Pragmatism, Tradition, and Truth in Psychoanalysis

It is argued that neither tradition nor its opposite, novelty, provides us with any reliable assurance as to where the truth lies in psychoanalysis or in any other body of knowledge. Both traditional ideas or new ideas may be true, but not because they are traditional or novel. It is because they can be shown to be true or false either deductively, by reason alone (i.e., by inference from an idea known to be true) or inductively by reason and observation. Of these two methods, the second is more fundamental. In a variety of ways, in the arguments seek to place psychoanalysis in the context of the history of ideas and science.