Psychoanalytic Interpretation as Pharmakon: Applying Derrida’s “Plato’s Pharmacy” to Psychoanalysis

This paper presents a metaphorical heuristic to expand psychoanalysts’ views on the nature and method of interpretation from an intersubjective perspective. It uses one of Jacques Derrida’s findings in his essay “Plato’s Pharmacy,” a critique of Plato’s Phaedrus, as a model of psychoanalytic interaction. A parallel is drawn between psychoanalytic interpretation and the pharmakon—an ancient Greek term for ‘drug’ that means both remedy and poison. From this comparison, the inescapable dependence of personal meaning on contextual factors, specifically the context of the clinical intersubjective field, is shown. As a result, when an interpretation is offered, the analyst cannot truly know if the patient will receive it as remedy or poison. By keeping the context-dependent nature of personal meaning in awareness through the use of the pharmakon metaphor, analysts increase their abilities of interpretive understanding. In further discussion, the classical psychoanalytic concept of ‘negative therapeutic reaction’ is presented as an example of a decontextualized and reified psychoanalytic construct that becomes superfluous when interpretations are viewed through an intersubjective lens as pharmakon. Without the burden of expectation for being the authoritative imparter of reality and truth, the analyst may now attend to the patient in a way that is more fluid and reciprocal, where the relational field becomes what is primarily interpreted. Further, practical clinical implications of the concept of pharmakon suggest that since the analytic interpretation is subjective in every respect, effective clinical practice cannot be reduced to rigid protocols of technique.     

Optimism for the World’s Future versus the Personal Future: Application to Environmental Attitudes

Optimism and pessimism for the future have been widely studied, but little is known about distinctions among types of optimism. In the present work optimism for the personal future and optimism for a more global world’s future were shown to be related yet distinct variables among responses from 156 undergraduate students. Furthermore, World Optimism predicted lower levels of pro-environmental attitudes (the New Ecological Paradigm) whereas Personal Optimism did not after its shared variance with World Optimism was removed. Personal Optimism (but not World Optimism) was associated with Consideration of Future Consequences, a measure of locus of control, and other measures of optimism and pessimism. Discussion addresses this distinction and its implications for understanding environmental attitudes and other individual differences.     

On the distinction between Peirce’s abduction and Lipton’s Inference to the best explanation

I argue against the tendency in the philosophy of science literature to link abduction to the inference to the best explanation (IBE), and in particular, to claim that Peircean abduction is a conceptual predecessor to IBE. This is not to discount either abduction or IBE. Rather the purpose of this paper is to clarify the relation between Peircean abduction and IBE in accounting for ampliative inference in science. This paper aims at a proper classification—not justification—of types of scientific reasoning. In particular, I claim that Peircean abduction is an in-depth account of the process of generating explanatory hypotheses, while IBE, at least in Peter Lipton’s thorough treatment, is a more encompassing account of the processes both of generating and of evaluating scientific hypotheses. There is then a two-fold problem with the claim that abduction is IBE. On the one hand, it conflates abduction and induction, which are two distinct forms of logical inference, with two distinct aims, as shown by Charles S. Peirce; on the other hand it lacks a clear sense of the full scope of IBE as an account of scientific inference.     

The Meontic and the Militant: On Merleau-Ponty’s Relation to Fink∗

Abstract

This paper clarifies the relationship between Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation with regard to ‘the idea of a transcendental theory of method’. Although Fink’s text played a singularly important role in the development of Merleau-Ponty’s postwar thought, contrary to recent claims made by Ronald Bruzina this influence was not positive. Reconstructing the basic methodological claims of each text, in particular with regard to the being of the phenomenologist, the nature of the productivity that makes phenomenology possible, and the problem of methodological self-reference, I show that Phenomenology of Perception is premised on a decisive rejection of the main theses affirmed in the Sixth Cartesian Meditation. In contrast to Fink’s speculative reinterpretation of phenomenology as an absolute science, Merleau-Ponty viewed it as participating in the historical realization of the world, and hence as ultimately based on a practical faith. Albeit with a Marxian inflection, Merleau-Ponty thus related phenomenology much more closely to Kant. This may not be a better philosophical position, but circa 1945 it was Merleau-Ponty’s, whose work must be approached accordingly.     

‘A Way Out’ and A Way In: Reply to Commentary

I express my appreciation for Michal Rieck's thoughtful and fully felt reading of my paper. I underline her points that the regression that an unobtrusive yet fully engaged analyst can allow, is not solely a phenomenon in work with more disturbed patients, and that the essence of this position is to be without separateness. I outline a process of the “flow of enactive engagement,” which fosters a narrative unfolding of the field of the treatment. I suggest that the flow of enactive engagement is a contemporary mutual form of enacted free association and that Rieck is correct in saying that from my perspective psychoanalytic cure need not involve the analyst's interpretation. The mutual enactment itself can be the interpretation.     

Response to MacIntosh’s Review and Discussion of the Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy Journal Literature: A Self Psychological,Intersubjective Perspective

ABSTRACT

After expressing my appreciation to Heather MacIntosh and highlighting her article’s significant contributions to the field, I comment briefly on some of the implications of her methodology and findings. I then elaborate on her summary of the history of the application of self psychology (Kohut, 1971) and intersubjective systems theory (Stolorow, Brandshaft, and Atwood, 1987) to couple therapy, highlighting the key contributions of both theories and describing the current state of the field.     

On Smilansky’s Defense of Prepunishment: A Response to Robinson

Philosophia - In a 2010 paper published in this journal, Robinson responded to Smilansky’s argument that compatibilists do not have a principled reason to reject prepunishment. Smilansky...     

Response to MacIntosh’s Systematic Review of Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy: A Brief Note from the Classical Perspective

ABSTRACT

Working with couples from a classical perspective can be thought of as an oxymoron, unlike working from object relations and relational viewpoints, often seen to be the more natural fits. This article offers a fresh look at those parts of the classical perspective that relate very clearly to working with two partners in a couple. Freud’s theories in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) and On Narcissism (1914a) provide theoretical background for the work. Concepts such as transference (between partners, between the partner[s] and the therapist) and countertransference are shown to be manifested in complex ways with couples. Being mindful of unresolved developmental issues—for example, Oedipal and separation-individuation issues—which may have played a part in partner choice and in the resulting problems, allows the therapist to offer deep interpretations of within- and between-partner conflicts. Interestingly, unresolved Oedipal issues, particularly, may form an important part of the countertransference.     

Correction to: Speculative Fiction and the Political Economy of Healthcare: Chang-Rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea

Journal of Medical Humanities - Due to an editing error, this article was initially published with an incorrect title. The correct title is reflected above. The original article has been corrected.     

Discussion of Dominique Scarfone’s Paper, “On ‘That Is Not Psychoanalysis’: Ethics as the Main Tool for Psychoanalytic Knowledge and Discussion”: Terminable and Interminable Discussion

When we ask ourselves if psychoanalysis is a science and what type of science it is, we raise many questions related to the notion of faithfulness. For instance, we might ask what it means to be faithful to a text, to the essence of an author’s writings, or to his or her creative power. If being a psychoanalyst means, at the very least, being able to translate the other’s thoughts, one of the difficulties of this task lies in what we call the complexity of translation. Analysts translate, interpret, interfere with the thoughts of the other in order to open up new paths, to offer themselves as a projection screen, or to try to create a link between two subjects so as to make room for the present, which is sometimes erased by history. To elucidate some of these issues, Scarfone (this issue) focuses on a discussion on the ethics of the analyst and of psychoanalysis