3. Percettologia

The Freudian theory was successful because it seemed to offer an explanation of the psyche from hypotheses in line with the sciences of his time: the concepts of libido, drive, psychic energy, discharge, instinct, economic principle tracked the contemporary scientific principles and discoveries of neurophysiology and thermodynamics. In such a context, for a long time and up to present day, the popular stereotypes in psychoanalysis are identified with Freud’s theory. This theory nevertheless has been widely criticized, also within psychoanalytical Associations, and for several decades now. In spite of this, the Freudian theory seems “to withstand”. A reason for such a persistence, in the author’s view, can be identified in the fact that different psychoanalytic models have been proposed at different times, without however clearly delineating an alternative explication of what Freud wanted to explain. His Drive Theory did have an explanatory value in this time. Today it may maintain its heuristic value, which may still be useful to understand affects and therefore helpful in clinical practice, but it no longer has an “explanatory” value. To Freud this latter was perhaps more important than the former, but nowadays it is untenable.

…. la ricerca di un modello che, pur rimanendo nell’ambito tipico della psicoanalisi, possa essere raffrontabile con modelli e teorie di altre scienze psicologiche (…)