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The idea of psychoanalysis as a hermeneutical practice is attributed to Imre Hermann, who, in Die Psychoanalyse als Methode (1934), argues in favour of the merging of the concept of meaning onto the concept of cause and the centrality of the exegetical method onto the positivist method embraced by Freud (which is essentially because of John Stuart Mill's classic eliminative inductivist model; see Grünbaum 1984). Hermann legitimatises it through the idea of causal psychic occurrences and through the notion of the deterministic and pervasive nature of this causalism. However, the rise of the hermeneutical perspective in the debate, as both an epistemic stance and a theoretical–clinical praxis, dates only to the second half of the 1960s. In fact, the contributions of Ricoeur, Lorenzer, and Habermas came about during these years.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-39010-9_1

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