Psychoanalysis and The Demarcation Criterion: Epistemological Criticism Revisited and New Paradigm

Abstract

The debate on the demarcation criterion that distinguishes science from non-science, fundamental to epistemology from the 1950s to the 1980s, has progressively lost its appeal. Philosophers of science have perhaps considered it less interesting to identify a single criterion since the emergence of complexity theories. In this article, we will not try to choose among different demarcation criteria. Instead, we will show that evaluating the epistemological implications of these various criteria as a whole has some interesting consequences for the present status and future of psychoanalysis and dynamic psychology.

KEYWORDS:

• Demarcation criterion
• epistemology
• operational definition
• paradigm
• psychoanalysis
• psychotherapy
• research program