How to turn Popper’s philosophical baton against psychoanalysis into a flower bouquet – an epistemological essay on psychotherapy

Authors

  • Kurt Greiner

Keywords:

Key words, Karl R. Popper, Psychoanalysis, Adlerian Psychology, Philosophy of Science, Pseudoscience, Science, Text Hermeneutics, Logopoietics, Psycho Narrative Networks, Problematic Client’s Texts, Psycho Terminological Horizon and Purpose

Abstract

When talking to psychoanalysts, a major uncertainty regarding the scientific nature of psychoanalytical activities again and again becomes evident. This methodological uncertainty can partly be traced back to Viennese philosopher Karl R. Popper (1902–1994) who almost 100 years ago scathingly criticized the then newly developed psychotherapeutic methods of psychoanalysis (based on S. Freud) and individual psychology (based on A. Adler) and tried to expose them as pseudoscience. The essay at hand aims at showing under which conditions and in which way Popper’s epistemological criticism of psychoanalysis and individual psychology, developed at the beginning of the 20th century, actually supports the text hermeneutic nature of the first two psychoanalytical methods today.

Author Biography

Kurt Greiner

Kurt Greiner, Univ.-Prof. DDr., lehrt an der Sigmund-Freud-Privatuniversität Wien (SFU) und forscht im dortigen Fachbereich Psychotherapiewissenschaftstheorie und Therapieschulenforschungsmethodologie.

Downloads

Published

2017-12-15

How to Cite

Greiner, K. (2017). How to turn Popper’s philosophical baton against psychoanalysis into a flower bouquet – an epistemological essay on psychotherapy. Psychotherapie-Wissenschaft, 7(2), 77–83. Retrieved from https://psychotherapie-wissenschaft.info/article/view/1776

Issue

No. 2 (2017): Psychosomatische Ansätze in der Psychotherapie

Section

Originalarbeit

License

This journal provides open access to its content in accordance with the basic premise that the free public availability of research benefits the exchange of knowledge throughout the world.

Authors wishing to publish in this journal agree to the following:

  1. The author/s retain/s the copyrights and consent/s to initial publication of the work in the journal under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, which allows third parties to use the work by citing the name/s of the author/s and this journal as initial publisher (in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 DE-Licence).
  1. The author/s can enter into additional contracts for the non-exclusive distribution (e.g. publish in a collection or book) of the version published in the journal, if the journal is cited as initial publisher.