Freudian naturalism and the assessment of psychoanalysis as a natural science: Psychic phenomenon as process

Committing to nature and naturalism

In his famous Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc, Macmillan (1991) asks: “Against the claim that psycho-analysis is not a natural science what are we to make of Freud’s belief that it was. Could Freud have been massively self-deluded or had he simply misunderstood the nature of his life’s work?” (p. 578). Indeed, according to Freud, there should be no debate about this, as he argued that there would be no room for other forms of science, such as the Geisteswissenschaften, which he referred to as the human sciences in German. He strongly commits to the idea that psychoanalysis should be categorized as a Naturwissenschaften, the term for natural sciences. Whether self-deluded or not, this commitment shows theoretical complications. Starting with the fact that phenomena studied by psychoanalysis must be ontologically connected to an idea of nature. Instincts (Trieb), unconscious, sexuality, and other central concepts that appear in Freudian metapsychology must correspond somehow to the domain of this idea.

Fortunately, these complications do not concern only psychoanalysis and a specific branch of philosophical inquiry is an ally to deal with the subject, or at least to indicate its challenges. To the understanding that all beings are constrained in a domain called nature, this branch of philosophy offers the name naturalism. The main argument of this view is that, since there is no such thing as a supernatural phenomenon, or that at least one could not study this kind of phenomena, the empirical method of science, incessantly corrected, is conjectured as the best way to decipher facts of phenomena that are recognized as natural. No problems there: natural science is one that studies natural phenomena, and it does so within the spectrum of naturalism. But since there is not only one way of conceiving of the idea of nature, nor a single way of saying that a phenomenon is natural, naturalism encounters several variations.

Since defining naturalism as the antithesis of the supernatural is not enough for a proper delimitation, philosophers proceed to find their own definitions. Like what happens in much of the philosophy of science, a method that becomes popular to fill in the gaps is to embrace forms of knowledge that are historically considered as empirically successful. Science comes to the rescue to reveal what nature really is. However, this must be done with caution, as science itself does not rule out the principle of fallibilism—the principle that humans may be wrong in their beliefs and that these must remain in doubt. Even conceptions based on victorious models of knowledge are shown to have an expiration date and this is a good reason for the emergence of several “isms” within naturalism.

An easy-to-grasp example of this polysemy is the way materialism encounters its limitations. Materialism initially posits that everything can be explained in terms of matter, which has an objective existence, and nature is synonymous with matter. Science’s task is to understand this monism by establishing interactions, laws, and properties related to matter. However, the transition from Democritus’ ancient concept of indestructible atoms to Dalton’s evolving atom with varying mass challenges the idea of nature in materialism (Collingwood, 1945). Later, it undergoes significant changes with the development of the late 19th-century theory of matter, particularly with Thomson’s discovery of electrons and Rutherford’s atomic model (Collingwood, 1945). These make way for a decisive shift in the paradigm of physics. Rutherford’s more sophisticated atomic model allows the new physics to claim that the old theory of matter is “wrong in almost every respect: the ‘matter’ of modern physics is not all solid, or inert, or impenetrable, or conserved; and it interacts indeterministically and arguably sometimes at a distance” (Crane & Mellor, 1990, p. 186).

With the arrival of quantum mechanics, the material particles, already reduced to electrons, also lose the assurance of their space–temporal characteristics: “what have seemed like the most fundamental space occupiers, physical particles, are actually not, from some perspectives, particles at all, but waves, which are apparently not space occupiers at all” (Dupré, 2004, p. 38). Therefore, in a short time, scientific knowledge itself raises a series of reasons for which materialism should either redefine its bases or desert its own project to demarcate nature.

Even though quantum mechanics reveals the fragilities of materialism, much of science does not give up the search for an “ism” to ground a radical naturalist project. In short, physicalism overtakes materialism and adopts another form of monism: “No longer trying to limit the matter of physics a priori, [the heirs of materialism] now take a more subservient attitude: the empirical world, they claim, contains just what a true complete physical science would say it contains” (Crane & Mellor, 1990, p. 186). If theoretical and empirical advances in physics reveal the difficulties of reducing nature to matter, this does not mean that physicalism discards the hope for another kind of reductionism.

