In a radically powerful interpretation of the human condition, this book redefines the discipline of psychoanalysis by examining its fundamental assumptions about the unconscious mind, the nature of personal history, our sexualities, and the significance of the “Oedipus Complex.” With striking originality, Barratt explains the psychoanalytic way of exploring our inner realities, and criticizes many of the schools of “psychoanalytic psychotherapy”
that emerged and prospered during the 20th Century.
In 1912, Sigmund Freud formed a “Secret Committee,” charged with the task of protecting and advancing his discoveries. In this book, Barratt argues both that this was a major mistake, making the discipline more like a religious organization than a science, and that this continues to infuse psychoanalytic institutes today. What is Psychoanalysis? takes each of the four
“fundamental concepts” that Freud himself said were the cornerstones of his science of healing, and offers a fresh and detailed re-examination of their contemporary importance.
Barratt’s analysis demonstrates how the profound work, as well as the play- fulness, of psychoanalysis, provides us with a critique of the ideologies that support oppression and exploitation on the social level. It will be of interest to advanced students of clinical psychology or philosophy, as well as psycho- analysts and psychotherapists.
Barnaby B. Barratt, formerly Professor of Family Medicine, Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University in Detroit, he now prac- tices psychoanalysis in Johannesburg, South Africa, and holds professorial appointments at the University of Witwatersrand and at the University of Cape Town.
What is Psychoanalysis?
100 Years after Freud’s ‘Secret Committee’
Barnaby B. Barratt
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge
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Barratt, Barnaby B., 1950–
What is psychoanalysis? : 100 years after Freud’s ‘secret committee’ / Barnaby B. Barratt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Psychoanalysis. 2. Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939. I. Title.
BF173.B206 2012 150.19´5—dc23 2012011078
ISBN: 978-0-415-69273-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-69274-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-09505-8 (ebk) Typeset in Garamond by Book Now Ltd, London
may these writings contribute to the happiness and freedom of all beings.
About the author ix
Preface xi
1 Opening the question 1
2 Consciousness and the dynamics of repression 11 3 Personal history and repetition-compulsivity 39 4 Sensual embodiment and the erotics of experience 65
5 Oedipal complexities 88
6 What are healing practices? 115
7 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 131 8 Ideology-critique and spiritual–existential praxis 165
References 181
Index 213
Barnaby B. Barratt, PhD, DHS, practices psychoanalysis in Johannesburg, where he is a Training Analyst with the South Africa Psychoanalytic Association, and a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association. He was previ- ously a Training Analyst with the American Psychoanalytic Association and Professor of Family Medicine, Psychiatry, and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University in Detroit. Currently, he is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town and Visiting Professor at the University of Witwatersrand. He may be contacted at [email protected].
Other books by Barnaby B. Barratt Psychic Reality and Psychoanalytic Knowing (Analytic Press, 1984)
Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse: Knowing and Being since Freud’s Psychology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)
The Way of the BodyPrayerPath: Erotic Freedom and Spiritual Enlightenment (Xlibris/Random House, 2004)
Sexual Health and Erotic Freedom (Xlibris/Random House, 2005) Ten Keys to Successful Sexual Partnering (Xlibris/Random House, 2005) What is Tantric Practice?
(Xlibris/Random House, 2006) Liberating Eros
(Xlibris/Random House, 2009)
The Emergence of Somatic Psychology and Bodymind Therapy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
My purpose in this book is to provoke discussion and genuine dialogue among students, academic colleagues, and practitioners about the authentic conditions of the healing modality known as psychoanalysis. How is this discipline to be defined? What makes psychoanalysis psychoanalytic? And how are we to establish its distinctive features that might empower us to dif- ferentiate it from other modes of discourse, and from other modes of dyadic interaction? In my scholarly assessment and in my personal experience, psy- choanalysis constitutes one of the great discourses of human liberation. Yet, as a discipline, especially as one that claims not only to heal the psyche but to do so scientifically (which is to say, at the very least, in a methodical and comprehensible manner), it has a peculiar history of recurrent controversies and crises. Even today it is arguably in a disheartening condition of intellec- tual and experiential disarray; hence, the mandate of renewed examination and debate.
