The enduring scientific contributions of Sigmund Freud

Through the development of a novel observational method, Sigmund Freud made possible the collection of reliable data about man's inner life. The scientific hypotheses he formulated about these formed the initial version of psychoanalysis. Many of these first thoughts have had to be revised in the light of subsequent scientific findings about the operations of the central nervous system, but even these refuted propositions often had much heuristic value. Despite the passage of a whole century, many Freudian hypotheses have retained their scientific standing. Most important among these was Freud's realization that human thought is usually unconscious. His understanding of the role of the automatic repetition of basic patterns of behavior, of the fateful consequences of early childhood emotional vicissitudes in structuring enduring mental dispositions, and of the distinction between two distinct modes of thinking are the most significant among his many contributions.     

The histologist Sigmund Freud and the biology of intracellular motility

Sigmund Freud, the acclaimed founder of psychoanalysis, invested nine years of his early scientific effort investigating animal histology, cell biology and basic neuroscience prior to concentrating on human nervous and mental disorders. Through his histological studies Freud provided coherent evidence suggesting that the protoplasm consists of a contractile fibrillary network, the present-day cytoskeleton; he was one of the original founders of the fibrillary theory on the structure of the protoplasm. Concerning the biology of the cell nucleus, Freud appears to have been the first author who documented movements of nucleoli in nerve cells, a phenomenon presently referred to as nuclear rotation. In certain instances, Freud's observations antedate later views by more than half a century and are important to our current understanding of cell structure and basic processes of intracellular motility.     

Culture and Conflict Resolution; Culture Variation and Conflict Resolution: Alternatives to Violence

Culture and Conflict Resolution. Kevin Avruch. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1998. 154 pp.
Culture Variation and Conflict Resolution: Alternatives to Violence. Douglas P. Fry and Kaj Björkqvist. eds. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997. 274 pp.     

Gantt, Pavlov and Freud: a comparison

Contrasts between classical Pavlovianism and classical psychoanalysis have been emphasized, but there are also significant similarities of which I write. A recent edition of a textbook of psychiatry which is widely used in the United States (Kaplan and Sadock 1985) indexes neither Pavlov nor Gantt, although it provides extensive coverage of psychoanalysis.     

Conceptual Styles, Culture Conflict, and Nonverbal Tests of Intelligence

Conceptual styles are rule-sets for the selection and organization of sense data. Two mutually incompatible conceptual styles are identified—relational and analytic. Relational and analytic methods of conceptual organization appear to have been developed and reinforced in shared-function and formally organized primary groups, respectively, as socialization settings. Each style affects its carrier's ability to deal effectively with the alternate kind of group process requirements. A distinction is drawn between culture conflict and related notions of deprivation and culture difference. When the conceptual styles used between individuals and groups are mutually incompatible, culture conflict may be said to exist, whether or not the other phenomena are also present. It is found that highly relational pupils in the analytic school environment represent this type of culture conflict regardless of their native ability or the variety and relevance of their experience backgrounds. This difficulty is not obviated by developing context-free situations. Item solution requirements for common nonverbal tests of intelligence, for instance, focus directly on expertise in using the analytic rule-set as a measure of intelligence. Their culture bias has, thus, not been reduced but has been moved to a higher level of abstraction. Conceptual rule-sets also affect the assimulation of experience content. They determine to a great extent the number and nature of contextual attributes that will appear relevant to individuals. In addition, because a wide variety of social and psychological behaviors are meaningful only when they follow from these rule-sets, conceptual styles contribute to the formation of logically derived normative systems.     

Interdisciplinary Methodology: The Case of Kitcher's Freud

The guiding idea of Patricia Kitcher's Freud's Dream is that the use of interdisciplinary methodology accounts at the same time for the most central features of Freud's theory of the mind and for its most serious shortcomings. Kitcher proposes to provide an account of Freud's theory that illuminates its interdisciplinary underpinnings. While she indisputably succeeds in providing a subtle and rich reconstruction of Freud's work, her attempt to show up the limitations of interdisciplinary studies does not work. The value of her account is attributable not to the idea that Freud's was a flawed interdisciplinary endeavour but to a contextually and historically sensitive approach that makes explicit and elucidates the norms of explanation at work in his method of theory construction and that takes into account the multifaceted nature of his scientific practice.