Sequel to: The Foundations of psychoanalysis.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Introduction / Philip S. Holzman -- Ch. 1. The Psychoanalytic Enterprise and Its "Hermeneutic" Construal: A Disputation -- Ch. 2. The Degeneration of Popper's Critique of Psychoanalysis -- Ch. 3. The Placebo Concept in Psychiatry and Medicine -- Ch. 4. The Role of the Case Study Method in the Foundations of Psychoanalysis: Fundamental Evidential Defects of the Theory of Transference Qua Etiologic Hypothesis -- Ch. 5. The Poverty of Clinical Observations as Probative Evidence for Psychoanalytic Theory and Therapy -- Ch. 6. Epistemic Defects in the Clinical Validation of Causal Hypotheses: Reply to Marshall Edelson's Defense of Intraclinical Testability of Causal Hypotheses in Psychoanalytic Theory -- Ch. 7. Psychoanalysis and Theism -- Ch. 8. Retrospective versus Prospective Testing of Etiologic Hypotheses in Psychoanalysis -- Ch. 9. The Logical Foundations of the Clinical Theory of Repression -- Ch. 10. Two New Major Difficulties for Freud's Theory of Dreams.

Well over one half of this brilliant new Monograph constitutes a major sequel to Professor Grunbaum's highly influential 1984 book The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique, which was labeled "magisterial" by Frank J. Sulloway, and "the most important book ever written on Freud's status as a scientist" by J. Allan Hobson. The importance of the present Monograph lies in the extent to which the author now goes beyond that earlier volume to offer new original ideas on fundamental themes.

Validation in the Clinical Theory of Psycho-analysis: A Study in the Philosophy of Psycho-analysis contains Adolf Grunbaum's new basic critique of the psychoanalytic theory of transference in its role of an etiologic theory; it turns out that etiologic transference interpretations rest on fallacious causal inferences from so-called "meaning connections" between mental states: moreover, just these unsound inferences are the stock-in-trade of the "hermeneutic" reconstruction of psychoanalysis, which charges Freud with a "scientistic self-misunderstanding.".

This volume joins the issue with Marshall Edelson's defenses of the investigative viability of the single-subject case study method. As a spin-off from the import of the serious placebo challenge to psychoanalysis, this Monograph presents the author's widely recognized new account of the placebo concept across all of medicine and psychotherapy. Whereas Foundations of Psychoanalysis objected that Freud's dream theory was evidentially ill-founded, the burden of the present book is to give two new basic reasons for presuming the theory to be false. It also develops the import of the author's appraisal of psychoanalytic theory for the scrutiny of Freud's triadic psychology of religious belief in theism.

Since Sir Karl Popper's most detailed charge of pseudoscience against psychoanalysis in 1983 could not be examined for inclusion in the 1984 book, the present monograph shows in what ways it is wide of the mark as an incoherent diagnosis of the scientific liabilities of psychoanalytic theory. In addition, four important papers that had antedated Foundations by a few years and were scattered over diverse publications have been updated and integrated with the other chapters herein.