Instead of saying that it is possible to reduce everything to matter, the physicalist suggests that it is possible to reduce everything to the physical phenomenon, to the object of physics, in which: “all entities, properties, relations, and facts are those which are studied by physics or other physical sciences” (Crane & Mellor, 1990, p. 185). Such modification implies that, to eradicate the supernatural realm and define the basis of its naturalism with more precision, physicalism chooses a more comprehensive and at the same time supposedly more stable criterion than that of materialism. It states that, not only are there solely physical things in the world, but also that physics can study everything.

The puzzle of nature seems to be complete in this view, for it translates what is in the world with the proper and most sophisticated concepts of modern physics. But it turns out that physicalism also encounters theoretical uncertainties about its definition and Hempel’s (2001) dilemma stands as an instructive example to show them.

Hempel (2001) says that under all cases of reductionism conceived as ontological claims ultimately underlies a “trivial truth” (p. 196). The reason is that these theories assume such radical determinism that requires some sort of property to be ontologically defined in a wide-ranging way that it can be contemplated at any moment. In his words: “Any significant statement of universal determinism requires, therefore, a suitable limitation of those features that are to count as constituting the state of the universe at any given time” (p. 196). In order for there to be a sort of physicalist reduction, its ontological claims to the physical property must either assume that the theory of present physics is complete—which cannot be true, because in that case all other theories would have been reduced to that theory—or work with the expectation that a future physical theory will explain everything that a certain reductionism foreshadows—which is impossible to state, because this theory has not yet been formulated. As a result, a conception of physicalism that conceives nature as containing only physical properties faces the dilemma that its definition of physical property can be modified over time, which precludes a current assertion that in the world there is only physical properties. To put it even more simply: to say that nature is only physical may be incoherent because there is no way to define physics in a timeless manner.

This dilemma does not stop the arrival of other versions of physicalism, such as a nonreductionist version which acknowledges phenomena in supervenience. Even so, the dilemma suggests that the problem of finding a steady conception of nature may be a reason to suppose either that the word naturalism has no content whatsoever or that, to make sense, it needs to discern and deal with the difficulties of its constraints. This is what Stroud (2004) advises when he says that “some determinate conception of what the natural world is like is needed to give substance to the claim that one’s epistemology, or one’s study of any other aspect of the world, is naturalistic” (p. 24). Otherwise, a conception of the natural world can become elusive. Then again, it is precisely these restrictions that can either “distort” phenomena to be properly included into a particular conception or exclude other phenomena that do not fit in its preestablished domains.

Stroud (2004) points out that this may be the case of physicalism. Its exhaustive prerogatives may anticipate the elimination of phenomena clearly present in nature, such as “psychological facts,” or, in order to include them, it presumes that they are, ultimately, “physical facts in disguise” (pp. 27–28). Understanding that this sort of restriction may lead to a “ridiculously extreme position,” Stroud (2004, p. 27) chooses to accept an “open-mindedness naturalism” (p. 35) that does not need to “feel pressure” (p. 35) to be defined in advance with a narrow idea of nature. Aware that such expansion can exceed the minimal constraints necessary for a naturalism, he then reveals detachment from the term: “If that is still called ‘naturalism’, the term by now is little more than a slogan on a banner raised to attract the admiration of those who agree that no supernatural agents are at work in the world” (p. 35).

Stroud’s arguments show that, regardless of the context in which it is defined, a form of naturalism can vary according to the constraints of its corresponding conception of nature. If the theoretical clauses of a given form are not explicitly clarified, then the term naturalism can become a disposable slogan itself. On the other hand, by emphasizing the importance of identifying in detail this corresponding content, Stroud’s view changes the approach and focus on an internal evaluation of the established commitments. These commitments may be analyzed in accordance with the adopted conception of nature and without appealing to an external and mainstream definition (as seen in the appeal of physicalism).

The phenomenon-oriented attitude

Freud does not ascribe to a fully open-minded naturalism, but we can certainly resort to Stroud’s (2004) approach and discuss the commitments and clauses in the former’s understanding of natural science. The main difficulty in this case is tackling a peculiarity of Freud’s epistemological and problem-solving attitude that is set off whenever a theoretical crossroads appears: he is phenomenon-oriented.

Decisive moments in his works reveal that Freud is guided first by his interest in what he identifies as showing a phenomenal realm. This is what happens when he goes on to study hysteria and hypnosis in the 1890s (Breuer & Freud, 1895); when he understands, at the turn of the century, that the explanation of dreams needs a conception of psyche distinct from that of neurological fashion (Freud, 1900); when he acknowledges phenomena ascending from his clinical work to reconsider the role and importance of sexuality in the 1900s (Freud, 1905a); and when he realizes that his theory needs to be refined in conceptual terms both for sophistication in the 1910s (Freud, 1914, 1915a, 1915b, 1915c), and for harboring atypical phenomena even for him in the early 1890s, as seen in the whole death Trieb (Todestrieb) quandary (Freud, 1920).

