Search

The very particular epistemological condition of psychoanalysis (that of a "psychology" closely tied to "metapsychology") is well evidenced in the genesis and historical development of this "new science"; so intrinsically tied to Freud's personality that it requires a personal and guaranteed transmission: a "filiation". Indeed, from this epistemological situation, as well as from the clinical character of psychoanalytical interpretation, was been the deontological necessity for a societal institution that attests to the orthodoxy of psychoanalytical praxis: an "ortho-praxis". This yields a body of problems specific to the scientific historiography of psychoanalysis, to the extent that the diversity of heuristic conditions of historians, whether psychoanalysts or non-psychoanalysts, although effective, does not always ensure a privilege or natural advantage. The epistemological analysis of such a body of problems--starting from the notions of "chronicle" and "history" in general--lead, nonetheless, to the exclusion of relativism and historiographic solipsism.