Freud as Scientist

As I have written before (1, 2), the essence of science and scientific method is “conceptualization, the mental process of generalizing to identify universals and applying previously formed universals to understand particular cases.*
 
The former is a process of induction and is called basic science, the latter a process of deduction (1, 2) and is called applied science. Most scientists perform both types in varying degrees, some spending most of their time on basic science, others on application.
 
Scientific method, which seeks to identify the distinguishing characteristic of a physical or mental entity under study and the causal relations between an entity’s attributes and other entities and their attributes, always involves experimentation—testing and trying one’s ideas against the real world. It may or may not be controlled experimentation. Statistical methodology and exact measurement (Applying Principles, 322-24) do not constitute the essence of science, but they can be adjuncts to the formation of universals and both may be helpful in applying those universals.
 
The present post rests on Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts (chap. 1-2), which emphasizes measurement omission in the formation of concepts and therefore in the identification of universals. Looking at an individual concrete instance of a concept means considering all of the concrete’s characteristics. These include quantitative ones that are typically measured by a precise unit, as is the physical sciences. And it includes qualitative characteristics that are typically measured approximately, as in the human sciences.
 
Basic sciences are fundamental sciences, such as physics, biology, and psychology, on which applied sciences rest, such as, respectively, engineering, medicine, and psychotherapy.
 
Sigmund Freud is an excellent example of both a basic and applied scientist of human nature, of the human science of psychology. Psychoanalysis is the basic theory, while psychoanalytic therapy is the applied science or practice of the basic theory. Freud called psychoanalysis the “science of the unconscious,” or depth psychology, while psychology in general, according to Freud, is the science of the soul, which consists of three parts: our conscious reasoning mind and seat of emotions (the I—see last month’s post on English translations), our conscience (the upper I), and unconscious (the it). Freud was an atheist his entire life, as well as a determinist, so the soul for him is not immortal nor do we have free will.
 
Freud as scientist, we might say, is a post-Kantian, modern Aristotelian (see especially chap. 3).“Post-Kantian” means that consciousness has an active, creative nature or identity, while “modern Aristotelian” means that an active, creative consciousness can, guided by Aristotelian logic, accurately perceive reality. A modern Aristotelian in this sense rejects Aristotle’s naïve realism that the essence of a thing is “out there” in the thing but retains his premise of the primacy of existence. Consciousness does not create or distort reality, as Kant and many other philosophers say, or reflect or mirror it, as the naïve realists think. The modern Aristotelian holds that consciousness creates—note the different meaning here of “create,” as opposed to how the Kantians and other primacy-of-consciousness philosophers use the term—concepts and principles based on what it has correctly recognized or identified of reality.
 
As a student, Freud attended the lectures of Aristotelian scholar Franz Brentano and was influenced by him. This is indicated in particular by Freud’s frequent use of the words “nature and essence,” often followed by “origin” (cause) of a mental process that he was trying to identify. He never went looking for Kantian noumena or so-called intrinsic essences or Newtonian algebraic equations. (Freud in fact rarely mentions Kant in his writings.) He does, however, recognize that both normal and abnormal psychologies exhibit quantities of emotional energy that are measured approximately on an ordinal or qualitative scale of less and more.  
 
In Independent Judgment and Introspection (78-79), I point out how Freud spent many years working out the correct meaning of repression as distinguished from the more general concept of defense, clarifying the two in 1926 (97-99, 110-12). In those earlier years he had considered the two synonymous. He recognized finally that repression is a response to anxiety and attempt to allay it, not a cause of anxiety, as he had earlier thought. It is neurotic anxiety that gives rise to the neurotic need for repression.
 
This is conceptualization, and it is how science works.
 
Or as Freud wrote in An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (31), “Every science is based on observations and experiences arrived at through the medium of our psychical apparatus” (that is, our mental processes), though psychology differs from physics in that psychology uses its mental processes to study and make inferences about mental processes, where physics uses the mental processes to make inferences about the external world. Both sciences often infer what is not directly perceivable. This last Freud describes as unrecognizable or invisible—“unerkennbar” in scare quotes in Freud’s German. The standard translation is “unknowable,” but Freud’s meaning clearly is not Kantian. He means that gravity and molecules are no more directly perceivable than the processes of our subconscious minds.
 
In addition, Freud points out, our awareness (through sense perception) of the physical world, provides “insight into connections and dependent relations which are present” in that world, reproduced in our minds as thought and knowledge that enable us not just to understand external reality, but also to anticipate and change it. And because the procedures of the science of psychology are “quite similar” to those of physics, says Freud, our awareness (through introspection) of the mental world provides similar insight about “connections and dependent relations” of the conscious and subconscious mind, to understand both and to anticipate and change (that is, treat through introspective analysis) their mental functioning (Outline, 83).
 
