GRUNBAUMS QUESTIONABLE INTERPRETATION OF INANIMATE SYSTEMS - HISTORY AND CONTEXT IN PHYSICS

In his critiques of psychoanalysis, the philosopher Adolf Grunbaum mai ntains that psychoanalysis is, or should be, a science cast in the mol d of physics. As part of that argument, Grunbaum contends that contrar y to the claims of some psychoanalysts and philosophers, certain inani mate systems can and do exhibit historical and contextual features. He supports this contention by analyses of examples of electrodynamic sy stems and hysteresis effects. In this article, I investigate these exa mples more closely and show the sense in which Grunbaum's claims are i llusory and spurious, ''correct but not true.'' Consequently, his cont ention that psychoanalysis should be like physics loses force. This sy stems investigation introduces the concept of state or phase spaces (s cience's basic representational systems). Reference is made to previou s work that identified the impoverishing effects that necessarily foll ow their (usually unwitting) use in psychoanalysis. The problems encou ntered when one attempts to develop radically alternative representati onal frameworks are briefly considered.