The patient's private construction of meaning and canons of science: Freud's case studies noch einmal1

Starting from Freud's classical case studies, the author highlights the tension between the psychoanalytical starting point in the subject's own meaning construction and the claims of the professional expert to objectivity, privileged knowledge and interpretative precedence. Psychoanalytic investigation of subjective phenomena came into existence parallel with Freud's magnifi cent project to furnish ‘a psychology that shall be a natural science’. The privileged knowledge of the specialist was substituted by the explicit intention to listen to the individual's own stories and private explanatory constructions. In order to investigate the territory of the unconscious, Freud had to develop various strategies for uncovering and correcting errors, and for testing clinically anchored hypotheses. However, Freud regularly failed to follow his own intentions. The thesis the author presents here is that departures from the explicit ambition to follow the subject's own meaning construction, and departures from the scientifi c attitude, easy to trace in Freud's case studies, accompany each other. These departures have had far‐reaching consequences for the present status of the psychoanalytic knowledge.     

Transference and katharsis,Freud to Aristotle

Aristotle's theory of tragic katharsis is the most ancient and debated theory of the effect of the theatrical experience on the audience. It affirms that tragedy effects the katharsis of fear and pity, engaging readers with the controversy whether by katharsis Aristotle meant purification of the emotions (i.e. their perfection within the mind) or purification of the mind from the emotions (i.e. their abreaction from the mind). In this paper I will explore how Freud's theory of transference can suggest a new interpretation of Aristotle's tragic katharsis. Transference allows for the representation and expression of repressed emotions through the re‐enactment of past relational dynamics. Although this process is essential to the psychoanalytic method, it is the subsequent analytic endeavour which allows for the “working through” of repressed emotions, bringing into effect the transference cure. I argue that the dynamic between emotional arousal in re‐enactment and emotional distancing in analysis offers an effective parallel of the dynamic between katharsis of fear and katharsis of pity in Aristotle's theory. Such interpretation of tragic katharsis suggests that the theatrical effect in audiences may be an opportunity for self‐analysis and the ‘working through’ of unconscious psychic dynamics.     

THE REBIRTH OF THE IDOLS: THE FREUDIAN UNCONSCIOUS AND THE NIETZSCHEAN UNCONSCIOUS3

The author explores how psychoanalysis mutates in its passing from the privacies of the session to the public spaces of academia, shifting away from enquiry into unfolding unconscious psychic processes guided by its method, and from the clinically based notions Freud and his diverse followers constructed, here called the ‘Freudian unconscious’. In postmodern intellectual contexts Freud's work fuels a ‘Nietzschean unconscious’, issuing from public lecterns in the protagonistic, self‐creating feats of a ‘psychoanalytic discourse’. The ideology of such mutation ishere traced from Nietzsche on to Heidegger and Kojave, and then to Lacan and Laplanche. It reflects the might of the ‘death of evidences’ and the Romantic penchant for the limit‐experience and the primacy accorded to the creative imagination. Discourse as revelation rests on a ‘paradox of the enunciation’ whereby the subject (author) of the statement is taken to be identical to the subject (matter) of the statement. Banishing the boundaries of illusion and evidence, and of self‐overcoming and insight, academic ‘psychoanalytic discourse’creates a ‘return of the idols’ in ‘theoretical’ narcissistic identification.     

Sibling rivalry,separation, and change in Austen's Sense and Sensibility

The paper explores a process of growth represented in the interplay of Jane Austen's characterizations of Marianne and Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, approaching the text through the lens of psychoanalytic theories on oedipal sibling rivalry, separation, and processes of change. A close reading of Sense and Sensibility tracks Marianne Dashwood's repudiation of any ‘second attachment’ as the surface of an unconscious fantasy, denying a rival for the mother's love. A psychoanalytic view contrasts Marianne's lack of separation from her mother, her use of denial and projection, and her near death after losing the man she loves, with her older sister Elinor Dashwood's capacities for depression, reflection, and greater acceptance of loss and separation. The narrative portrays Mrs. Dashwood's identification with and idealization of her daughter Marianne, which contribute to her oedipal sibling ‘victory’. In the language and structure of the novel, the projections, identifications, aggressions, and separations (conscious and unconscious) of the sisters in the vicissitudes of their adolescent loves and rivalries constitute a process of growth. Austen's novel brings to life, with the vividness and coherence of great literature, forces and fantasies in oedipal sibling rivalries, inspiring renewed attention to their subtle presence in the transference and countertransference of the psychoanalytic process.     

