What was going on when I was born?

THE scientific credentials of psychoanalysis are being weighed anew in what some see as an effort to demolish its intellectual status, and what others see as a defense of its viability. More than 25 years ago in an influential statement on the nature of science Sir Karl Popper dismissed psychoanalysis, along with Marxism and astrology, as a self-confirming, nonscientific theory. Now, in a detailed refutation of Sir Karl, Adolf Gr"unbaum, a philosopher of science at the University of Pittsburgh, has proposed that psychoanalytic theory may be scientifically respectable, but he finds it poorly served by most attempts to support it. ''Its scientific foundations are impoverished,'' Dr. Gr"unbaum said in an interview. He grants that many, perhaps most of Freud's clinical observations and the theories that followed from them may be accurate. His point is that they have not been proved by Freud, or anyone else, in a way that meets the basic standards of the scientific method. Thus no one knows which aspects of the theory may be true, and which false.

The Israeli Cabinet approved a plan today to withdraw the Israeli Army from Lebanon in three stages, beginning within five weeks. The action came after 11 hours of discussions on Sunday and today. The vote was 16 to 6 in favor of the Defense Ministry's withdrawal plan. Prime Minister Shimon Peres said he hoped the plan would be completed within ''six to nine months.''

Stock prices surged yesterday in a rally reinforced in the final hour of trading by news that a major bank had cut its prime rate a quarter point. The Dow Jones industrial average, up 7.51 at 3 P.M., finished the day with a 16.45-point rise, to 1,234.54. It was the blue-chip barometer's second-largest gain of 1985, after its 20.76 rise last Thursday. Other key stock market indicators also moved solidly ahead.

A map published yesterday with a dispatch about a rare snowstorm in south Texas transposed the cities of San Antonio and Austin. San Antonio is southwest of Austin.

NAME the country drained by the Amazon River, American college students were asked in a 1950 survey, and 77.5 percent of them correctly said Brazil. The same question was posed last fall in a statewide college exam in North Carolina, and this time only 27 percent of the students got it right. The apparent deterioration of geographic knowledge evident in the North Carolina survey and in similar tests around the nation has prompted two professional organizations of American geographers and educators to devise a set of guidelines for the teaching of geography in elementary and secondary schools. The guidelines, just published by the National Council for Geographic Education at Western Illinois University in Macomb and by the Association of American Geographers in Washington, explain the nature of geographic inquiry and recommend a systematic learning sequence for use in a geography curriculum from kindergarten through the 12th grade.

''These products do not prevent hair loss or grow hair. How you lose or keep your hair depends on how wisely you choose your parents.''

A 52 percent increase in medical malpractice insurance rates was approved yesterday for an insurer serving some of New York State's 45,000 doctors. The State Insurance Superintendent, James P. Corcoran, who approved the increase for an insurer covering 900 of the doctors, said it would be granted to the rest of the state's medical malpractice insurers when they applied to the State Insurance Department. The increase is the highest approved by the state in 10 years, with most of the added cost expected to be passed on to patients in higher doctors' fees and to the public through higher health insurance costs for Blue Shield, Medicare and Medicaid. Highest Regional Rates The new rates would mean, for example, that the amount a Long Island obstetrician would pay for malpractice insurance would rise to $82,500 a year from $54,282. For a neurosurgeon on Long Island, which has the highest regional rates for medical malpractice insurance in the state, the annual rate would rise to $101,000 from $66,468.

-rays lasting only billionths of a second are giving scientists their first highly detailed looks at individual living human cells. The images, obtained with a new technique called contact X-ray microscopy, can show internal structures as well as surface characteristics. The details are far finer in resolving power than can be obtained with the best of light microscopes. Although electron microscopes can reveal finer detail than is possible with X-ray microscopes, they cannot make images that capture an instant of life. For viewing under the electron microscope, subjects must be housed in a vacuum chamber and therefore cannot ordinarily be pictured while they are still alive. The new technique makes use of long wavelength, or ''soft,'' X-rays that kill the specimen, but since the pulse lasts only 100 billionths of a second, the image is formed before the destructive effects occur.

Economists' perceptions of business prospects for this year have brightened substantially, only months after growth nearly stalled and experts were predicting a painfully slow start for 1985. ''There are lots of reasons to feel good,'' said Charles B. Reeder, chief economist at the Du Pont Company. ''The economy is stronger than at any time in the last five years,'' said Arthur Levitt Jr., chairman of the American Stock Exchange. ''If you kind of back off and look at where we are, not just at the monthly numbers, we're looking real good,'' said William C. Dunkelberg of Purdue University, chief economist of the National Federation of Independent Business. The new optimism among economists goes beyond the Government's parade of monthly statistical reports on inflation, growth, industrial activity, construction, retail sales, foreign trade and the like. The reports for November and those announced to date for December have taken a decidedly positive turn or showed encouraging signs of eventual improvement.

OVER the centuries ships of every description sailed into the Spanish harbor of Cadiz, on the Atlantic west of Gibraltar. Phoenicians came from the Levant long ago, and then there were Greeks and Romans, Vikings and Venetians. In the Age of Discovery, this was the bustling home port for the Spanish caravels that found new worlds and the galleons that brought back the new-found riches. Not all the ships that arrived at Cadiz ever sailed out again. Many foundered on shoals or, for other reasons, were abandoned and sunk. Some were victims of marauding fleets. Several thousand ships went to the bottom in the Bay of Cadiz, settling into muddy graves, and the mud has preserved these shipwrecks as an important archeological treasure. But little has been done to recover any of these shipwrecks, and archeologists are growing increasingly concerned that this invaluable underwater archive will soon be destroyed by dredging and landfill operations associated with the expansion of the modern port of Cadiz. Archeologists are applying pressure on the Government of Spain to set aside at least part of the harbor as a historical preserve and to grant permission for a systematic survey of the shipwrecks and the recovery of those deemed most revealing of shipbuilding technology through the ages.

Those hair restorers that have been advertised for many years in the back of men's magazines and Sunday supplements do not work, the Food and Drug Administration said today. The statement came as the agency prepared to publish a regulation that would bar from the market all nonprescription baldness cures. It is not that the preparations are harmful, said Edward R. Nida, a spokesman for the agency, but rather that they just do not work.

Three of the nation's biggest banking companies yesterday reported good performances for the fourth quarter. J.P. Morgan & Company showed one of the best rates of return in recent history by a major banking concern; the Chase Manhattan Corporation reported a gain in aggregate net income but a decline in per-share earnings from the 1983 period, and the First Chicago Corporation's net income rose slightly. Compared with the third quarter, however, all showed strong improvement. On a per-share basis, Chase's earnings rose to $2.56, from $1.64; Morgan's rose to $1.90, from $1.35, and First Chicago's was $1.03, against a loss.