Abstract

Can psychoanalysis take its place in the science that is psychology? I want, for now, to put aside the therapy, and ask about the theory, its evidence and generation. For at the heart of psychoanalysis as theory and therapy is a theory about the nature, development, and functioning of the human mind, especially in relation to motives. There are a number of features of this theory, in particular the role and nature of unconscious mental states and processes, that makes it recognizably distinct and a competitor with other psychological theories deriving, for instance, from cognitive psychology or neuroscience.1 I take the question of whether this theory is scientific to be the question of how we can establish whether...