The “thought and knowledge” that accumulates in our minds, whether of physics or psychology, consist of concepts and principles, and the process of forming and applying concepts and principles is conceptualization. To put this in Ayn Rand’s terms, science is the mental process of identifying the nature of entities and their attributes—physical or mental—including in particular the motions of the entities caused by those attributes. This last is Aristotelian causality based on formal causation, or as Rand puts it, causality is “identity in action.”
 
Science thus identifies entities and their attributes and causes and effects (connections and dependent relations) by constructing and defining concepts that identify the nature and essence of those entities and attributes.**
 
To add one more point, Freud as scientist, in the words of philosopher Walter Kaufmann (80), often considers “objections and alternatives,” many of which we still hear today, but were addressed and answered by him in his time, the accusation of “pan-sexualism” just being one example. As Kaufmann writes, considering objections and alternatives is the “essence of critical thinking.”***
 
Let me conclude this post with a description of science and scientific method, especially as it applies to psychology, written by Freud in partial answer to the religious dogmatism of his critics.

This is the way of science: slow, groping, laborious. . . . Through observation one learns something new, now here, now there, and at first the pieces do not fit together. One formulates surmises and makes auxiliary constructions that one takes back when they are not confirmed; one requires a lot of patience, readiness for all possibilities, renounces early convictions lest under their compulsion one should overlook new and unexpected factors; and in the end all this exertion proves worthwhile, the scattered finds do fit together, one gains an insight into an altogether new piece of psychic processes, is done with the task and ready for the next one. Only the help that [controlled] experiments provide for research has to be dispensed with in analysis. (Kaufmann translation, 79-80; see standard translation in New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 215-16).

This is conceptualization.
 
Next month: “The Basic Science of Psychoanalysis.”
 
 
* And, to emphasize, scientists are not the only ones performing these mental processes. We all perform them, generalization especially in our younger years of parental and formal education, application every day using our acquired knowledge to guide our lives.
 
** As this post demonstrates, Freud was most emphatically a scientist, which means he and  his theory of psychoanalysis are in no way “pseudo-science,” as the positivists and, especially, Karl Popper (1, chap. 1; 2, 74-75), like to say.
 
*** I would say that the essence of critical thinking is the formulation of concepts and principles that correctly recognize or identify, that is, not contradict, the facts of reality. It is the ability to perceive reality through unfiltered or discolored lenses. Considering objections and alternatives is one of the main ways we test and try our ideas against reality, that is, remove contradictions.

On Science and the Scientific Method

The purpose of science is to explain and guide, and the method scientists use, in briefest essence, is observation to raise questions followed by frequent testing and trying of alternatives to find correct answers.
 
In a single word, scientific method is conceptualization, the mental process of generalizing to identify universals and applying previously formed universals to understand particular cases. The former is a process of induction, the latter a process of deduction (1, 2).
 
We all use both cognitive processes, but scientists use them more intensely and in more concentrated areas.
 
Scientific method may or may not involve controlled experimentation with an elaborate array of instruments and it may or may not produce mathematical equations and hosts of quantitative data.
 
The ultimate aim of science is practical, to enhance human life.
 
The most fundamental science is philosophy or, as some have said, philosophy is the science of all sciences, with epistemology providing the principles of method to guide scientists in their choices and actions. The current post is based on Ayn Rand’s epistemology, especially her theory of concepts.
 
There are three fundamental special sciences: the physical that study inanimate matter and its actions; the biological that study living organisms and their behavior; and the human that study homo sapiens—the highest living organism that possesses a consciousness with the capacity to reason—and its behavior.
 
Special sciences representative of each are physics and chemistry, botany and zoology, psychology and economics.
 
All other sciences derive their basic premises from one or more of the fundamental ones. Derivative sciences are more applied than the fundamental ones and at some point may be called technology or applied sciences—engineering, medicine, psychotherapy.
 
Applied sciences are largely, though not exclusively, deductive. The fundamental sciences are largely, though not exclusively, inductive.
 
To return to our beginning concepts, the aim of science is not explanation and prediction as the logical positivists insist, but explanation and guidance. To explain means to describe the nature of an entity, its attributes, and its causal origin and effects. To guide means to provide principles of action to help human beings achieve specific goals.
 
Principles of guidance can be used to build spaceships and bridges; to diagnose diseases in plants, animals, and humans to recommend treatments; to manage small and large businesses; to make baskets (pp. 299-301); and to decide whether a specific action would be honest.
 
