Abstract
That psychoanalysis embraces both a psychology and a metapsychology has not always been recognised by its critics (e.g. Popper (1962), Eysenck (1953), (1985)), whose preoccupations have tended to centre on the scientific status of the former, rather than on the metascientific features of the latter. For this, Freud himself may be partly responsible. Thus Grünbaum contends, with some textual support, that Freud regarded his metapsychology as a “speculative superstructure”, and took his psychoanalytic corpus to stand or fall with his psychology — that is, his clinical theory or psychopathology, of which the theory of repression is the cornerstone. (Grünbaum (1984), p. 5)
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McLaughlin, R. (1987). Freudian Forces. In: Forge, J. (eds) Measurement, Realism and Objectivity. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3919-6_7
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