Psychoanalytic Explanation
Psychoanalytic Explanation|
This week's reading focuses on psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic explanation. While philosophers and many psychologists generally discount psychoanalytic explanation offhandedly, Hopkins and Johnston argue that the theory can best explain certain aspects of human behavior, particularly wishful thinking and self-deception. Erwin also espouses a view favoring psychoanalytic explanation in his paper on the psychotherapy, though he does express problems with measuring its effectiveness. Psychoanalysis is the theory originating in Freud's work. Generally, psychoanalysis postulates that the mind (brain) can be divided into quasi-independent compartments that each have a significant role in mental activity of a person. With this picture of the mental, psychoanalysis can explain paradoxical aspects of mental life. In particular, the authors concentrate on the difficulties of wishful thinking and self-deception. Wishful thinking is the idea that if a person strongly desires something to be true, she will come to believe it actually is the case. This is problematic form a monistic view of the mind because the wishful thinker both believes the wishful thought and knows that it is false at the same time. For example, I have a strong desire to get into graduate school and I believe that I will, even though I know that I am severely underqualified. The psychoanalytic explanation of my seemingly contradictory beliefs is that one part of my mind, call it the subconscious, contains the rational belief that I am underqualified for grad school, while a different part of my mind, call it the conscious, both strongly desires that I get in and holds the belief that I will. A third part of the mind would act as a mediator, assigning which beliefs and desires will appear in each of the other compartments (the conscious and subconscious). By this triumvirate, the psychoanalyst can explain the paradox of having contradictory beliefs by separating them within the mind. The case of self-deception is very s Johnston argues that acts of self-deception (and wishful thought) must be unintentional unless they involve the development of positive beliefs. This is significant to psychoanalytic explanation because intentional self-deception does not seem very deceptive. That is, I cannot actively cause myself to believe something that I overtly do not believe. The unintentionally of self-deception serves as corroborating evidence to the psychoanalyst. By holding a strong distinction between intentional and unintentional beliefs, we can infer, says the psychoanalyst, that the mind is organized to separate these belief categories. Once we acknowledge that the mind is compartmentalized, psychoanalytic explanation becomes an important tool in the science of the mind. One important issue regarding psychoanalysis is whether it is a methodological or ontological claim. Both horns of the dilemma are problematic. If psychoanalysis is merely a method of explaining cases such as wishful thinking and self-deception, then the problem of contradiction still stands, since the undivided mind holds contradictory beliefs. Alternatively, if psychoanalysis attests to accurately explain the mechanisms of the mind, then we have a problem in verifying (and falsifying) the theory. Erwin's article discusses the effectiveness of psychotherapy. Erwin argues that meta-analysis of psychotherapy techniques cannot accurately indicate its effectiveness. Meta-analysis is a method of converting descriptive studies into statistically comparable results. Erwin is skeptical about the meta-analysis project as a method of determining the adequacy of psychotherapy. He states that meta-analysis is no more scientific than descriptive analyses. Additionally, Erwin considers the use of placebos in psychotherapeutic testing. Erwin supports the use of placebos and argues against some objections to placebo use in psychotherapy (particularly the problem of defining an adequate psychological placebo). His article is not only relevant to clinical psychology, but also to the more general problem of psychoanalytic explanation. By justifying the effective use of placebos in psychotherapy, Erwin implicitly gives evidence supporting psychoanalytic explanation, since psychotherapy uses psychoanalytic ideas in its treatment. |
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