How do psychoanalysts know what they know?

This paper puts forward an account of psychoanalysis as an organised practice for the generation of new knowledge. Against criticisms of psychoanalysis as a pseudo-science or failed science it asserts the respect of psychoanalysis for both rational argument and empirical evidence over the course of its development. Its contention is that from its foundational moment as a ‘revolutionary science’ in the formative work of Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams and after, psychoanalysis has proceeded in the mode of a ‘normal science’, that is by recognising and investigating problems that emerged from the encounter of its theoretical conjectures with facts, in particular the ‘clinical facts’ which have always been its principal source of observational data. It argues that while psychoanalysis does have distinctive and unusual features as a form of systematic inquiry, these derive logically and appropriately from the nature of its distinctive object of study, namely unconscious mental life.

Citation:
Rustin, M. (2007) ‘How do psychoanalysts know what they know?’ Published in Braddock, L & Lacewing, M. (eds) The Academic Face of Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge 2007, pp 272-195.