FREUD REAPPRAISED A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Theory
ROBERT R. HOLT New York University
THE GUILFORD PRESS New York London Contents
Fart I Background
Chapter 1. A Personal Introduction 3
Chapter 2. The Manifest and Latent Meanings of Metapsychology 15 How Did Freud Define and Use Metapsychology? 16 Some Intellectual Antecedents of Metapsychology 31
Chapter 3. Freud's Cognitive Style 34 Character Style 35 Nature of Freud's Intellect 36 Style of Thinking and Writing 39 Conception of Scientific Method and Concepts 48 Style of Theorizing 50 Use of Figures of Speech 55 Freud's Rhetoric 58 Summary 63 A Decalogue for the Reader of Freud 67
Part II Psychic Energy: The Economic Point of View
Chapter 4. A Critical Examination of Freud's Concept of Bound versus Free Cathexis 71 Breuer's and Freud's Uses of the Concept 73 The Concept in the Project for a Scientific Psychology 76 The Concept in Chapter VII of The Interpretation of Dreams 84 The Concept in Midlife Works and the Metapsychological Papers 87 The Concept in Beyond the Pleasure Principle 90 The Concept in Later Works 96 The Concept in An Outline of Psycho-Analysis 99 Discussion of the Various Definitions 100 Summary and Conclusions 107 Afterword 108
XI xii Contents
Chapter 5. A Review of Some of Freud's Biological Assumptions and Their Influence on His Theories 114 The Doctrines of Freud's Teachers 116 Biological Assumptions in the Project 118 Retention of Biological Doctrines in Post-1900 Works 121 Difficulties Created by Freud's Biological Assumptions 127 Conclusion 139
Chapter 6. Beyond Vitalism and Mechanism: Freud's Concept of Psychic Energy 141 Vitalism and Mechanism: A Historical Review 142 The Influence of the Vitalism Controversy on Freud's Work 152 Objections to Vitalism as They Apply to Psychic Energy 159 Conclusion 164
Part III Instinct Theory: The Dynamic Point of View
Chapter 7. Drive or Wish?: A Reconsideration of the Psychoanalytic Theory of Motivation 171 Methodological Critique 174 Lessons from the Experimental Psychology of Drive 181 Toward a New Theory 186
Part IV Ego Psychology and the Theory of Thinking: The Structural Point of View
Chapter 8. The Past and Future of Ego Psychology 199 The Past 200 The Ego and the Id Reconsidered 207 Two Psychologies: Narrow and Broad 212 The Future 214 Afterword 215
Chapter 9. Ego Autonomy and the Problem of Human Freedom 218 Historical Survey 220 Some Specific Aspects of Relations to Reality 229 A Systems View of Reality—And Freud's 238 Free Will: Illusion or Reality? 246 Contents xiii
Chapter 10. The Development of the Primary Process: A Structural View 253 The Structural Basis of the Primary Process 254 The Development of the Primary Process 266 Dreams, Hallucinations, and the Origins of Thought 274 Chapter 11. The Present Status of Freud's Theory of the Primary Process 280 The Observational Base of the Concept of the Primary Process 280 Some Origins of Freud's Concept 281 A Digression on Perception and Cognition 285 The Phenomenal Referents of the Term "Primary Process" 291 A Scheme for Scoring Primary-Process Manifestations 293
Part V Critical Reflections on Psychoanalytic Theory as a Whole
Chapter 12. Death and Transfiguration of Metapsychology 305 The Disciplinary Status of Psychoanalysis 307 Is Psychoanalysis a Science? 308 One Theory and One Model 314 Summary 321 Chapter 13. The Current Status of Psychoanalytic Theory 324 The Decline and Fall of Metapsychology 324 A Philosophical Critique of the Clinical Theory 327 The Structure of the Clinical Theory 333 Can the Clinical Theory Be Confirmed? 334 Psychoanalysis: Hermeneutics or Science? 336 Recent Theoretical "Developments" 337 The Current Crisis 338 Some Tentative Prescriptions 341
Part VI Toward the Future
Chapter 14. Freud and the Emergence of a New World Hypothesis 347 World Hypotheses 347 From Animism to Mechanism 349 Freud, Relativism, and Pragmatism 352 Toward a New, Integrative World Hypothesis 357 Coda 361 Notes 363 References 395 Index 419