Grunbaum Arguments

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Problem 1: Suggestibility  transference, the attempt by patients to elicit approval from the analyst as though the analyst were their parent  "clothes the doctor with authority and is transformed into belief in his communications and explanations"  placebo effect of simple suggestibility.

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Problem 2: Failure of Tally Argument  Freud's tally argument : "After all, his [the patient's] conflicts will only be successfully solved and his resistances overcome if the anticipatory ideas he is given [by the analyst] tally with what is real in him. Whatever in the doctor's conjectures is inaccurate drops out in the course of the analysis..."  (3) IF Cure, THEN Psychoanalysis. (4) NOT Psychoanalysis. ____________________________________ (5) NOT Cure.  The NCT could potentially be falsified if a durable cure of psychoneurosis occured in the absence of psychoanalysis.falsified  The weakness of the tally argument is that, as Freud admits, patients are subject to suggestion (transference). Transference affects all clinical data. suggestion

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Problem 3: Weakness of Consilience Argument  Verbal assent may be "hypocritical,  "The 'Yes' has no value unless it is followed by indirect confirmations, unless the patient, immediately after his 'Yes,' produces new memories which complete and extend the construction" (p. 262).  Verbal dissent is almost always taken as untrustworthy, an indication of something other than genuine dissent.  The problem with the consiliance argument is that assent/dissent and indirect confirmations from the couch are not independent observations--rather, they are subject to a shared influence

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Problem 4: Nisbett and Wilson Findings  Freud claims that patients' veridical insight causes a durable cure of psychoneurosis. Thus, the epistemic reliability of patients' intropections is of utmost importance.  Nisbett and Wilson : Introspection does not afford a person privileged epistemic access to the discernment of the causes of his (her) own mental states, as compared to the avenues available to others who observe him (her) externally.

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Problem 5: Problems with Breuer- Freud Argument  Cathartic treatment CAUSES Durable cure  The major problem is the possibility that another factor besides cathartic treatment causes the durable cure.  Such a possible alternative factor is the placebo effect: that the docile patient, expecting a cure from the wise doctor, is cured by that very expectation.

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Problem 6: Problems with Extrapolation to Slips and Dreams  Freud holds a compromise-formation model of neurotic symptoms, slips of the tongue (parapraxes), and manifest dream content.  “In dreams, just as in symptoms formation, "we find a struggle between two trends, of which one is unconscious and ordinarily repressed and strives towards satisfaction—that is, wish-fulfillment— while the other, belonging probably to the conscious ego, is disapproving and repressive. The outcome of this conflict is a compromise-formation (the dream or the symptom) in which both trends have found an incomplete expression"  Extrapolation from neurotic symptoms to slips and dreams is unwarranted by the therapeutic evidence

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Problem 7: Problems with Establishing Causal Claims by Retrospective Testing  The method of free-associationis not a trustworthy resource for establishing causation.  A repression that emerges at the end of a chain of free associations is taken uncritically to be the original cause of the symptom that initiated that chain.

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