What is psychoanalysis? To anyone unfamiliar with its checkered history, it might seem strange to have to ask this question over 11 decades after Sigmund Freud’s proclamation of this new discipline. Surely if it has been around this long, we should know what it is? This may seem stranger still given that, in many parts of the world, the practice of “psychoanalysis”
appears to be thriving. Almost all of the Western European countries have longstanding psychoanalytic organizations and, since the dramatic events of reunification, countries in the former Eastern Bloc are now developing their own institutes. Candidates are being trained, professional papers are being written, conferences are being held, and – most importantly – patients are being treated. Psychoanalytic organizations all across South and Central America have a vitality that is impressive, and similar organizations are also significantly active in Australasia. In the United States, the American Psychoanalytic Association, as well as other North American institutes affili- ated with the International Psychoanalytic Association, remains moderately strong and “psychoanalytic therapy,” under the auspices of the American Psychological Association, has been an ebullient presence in the past few decades. Moreover, despite cultural differences that are not to be underesti- mated, the presence of psychoanalytic organizations in other parts of the
world – South Asia, the Far East, and Africa – is gradually being felt.
Psychoanalysis may have originated in a Eurocentric manner, and subse- quently been dominated by the affluence of its North American adoption, but its universal potential as a healing modality is being explored in ways that are, to say the least, fascinating.
So given all this activity across the globe, why would we need to ask what the discipline is? The answer, of course, is that institutional structures do not – and should not – be taken to define the intellectual and experiential viability of a discipline. The mere fact that training institutes produce card-carrying practitioners of an organization labeled “psychoanalytic” says next to nothing about the discourse being practiced. And it is the question of discourse that concerns this book.
Today, well over 100 years since Sigmund Freud’s initial grasp – in the twilight years of the nineteenth century – of a discursive method by which to allow our unconscious mind to disclose itself, almost every educated person across the globe knows that there is such a discipline as psychoanalysis. Yet few can define it (contrast this with, for example, microbiology, astronomy, or linguistics). Indeed, even comparatively talented students of the human sciences, including those training for the mental health professions, usually fumble for a definition and have only a hazy vision of how psychoanalysis actually operates. Surely this is a rather odd state of affairs? Additionally, such students are not always readily able to locate a sophisticated text that can offer a concise and reasonably authoritative exposition of this healing art that also claims the honorific status of a science. So while the primary purpose of this book is to inspire renewed debate over the definitional essentials of the discipline as a special mode of discourse, a secondary purpose is to provide a sophisticated, even if challenging, text that introduces an intellectually- discerning person to the powerfully transformative discipline known as psychoanalysis – at least, as one seasoned practitioner comprehends it.
As we progress through the second decade of the twenty-first century, the discipline of psychoanalysis can only be perceived by most outsiders as being in a very confused state of affairs. Still more disconcerting is that the disci- pline remains somewhat confusing even after one has entered into studying it, trained for many years to practice it, and is working diligently within it!
The proliferation of training institutes and organizations might give the dis- cipline the appearance of robust health; but beneath this appearance, there is a profusion of viewpoints, theoretical traditions, and schools of practice each calling themselves “psychoanalytic” and often holding to quite divergent visions of the human condition. Rarely do they converse and when they do it is not in a way that would reassure an intelligent audience that a single lan- guage is being spoken. So while this book is not, and cannot be, a scholarly and authoritative history of the psychoanalytic movement (or movements), another purpose is to examine some of the quite divergent assumptions about the nature of the human condition that underlie this immanent Babel, and to
do so in a way that might stimulate dialogue between divergent viewpoints.
As prolegomenon, allow me to schematize a minimal list of these diverse lineages that call themselves “psychoanalytic.”
1 There are “classical” practitioners – although what this means is often far from clear, since almost every psychoanalyst claims some sort of adher- ence to Freud’s multitudinous works.
2 There are practitioners whose major theoretical allegiance is to the work of Melanie Klein or Wilfred Bion and their many successors, including the many so-called “neo-Kleinians” – although perhaps it is problematic to group these as if a unitary item.
3 Other practitioners orient themselves more to a series of “independent object-relations” theorists, such as Donald Winnicott and numerous oth- ers – and again, this corrals theorists as different as Winnicott, Ronald Fairbairn, and Harry Guntrip in a way that is perhaps unfair.
4 Some practitioners subscribe tenaciously to the precepts of “ego-psychology,”
with its structural–functional depiction of the mind, as first described by contributors such as Anna Freud, Heinz Hartmann, and David Rapaport.
