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Chapter 15

choanalysis is characterized by its technique and not by its subject matter [23], in

a third that psychological theory has a temporary nature and will be replaced by

an organic theory. [24]

All this may easily delude us: it might seem that psychoanalysis really has no

system and that its data can serve to correct and complete any system of knowledge,

acquired in whatever way. But this is utterly false. Psychoanalysis has no a priori,

conscious theory-system. Like Pavlov, Freud discovered too much to create an ab-

stract system. But like Moliere’s hero [25] who, without suspecting it, spoke prose

all his life, Freud, the investigator, created a system: introducing a new word, har-

monizing one term with another, describing a new fact, drawing a new conclusion,

he created, in passing and step by step, a new system. This implies that the structure

of his system is unique, obscure, complex and very difficult to grasp. It is much

easier to find one’s way in methodological systems which are deliberate, clear, and

free from contradictions, which acknowledge their teachers and are unified and

logically structured. It is much more difficult to correctly evaluate and reveal the

true nature of unconscious methodologies which evolved spontaneously, in a con-

tradictory way, under various influences. But it is precisely to the latter that psy-

choanalysis belongs. For this reason psychoanalysis requires a very careful and

critical methodological analysis and not a naive superposition of the features of

two different systems.

Ivanovsky (1923, p. 249) says that “For a person who is not experienced in

matters of scientific methodology all sciences seem to share the same method.”

Psychology suffered most of all from such a misunderstanding. It was always

counted as either biology or sociology and rarely were psychological laws, theories,

etc., judged by the criterion of psychological methodology, i.e., with an interest in

the thought of psychological science as such, its theory, its methodology, its sources,

forms and foundations. That is why in our critique of foreign systems, in the evalu-

ation of their truth, we lack what is most important: after all, it is only from an

understanding of its methodological basis that we can correctly assess the extent

to which knowledge has been corroborated and established beyond doubt

(Ivanovsky, 1923). And the rule that one must doubt everything, take nothing on

trust, ask each claim what it rests on and what is its source, is, therefore, the first

rule and methodology of science. It safeguards us against an even grosser mistake—

not only to consider the methods of all sciences to be equal, but to imagine that

the structure of each science is uniform.

The inexperienced mind imagines each separate science, so to speak, in one plane:

given that science is reliable, indisputable knowledge, everything in it must be reliable.

Its whole content must be obtained and proven by one and the same method which

yields reliable knowledge. In reality this is not true at all: each science has its different

facts (and groups of analogous facts) which have been established beyond doubt, its

irrefutably established general claims and laws, but it also has pre-suppositions,

hypotheses which sometimes have a temporary, provisional character and sometimes

indicate the ultimate boundaries of our knowledge (at least for the given epoch); there

are conclusions which follow more or less indisputably from firmly established theses;

there are constructions which sometimes broaden the boundaries of our knowledge,

sometimes form deliberately introduced ‘fictions’; there are analogies, approximate

generalizations etc., etc. Science has no homogeneous structure and the understanding

of this fact is of the greatest significance for a person’s understanding of science. Each

different scientific thesis has its own individual degree of reliability depending upon

the way and degree of its methodological foundation, and science, viewed

methodologically, does not represent a single solid uniform surface, but a mosaic of

theses of different degrees of reliability” (ibid., p. 250).

That is why (1) merging the method of all sciences (Einstein, Pavlov, Comte,

Marx) and (2) reducing the entire heterogeneous structure of the scientific system