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According to the epistemologist Karl Popper, psychoanalysis is not a science, because its claims are always confirmed and can never be refuted. It is true, there is no crucial experiment that could refute psychoanalysis, any more than there is for any other human science. However, psychoanalytic theory progresses by successive refutations. The methods used by psychoanalysts to refute their theories should not be confused with respect of basic psychoanalytic postulates (the shibboleth). For some time, Freud advocated “intellectual communism,” and always demonstrated an extraordinary openness to his students’ ideas, up to the point at which they were contradicted by the facts. Refutations in psychoanalysis are always partial, and retain something of the refuted theory when replacing it.