5 There are those whose practice follows the concepts of self-psychology and who admire especially the work of Heinz Kohut.
6 Deriving their perspectives both from object-relations and from self-psy- chology, there is also a variegated grouping of interpersonalists, relational psychologists, “intersubjectivists,” and the like – which is not to imply that there are not significantly serious differences within this motley collection.
7 There are practitioners who hold that the theories bequeathed by the writings of Jacques Lacan give them an exclusive right to be called Freudians.
8 Still more are post-structuralist practitioners, influenced by existential- ism, by deconstruction, by feminism, by post-colonial liberationist thinking, and by somatic psychology. Obviously, this too is a heteroge- neous category.
And, of course, there are others, including those who have made a stalwart but bewildering effort to learn from multiple vantage points, even while acknowledging that eclecticism cannot be a valid approach to clinical prac- tice. This list could easily become even more extensive and, as it is, almost everyone will have some disagreement with my cursory presentation of it. For the moment, my point is that, although all practitioners in the eight catego- ries above call themselves “psychoanalytic,” there are radically discrepant interpretations of the fundamental features of the human condition passing under this label.
There are two sorts of attitude that are often brought to bear on lists such as the one I have just adumbrated. The first attitude suggests that, although there are divergences in theoretical formulation, psychoanalysts are mostly all
doing something quite similar in their practices. As cheerily comforting as this attitude might be, it begs the seriously disquieting question as to how a more or less unitary mode of discourse could possibly generate so many diver- gent descriptions of its processes. The second attitude suggests that the rubric
“psychoanalysis” has become virtually meaningless; that there are, in fact, different discursive processes and clinical procedures each claiming – legiti- mately or illegitimately – to be “psychoanalytic.” This raises other disquiet- ing questions as to why it is that psychoanalysts all feel the need to lay claim to the title, and all proclaim some derivation of their ideas from those of its progenitor, when they are scarcely able to converse meaningfully with each other about their differences.
In addition to this theoretical bedlam, the contemporary picture that psy- choanalysis presents as a professional practice is acutely ambiguous. It may currently be seen either as burgeoning or as stumbling into oblivion, depend- ing almost entirely on the angle from which you view it. With respect to the Western world, it has influenced the general culture quite profoundly through the course of the twentieth century, stimulating a variety of signifi- cant transformations in the fields of mental health, education, the humanities as well as the arts, various aspects of cultural or political theorizing, and even the “hard sciences.” However, after the 1950s, its influence on psychiatry and on the general practice of psychotherapy (which would include the prolifera- tion of non-psychoanalytic therapies) has been more mixed, particularly in the United States. In other parts of the world, any assessment of the way in which psychoanalysis has influenced and is influencing the general culture must also be cautious in its appraisal. How psychoanalysis will further impact the tricontinental world (specifically Asia and Africa), especially those cul- tures that are not traditionally Judeo-Christian, will be most interesting to evaluate. This is a task for the future; a conclusive determination would still seem premature.
It is possible to argue that psychoanalysis could have a bright future. But it is also possible to render a strong argument that its future is at best uncer- tain. So much depends on what is meant by “psychoanalysis.” So much depends on the present and future capacity of the planet’s educated popula- tion to comprehend its precepts and thus to grasp the value of its practice. So much depends on the ability of psychoanalysts to take a stand on what might seem to be a paradoxical commitment: namely, to be both open-minded (and thus committed to dialogue with each other, as well as with other scholarly advances), and yet clear-sightedly firm as to the essential features of their discipline. Sadly, it cannot be said that, over the past century or more, psy- choanalysts have generally risen to the stringencies of these commitments, and the remedy of this most serious situation is another reason for the publi- cation of this book.
Of particular concern to me is a tendency that I have personally witnessed over the past several decades in the United States, which is to broaden the
notion of “psychoanalysis” such that it denotes any psychotherapy that is oriented to understanding the patient’s experiences in terms of the meaning- fulness of his or her inner world. In my view, this tendency confuses psycho- dynamic therapy (which I shall define in due course) with psychoanalysis (which may be regarded as a particular species of psychodynamic therapy), and it is precisely this sort of confusion that is addressed by the inquiries to be undertaken herein. In short, my threefold wish for this book is that:
1 It focus the question as to what are the defining essentials of psychoana- lytic discourse.
2 It provide students with a sophisticated and challenging presentation of this exciting discipline (for it is my conviction that the simplifying and easy-to-read “introductions” to psychoanalysis invariably do considerable disservice to the reader’s ability to grasp the discipline’s excitement and its far-reaching implications for our understanding of the human condition).
