Wittgenstein vs. Freud

I'm reading a fairly heavy (though fortunately not very long!) tome by French philosopher Jacque Bouveresse, Wittgenstein Reads Freud: the Myth of the Unconscious, which I picked up during a recent visit to Vienna (I was taking a few hours off and went to see Freud's home out of curiosity). I want to share some interesting notes, as Wittgenstein is always fascinating and yet baffling to me, and actually so is Freud!

Apparently, Witty often referred to himself as a "disciple" of Freud, and clearly admired the latter's intellect. However, beware of a compliment coming from Ludwig! Here are a few comments on psychoanalysis and its inventor, straight from the philosopher's pen:

* "Freud's fanciful pseudo-explanations (precisely because they are brilliant) perform a disservice. Now any ass has these pictures available to use in 'explaining' symptoms of illness."

* "Freud is constantly claiming to be scientific. But what he gives is speculation -- something prior even to the formation of a hypothesis."

* "Wisdom is something I never would expect from Freud. Cleverness, certainly; but not wisdom."

All of this makes Wittgenstein sound remarkably like his contemporary philosophical colleague, Karl Popper (also a Viennese, incidentally), who criticized psychoanalysis on the ground that it fails to meet Popper's criterion of "falsifiability," which allegedly differentiates science from pseudoscience (contemporary philosophers have moved beyond falsificationism, and admit that the boundary separating good science, bad science, and pseudoscience is somewhat fuzzy). Yet, Witty and Popper were actually often at odds, and they had a famous public dispute during a visit of Popper to Cambridge, where Wittgenstein was working.

Indeed, although I actually agree with the comments quoted above, their origin is to be found in Wittgenstein's (I think) excessive distrust of scientific explanations of human phenomena (such as the workings of the mind). Wittgenstein has made some blunders of his own, as in his criticism of Darwin's theory on grounds similar to his rejection of Freud:

"I have always thought that Darwin was wrong: his theory doesn't account for all this variety of species. It hasn't the necessary multiplicity."

By which he meant that the Darwinian principles of common descent and natural selection are insufficient to account for the variety of forms seen in the biological world. While this is in fact very likely true, it does not imply a rejection of Darwinism, but rather its expansion, building on Darwin's original insight (which is exactly what has happened over the past 150 years in biology).

Well, more on Witty vs. Freud if I have the stomach to keep reading Bouveresse...