The unconscious

A discussion of the unconscious leads naturally to Freud and to a theory on subjectivity we may designate as de-centred. The unconscious reminds us that not only do we not know ourselves. In the core of our subjectivity, we have to acknowledge the notion of otherness. Re-reading Freud's text, The Unconscious, from 1915, the current author emphasises the character and function of the unconscious as radically different from what we know about conscious processes. This allows for the concept of the preconscious, which the author links to Winnicott's intermediary area and Green's tertiary processes. Taking as point of departure Freud's differentiation of word presentation and thing presentation, the author points to Freud's introduction of the term thing-cathexies of the object as designating the primal psychic representation. The Freudian perspective is broadened, encompassing the notion of otherness as discussed by Laplanche and Aulagnier. Concluding the paper, the author draws some implications for psychoanalytic technique, focusing especially on transference.     

Nina Farhi: Leaning on an Annealed Identification: Commentary on Paper by Nina Farhi

In my response to Nina Farhi's paper, I begin my discussion with the concept of a placental space that Farhi develops to represent the psychotic's internal experience of living in a fusion with the Other. Farhi's new concept of an annealed identification provides a useful addition to the psychoanalytic literature to describe the living conditions of a psychotic who is severely entrenched in an unyielding maternal bond. Basing her conceptualizations on Milner's psychotic patient Susan, Farhi also focuses on Milner's discovery that no repressed unconscious existed for her patient Susan. I suggest in my response that Freud's nearly forgotten idea of primal repression and Lacan's idea of maternal jouissance would shed additional light onto the psychotic experience and expand Farhi's notion of an annealed identification with the maternal figure. In addition, I argue for an inclusion of the Third whose presence is so powerfully lacking in the case discussion and in the patient's life.     

WITHSTANDING TRAUMA: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF EMMA ECKSTEIN'S CIRCUMCISION TO FREUD'S IRMA DREAM

The author considers the medical rationale for Wilhelm Fliess's operation on Emma Eckstein's nose in February 1895 and interprets the possible role that this played in Freud's dream of Irma's injection five months later. The author's main argument is that Emma likely endured female castration as a child and that she therefore experienced the surgery to her nose in 1895 as a retraumatization of her childhood trauma. The author further argues that Freud's unconscious identification with Emma, which broke through in his dream of Irma's injection with resistances and apotropaic defenses, served to accentuate his own “masculine protest”. The understanding brought to light by the present interpretation of Freud's Irma dream, when coupled with our previous knowledge of Freud, allows us to better grasp the unconscious logic and origins of psychoanalysis itself. 1     

Psychoanalytic action explanation

Psychoanalysis is concerned with neurotic behaviour that counts as an action if one takes into account “repressed” mental states. Freud's paradigmatic examples are a challenge for philosophical theories of action explanation. The main problem is that such symptomatic behaviour is, in a characteristic way, irrational. In line with standard interpretations, I will recap that psychoanalytic action explanation is not in accordance with Davidson's classical reason-explanation model, and I will recall that Freud's unconsciousness is not a second mind with its own rationality but that it is non-propositional in character. However, I then will argue that this characterization is not discriminating enough to explain the dynamical unconscious and overlooks the crucial role of “counter-cathexis”. With counter-cathexis the relevant desire turns out to be a complex with two inseparable aspects (“double-aspect view”), so that the causing belief–desire pair is still part of the space of reasons, although it cannot rationalize the behaviour. Psychoanalytic action explanation is hence still Davidsonian, albeit in a modified way.     

The uses of humor in life,neurosis and in psychotherapy: Part 2

Abstract

The first part of the paper focused on the dynamics of wit in life, literature, and psychoanalysis; the second part of this paper is devoted to the use of humor in therapy. The central concept is Freud's psychoanalytic method, as distinguished from Freud's various theories of disorder, or neurosis, with a further elaboration of Freud's inherently interpersonal conception of the analytic process, already present in the cathartic phase of the therapeutic technique. The cathartic, or discharge, function of humor is connected to reciprocal free association (a term coined by the author) to define the mutual and reciprocal free association in analysand and analyst, playing an essential role in the genesis of insight and interpretation. Humor has its role in loosening repression, facilitating the emergence of unconscious emotions and ideas, bringing to light character defenses, and thus driving the process of analysis.     

