The African exchange: toward a biological history of black people

of its argumentative reconstruction of Freud's writings, in the form of a set of well-defined scientific hypotheses. Grunbaum provides a useful precis of his book at the outset, and his verdict on psychoanalysis' claim to scientific truth is negative. Hopkins and Cioffi take issue with Grunbaum, but for opposing reasons. Hopkins argues carefully and in detail that psychoanalytic thought stands as an extension of common-sense psychology and not on the kinds of inductive foundations that Grunbaum supposes required for it. This, if correct, would make the absence of inductive support irrelevant, since Freudian interpretations would then be no more in need of special scientific corroboration than are ordinary explanations ofwhy people do what they do. Dilman, later in the collection, argues for such a view, with reference to the concept of intention. Cioffi, by contrast, defends the view, promulgated by Popper and by now quite familiar, that psychoanalytic theory, like astrology, illegitimately makes itself invulnerable to refutation. The attitude one takes on this fundamental issue-whether one sees psychoanalytic theory as scientific but false, non-scientific and true, or pseudo-scientific and incapable of truth-is crucial for how one reacts to the later discussions in the collection, and the editors perhaps disappoint in not giving us Griinbaum's replies to the criticisms. (Even if, to this reviewer at least, it seems that Hopkins's arguments would be exceedingly hard to controvert.) The various tasks to which later papers are devoted include the co-ordination of psychoanalytic theory with topics in philosophical psychology, such as the postulation of homunculi, the "functional" characterization of mental states, and the possibilities of explanation offered by cognitive psychology (Eagle, Haldane, Moore); the evaluation of extra-clinical experimental evidence for psychoanalytic theory (Erwin, Kline); a reassessment of Sulloway's study of the influence of biology on Freud's thought (Crews); and the interconnections of psychoanalytic and literary theory (Sharpe, Lamarque). Of particular interest is the final section devoted to Hobson's "activation-synthesis" model of dream (elaborated in his subsequently published The dreaming brain). Squires's acute commentary leaves doubtful the degree to which Hobson's theory does in fact contradict psychoanalytic claims. There is an irony in the fact that, at a time when many practising psychotherapists and psychoanalysts have been hurrying to declare themselves rid of theoretical commitments, a volume should appear which does so much to demonstrate that the discussion of Freudian theory is, for the very best of reasons, still a live issue. Sebastian Gardner St Hilda's College, Oxford