The experimental method as a guarantee of scientificity is discussed here, together with its idealization in today's scientificist ideology. The author argues that the clinical method is epistemologically distinct from the experimental method, and attempts at considering the former as science is mistaken. Psychoanalysis is taken as an example, since some psychoanalysts have continued to try to create imitations of experimental tests in order to validate their clinical methods. This has occurred in spite of Freud, who clearly stated that psychoanalysis was epistemologically incompatible with experimental science, and that the psychoanalytic method cannot be submitted to tests because it is a therapeutic measure whose purpose is to reduce neurotic suffering and to redirect from paths that only worsen things. Not only psychoanalysis but every form of clinical work requires listening and attention to what is inevitably singular, which is the work of Eros, the navigates against the wind of today's trends toward the objectification of the forms of diagnosis and of the use of treatment protocols.
Clinic; epistemology; psychoanalysis; science