About this item
Highlights
- 'Don't judge a book by its cover.'
- Author(s): Austin Ratner
- 302 Pages
- Psychology, Applied Psychology
Description
About the Book
An important, serious and timely treatment of the major problem confronting psychoanalysis today, The Psychoanalyst's Aversion to Proof could help determine the future direction of American psychiatry and mental science. -Mark Solms,Book Synopsis
'Don't judge a book by its cover.' This one does not engage in Freud-bashing and it is not another Freud psychobiography. Read this book carefully and with an open mind! It is an important, serious and timely treatment of the major problem confronting psychoanalysis today. By extension, it could help determine the future direction of American psychiatry and mental science. The book is compellingly readable and direct but simultaneously scholarly and edifying -- impeccably well researched in relation to the historical facts it reviews and the philosophical arguments it marshals - and it culminates in impressively realistic conclusions and practical recommendations.
MARK SOLMS, Science Director of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Research Chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association
Review Quotes
" 'Don't judge a book by its cover.' This one does not engage in Freud-bashing and it is not another
Freud psychobiography. Read this book carefully and with an open mind! It is an important,
serious, and timely treatment of the major problem confronting psychoanalysis today.
By extension, it could help determine the future direction of American psychiatry and mental
science. The book is compellingly readable and direct but simultaneously scholarly and edifying--
impeccably well researched in relation to the historical facts it reviews and the philosophical
arguments it marshals--and it culminates in impressively realistic conclusions and practical
recommendations."
--Mark Solms, Science Director of the American Psychoanaly+c Associa+on,
Research Chair of the Interna+onal Psychoanaly+cal Associa+on
THE PSYCHOANALYTS'S AVERSION TO PROOF AUSTIN RATNER
THE PSYCHOANALYST'S
AVERSION TO PROOF
AUSTIN RATNER
"This ground-breaking book is one of the most creative and valuable contributions to psychoanalysis's
epistemology. Ratner's bold thesis that Freud and the entire psychoanalytic community
had a genuine aversion to proving psychoanalytic ideas, opens new ways of understanding the obstacles
of transmitting psychoanalytic knowledge to the public. Psychoanalyst's Aversion to Proof
convincingly demonstrates in fresh and systematic ways that validating psychoanalysis for the world
is possible if analysts can recover their sense of optimism, curiosity, and ambition. This book is a
remarkable achievement of profound scholarship that should be read by every clinician."
--Aner Govrin, PhD, Faculty, Bar-Ilan University,
Director, Doctoral Program for Hermeneutics & Cultural Studies
"What is proof--demonstration of facts in all their scientific glory?What about psychic facts? Austin
Ratner perspicaciously challenges the hubris of objectivist epistemology by revealing that criteria
of proof fails to displace the reality of the life within--what resonates in our emotional life, the
presencing of interiority.
In our age where the sanitization of the human subject is eclipsed bymedical ideology and biological
explanations remedied by a proverbial pill, Ratner reminds us that psychoanalysis is about the lived
truth of the feeling soul.."
--Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, ABPP, Professor of Psychology & Psychoanalysis, Adler Graduate
Professional School, Toronto; author of numerous books in psychoanalysis & philosophy