The phenomenon comes first, and, in all the above examples, Freud does not question his adjustment to what is ratified in the natural science domain, even when he is called upon to defend the scientific value of his ideas. He considers that what he is proposing is scientific, revealing himself as someone who prefers to explore anomalous phenomenon to following traditionally settled forms of naturalism. From this follows that his naturalism is not authority-oriented, in the sense that its constraints are not prescribed by traditionally accepted arguments and forms of empiricism; it is not substance-oriented, in the sense that the lack of a material substance would be an impeding factor in explaining the causal relationship of a series of psychic phenomena; nor is it future-restrained by the belief that one day another natural science will suppress all that his metapsychology has built, even though, from time to time, Freud uses what we may call his replacement-arguments. That is, all those arguments that he summons to postpone other forms of explanation in predicting that someday they will replace metapsychology.

Freud’s metapsychology unfolds gradually throughout his writings, and it is only in the later stages that he comprehends it as the name for his theoretical framework. In 1915, in his Papers on Metapsychology, particularly in his study of the unconscious, he introduced a definition that later became widely recognized for its precision: “I propose that when we have succeeded in describing a psychical process in its dynamic, topographical and economic aspects, we should speak of it as a metapsychological presentation” (Freud, 1915c, p. 181). Given its comprehensive coverage across multiple levels, it’s as if this has evolved into a conceptual dictionary entry. To fully comprehend it, there’s no avoiding an exploration of the foundational hypotheses grounding the theory. It starts with what he terms the “psychic process,” opening theoretical paths through his understandings of topographical, dynamic, and economic aspects. Then, when we pin down one of those aspects, specifically the economic one, it sets off questions about the understandings of what quantifiable energy is, triggering considerable debate on the nature of the driving forces behind mental processes. This can only be examined by considering its underlying principles, such as the pleasure principle, as well as the functions and processes (primary and secondary) governing a mind in a state of conflict, thereby unveiling its dynamic description. We then come across Freud’s topological idea that such a mental apparatus would be divided into systems with different functions, like the unconscious, preconscious, and conscious. So, as we reel in that definition, it becomes clear that Freudian metapsychology embodies his insight into the fundamental nature of the psyche, emphasizing the interdependence of these concepts.

The term metapsychology did not originate within this 1915 passage; it first appeared in Freud’s correspondence with his friend Fliess and reappeared in many other moments to describe a psychology that explores unconscious processes (as cited in Masson, 1985, p. 172). Yet, thanks to its clear presentation, this passage from 1915 allows us to ponder on his actual beliefs about the core of his theory. Should we view metapsychological concepts as heuristic constructs representing an unobservable reality, or should we consider them as deductions pertaining to an empirically grounded conception of reality? Is it a necessity to primarily explain the unconscious mind through a metapsychological model, employing clinical and hypothetical–deductive approaches with a focus on psychic processes? Or will neuroscience eventually replace and incorporate this model in the future? The truth is that Freud (1937) himself raises many doubts when considering the future of his own theory, as we can observe in this compelling example taken from Analysis Terminable and Interminable:

If we are asked by what methods and mean this result is achieved, it is not easy to find an answer. We can only say: “So muss denn doch die Hexe dran!” [emphasis added; We must call the Witch to our help after all!]—the Witch Metapsychology. Without metapsychological speculation and theorizing—I had almost said “phantasying”—we shall not get another step forward. Unfortunately, here as elsewhere, what our Witch reveals is neither very clear nor very detailed. We have only a single clue to start from—though it is a clue of the highest value—namely, the antithesis between the primary and the secondary processes; and to that antithesis I shall at this point turn. (p. 225)

This passage implies a considerable space for contemplating the dispensability of metapsychology and shows very clearly what we call replacement arguments. At the same time, as evident at the end, Freud considers that the speculative construction occurs atop what holds the “highest value” — that is, something irreplaceable like the primary and the secondary processes. The entire argument is unsettling due to its failure to articulate the genuine necessity of the theory: do we need it or not?