Ethics is a fundamental branch of philosophy that provides important principles of guidance throughout our lives.
 
Testing and trying are the etymological roots of the word “experiment” and testing and trying is what anyone who possesses the capacity to reason does to conclude that an essential distinguishing characteristic has been identified.
 
A child, for example, may throw, bounce, and chew a round, spongy thing before concluding that the round, spongy thing is a ball that bounces and rolls (but is not food). Aristotle opened twenty fertilized chicken eggs, one per day, to observe the development of chicks from beating speck of blood to live baby chicken. In this way, he tested and confirmed the hypothesis that baby birds are not born pre-formed, but grow gradually stage by stage within the egg (see Harré, chap. 1).
 
Today’s scientists test and try many options, sometimes using controlled experimentation to eliminate sources of extraneous variation. In the physical sciences, they may identify algebraic equations to explain the relationship between two or more entities or their attributes or actions.
 
The biological and human sciences, however, because of the nature of their subjects cannot be so precise. Since all concept formation, as Ayn Rand has shown (chap. 1 &2), involves measurement—measurement omission to arrive at the universal—these sciences can be quantified to a limited extent, using approximate measurements, such as greater than or less than, higher or lower, more important or less important.
 
The human sciences, of course, have the added proviso that free will reduces to absurdity the formulating of equations to predict behavior. All sciences work with universals by omitting—but certainly not forgetting—the measurements.
 
Technology or applied science uses measurements of individual cases, such as the engineer who needs to decide the best location of a new bridge or the sea captain who needs a reliable estimate of the tides in a specific harbor. The medical doctor needs to know a patient’s temperature and blood pressure and the psychotherapist needs an estimate of the kind and quantity of thinking errors an unhappy patient has made over the years.
 
Essentialization is the fundamental thinking method of scientists (and everyone else) because the essential distinguishing characteristic or essence of a concept explains and causes all or most of the other characteristics. The flat, level surface of a table explains why my glass of water sits stably on it and causes the liquid to stay within the glass. The motions of the sun and moon explain and cause the motions of water on earth.
 
Essentialization can be thought of as thinking in causes and effects.
 
Principles of guidance also explain the nature of the goals one is seeking and the steps that will cause that accomplishment. To sell a product, the salesperson must tailor his or her presentation to the prospect’s needs and wants. To build a bridge, the engineer needs to know many specifics, including precise measurements, of the width of the river and the nature and history of its soil.
 
Where does history fit in to this? Science, whether basic or applied, can be referred to as theory. History requires and uses theory to identify the nature and causes of a specific case, such as sedimentary rock embedded at a forty-five degree angle several thousand feet up on a mountainside or the nature and cause of a specific war.
 
What is called natural history uses theory from the physical sciences and human history uses theory from the human sciences to explain the nature and causes of the cases each study.
 
History is applied science.

Science and Great Experiments: The Search for Universals

The 1981 book Great Scientific Experiments by Rom Harré presents in popular format and in only 200 pages the gist of twenty influential scientific experiments, from Aristotle to the twentieth century.

Interestingly, none of the experiments cited uses statistical samples of any size divided into experimental and control groups. All samples are small and one is a sample of one! How is this possible?

And if true, may we conclude that Sigmund Freud and Jane Goodall were great experimenters?

It is the logical positivism of modern science that tells us a sound theory of induction does not exist, because universals do not exist, only statistical probabilities. Therefore, anything close to causal must be found through at least two groups of large samples to control sources of “extraneous variation.” Hence, all we can find through our many studies are “successive approximations.” This what John Stuart Mill’s followers called the hypothetico-deductive method that drives nearly all research today and condemns Freud and Goodall to the realm of “pseudo-science.”

Let us back up and define our terms. Science is a systematic study of an aspect of reality that explains its domain descriptively and causally, and if applied (as technology) provides guidance for human choices and actions to achieve specific goals.

The product of any science is a body of knowledge—a collection of integrated, universal concepts and principles the aim of which is to enhance life.

The second term to look at is experimentation. The Latin root of the word experiment means to try. Paraphrasing the Oxford English Dictionary, to experiment means to test or try something to identify what has previously been unknown. This means experimentation is trial and error. It may involve experimental and control groups (and the manipulation of one variable to determine its effects on another), but it does not necessarily have to. It also may involve an elaborate apparatus or it may be entirely conceptual—in the head, sometimes called a thought experiment.