3 It stimulate renewed dialogue between psychoanalysts of divergent allegiances that they may better understand the significance – or insignificance – of their differences.
This project may well be overly ambitious, so three limitations should be noted preliminarily.
First, I am going to restrict my inquiries to psychoanalysis as a discursive praxis engaged by two individuals, a psychoanalyst and an adult patient – because this is where psychoanalysis began as a method of interrogation and it is the context from which its diverse theorizing allegedly emanates. So I will sidestep the issues raised by a multitude of clinical and non-clinical pro- cedures in which psychoanalytic ideas are applied in other arenas. There will be no discussion here of clinical work with couples or groups, or even to clinical work with children. No disrespect for these therapeutic enterprises is intended by these omissions – I merely assume that there is something unique about the engagement of the psychoanalyst with his or her adult patient, and that to examine this in a way that is manageable requires this restrictive focus. Also, there will be no inquiry as to the validity of applying psychoanalytic ideas to the study of cultural artifacts such as literature, to the comprehension of mystical revelations and other spiritual or religious phe- nomena, or even to the interpretations of contemporary neuroscience. This again should not be taken to imply that these endeavors lack merit, but rather this limitation makes my inquiry manageable by restricting it to the clinical situation in which the discipline originated.
My choice of the term “discursive praxis” as a starting-point may also be contentious. There are many who, when challenged to definition, will say
“it’s a relationship” (as if anything isn’t). But then, in my experience, such people usually deteriorate into drivel when asked what sort of dyadic encoun- ter makes this process distinctive. Thus, for me, discourse is the issue.
There are also those who, failing to elucidate the peculiarities of psychoana- lytic discourse per se, resort to definitions in terms of exterior features. Examples of this would be ridiculous declarations that a process is psychoanalytic only if it is undertaken by a formally qualified psychoanalyst (whose membership of the right institute is in good standing); it is only psychoanalysis if it requires meeting at least four times a week; it is only a psychoanalytic process if the patient is lying supine on a couch and the psychoanalyst is seated out of sight.
And so forth. Sadly – nay, disastrously – psychoanalytic organizations and train- ing institutes have themselves regressed to this sort of externalized definition, as I shall discuss in Chapter 1.
Second, this book functions more as a set of arguments concerning the defining features of what I understand to be psychoanalysis, rather than being a guide to all the multifarious practices that call themselves psycho- analytic. Having taught many seminars on “comparative psychoanalysis” to candidates in psychoanalytic training and other professionals, for about a decade I considered the possibility of attempting an authoritative and com- prehensive text on this topic. I backed away from such an ambition, partly because it seemed dauntingly complex and monumental, partly because I resist exercising the patiently encyclopedic mindset and fastidious indexing skill that is required to accomplish this well, and partly because it truly does not seem to me to be what is necessarily most needed in the field at this point in history. What I believe is needed is not so much a compendious review, as a shorter work that would provocatively focus discussion and dia- logue on the authentic essentials of the discipline, and at the same time provide a rudimentary exposition of its conduct; that is, to take up a posi- tion as to what defines psychoanalysis as a discipline, and then let others criticize it or dissent from it. Given this ambition to provoke genuine debate, I have tried to improve readability of a complex text by not over- loading it with qualifications and footnotes. To do justice to all the litera- tures addressing the issues that are discussed in this book would produce an oversize and cumbersome text, and thankfully the bibliographies required for any follow-up exploration of the literature are relatively easy to find (since psychoanalytic indexes and search engines are now available). By the same token, the reader seeking education in the complex nuances and theo- retical details of psychoanalytic theorizing – particularly of the more arcane speculations of the metapsychological models – may be disappointed. My aim is to present a challenging but nevertheless introductory picture of the essentials of the discipline that can serve as the coordinates for reappraisal.
This limitation makes the book into an essay, rather than an exhaustive treatment of any particular issue.
Third, in a sense that is important to acknowledge, the ideas presented herein are my understanding of the essentials of psychoanalysis as a discipline and my understanding of the way in which it is to be practiced. As the stand- point of one individual practitioner, it must be emphasized that this essay is
not to be taken as representative of any particular tradition or school within the field. Hopefully, this will actually be seen as one of the book’s strengths.