Similar arguments, albeit not always directly addressing the metapsychology per se, appear in other significant texts. In The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900), he suggests that, at some point, his theory may be supplanted by “deeper research”: “Even when investigation shows that the primary exciting cause of a phenomenon is psychical, deeper research will one day trace the path further and discover an organic basis for the mental event” (pp. 41–42). In The Claims of Psychoanalysis to Scientific Interest (Freud, 1913), he contends that the revelation of the unconscious occurs through its interplay with the conscious mind. This assertion underscores the imperative for anticipating a nonpsychological investigation: “On the other hand, there still seems no possibility of approaching it from the direction of physical events. So that it is bound to remain a matter for psychological study” (p. 179). A year later, in On Narcissism: An Introduction (Freud, 1914, p. 77), Freud takes a more straightforward approach, suggesting that metapsychology is inherently provisional: “we must recollect that all our provisional ideas in psychology will presumably some day be based on an organic substructure” (p. 78). Later, as his work approaches its conclusion, a similar sense of unsettlement arises in the Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud, 1920):

We need not feel greatly disturbed in judging our speculation upon the life and death instincts by the fact that so many bewildering and obscure processes occur in it—such as one instinct being driven out by another or an instinct turning from the ego to an object, and so on. This is merely due to our being obliged to operate with the scientific terms, that is to say with the figurative language, peculiar to psychology (or, more precisely, to depth psychology). We could not otherwise describe the processes in question at all, and indeed we could not have become aware of them. The deficiencies in our description would probably vanish if we were already in a position to replace the psychological terms by physiological or chemical ones. It is true that they too are only part of a figurative language; but it is one which we have long been familiar with and which is perhaps a simpler one as well. (p. 60)

Here we see more emphatically the idea that psychological processes cannot be adequately described without delving into the profound realm of the unconscious—the domain of metapsychology. However, despite the continual emergence of similar arguments, they never stop Freud from going ahead theoretically: he consistently continues constructing something he deems replaceable. To our view, it seems that these arguments emerge when he wants to appease a community of colleagues focused on narrow scientific values, or even to employ rhetoric aimed at showcasing humility in acknowledging the theory’s limitations and uncertainties. Then again, they also may represent his own way to deal with and mitigate problems that appear in determinism dilemmas (such as Hempel’s, 2001, mentioned earlier).

While these arguments may ease the commitment to a totalizing view of what the world is like, what they cannot do is set Freud free from the ontological and epistemological challenges that come with this phenomena-oriented attitude. Since he allows himself to be guided by what he recognizes as phenomena and chooses not to “distort” them in advance, the way he defends the natural character of the chosen phenomenal realm is decisive for understanding his idea of naturalism and therefore of natural sciences. This means identifying a common theoretical criterion that would be employed to sort out phenomenon every time one was accepted into his natural science territory. For instance: does Freud employ the same philosophical understanding when naturalizing dreams into his metapsychological theory and, say, a new technique in the clinical procedure of psychoanalysis?

The idea alone that there would be such a common element is problematic because it entails both that it might not have been shared by other scientists at the time and that Freud’s view of science was straightforward even to himself. Like what happens to other scientists in this situation, breaking barriers and championing a new field of knowledge demands constant reassessment of one’s own epistemological understanding. Scientific novelties often collide with what is consensually established and moments like this end up testing the demarcation limits of the scientists involved.

This is precisely what Pais (1986) and, later, Bass (1997) show when they are comparing Freud with Max Planck’s predicament. When the latter came across his constant h, he became skeptical and decided not to challenge the incompatibilities with classical physics. Freud did not show the same conservative attitude and was more willing to modify, or at least expand, his conception of science to integrate a puzzling concept into his theory. He fluctuates between different theoretical backgrounds, such as central assumptions of physics, evolutionary and functional biology, as well as conceptions better well-founded in historical naturalism. For this reason, Simanke (2011) stressed the importance of considering a “qualified” and “integral” naturalism in Freud’s case:

The epistemological virtue of Freud, on the contrary, seems to have been his openness to permit his conception of science to be modified as his research advanced, without prejudice to his conviction that it remained within the frontiers of the natural sciences. In a word, it may perhaps be possible to support the need for a qualified naturalism—and for a qualified concept of nature—to do justice to the Freudian epistemological attitude and to fully appreciate his originality and to explore more efficiently the insights that it has to offer. (p. 220)

Matching ontological and methodological naturalism in Freud’s case

To do this sort of justice and identify the particularities of this “qualified naturalism,” there seems to be no better way than an evaluation of Freud’s theoretical commitments in the 1890s. That is when he becomes directly involved with the problems of expressing ontological and epistemological agreement between his conception of nature and psychic phenomena. He then faces the challenges of transferring his conceptual framework from the brain to the mind, from neurons to representations, and reveals the shifts in his conception of mind before ending up with the one that really shapes the psychoanalytic thought of the mind–brain problem.

