That’s a sharp and timely question. In “Concerning the Nature of Psychoanalysis: The Persistence of a Paradoxical Discourse” (2019), Gregorio Kohon does indeed mount a deeply thoughtful and literary defense of psychoanalysis against the encroachment of evidence-based, positivist paradigms, particularly those championed in contemporary psychology and psychiatry.
Did Kohon succeed?
In a way—yes, but only within a certain horizon of discourse. Let me explain:
1. What Kohon Tried to Do
Kohon’s project was not to refute evidence-based claims on their own terms (e.g., through randomized controlled trials or neurological data). Instead, he tried to reframe psychoanalysis as a unique form of knowledge and practice—a “paradoxical discourse” that cannot, and should not, be reduced to the criteria of scientific objectivity or empirical validation.
He emphasized:
• The irreducibility of subjectivity;
• The centrality of the unconscious and interpretation;
• The poetic, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions of psychoanalysis;
• That psychoanalysis operates in the realm of meaning, not mechanism.
His goal was to affirm psychoanalysis as a mode of inquiry into human existence that is qualitatively distinct from medical or behavioral models of treatment.
2. Where He Succeeds
• Philosophically & ethically: He offers a compelling case that psychoanalysis is closer to hermeneutics, literature, and existential inquiry than to medicine. For readers who value this distinction, Kohon gives psychoanalysis back its dignity.
• Historically & institutionally: He reminds us that Freud never intended psychoanalysis to be fully assimilated into a medical model—it was always anomalous, transdisciplinary, and haunted by paradox.
• Against colonization: He successfully warns us of the risks: when psychoanalysis is forced into the mold of “evidence-based,” its complexity and radical core may be evacuated.
3. Where the Success Is Limited
• Outside the choir: Kohon is writing for those already sympathetic to psychoanalysis or, at the very least, to continental philosophy and literary modes of thinking. For the scientific establishment or the clinical psychology world dominated by CBT, his arguments won’t shift paradigms.
• No alternative metrics: While Kohon critiques evidence-based approaches, he does not offer a new framework of validation that might allow psychoanalysis to claim legitimacy in broader academic or clinical settings.
• No political counter-strategy: The evidence-based paradigm is not just epistemological; it’s institutional and economic. Kohon doesn’t fully engage with the political dimensions of this dominance—e.g., insurance models, state funding, mental health policy—which limits the practical impact of his argument.
Final Judgment?
Kohon succeeds poetically, conceptually, and ethically. He gives voice to what psychoanalysis is at its best: a paradoxical, disruptive, deeply human discourse. But he does not succeed in “rescuing” psychoanalysis in the institutional or disciplinary sense, because that would require more than philosophical rigor—it would require a new strategy of survival for psychoanalysis in a data-driven age.
Would you like a synthesis of how Kohon’s position compares to others like Thomas Ogden, Darian Leader, or Jamieson Webster, who also resist the evidence-based colonization but in slightly different ways?
