Grunbaum Arguments

Map Coloring to Graph Coloring

Part of a unit on discrete mathematics.

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.

Map Coloring to Graph Coloring

Part of a unit on discrete mathematics.

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.

The weakness of the tally argument is that, as Freud admits, patients are subject to suggestion (transference). Transference affects all clinical data.

Map Coloring to Graph Coloring

Part of a unit on discrete mathematics.

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

Map Coloring to Graph Coloring

Part of a unit on discrete mathematics.

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.

Map Coloring to Graph Coloring

Part of a unit on discrete mathematics.

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.

Map Coloring to Graph Coloring

Part of a unit on discrete mathematics.

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

Map Coloring to Graph Coloring

Part of a unit on discrete mathematics.

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.

Map Coloring to Graph Coloring

Part of a unit on discrete mathematics.