A practical way of qualifying his theoretical movements in this decade is to split naturalism into its ontological and methodological categories. Ontological (also called metaphysical or philosophical) naturalism presupposes that only natural entities exist. Everything ends in nature, which leads this type of naturalism to suppose that there is no possibility for a supernatural being, such as a deity, to govern the universe and create its laws. On the other hand, methodological (also called epistemological) naturalism regards that reality can only be known from certain conditions (especially that matter and energy are within a space–time causality) and refuses the intervention of supernatural explanations. The revealing of nature in this case takes place through a method that is constantly updated and famously labelled as the scientific method.

Suppose a physicist who is also devoted to the existence of God and creationism. This physicist will have a hard time if, in the research laboratory and in the construction of theories, they cannot renounce the idea that phenomena must be studied through a certain method that allows them to observe and organize phenomena to create hypotheses from the constructs accepted by the physics of that time. For example, they would find it extremely difficult to explain the movements of the stars’ gases by taking a particular passage from the biblical book of Genesis as theoretical foundation. This would certainly not work. To be a scientist of nature, the physicist may not be a naturalist from the ontological point of view but must embrace the methodological point of view.

Now, when we turn to the studies of psychic phenomena, this distinction between two types of naturalism seems to stumble across certain complications and requirements. On the one hand, a theorist in this field can assume themself as a methodological naturalist when asserting that the method of study is in accordance with that of other natural sciences and that this method allows the explanation of the causes of psychic phenomena. The problem is that this statement is at risk of becoming inaccurate if its ontological groundwork is not properly identified. The immaterial, unobservable, and immeasurable properties of psychic phenomena demand a greater degree of accuracy of the theoretical assumptions that designate them.

Suppose now a theorist of the mind who considers themself a reductionist–physicalist and, at the same time, a follower of a given religion that believes in the premonitory power of dreams. The contradiction would be most evident in this case, showing that the properties of dreams demand a bigger commitment with their ontological description. There is no way around it as the theorist of mind who calls themself a naturalist also commits to their own definition of naturalism—this in addition to the historical problems related to the conditions of possibility of knowledge of psychic phenomena.

Life is not easy for mind scientists and rejecting ontological naturalism will be profoundly more complicated than for those who study phenomena as objects within time and space. It was a realization in this sense that led Horst (2007) to underline the possible risks of not providing a clear meaning to the word naturalist:

If a reductionist, an evolutionary theorist, and a dualist can each apply the label “naturalist” to [themselves], it is very likely to prove the case either that they are using the word in subtly different ways, or else that the word has become so bland and ecumenical as to be essentially useless. (p. 11)

Now, we know that Freud was not a philosopher, but he did offer generous passages in his works with his thoughts on nature. They appear as early as the 1880s—with expressions about his conception of the scientific–naturalist character of hypnosis and hysteria—and are fully expressed in the following decade, when he really takes up his studies in the field of psychology (Freud, 1893). As we try to show in the following topic, his ontological commitment is “tested” in some versions of the mind–brain relation to finally match his understanding of the methodological counterpart.

Process as a commitment to ontological naturalism

In Psychical (or Mental) Treatment (Freud, 1890/1905b), first published in 1890, Freud argued that the medicine of the time did not recognize the effects of the mind on the body. Mainstream opinion in this field was the dysfunction of the mind as an effect of a well-nourished brain that had undergone modifications. In the “clinical experience,” focused on the symptomatology of neuroses, Freud finds reasons to build a conceptual framework on psychic phenomena without resorting to the idea of brain deformation. His hypothesis was that “all mental states” are “affective,” including “processes of thought,” and therefore able to modify “somatic processes.” Already envisioning the connection between affects and ideas (or representations), he stated:

Even when a person is engaged in quietly thinking in a string of “ideas,” there are a constant series of excitations, corresponding to the content of these ideas, which are discharged into the smooth or striated muscles. These excitations can be made apparent if they are appropriately reinforced, and certain striking and, indeed, ostensibly “supernatural” phenomena can be explained by this means. (p. 288)

At this time, Freud understood hypnosis as the technique to show the effects of a psychic phenomenon and, so to speak, amplify its observational aspect on the body. It would serve as a method of investigation to allow causal explanation for phenomena that could previously be considered supernatural. Regardless of him later replacing this technique, it ended up revealing a feature of his methodological naturalism: puzzled with the impossibility of observing certain phenomena empirically, he does not abandon the scientific method and prefers to look for explanatory models based on logic and on a causality transpired in the body, which he calls affections. Within the naturalist realm, this understanding only becomes possible if the psychic phenomena are seen as natural and, to a certain degree, autonomous.

