In order to justify his long report of a clinical case, Josef Breuer wrote the following in the famous book Studies in Hysteria, co-authored with Freud.

The paper examines the epistemological significance of the expe- rience of estrangement caused by some types of descriptions of objects and phenomena. It shows how, today, the main productive matrix of these descriptions is formed by natural science. A distinction is drawn between a reductionist and pluralist approach to the aspect of estrangement offered by science, and subsequently analysed. The paper then puts forward an argument in support of the latter attitude.