Is Depth Psychology a Science? Jung, Freud, and the Subject–Object Dilemma Explained

Artist: Jake Baddeley

Science, as far as it is defined by its methodology more so than its aims, is indispensable even if objectively imperfect. Despite the inherent limitations of scientific objectivity, the psychological heuristic approach remains one of the most valuable ways to engage the subject–object dilemma, not by resolving it, but by illuminating the dynamic relationship between knower and known.

Since areas of inquiry, such as the study of the psyche, cannot be put under a microscope, so to speak, it does not mean there are no repeatable and demonstrable empirical patterns for qualitative observations. Freud considered the scientific approach, although “still somewhat obscure,” and he warned against “rigidity,” yet postulated that the scientific method is “indispensable to us in psychology” (Freud, 1989, p. 564).

When J.P. Hodin interviewed Jung and reported that England thought his psychology was unscientific, Jung responded with evidential examples for his methodology being no different than the scientific method as “a comparative phenomenology of the mind …” (Jung, 1977, p. 220).

Without a scientific approach to psychological phenomena, we might have “an idea without living form,” which is to say, the psychological phenomena may be like an idea, and science gives it a living body, despite Jung likening science to an evil.

He clarifies, “My idea, which is also a form, is like a man who has a body. If he has no body, we should not see him. It must be a visible form [science] and idea [psychology] at the same time” (p. 223).

Taken together, “we see that we have been dealing with the data of human experience” (Cohen, p. 79). But it is precisely human experience that clutters the scientific frame, as Heisenberg demonstrated. Even so, it is science that attempts to resolve the “conflict of interpretations” (D’Acierno, et al., p. xviii).

References

Freud, S. (1989). The Freud reader (P. Gay, Ed.). W. W. Norton. (Original works published 1893–1939)

Jung, C. G. (1977). C. G. Jung speaking: Interviews and encounters (W. McGuire & R. F. C. Hull, Eds.). Princeton University Press.

Cohen, E. (1977). C. G. Jung and the scientific attitude. Princeton University Press.

D’Acierno, P., & Barnaby, K. (Eds.). (1999). C. G. Jung and the humanities: Toward a hermeneutics of culture. Princeton University Press.