In Psychical (or Mental) Treatment (Freud, 1890/1905b) he does not qualify the attributes of these phenomena by evaluating the properties of mind in nature. This begins to happen the following year, with On Aphasia: A Critical Study (Freud, 1891). Here, important ontological elements are revealed in a version of the mind–brain relation. Freud’s opposition to anatomical localizationism—rejecting point-to-point localization of representations in neurons—takes him to adopt Hughlings Jackson’s psychophysiological parallelism. It is a milestone as it distances him from an important commitment found in his neurophysiological community: materialist reductionism. On the other hand, the problem of naturalism is reestablished with a question of the following order: if psychology is not point-to-point based on neurons, how can one argue in favor of the natural character of its phenomena?

We start to see an answer to this question in Freud’s studies on aphasia. He conceives representation [Repräsentation, and not Vorstellung] as a product of the sensory stimulus processed between the medulla and the cortex. This is a different conception from that of his professors, especially Theodor Meynert, who adopted traditional associationist empiricism by proposing that a representation would be a simple correspondent of innervations that project the external world onto the internal (Amacher, 1965). For Freud, on the contrary, representations could only be complex since the organizations occurring between the medulla and the cortex also undergo other associationist reorganizations on the psychological level. The sequence of psychic phenomena receives its own causality in the intercalation of associations. Freud’s philosophical influence in this matter is Stuart Mill’s (1865/1979) mental chemistry, as he conceives the whole (psychic process) as different from the separation of its parts (neurological process).

From the mind–brain point of view, Freud is then leaning toward emergentism and moving away from reductionism. This is one of the most decisive turning points in his work because he starts to understand psychic phenomena as a process. No longer an exclusive product of matter, or of a specific location of the brain, the cause of the psychic phenomenon is the dynamic and functional disposition of the nervous system. Or to be precise, as emerging from the movements of this system:

What, then, is the physiological correlate of a simple representation or of the same presentation when it recurs? Clearly nothing static, but something in the nature of a process. This process admits of localization. It starts from a particular point in the cortex and spreads from there over the whole cortex or along certain tracts. When this process is completed, it leaves a modification behind in the cortex that has been affected by it the possibility of remembering. (Freud, 1891, p. 58)

So, if the text on aphasias inaugurates Freudian metapsychology with the introduction of the concept of representation (Simanke, 2007), we can add that the notion of process is also another decisive product for his naturalist project. On the other hand, despite these advances, this project soon abandons parallelism because this version of the mind–brain relationship means that, although there is a certain dependence, psychic phenomena do not interact causally with neurological phenomena. Furthermore, in Jackson’s specific parallelism, psychic phenomena are juxtaposed to the domain of consciousness, an equation whose refusal by Freud is decisive for the emergence of psychoanalysis (Caropreso, 2009). Again, it is the persistence in methodological naturalism that allows Freud to rethink its ontological component. Clinical evidence of hysterical paralysis demonstrates the disrupted causal link between psychic and neurological sequences, suggesting the possibility for an unconscious dimension to bridge this gap.

Later in the same decade, in his work The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence, Freud (1894) presents the defense processes as a “separation of the idea [Vorstellung] from its affect” (p. 53) that occurs outside of consciousness. He stated:

Their existence can only be presumed, but cannot be proved by any clinico-psychological analysis. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that these processes are not of a psychical nature at all, that they are physical processes whose psychical consequences present themselves as if what is expressed by the terms “separation of the idea from its affect” and “false connection” of the latter had really taken place. (p. 53).

This passage illustrates his uncertainty regarding the nature of these psychic processes occurring beyond consciousness. Noticeably, during the 1890s, there were numerous shifts in how he explained and perceived the connection between the mind and brain. Freud grappled with the notion that the explanation for processes occurring beyond consciousness might be tied to physical phenomena, leaving this question unresolved. If the suggestion that it might involve “physical processes” is tentatively introduced in this text from 1894, it is elaborated upon a year later in the Project for a Scientific Psychology (Freud, 1895), where unconscious processes were examined through the perspective of neurophysiology.

