A case of mistaken

identitv
John Bowlby, Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, the Tavistock
Clinic

The open letter from Barry Richards and the longer and more
passionate commentary from David Holbrook have a great deal in
common. Both express appreciation for some of my work, for
which I thank them, and both take me to task for my alleged
positivism. Mr Richards deplores my keeping the scientific and the
personal distinct from each other and claims that psychoanalysis
offers a way of transcending the split. Mr Holbrook holds that my
insistence on keeping both approaches ‘in the same bed’ is attempt-
ing the impossible.
Let me start with a transference interpretation addresied t o Mr
Holbrook. It is evident from what he tells us that he has been
severely traumatized by the dogmatic assertions of scientists and
philosophers who have preached logical positivism at him. Science,
he has been told, insists that the truth of the world can be found
only as matter in motion; and only statements verifiable by means
of sensory experience are to be taken seriously. Since, therefore, I
advocate scientific method, it foIlows that I must be a materialist,
a reductionist and a determinist. Mr Richards reaches much the
same conclusion. In this, however, both are mistaken: I am none
of these things.
It is now a generation since Karl Popper’ gave the coup-de-grace
to logical positivism, VerifiabiIity cannot be the criterion of mean-
ing because many unverifiable statements are meaningful. Moreover,
induction is not the method of science, or at the most is only half
the story, Already in 1967, in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Passmore2 could write: ‘Logical positivism is dead or as dead as a
philosophical movement ever becomes.’ Its place has been taken
by one or another version of Popper’s evolutionary epistemology
with its emphasis on conjecture and falsifiability. Towards the end
of my second paper I indicate my own position by referring briefly
to Kuhn, H a d and Pantin as among my sources, though E should
A case of mistaken identity 329

Curiously enough Mr Holbrook

also have included L a t a k ~ s . ~
recommends me to adopt Rom Hard’s view of what is proper
scientific enquiry without apparently being aware that that is
what I have been attempting all along.
Key points in this approach are to recognize problems as
being at different levels of complexity, to develop concepts of a
kind appropriate to the level studied and also, if in any way
possible, compatible with (though not reducible to) those appro-
priate to lower levels of complexity, and to frame the concepts
in a way that makes them falsifiable, at least in principle and in
the long run.
Admittedly, despite its death, the ghost of logical positivism
still stalks the land. It continues to inspire the still large, though
dwindling, band of behaviourists; and, unfortunately, it still
haunts Mr Holbrook and Mr Richards. In which passages of my
lectures, I wonder, have I misled them into supposing that I pay
heed to it too? Perhaps in my reference to Freud’s early ambition
‘to represent psychical processes as quantitatively determinate
states of specifiable material particles’; or in my emphasis on the
study of behaviour, which is often confused with adopting the
outlook of a behaviourist; or in my seeking to base psychoanalysis
firmly on a foundation of modern biology, which both of my
critics see as essentially deterministic; or in my references to
information processing, which seems to evoke in them the image
of an inflexibly programmed computer.
For many in the social sciences sociobiology has become a
bogey. It implies, they suppose, that human behaviour is not only
influenced by genes but determined by them. There are no grounds
for this supposition. That our behaviour is influenced by the genes
we inherit is obviously true: that it is determined by them, it
should be equally obvious, is nonsense. Throughout my work I
have referred to our being genetically biassed t o develop in certain
ways but have emphasized also that the actual way in which each
one of us deveIops turns in high degree on what experiences he or
she has. Moreover in some degree we both select our environment
and change it. As Dawkins4 points out, genetic determinism is one
of the myths of our time.
What then of computers? Although I did not use the word and
was careful to prefix the adjective ‘human’ in my references t o
information processing, it may be useful to consider the pros and
330 NUQ Autumn 1982

cons of likening the human mind to a computer. Is this really SO

terrible? Does it imply that the human mind is nothing but a
computer?
Mr Holbrook writes approvingly of Harvey’s analogy of the
heart as a pump, because it advanced understanding. But it would
be absurd to say that the heart is nothing but the man-made pump
Harvey was likening it to. What the analogy was intended to con-
vey was that in one o r two important respects the heart is like the
kind of pump his readers would be famiIiar with, and that concepts
such as pressure, volume, input, output, with which his readers
would also be familiar, are useful in understanding the heart’s
action, In many other respects, of course, the heart is entirely
different t o any form of man-made pump, Analogies in science
must not be taken too far.
I believe that likening the human mind to a computer has a
value similar t o that of likening the heart to a pump. What the
analogy is intended to convey is that in certain respects the
human mind is like a computer and that concepts such as infor-
mation input, transduction, memory store, retrieval, comparison,
operation, decision, output are useful in understanding mental
activity (and are vastly preferable to traditional concepts such as
energy, force, space, stimulation, tension and discharge), In many
other respects, of course, the human mind is quite unlike every
and any man-made computer, not only in its ‘hardware’, which
is obvious, but in its ‘software’ as well. It is a pity that cornputer-
phobia is so widespread.
Invaluable though scientific method is as a way of obtaining
relatively reliabIe knowledge and making useful predictions, it has
several limitations, which are often too little recognized by scien-
tists. Science deals in generalities but has Little to say about singular
specific events. This is a vital distinction, as the physicist, Weiss-
kopfs , points out. In the physical sciences it does not matter
since physicists and engineers have no interest in the. future fate
of any particular atom or molecule. Once we move to the bio-
logical sciences, however, it often does matter because biologists
are frequently interested in individual organisms, all of which
differ. In certain of the human sciences, moreover, the individual
example is the very essence of the case. History, for instance,
whether it deals with societies or persons or ideas, is always con-
cerned with an appdlingly compIex sequence of highly specific
A case of mistaken identity 33 1

