Mechanisms and fundamental principles in Freudian explanations

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the structure of explanation in Freudian psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis contains some fundamental psychoanalytic and philosophical principles – for example, determinism, the laws governing psychic energy, and the differentiation of the mind into id, ego, and super-ego – that are involved in explanations of psychoanalytic phenomena. However, psychoanalysis also explains phenomena by demonstrating how they are generated by underlying psychodynamic mechanisms. For example, repression is an explanatory model that describes the psychodynamic mechanism whereby unpleasant memories and thoughts are blocked from entering consciousness. It is not clear what is the relation between the fundamental principles and the mechanistic models. It is argued that in Freudian psychoanalysis the fundamental principles are used as tools and guidelines to construct explanatory mechanistic models of psychoanalytic phenomena. This account of Freudian psychoanalysis’ explanatory structure is based on theories of scientific models and explanation that are currently being discussed in philosophy of science.