In this text, the Freudian endeavor in naturalism appears in the very first lines: “The intention is to furnish a psychology that shall be a natural science: that is, to represent psychical processes as quantitatively determinate states of specifiable material particles, thus making those processes perspicuous and free from contradiction” (Freud, 1895, p. 295). This statement reveals a precise convergence of methodological naturalism (which seeks an association with the method of the natural sciences to find psychic phenomena intuitively and free from contradiction) with its ontological aspect (which conceives these phenomena in psychic processes of material parts). Even if Freud is referring to the configuration of a theoretical–abstract apparatus, in this convergence there seems to be what would be a clear definition of what Freud understood then as naturalism. From this definition would arrive the principles to ground psychology on neurophysiology and thus explore what in 1894 was understood as “without consciousness” and impossible to prove.

Unlike the text on aphasias, in which representation is the parallel process of dynamic reorganizations that occur between the medulla and the cortex, in the Project for a Scientific Psychology (Freud, 1895), it is identified with specific neurological bases. Freud is now seeking an explanation for unconscious processes, and the occurrence of a representation is due to the properties of neurons, which are occupied by quantities and may present contact barriers to bar or facilitate these quantities according to their intensities. Representation is thus understood as a dynamic process of occupations. At this stage, despite encountering certain difficulties in explaining the qualitative aspects of consciousness, Freud finds an explanation for the etiology of hysteria, notably in the way this pathology can reveal the process of pathological defense.

Everything seems to be in its right place with the psychic apparatus arranged in this manner, satisfying the demands of that convergence of naturalism. However, Freud’s clinical work requests him to reopen this explanation because he was unable to solve other problems, especially those found in the theory of seduction and repression. As a result, carrying forward his phenomenon-oriented approach, another interpretation of the mind–brain relationship must take place. This means making concessions to the ontological component of his naturalism, but not to the methodological one. Just before the turn of the century, in the process of publishing his book on the interpretation of dreams, he tells his friend Fliess about the difficulty in explaining these psychological problems in a brain-anchored explanation:

I am not at all in disagreement with you, not at all inclined to leave the psychology hanging in the air without an organic basis. But apart from this conviction I do not know how to go on, neither theoretically nor therapeutically, and therefore must behave as if only the psychological were under consideration. Why I cannot fit it together [the organic and the psychological] I have not even begun to fathom. (Masson, 1985, p. 326)

In this passage, Freud’s reference to “psychology” isn’t a general allusion to the entire field. Instead, within these specific letters to Fliess, he employs the term “psychology” to specifically discuss and denote Chapter VII of The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900). Nevertheless, his decision to focus on psychological examination is not indicating a subscription to a dualistic conception of the mind–brain relationship, nor the rejection that psychic phenomena are natural. What is really happening is that Freud is adjusting his way of understanding how to explore psychological phenomena. He’s doing this by fully conveying the influences of his academic training that allowed him to comprehend psychic phenomena as a domain of independent causes. Franz Brentano (1874/1995) and Stuart Mill (1865/1979) were two philosophers who defended psychology as an autonomous science of nature without the need to be reduced to physiology (Carvalho & Monzani, 2015). They had a major influence on Freud and were some of the few in the 19th century who advocated this position.

Their ideas reflect Freud’s next significant steps towards the birth of psychoanalysis, first in Letter 52 (Masson, 1985) and, in its more developed form, to compose what became known as the first psychic topic, presented in Chapter VII of The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900). In this chapter, the neurophysiological materialism that shapes the concepts of the Project for a Scientific Psychology (Freud, 1895) is finally translated into an abstract psychological figuration (Monzani, 1989). Moreover, within this chapter, he embraces property dualism as his philosophy of the mind, a view he upheld until the completion of his works. This perspective posits that mental states possess inherently different properties from physical attributes, such as the chemical and neural processes occurring in the brain. So, instead of seeking an “intuitive” and “contradiction-free” specification in his explanations, Freud’s epistemological measure now allows him to work with the more general understanding that the psychic phenomenon is something “between” neurons, which is supported by the following passage from Chapter VII:

We can avoid any possible abuse of this method of representation by recollecting that ideas, thoughts and psychical structures in general must never be regarded as localized in organic elements of the nervous system but rather, as one might say, between them, where resistances and facilitations [Bahnungen] provide the corresponding correlates. Everything that can be an object of our internal perception is virtual, like the image produced in a telescope by the passage of light-rays. But we are justified in assuming the existence of the systems (which are not in any way psychical entities themselves and can never be accessible to our psychical perception) like the lenses of the telescope, which cast the image (Freud, 1900, p. 606)