Science historian John P. McCaskey has traced the history of induction and the role of experimentation in it  (1, 2). Up to the last couple of hundred years, McCaskey found, induction and experimentation were based on the work, among others, of Francis Bacon who based his work on Aristotle’s formal cause. And Aristotle in turn developed his theory of induction from what during the Renaissance was called “Socratic induction.”

Socrates, when taunting his know-it-all Athenian conversationalists, was looking for universal essences that apply in all instances.

Universals, those exceptionless concepts and principles, not correlations or probabilities, are what constitute the essence and foundation of science.

Thus, conceptualization, or concept formation, is the fundamental method of science, because large samples are often not necessary to identify the universals. McCaskey, as do I, gives the nod to Ayn Rand for understanding the role of concept formation in science, specifically the inductive process of identifying essential distinguishing characteristics.

Examples from McCaskey: Robert Koch’s identification of the comma bacillus (Spirillum cholerae asiasticae) as the defining, universal characteristic and cause of cholera, not such competing but correlational hypotheses as season or foul water; Charles Wells’ conclusion, after many small experiments to test a wide variety of independent variables, that water condensation was the essence of dew; and Lord Kelvin’s reasoning to describe tides by their definition and causes, namely “motions of water on the earth, due to the attractions of the sun and of the moon” (quoted in McCaskey).*

Harré acknowledges in his book (p. 191) that one or a few cases, with careful experimentation, that is, trial and error, can yield “defining properties of all samples similar to them.” He calls the small samples “intensive design.” In contrast, he calls the larger (and statistical) versions “extensive.”

The intensive design and sample of one in Harré’s book (chap. 2) is the nine years of experimentation conducted by army doctor William Beaumont on Alexis St. Martin, whose stomach did not close completely after a musket wound. Access to St. Martin’s stomach contents, especially his gastric juices, enabled Beaumont to answer the question, are gastric juices chemical solvents or is the process of digestion some vital force and the juices just “inert water”?

Feeding different foods to his subject and observing his digestive processes and by removing gastric juices to test its effects in a glass jar were the experiments that Beaumont conducted to make the well-respected conclusion of chemical solvency, even of “the hardest bone” (quoted in Harré, p. 41).

The concept correctly identified by Beaumont was that gastric juices were indeed—and universally so—chemical solvents, not inert water.

In my book Independent Judgment and Introspection (pp. 78-79), I praise Sigmund Freud for his work in clarifying and defining psychological repression and Jane Goodall for her discoveries about chimpanzees. Both conducted great experiments, the former in psychology, the latter in biology. They both used the method of conceptualization and deserve to be recognized as great experimenters. Science, in other words, is not confined to the fields of physics and chemistry, or imitations of those fields, as too many positivists are prone to assume.

Freud spent over thirty years in talk therapy with many different patients before he finally formulated the essential meaning of repression as an unconscious (or subconscious) response to anxiety that mutes the experience of or blocks entirely thoughts, memories, or emotions from conscious awareness. He also had to distinguish repression from defense mechanism in general, which for many years he tended to equate.**

Jane Goodall’s work, beginning in 1960, was to observe the behavior of chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve (now Gombe National Park) in Tanzania. Over the course of many years, she discovered that chimps eat meat, make elementary tools to obtain food, can be violent and even cannibalistic, and have personalities. She gave the chimps names and interacted with them after they had gained her trust.

Goodall’s work required patient observation and, especially, application of analogous concepts from human psychology to the higher mammals, “patient observation” meaning testing and trying different ideas before drawing conclusions.

It is the logical positivists who dismissed Freud’s work as anecdotal at best, literature at worst. And it was the “men of hard science” at the beginning of Goodall’s career who dismissed her as an uncredentialed woman frivolously and anthropomorphically giving names to the nonrational, dumb animals. Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, however, called Jane Goodall’s work “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements” (quoted in Goodall, p. xvii).

It is the logical positivists and many of those “men of hard science” who are not particularly scientific, or great experimenters!


* In the study of tides there may have been confusion over the difference between theoretical and applied science, or technology. Sea captains need to know the timing and heights of tides at a specific location, and statistics can help make these predictions. But this is applied science where the universals of theory are used to uncover correlations, tolerances, and averages to guide concrete, practical decision making.

** Repression is a defense mechanism, or defensive habit, as I prefer to call it, but it is not identical to it. Freud’s daughter, Anna, said it was in his 1926 book Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety when Freud identified the correct place of repression in psychology. The muting or barring of an emotion is accomplished by muting or barring the thought that stands behind it. Traumatic memories, I have suggested (fn 11, p. 146), are not repressed and should not be thought of as part of the definition. Subconscious is the more preferred modern term and is discussed in my appendix to Independent Judgment and Introspection.