Freud's Dream: A Complete Interdisciplinary Science of Mind

"Freud's Dream is a first-rate study in the philosophy of science which traces the undoing of Freud's program to the interdisciplinary nature of his project, the closed epistemological structure of the psychoanalytic institutes, and the resulting homogeneity of the psychoanalytic community. Kitcher makes a convincing case that the interdisciplinary commitments of contemporary cognitive science makes it prone to some of the same problems that undid Freud's program."-- Owen Flanagan, Professor of Philosophy, Duke University By examining the rise and fall of psychoanalysis, Freud's Dream provides an extended case study of the appeal and potential dangers of the interdisciplinary approach to theory construction now guiding cognitive science, as well as a novel interpretation of Freud's own program. Kitcher argues that Freud's grand scheme for psychoanalysis was nothing less than a blueprint for a complete interdisciplinary science of mind, that many of its strengths and weaknesses derived from this fact, and that Freud's errors are instructive for current work in cognitive science. A Bradford Book