These words reveal a naturalist project that does not have the scope to determine the material entities that underlie this in-between character, revealing instead another ontological aspect of Freud’s conception of nature, that is, the notion of process. This assertion might seem surprising because process appears to be a word he would have used offhandedly, covering not only psychological events but also when he generally refers to physical processes. However, a closer look reveals that the term can consolidate the most fundamental statements, not solely to unveil Freud’s concept of nature but also to consider the irreplaceability of metapsychology as a theory. Ultimately, committing to the term “process” allows him to:

The commitment to process potentially enabled Freud to embrace an open naturalism, although not entirely in line with Stroud’s (2004) perspective. This allowed for an ongoing reconsideration of the relationship between ontological and methodological elements, which could be continuously revisited and adjusted to define its epistemological status and its pursuit of developing a natural science. It does not seem to be a coincidence that the term appears in all the texts cited here, revealing a perhaps little-explored clue about a naturalism that seeks to take on time, movement, and change more than the confidence in the reduction to matter. ¹

As pointed out by Simanke (2011), for a long time, attempts have been made to interpret clues like these by associating them with the context of the naturalist project of positivism, causing numerous debates about the energetic model of Freudian metapsychology and thereby obfuscating other dynamic aspects of his conception of nature: “usually attributed to history: conflict, purpose, meaning” (p. 220). By employing interpretive frameworks that center around these aspects, we can comprehend Freud’s work without succumbing to the issues that conventional metaphysics often sidelines or completely disregards. This is aptly exemplified by Mills (2003), showcasing not only the diverse dialogues between Freud and Whitehead but also emphasizing how constructive process philosophy can be for philosophical psychology as a whole.

Concluding remarks

From the enigmatic nature of consciousness to the issues of explaining dark matter, there are several problems in the history of science that may be aporetic and insoluble. These problems are intrinsic to the nature of scientific inquiry, and while we must continue to move forward, we also need to constantly remind ourselves that progress doesn’t necessarily mean that they have been solved. Otherwise, we may downplay theoretical perspectives that, although not proven to be logically or empirically wrong, could be overlooked or underrated. We have argued here that one of these problems is precisely the relationship between psychology and naturalism. Shifts in psychology are particularly riskier because they can suggest that we have defined what nature is, which is usually implied when a given approach claims to be “evidence-based.” As this is not possible—at least not in a timeless manner—it seems to be wiser for psychological science to stay open-minded and embrace different qualifications of naturalism.

This is a significant epistemological challenge that we are stuck with in psychology and here we have shown how Freud’s can be a very instructive case study of naturalization. Was he self-deluded or was he trying to describe a part of nature that, in his understanding, could only receive clinically oriented explanations? At the outset, his phenomenon-oriented approach makes it challenging to categorize his naturalism due to the unsettling arguments he presents regarding the role of his metapsychological theory. We suggest that this unsettlement, driven by his replacement-arguments, has resulted in gaps in his adherence to naturalism, allowing them to be historically supplemented by external views. Nonetheless, we maintain that the contemporary division within the philosophy of naturalism between ontological and methodological aspects permits a more reliable comprehension of Freud’s conceptual framework.

In his pursuit to integrate psychoanalysis with natural science, as we sought to demonstrate by revisiting key moments in his theoretical conflicts of the 1890s, Freud consistently upheld the belief that psychic phenomena are not substances but processes. This means that he is not referring to a materialistic or even a physicalist nature when he builds his theoretical framework, although they remain as constraints that he is not willing to surpass. Recognizing this aspect assists us in delineating the framework of his metapsychological theory, which is conceptually oriented toward a metaphysics divergent from perspectives that perceive reality as rooted in substances, functions, behaviors, and similar views prevalent in many contemporary psychological theories.

The claim that Freud embraces the idea of psychological nature as a process holds a dual significance in our paper. While it may lack specificity regarding Freud’s precise understanding of what process is, it serves as a critical starting point for examining the theoretical connections between psychoanalysis, other theories, and their relationship to the concept of natural science. Further research is essential to deepen our grasp of Freudian naturalism and his Grenzbegriff science, investigating potential consistencies, expansions, and potential differences concerning other scientific–naturalist psychological theories.