[The truth of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis]

Abstract

The concept of truth in Freud's Metapsychology is a modern idea: a subject-related and pragmatic modification of the traditional concept of correspondence. But more important is the proof of a new implicit understanding of truth which becomes clearer in reation to the archaic conception of truth (alétheia) in the Oedipus tragedy. Freud finds in this drama not only the Oedipus complex, but also the tragic process of disclosure represented in the tyrant's struggle to uncover the reality (being) behind appearances which exhibits a certain similarity to the progress of psychoanalytic therapy.