Truth, Autonomy, and the Value of Psychoanalysis

Barbara Hannan

The status of Freud is controversial. Was he the twentieth century's most important philosopher of mind, or was he a creative but unscientific thinker whose work has been almost completely discredited? I take a look at the arguments of a prominent critic of Freud (Adolf Grunbaum), and at the arguments of a prominent defender or sympathetic interpreter of Freud (Jonathan Lear), in order to make some progress in assessing Freud's continuing importance to philosophical psychology. I conclude that Lear's points are ultimately deeper and more persuasive than Grunbaum's. Freud's work has both scientific and ethical importance, and it is not the case that all, or even most, of his work has been discredited.