(Psychological Issues) 1st Edition
by Jerome C. Wakefield (Author)
In
this close reading of Freudian theory, Jerome C. Wakefield reconstructs
Freud’s argument for the Oedipal theory of the psychoneuroses, placing
the case of Little Hans into a philosophy-of-science context and
critically rethinking the epistemological foundations of psychoanalysis.
Wakefield
logically evaluates four central Freudian arguments: the "undirected
anxiety" argument which contends that Hans suffered from anxiety before
he developed his horse phobia; the "day the horse fell down" argument
where, engaging in some scholarly detective work, Wakefield resolves a
century-old dispute between behaviorists and psychoanalysts about when
Hans witnessed a frightening horse accident; the "N=1 sexual repression"
argument that the trajectory of Hans’s sexual desires matches the
Oedipal theory’s predictions; and lastly, the "detailed symptom
characteristics" argument that the Oedipal theory is needed to
understand otherwise inexplicable details of Hans’s symptoms. Wakefield
demonstrates that, although Freud’s arguments are brilliantly conceived,
he misread the facts of the Hans case and failed to support the Oedipal
theory as judged by his own stated evidential standards. However, this
failure creates an opportunity for renewed consideration of
psychoanalysis’s distinctive contribution: the understanding of an
individual’s unique meaning system and confrontation with meanings
outside of focal awareness in order to reshape an individual’s fate.
This
book will be of interest to psychoanalysts and psychotherapists alike,
and will prove essential for scholars working in the fields of
psychoanalysis, philosophy of science, and the history of psychiatry.