That said, it seems warranted in this Preface to inform the reader briefly of the extent and trajectory of my involvement with psychoanalysis. I first encoun- tered psychoanalysis in my early twenties as a patient, following a significant depressive breakdown in my everyday functioning as an undergraduate stu- dent who was troubled by culture shock (I had lived in India, and then returned to England) as well as the painful dissolution of my first love affair.
So impactful was the experience of even this brief encounter with a “psycho- analytically-oriented” treatment (which I have described cursorily elsewhere) that I was determined to seek full psychoanalysis and the opportunity to train as a psychoanalyst. I immigrated to the United States and, having earned my first doctorate at Harvard University and undertaken postdoctoral training as a psychologist at the University of Michigan’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, I eventually succeeded in scraping together the funds for personal treatment and gained admission to a training institute under the auspices of the American Psychoanalytic Association. I have been professionally practicing in a psychoanalytic mode continuously since 1975, beginning institutional can- didacy with the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute in 1980, and acquiring full membership of the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1991. In the course of this odyssey, as a patient I completed two courses of full psy- choanalysis with Training Analysts and as a practitioner I started seeing patients in full psychoanalytic treatment in 1982. I have taught seminars on psychoanalytic topics since 1979 and developed what were – for me – memo- rable seminars on working with dreams, on comparative psychoanalysis, and on psychodynamic sexology. I was appointed a Training and Supervising Analyst with the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1996, and I cur- rently practice in Johannesburg as a Training and Supervising Analyst with the newly developed South African Psychoanalytic Association. It is on the basis of all these experiences, together with over four decades of reading and writing, that I offer this essay.
One result of the longevity of my involvement with psychoanalysis is that it is not possible to list all the individuals I should acknowledge and for whom I wish to mark my appreciation. Such a list would begin with the three practitioners with whom I have been in treatment, and also with the numer- ous individuals whom I have been privileged to serve as their psychoanalyst.
All of these must remain anonymous. It would also include the psychoana- lysts, who at various times supervised my clinical work or with whom I consulted when I encountered seemingly insuperable difficulties. In the course of my career I have benefitted from my acquaintance with many gener- ous colleagues in psychoanalytic institutes across the world, including such thoughtful individuals as Christopher Bollas, Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, Darlene Ehrenberg, Merton Gill, Arnold Goldberg, James Grotstein, Juliet
Mitchell, and Donald Spence. I am also greatly indebted to Professor Mark Solms, who invited me to relocate my psychoanalytic practice to South Africa. At a crucial stage of my writing in the 1990s, I was greatly encour- aged by letters I received from Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva in response to the 1993 publication of my Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse – how- ever, this should not be taken to imply that either of these brilliant thinkers endorsed my thesis. Over the years, I have been the appreciative recipient of generous support and much needed criticism from a number of other scholars who are not themselves practicing psychoanalysts, and here I wish to mention especially Maggie Boden, Sam Kimball, Jerry Piven, Tod Sloan, Barrie Ruth Straus, and Peter Wolff. As is customary in these matters, I hasten to empha- size that I alone am responsible for whatever flaws there are in what follows.
Johannesburg, South Africa January 2012
Opening the question
It is now over 100 years since September 1909, when Sigmund Freud gave a week of lectures at Clark University in Massachusetts, introducing his way of understanding the human condition to an American culture both tenuously eager and, in so many respects, profoundly ill‑prepared (Hale, 1971, 1995).
He was approaching the culmination of what was over a decade of intense revelations, unseemly politicking, and prolific writing. These five introduc‑
tory lectures were an attempt to define and present the kernel of his discipline.
In the period approximately between 1896 and 1914 Freud articulated his monumental contributions – so I argue.After 1914 or thereabouts, Freud’s writing took on a slightly but discernibly different flavor. I am not the only commentator to discern this shift (e.g., Green, 2002), although I have my own specific sense of its significance (e.g., Barratt, 1993). In the early years (starting with his first psychoanalytic writings in the mid 1890s), Freud’s use of the term Ich or “I” is clearly tied to the subject’s lived experience – to the sense in which we know that ideas, images, and wishes that are not repressed indeed belong to us. In the years from approximately 1914 until his death in 1939, this denotation is ablated by Freud’s emphasis on das Ich, “the ego” as an organization that may be objectively assessed. This shift is, in my view, both unfortunate and profoundly significant. In so many ways, Freud’s theo‑
rizing after 1914 became more systematic; his presentations less about his discovery of a method by which to interrogate the human bodymind, more about metapsychological exposition. I will discuss later why I favor the notion of the “bodymind” (see Barratt, 2010a; Dychtwald, 1977).
