Posted by special_k on April 11, 2006, at 0:41:18
In reply to Re: that brand of therapy ;-), posted by special_k on April 10, 2006, at 23:23:48
> - transference feelings are differentiated from non-transference feelings by their aetiology. an analogy... someone presents with a burn. the burn is very real. you can see it. you can't tell whether it is a sunburn or not until you know more about what caused the burn. it is part of the identity condition for something being a sunburn that it was caused by the sun. analogously it is part of the identity condition for transference feelings that they are caused by the past rather than the present.
though of course that is a matter of degree (and so there wouldn't be a hard and fast line). i think it is about categorisation... and we are always classifying instances in the present according to categories we have had past experience with. and we are going around doing the symbol thing too with respect to interpreting the significance of things. so once again... a matter of degree.
> - an indicator of whether feelings are due to transference (as opposed to not being due to transference) is their intensity.though you can be mighty pissed for good reason either way.
i'm not so sure anymore...
i think that either 'transference' will be cashed out properly...
or the term will be replaced (eliminated) as the sciences progress.
i've often wondered whether psychoanalysis was entitled to invoke terms such as 'transference' etc because the explanadum was different (unique) from the rest of the sciences... but i'm not so sure... i'm not so sure... i was looking at whether i might be able to do analytic philosophy with psychoanalysis. and... i couldn't for the life of me see how that would go. it would involve translation... translating the psychoanalytic concepts into phenomena that have been observed / studied / or at least pheonomena that are observable / recordable within the cognitive neuro psychological framework... although... probably some relevant stuff in social psych too (though i don't know anything about that really)...one option (IMO by far the best option) is to consider that psychoanalysis doesn't aim to be a science... rather it is an art. the continental philosophers seem to be happy enough with it (and with doing continental philosophy on freud etc). but i can't see how do do it within my philosophical tradition where IMO philosophy is on a continuum with the natural sciences and ideally philosophy is just about the 'theory' level of developing theories that unite observed phenomena and predict what would seem to be suprising new phenomena (surprising phenomena in the sense that you wouldn't expect it without the theory).
but i dunno...
poster:special_k
thread:628935
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060406/msgs/631636.html