Poetics in the shadow of the other's language: The melancholic discourse of the trilingual poet Amelia Rosselli

In this paper, I propose a psychoanalytic reading of some of the writings of Amelia Rosselli, a trilingual poet who, at the age of seven, lost her father Carlo, who was persecuted and murdered by Mussolini's regime. History and her history conflate into personal and collective trauma which defies human possibilities to work through and mourn. Rosselli's work testifies to such predicament of the human subject of the 20th century, his/her dislocation, alienation and internal irreconcilable divisions. In particular I examine Diary in three tongues, which is the most autobiographical of her works and a self‐analytic piece, written after the conclusion of her second analysis. In the Diary, Rosselli employs textual strategies which convey the fragmentation and destructuring of language, where her traumatic experience resides as a wound inflicted to the symbolic order. I propose that her writings contain her unconscious memories in an estranged and melancholic language which becomes the crucible to express her impossible mourning, in a complex mixture of Eros and Thanatos which allowed her to survive psychically and to create a very personal experimental poetic discourse which made her a literary figure of international acclaim. My primary engagement will be with Freud's theory of mourning and melancholia and its successive elaboration by Kristeva, who maintains that the melancholic discourse finds its expression in the pre‐verbal and infra‐verbal aspects of language, which she calls ‘semiotics’, in dialectic articulation with its symbolic components. Drawing on literary texts, significant inferences can be made on the psychoanalytic listening to the prosodic aspects of language as the carrier of inchoate forms of representation of that which exceeds language: trauma, raw affects, mnemic traces, that is, the unrepresented and/or unrepresentable.     

The Retentional and the Repressed: Does Freud's Concept of the Unconscious Threaten Husserlian Phenomenology?

This paper investigates the claims made by both Freudian psychoanalysic thought and Husserlian phenomenology about the unconscious. First, it is shown how Husserl incorporates a complex notion of the unconscious in his analysis of passive synthesis. With his notion of an unintentional reservoir of past retentions, Husserl articulates an unconscious zone that must be activated from consciousness in order to “come to life.” Second, it is explained how Husserl still does not account for the Freudian unconscious. Freud's unconscious could be called, in phenomenological terms, a repressed retentional zone that differs from both near and far retention. Finally, an analysis is offered for the significance of this psychoanalytic argument for phenomenology. Does phenomenology provide a complete account of the psychical life of the subject without the Freudian unconscious? Does phenomenology suggest, as is often done, that Freud's “discovery” of the unconscious is a fantastical invention? Or, does the Freudian unconscious represent a true stumbling block for phenomenology?     

Opening to the otherwise: The discipline of listening and the necessity of free‐association for psychoanalytic praxis

It is argued that only free‐association methodically opens the discourse of self‐consciousness (the representations available to reflective awareness) to the voicing of the repressed. The method is key to Freud's originality and the sine qua non of any genuinely psychoanalytic process. Clinical procedures which do not prioritize a steadfast and ongoing commitment to this method (instead emphasizing either interpretative formulations, as decisive acts that appear to fix and finalize the meaning of a particular lived experience, or the vicissitudes of transference‐countertransference in the immediate treatment situation) all too readily entrap the treatment, limiting its capacity to divulge the power of unconscious processes. Influenced by Laplanche, Freud's 1920 principles of lifefulness and deathfulness (the binding and unbinding of psychic energy in representations) facilitate an understanding of the unique significance of free‐associative discourse in opening the representational textuality of self‐consciousness to the voicing of that which is otherwise than representationality and reason. The ‘otherwise’ is intimated as the returning force of the repressed, as the ‘unfathomable navel’ of ‘thing‐presentations,’ experienced and expressed within the text of awareness, yet not translatable into the law and order of its logical and rhetorical reflections. Free‐associative discourse thus affects self‐consciousness in a way that is radically different from other creative procedures (‘psychosynthetic’ or integratively interpretive). In this respect, the status of free‐associative praxis as necessary for a genuinely psychoanalytic process is justified.     

The Unconsciously Constructed Virtual Other

Neuroscience has confirmed Freud's assertion of the primacy of unconscious process in relation to conscious experience. However, unconscious process, for many neuroscientists, is viewed as something that is devoid of meaning. This paper suggests that there are different levels of unconscious process. This conceptualization of unconscious process may help to reconcile the psychoanalytic assumption of a meaningful unconscious with the conception that unconscious process is a meaningless code, a belief held by most neuroscientists. To effect this reconciliation we must return to Freud's earlier theory of unconscious process as described in his Interpretation of Dreams. A dream-like unconscious process, employing metaphor, unconsciously organizes our affective experiences while we are awake.     

Exit Dora: Freud's Patient Takes Leave

Why did “Dora” leave Sigmund Freud—why did she end her psychoanalytic treatment with him prematurely? This question haunts Freud's Dora study, his first extensive and perhaps most famous narrative of a psychoanalytic treatment. I pursue this question through a close reading of Freud's text. I focus not only on the interaction between Freud and Dora but also on the literary qualities of “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” (1905)—qualities that place this work firmly in the tradition of Viennese fin de siècle drama and prose.     