Subsequent theorists would be inclined to select a particular aspect of the later metapsychological formulations and, to a greater or lesser extent, yoke their endeavors to one of these post‑1914 contributions. There are three main variants of this tendency. First, there are those whose theorizing develops from the set of essays written in 1915 that, among other contributive aspects, significantly advanced the formulation of “object‑relations.” Second, there are those whose theorizing leans on the ambitious conjectures of the 1920 essay, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which posited the controversial notion of Todestriebe (“death instincts”). We might note here that, whereas some have
understood this notion in terms of primal aggressivity and sadism towards whatever is “loved” (a Kleinian reading), others have interpreted its explora‑
tion of repetition‑compulsivity in terms of the subject’s relation to absence and the abyss of death (a Lacanian reading). Third, there are those whose theorizing takes Freud’s promulgation of ego‑psychology published in 1923 (translated as The Ego and the Id ) and 1926 (translated as Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety) as the pinnacle of his work and have consequently developed the structural–functional model of mental life.
However, for me, the great pre‑1914 discoveries of a discourse by which to interrogate consciousness are of prime significance. As justification of this focus, it might be noted that, even as late as 1923, Freud insisted that psy‑
choanalysis is not primarily to be identified with its grand theories of the mind, nor even with its successes in treating the troubles presented by people designated as patients, but rather with its method. It might also be noted that, in the closing years of his life, Freud believed that only two of his written works would prove to have lasting value, which were those first published in 1899 and 1905, the years that represent the zenith of his methodical innovations.
It is facile – and seriously mistaken – to claim that Freud was a genius who simply built one theoretical formulation on top of another with what might seem like a rather cavalier disregard for explicated sequential integration.
This is the story presented by his hagiographers (e.g., Jones, 1953–1957), and it is far from convincing. It is also discernibly mistaken to claim that somehow the various theories propounded by Freud all have an indisputably tight connection with the mode of inquiry, and thus form some sort of linear progression or intellectual evolution. Freud’s theoretical formulations are not neatly nested within one another like matryoshka dolls, nor do they follow on from each other like a neat flow chart of syllogistic chains, prompted by his accumulation of additional clinical experience or “data.” Moreover, they are always, like every depiction of the human mind, intensely allegorical – beau‑
tiful “similes,” as Ludwig Wittgenstein once pronounced them – and as such, their connectedness is often evocative but elusive. I believe it is more useful to acknowledge that, somewhere around 1914, there was a rupture in Freud’s style of thinking and writing; a rupture that has been called a “caesura”
(Green, 2002). Rather than pretend that there is “one Freud” – for the fire‑
works he ignited did not illuminate in a singular trajectory – I suggest that it is more challenging, more accurate, and ultimately more useful to admit that, as Freud approached his 60th birthday in 1916, as he battled with can‑
cer, and as he countenanced the horrors of a world at war, something shifted in his stance. He became less the revolutionary, more the patriarch engaged with systematizing grand theoretical formulations and with nurturing his legacy. In this shift – it is my opinion – something of the vivacious engage‑
ment with the radical discovery of a method of interrogatory healing was lost. In this book I shall argue that, with this loss, the four tenets that Freud
himself called the Grundpfeiler, the foundational pillars or coordinates of psychoanalytic discipline, became compromised or endangered.
