Abstract
Various approaches have been developed concerning the question of theory production and diffusion. This multiplicity of approaches and investigative tools is due to the insufficiency of some of them, to the dissatisfaction over others and to the specific nature of the problem which is involved in the very process of the production of the means of its own investigation. That is, the specific features of the various sciences require specific questions to be asked and a specialized mode of research.
This paper is part of a larger study, concerning theory formation and theory change, which is carried out by members of the Interdisciplinary Group in Athens
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Notes
See for example works such as Gunnar Brandell, Freud: A Man of His Century, trans. by Iain White (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979)
Henri, F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious (New York: Basic Books, 1970)
Kenneth Levin, Freud’s Early Psychology of the Neuroses (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978)
Paul Roazen, Freud: Political and Social Thought (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1968)
Frank J. Sulloway, Freud, Biologist of the Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1979).
S. Freud, Standard Edition of the Complete Works (24 vols.), Vol. XIX, 261. Compare W. James’ remarks on the career of a theory in Essays in Pragmatism (London: Collier, 1948), p. 159.
Cf. Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973). See also Jean Clair (sous la direction de), Vienne 1880–1938 (Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1986).
An account for the influence of the milieu, both the one pertaining to the theory in question and the more general, cognitive contextual one is proposed by G. Papagounos who uses the terms ‘epistemic component’ and ‘cognitive context’ to describe the two frames, respectively.
Cf. G. Papagounos, The Evolution of Philosophy and the Question of Progress’, in I. Kucuradi, Philosophy in the Balkan Countries and Its Possible Contribution to the Role of Philosophy in the World, Proceedings of the First Balkan Countries Seminar of Philosophy (Ankara: Philosophical Society of Turkey, 1982), pp. 49–54.
Cf. Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England (New Jersey: Harvester Press, 1970)
Rene Taton, Enseignement et diffusion des sciences en France au XVIIIe siecle (Paris: Hermann, 1986); Augustine Brannigan, The Social Basis of Scientific Discoveries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
Karin Knorr, Roger Krohn and Richard Whitley, eds., The Social Process of Scientific Investigations, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 1980 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: D. Reidel, 1981).
Cf. Standard Edition, Vol. I.
The problem of the existence of ‘things’ such as the Unconscious or the Ego is part of the more general problem concerning the existence of theoretical entities.
The view that these entities are theory and practice contingent was proposed by G. Papagounos, ‘The Notion of Reality: Epistemological and Methodological Problems’, in E. Bitsakis, ed., The Concept of Physical Reality (Athens: Zacharopoulos, 1983), pp. 45–50.
The first psychoanalytic text which was translated into Greek in 1913 was Th. Reik, ‘Poetry and Psychoanalysis’. Cf. A. Tzavaras, ‘La Psychanalyse, en Grece, a-t-elle une histoire?’, Journal A. I. H. P., 1986, 2, 13–15.
A through study of psychoanalysis in Greece is presented in the collective volume, A. Tzavaras, ed., Psychoanalysis and Greece (Athens: Society for the Study of Modern Greek Civilization, 1984). In Greek.
S. Freud, ‘The Question of Lay Analysis’ (1926), Standard Edition, Vol. XX, 183–250
See also K. R. Eissler, Medical Orthodoxy and the Future of Psychoanalysis (New York: International Universities Press, 1965).
The lively discussion which is being carried out over Adolf Grunbaum’s recent book, The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (Berkeley: Univeristy of California Press, 1984), concerns indeed this particular problem. See also the discussion of the book in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1986, 9, 217–284.
The case of Klein’s contribution to psychoanalysis and the early 40’s controversy within the British Psychoanalytic Society could be discussed in terms of the ‘centric-excentric’ mode of analysis. Thus the ‘object relation theory’ and the contributions of Klein’s main followers, Winnicott and Bion, remain terra incognita in terms of a development of the theory for a number of IPA members.
Cf. Sherry Turkle, Psychoanalytic Politics: Freud’s French Revolution (London: Burnet Books, 1979)
See also Elisabeth Roudinesco, La bataille de cent ans. Histoire de la psychanalyse en France, 2 vols. (Paris: Seuil, 1982, 1986)
Another aspect of the French situation at this period is presented in A. Tzavaras, ‘Bergson and the French Neuropsychiatric Tradition’, in A. C. Papanicolaou and P. A. Y. Gunter, eds., Bergson and Modern Thought (New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1987), pp. 187–200.
The only other known case of a surrealist poet and psychoanalyst is that of the Argentinian Aldo Pellegrini (1903–1973). Embiricos’ role in Greek psychoanalysis is documented in two articles in Greek by A. Tzavaras: ‘Andreas Embiricos and Psychoanalysis’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Modern Greek Civilization, 1981, 5, 80–88, and
A. Tzavaras ‘Andreas Embiricos and Psychoanalysis’, IF, Cartis, 1985, 17/18, 566–577.
Psychoanalysis was re-introduced in Greece in the late 70’s by the establishment, first, of an IPA study-group, and second, by the Society of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, affiliated to the British mother society, and by the arrival of several Lacanian analysts.
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Tzavaras, A., Papagounos, G. (1990). The Development of Freudian Theory: The Role of the ‘Centre’ and the ‘Excentric’ in Theory Production and Diffusion. In: Nicolacopoulos, P. (eds) Greek Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 121. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2015-6_15
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