interacting events which no amount of science can enable us to

explain adequateIy let d o n e predict. Thus, the distinction between
the natural sciences and the historical sciences is not that they use
a different method of obtaining knowledge but that the problems
that they strive to understand and the criteria they adopt are quite
different. One is concerned t o formulate general Iaws in terms of
probabilities, the other to understand singular specific events in as
much details as possible. The distinction is central to the whole
argument.
Under the label ‘psychoanalysis’, it is clear, two complementary
discipIines are striving to live and develop. In so far as we are
trying to understand the general principies accounting for person-
ality development and psychopathology, necessary for example
if we are t o know what forms of child care tend to produce what
sorts of personality formation, we adopt the criteria of the natural
sciences. And we do the same when we are trying to understand
the essential features of effective therapy. In these fields we are
dealing with statistical probabilities. In so far as we are concerned
to understand the personal problems of a given individual and
what events may have contributed t o their development, necessary
if we are to help him (though far from sufficient), we adopt the
criteria of the historical sciences. Each approach contributes to
our understanding, a daily clinical experience that shows the error
of Mr Richards’s allegation that reference to biology terminates
all possibility for discovering personal and social meaning. Has
biology nothing to d o with getting married and having children?
The inability of natural science to explain and predict the specific
and singular is a huge limitation intrinsic to science; whilst another
and even greater limitation has for long been cmphasized by pheno-
menologists. This is that natural science has nothing whatever to
-
say about the personal experience of being alive experiencing
the world, other people and ourselves - which each one of us has.
The story is told of two famous physicists walking along the shore.
One is describing some new ideas about mathematical structures o f
space to which the other, contemplating the scene, replies ‘Space
is blue and there are birds flying in it’, Beyond these simple
experiences, moveover, lies the world to which all the more
moving and the more complex experiences in life belong - love
and hate, loyalty and treachery, gratitude and envy, and also
music, painting, poetry and science itseIf. In this other world
332 NUQ Autumn 1982

belongs also all that we mean by free-will. Our personal experiences

of applying our own standards and making our own decisions, or
of finding ourselves unable to do so for reasons unknown to our-
selves, are just as real as our personal experiences of seeing the sky
as blue or enjoying a Bach cantata. Mr Richards’s vision of psycho-
analysis as in some way transcending the great divide of scientific
and personal is surely nothing but a pipedream.
Let us therefore agree with Weisskopf. There are several ap-
proaches to reality which, though mutually exclusive, nonetheless
add to our understanding of the pehnomenon as a whole. Psycho-
analysis embraces at least three of them and in that lies its great
potential. But unless we are clearheaded as to what belongs to
which approach we shall make no progress,
In preparing this reply to my critics I have drawn heavily not
only on the ideas of Dawkins and Weisskopf but aIso on a recent
paper by Blight‘ entitled ‘Must psychoanalysis retreat to herme-
neutics?’, In it he argues that the movement towards hermeneutics,
both in European philosophy and also in psychoanalysis, has been
in reaction to logical positivism. So long as it is supposed that
natural science must conform to the dictates of logical positivism,
whatever is of interest to the humanities cannot possibly be dealt
with by science: some altogether different discipline is necessary.
Thus began the retreat to hermeneutics - as the opposite side of
the logical positivist penny. Now, however, in a world with positiv-
ism dead, perhaps it is time to bury hermeneutics by its side. Let
us hope their ghosts will not linger too long.

‘
Ref rcnces
ICR. Popper Objective knowledge: an evolutions y approach (Oxford University
P r e y 1972).
J.A. Passmore ‘Logical Positivism’, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Val, 5.
Ed. P. Edwards (Macrnillan, 1967).
I. Latakos ‘Falsification and the methology of scientific research programmes’,

‘
in Criticism and the growth of knowledge. Ed. I. Latakos and A. Muagravc (Cambridge
Uni crsity Press, 1974).
5
Richard Dawkins The ExtendedPhenotype (W.H. Freeman, 1982).
V.F. Weisskopf ‘The frontiers and limits of physical sciences’, in Bulletin of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 54. Nov. 1981.
‘ J,Gr-B+i&Ylblust psychoanalysis retreat to hermeneutics?’, in Psychoanalysis
and Contemporay Thought Vol. 4. no. 2 1981, pp. 147-205.