Freud himself was quite aware that significant discoveries about the human condition can indeed be lost beneath a mire of competing ideologies (see Gay, 2006; Henry, 1993; Jacobsen, 2009; Makari, 2008; Weber, 1982). The way of the world is not necessarily characterized by progress. However, some of Freud’s actions in response to this insight actually sabotaged the hopes and intentions he had for his own discipline’s future. In addition to his somewhat sporadic efforts to showcase a coherent yet evolving exposition of the dis‑
course he discovered, Freud himself resorted to a fetishistic procedure by which to defend his disciplinary territory. This prompts the subtitle of this book, for it is exactly 100 years ago that Freud formed a “Secret Committee”
by which to arbitrate who or what was doctrinally “in” and who or what was doctrinally “out” (Grosskurth, 1991). The year was 1912; Freud was no doubt offended by the almost sophomoric departure of Alfred Adler in 1911, engaged in the process of profoundly painful divergences with Carl Jung (who finally resigned in 1914), and perhaps anticipated the problems to be caused by Abraham Brill, who was busy establishing psychoanalysis in the United States. Reacting to these situations, Freud decided to implement a proposal made by Ernest Jones. Jones suggested that an inner circle should be covertly established and charged with the task of “keeping the faith.” This is my characterization of its mandate, because I believe this was the egregious period in which effectively a decision was made that psychoanalysis should be as much a religious organization, promulgating a faith, as a scientific move‑
ment. Going along with Jones’ fanciful intrigue, a year later Freud gifted intaglios to a group composed of Karl Abraham, Sándor Ferenczi, Otto Rank, Hans Sachs, and Jones himself. Max Eitington was added to this inner circle in 1919, and Freud’s own daughter, Anna Freud, joined the group when Abraham died in 1926. The first five apostles had their intaglios set into rings, signifying no doubt their betrothal to the newly‑born International Psychoanalytic Association, which had been established in 1910, and their commitment to the ideological perpetuation of a particular orthodoxy.
Although it is not entirely clear what functions it actually performed, the
“Committee” operated discreetly until its dissolution in 1936. Sadly, it must be said that the attitude that constituted the Committee lingers in the operation of many, if not all, psychoanalytic organizations (see Loewenberg and Thompson, 2011).
There is clearly some historical precedent for great wisdom traditions being preserved through periods of adversity by means of secret transmission. Think here of certain spiritual practices being sheltered from persecution on the part of religious and political orthodoxies (Barratt, 2006). However, it is usu‑
ally disastrous to believe that truths can ultimately be protected by blatant authoritarianism, elitism, and organizational chicanery. This sort of maneu‑
vering regularly characterizes the dogmatically evangelical fundamentalism of
religious clans and cults, to their detriment. For example, truth resides in the Rabbinical Council, the College of Cardinals, the 12 Ima‑ms, or whatever esteemed body pronounces itself in this hegemonic manner, and it then follows that ordinary individuals have, at best, an inferior access to it. At this point in time, it is difficult to have sympathy for whatever reasoning might have prag‑
matically justified Freud’s agreement with the installation of this Secret Committee by which to protect the truthfulness of his discipline from real and imagined persecution.
The irony and the tragedy of the Committee’s formation are immediately evident, well documented and discussed by Phyllis Grosskurth (1991), which may be contrasted with François Roustang’s (1975) equivocal justification of psychoanalytic discipleship. Psychoanalysis was, after all, proclaimed to be the science of the unconscious; it opened for us, in Freud’s words of 1915, “a critical new direction in the world and in science” (eine entscheidende Neuorientierung in Welt und Wissenshaft). What if the essential momentum of psychoanalytic dis‑
course depends on its own openness as a process of interior revelation and critique, and thus itself challenges the notion that dogma and orthodoxy can ever lead to liberation? Are not the claims to a curative or emancipative science ultimately voided by any implied admission that the life of the mind pro‑
gresses by rhetorical forces of affiliation to authority and the organizational structures of formalized allegiance?
Freud may well have established his inner circle mindful of then‑present apostasies and prescient of future ones. He certainly formalized the Secret Committee acutely aware that the discoveries of psychoanalytic inquiry pose a serious threat to the complacent equilibrium of the bourgeois mind. “It has become my fate,” he wrote in a 1911 letter to the existential psychologist Ludwig Binswanger, “to disturb the peace of the world” (Binswanger, 1957).
On three occasions in his published writings (in 1915, 1916, and 1925), he compared his discoveries to those of Nicolai Copernicus and Charles Darwin.
They had delivered the three great blows to human narcissism. Our planet is not the center of the universe; our species is not separated from the plant and animal kingdoms by its divine ordination; and (perhaps most disturbing of all, since it is closest to home) our narcissistically endowed ego cogito is not master of our being‑in‑the‑world. The discovery of psychoanalytic discourse liberates, but it also threatens ominously. As W. H. Auden (1939: 216) wrote in his memorial poem, in Freud’s method of “unsettlement,” it is no wonder that
“the ancient cultures of conceit” would anticipate the “fall of princes, the col‑
lapse of their lucrative patterns of frustration,” as well as the impossibility of the ideologies of everyday life and a breakdown of “the monolith of state.” It is not only those who hold social and political power over others who should shudder at the exposés of psychoanalytic interrogation. On the level of each of us as individual humans, our egotism resists mightily the process of facing its own truthfulness – namely, that the “me” of self‑consciousness is not captain of the enterprise.
