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Cognitive Science and Psychoanalysis KENNETH MARK COLBY ROBERT J. STOLLER University of California, Los Angeles First Published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 365 Broadway Hillsdale, New Jersey 07642 Transferred to Digital Printing 2009 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA Copyright © 1988 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Colby, Kenneth Mark, 1920Cognitive science and psychoanalysis I Kenneth Mark Colby and Robert J. Stoller. p. cm. Includes bibliographies and index. ISBN 0-8058-0177-4. ISBN 0-88163-076-4 (pbk.) 1. Psychoanalysis. 2. Cognition. I. Stoller, Robert J. II. Title. [DNLM: 1. Cognition. 2. Psychoanalytic Theory. WM 460 C686c] RC506.C59 1988 616.8917--d c 19 DNLM/DLC 87-30118 for Library of Congress CIP Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent. We thank Mrs. Flora Degen, our secretary, for her skillful and enthusiastic assistance in this project. This page intentionally left blank Contents 1 INTRODUCTION/l 2 SCIENCE AND COGNITIVE INQUIRY/9 3 PRELIMINARIES/15 4 MERITS AND SHORTCOMINGS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS/25 5 OUR-SCIENCE: NO .REPORTABLE DATA/41 6 OUR-SCIENCE: DATA ON THE ABSENCE OF DATA/47 v vi Contents 7 OUR-SCIENCE: THE OBSERVING-INSTRUMENT/77 8 OUR-SCIENCE: THE TESTS ANALYSTS OFFER/93 9 FOLK PSYCHOLOGY/109 10 HOMUNCTIONALISM/123 11 HOMUNCULOSIS/123 12 COMPUTATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY/129 13 DEFLECTIONS/141 14 CONCLUSIONS/153 REFERENCES/155 INDEX/163 1 Introduction *: We wish, in this book, to think through some relations between two fields that are concerned with the m ind—cognitive science and psychoanalysis. We intend to examine how they might be connected and contribute to one another. To model something as complex as the mind, cognitive inquiry must use ideas of many fields, among others, psychoanalysis, be cause of its concern with feelings, fantasies, desires. To measure the gaps we must cross, consider our first words, "we wish." One could write a history of each discipline in which the question of aims and desire was the crucial issue forming those disciplines; yet the two histories would almost never overlap. We are biased. We view cognitive science as a new, promising, lively field, full of novel concepts and methods about the mind, whereas psychoanalysis is and thinks of itself (at least four days of the week) as being in the doldrums. In this volume, we examine that difference in enthusiasm to show why it exists, what its effects are, and what we guess the future might hold. In regard to the theory of psychoanalysis, we take the position that it is not, as often alleged, a totally dead duck. It stands as a label for a number of ideas about mind that have a history extending indefinitely into the past and a future extending indefinitely forward, the present label "psychoanal ysis" dropping away while aspects of it continue to progress. Like other fields of inquiry, the concepts and ideas of psychoanalysis will become something different: new facts and ideas will produce new S *When one of us has written a section, his initial will be attached; when both, both initials. But each author has edited every word and added a few of his own. In the case of impasse, the original writer wins. 1 2 Chapter 1 theories and models that w