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What is a clinical fact?

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Abstract

Clinical facts, materially transient, are unexpectedly durable — think how the clinical facts about Dora, the Wolf-Man, and the Rat Man have lasted. Yet important current critiques dispute their nature and even their existence (see, for example, Eagle 1984; G. S. Klein 1976; Schafer 1983; Spence 1982; and, for a masterly review, Wallerstein 1982). Such critiques reflect the present tension in psychoanalysis between the conviction that psychoanalysis discovers facts about the mind and the unease generated by the variety of existing clinical and theoretical views. Furthermore, issues of subjectivity, and the overall difference between physical science and human studies, also lead many to question whether it is facts that analysts find in an analytic hour.

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Erwin Kaiser

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© 1995 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden

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O’Shaughnessy, E. (1995). What is a clinical fact?. In: Kaiser, E. (eds) Psychoanalytisches Wissen. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-11198-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-11198-6_2

  • Publisher Name: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-531-12746-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-663-11198-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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