams appear to represent the frustration of a wish rather than the fulfillment of one is that they actually represent the dreamer's wish to prove Freud wrong. Grünbaum contends that in giving such a response Freud commits several glaring fallacies.

The case for the Freud-Breuer theory of hysteria: A response to Grünbaum's foundational objection to psychoanalysis.

In his influential critique of psychoanalysis, philosopher Adolf Grünbaum has repeatedly objected that the psychoanalytic enterprise has a foundational flaw in that its fundamental claim that repressed thoughts can be pathogenic cannot be sustained. His criticism focuses on Freud and Breuer's reasoning toward this claim in , which Grünbaum rejects mainly on the ground that there is an alternative explanation, the placebo hypothesis, that Freud and Breuer have failed to rule out. I argue against this by showing in detail why Freud and Breuer's claim about the pathogenicity of repressed thoughts can be sustained on the evidence presented in .