Synthesize resistance in Freud and Kuhn:
Paper instructions:
Prompt: “In Freud’s Five Lectures he writes: “the force which was maintaining the pathological condition because apparent in the form of resistance on the part of the patient”(21). In context, the problem is that the patient seems not to see something about his own past that, if only acknowledged, could free him from his symptoms.
In “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” Kuhn claims “In science… novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation”(64). That is, scientists resist seeing something new that would challenge their professional expectations and understandings of their worlds.
For this paper, you are to explain what Kuhn and Freud each mean by the term “resistance” by showing me how the term works in their books, and then pointing to how they are alike and, just as crucially, how they are different. Could freud be used to explain Kuhn, or Kuhn to explain Freud? Your thesis should make a precise argument about how the concept of resistance in Kuhn’s theory is related to that of Freud’s. This argument will not simply restate their definitions of resistance, but put them in productive dialogue.