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In his paper, “Causation in psychoanalysis,” Dr Nikolai Axmacher raises and responds to three arguments that claim that psychoanalytic explanations and causal explanations in the neurological sciences are mutually inconsistent. These arguments, he claims, are raised by many opponents of neuropsychoanalysis, who argue that psychoanalytic explanations, because they are hermeneutic in character, cannot be consistent with causal explanations in the sciences. Axmacher disputes these arguments, and attempts to show that the apparent differences between hermeneutical and causal explanations are merely apparent; he thereby hopes to defend “the neuropsychoanalytic endeavor” (Axmacher, 2013, p. 3). I examine Axmacher's responses to the three arguments he raises; I shall argue that two of them are indeed insufficient to raise concerns about the neuropsychoanalytic project, but one of the arguments—Argument Two—does raise concerns that Axmacher's responses do not consider. Axmacher hopes to show that causal and hermeneutic explanations are, at least in principle, consistent with each other by showing that hermeneutic psychoanalytic explanations also appeal to causal principles. I argue that even if the latter claim is true, fundamental differences between psychoanalytic explanations, and scientific causal explanations, remain.

Causation vs. causal explanation: a response to Axmacher