The Dawning of a Thought and the Role of Play and Trauma

A critical scrutiny of Freud's case the Rat Man elucidates the implications of the built-in contradictions that Freud made while evolving the psychoanalytic method. By comparing the published case of the Rat Man with Freud's private notes we get access to two different perspectives. Wishing to mould a clinical situation that would confirm his theories and uphold the image of the psychoanalyst as an authority figure, Freud was partly blind to some irrational distortions in how he perceived the interaction between the patient and himself. Contradictory explicit and unconscious “theories” and the emergence of a more modern understanding of transference, which includes inter-subjective dimensions, are expounded.     

Binding,narcissistic pathology and the psychoanalytic process

This article discusses the question of truth claims in psychoanalysis, revolving around the concepts “construction”, “reconstruction”, “historical truth” and “narrative truth”. In Part I of the article, these concepts are discussed in an historical context, in particular, Freud's view, the narrative tradition and some of Bion's ideas. In Part II, an attempt is made to synthesize these concepts. It is argued that the constructed character of the unconscious has to be integrated into the patient's reconstruction of his/her life story. The psychoanalytic project enables the patient to create a new narrative that claims to possess historical validity. It is important in this context not to understand the notion of “history” objectivisticallv as if it were a question of revealing certain objective historical facts. Instead, it is suggested that the connection between the present understanding of the past and the past as it was experienced in the past should be understood as a fusion of horizons. Finally, the necessary function of consciousnesslself-consciousness for the psychoanalytic project of acquiring knowledge about one's unconscious is pointed out.     

Psychoanalysis as science

This work explores two “Copernican shifts” in the history of psychoanalysis. The first is Freud's recognition of the motives behind the constructions of psychic reality; the intrusion of the wish in the subject's perceptions. The author explores the roots of this recognition in the scientific tradition of Kant and Helmholtz, and suggests that these two predecessors were topical for Freud in their deviation from a theory of “immaculate perception”. The other theme of this work is what the author suggests is a contemporaneous “Copernican shift” in psychoanalytic theory. This shift consists in a recognition of the topicalness of the experience of reciprocity. Connections between this experience and the experience of the self are described, and implications for the theory of the psychoanalytic process are suggested.     

Reflections on Freud's Dora Case After 48 Years

I revisit Freud's case of Dora from the vantage point of current literary and psychoanalytic perspectives. Mahony (this issue) argues that Freud's understanding of Dora is unconvincing to the modern reader because Dora is a victim of trauma rather than sexual repression. I extend Mahony's ideas in terms of the development of psychoanalytic ideas, place Freud's view in the context of my psychoanalytic education in the mid-20th century, and suggest that modern contributions to trauma theory and memory further support the thesis that Dora was a victim of trauma rather than of conflicted libidinal desires.     

ANALYTIC MIND USE AND INTERPSYCHIC COMMUNICATION: DRIVING FORCE IN ANALYTIC TECHNIQUE,PATHWAY TO UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL LIFE

Developed from established psychoanalytic knowledge among different psychoanalytic cultures concerning unconscious interpsychic communication, analysts' use of their receptive mental experience—their analytic mind use, including the somatic, unconscious, and less accessible derivatives—represents a significant investigative road to patients' unconscious mental life, particularly with poorly symbolized mental states. The author expands upon this tradition, exploring what happens when patients unconsciously experience and identify with the analyst's psychic functioning. The technical implications of the analyst's “instrument” are described, including the analyst's ego regression, creation of inner space, taking mind as object, bearing uncertainty and intense affect, and self‐analysis. Brief case vignettes illustrate the structure and obstacles to this work.     

Freud,the Serpent and the Sexual Enlightenment of Children

Abstract

This paper examines Freud's interpretation of the myth of the Fall, which he sent to Jung in December of 1911. After a textual-historical exegesis of the Genesis narrative, I argue that many features of the myth, which Freud construed in Oedipal terms, are more intelligible in light of his theories of infantile sexual researches, which he abandoned in 1910. The etiological shift away from infantile sexual researches (and the consequent Oedipalization of analytic theory) were 1) not prompted solely by clinical considerations, and 2) heralded dramatic changes in attitudes toward children and the rejection of paternal authority in Freud and his circle, and 3) corresponding changes in the structure and organization of the psychoanalytic movement itself, creating an orthodoxy or “party line”.

The term “orthodoxy” means “uniformity of belief”, and is usually applied to religious groups, whose dogmatic emphasis on a specific body of doctrine serves to define the group's membership and boundaries, and to exclude “unbelievers” from its midst. In this sense, Freud's style of leadership was distinctly “religious”. Due to deep seated resistances in the analytic world, it is possible that disparities between Freud's earlier and later attitudes toward children will never be thematized and explored with the attention and seriousness they deserve. But the attempt must be made, and by exploring the Genesis narrative, we can grasp the personal and political motives that molded Freud's theory of religion, and glimpse the outlines of paths not taken in the clinical theory.