However, taking its place as the standard‑bearer of a revolution was not actually how the Secret Committee seems to have understood its mission.
Indeed, the formation of this elite group was little about guarding a doctrine that would be dangerous to the status quo. If anything, its members, who were sworn to complete confidentiality and required to profess almost abso‑
lute devotional loyalty to Freud, seemed enthusiastic to sanitize psychoanaly‑
sis and dedicated to making their version of it more available for public consumption. In general, the Secret Committee’s purpose was to establish and protect a guild as well as to uphold the banner of the Freudian brand against any competing theoretical formulations. For example, despite British efforts at reconciliation (with respect to the animosity between Melanie Klein and Anna Freud), in a series of “controversial discussions” that took place in the early 1940s, Kleinian perspectives were often viewed by the heirs to Freud’s familial empire as a deviation that needed to be uneasily tolerated and thus contained within the international organization (Hughes, 1989; King and Steiner, 1992; Kohon, 1986; Loewenberg and Thompson, 2011; Stepansky, 2009). Conversely, Lacanian views were judged a deviation that warranted excommunication by those who inherited the mantle of the Committee’s authority several decades after its formal dissolution (Gallop, 1985; Oliner, 1977; Ragland‑Sullivan, 1987; Schneiderman, 1984; Turkle, 1992).
Even as a less‑than‑lofty organizational tactic designed to hold a “church”
together (which, as with all religious consortia, implies that those who do not correctly subscribe to the faith have to be cast out), the Secret Committee must be judged something of a failure. For it did not prevent doctrinal splintering, organizational fracture, and the development of divergent theoretical positions infected with intolerance for each other’s viewpoints (Zaretsky, 2005). Today, it is evident on scrutiny that the label “psychoanalysis” is adopted quite pro‑
miscuously, as referring to a perhaps diverse range of practices of discourse, manifestly involving only two people, and accompanied by a bewildering cacophony of theoretical formulations about the functioning of the human mind. In my Preface, I listed eight versions – the “classical,” Kleinian, struc‑
tural–functional, Lacanian, and so on. Indeed, the history of the psychoanalytic movement through the 20th Century provides an appalling spectacle of in‑groups and tightly‑knit clubs fighting with each other, of internecine rival‑
ries, backbiting and name‑calling that is only thinly veiled in professional courtesy, of rampant authoritarianism, of politically motivated expulsions and the formation or counter‑organizations, and thus of proliferative organiza‑
tional splitting. All this is well known, but little acknowledged publicly, and all this has only occurred within the 11 decades after the publication of Freud’s 1900 opus magnum marked the full initiation of his discipline.
To an outsider, the inability of psychoanalysts to agree on the character or conditions of their discipline and to get along in the politics of its organiza‑
tions is, to say the least, baffling. There is no comparison with any other scientific discipline. For example, archaeologists and oceanographers do not
waiver in their ability to define and describe the object of their investigations;
theoretical physicists occasionally fight with rancorous disagreements, but they still belong to the same professional organizations and still read the same journals; anthropologists diverge around the interpretation of a particular cultural phenomenon, but they are all aware of each others’ interpretations and ready to articulate the differences, usually without name‑calling. In psy‑
choanalysis, scarcely any of this can be said to be the case. Not only is the
“object of the inquiry” still a matter for deliberation, but the conduct of its practitioners as a supposedly scientific community has left much to be desired, for organizational fracture and sectarian hostilities have characterized the past 100 years of the psychoanalytic movement.
Today, there are schools of psychoanalysis which, if they do not blatantly forbid their students to read papers written from dissenting perspectives, certainly deter such open‑minded exploration. There are psychoanalytic groups that actively prohibit their trainees from seeking clinical supervision with qualified practitioners whose allegiance is to a different lineage. Other psychoanalytic institutes permit trainees to read literature from traditions other than that in which they are being schooled, but mostly so that diver‑
gent viewpoints can be lampooned. Thus, open‑minded engagement with competing ideas is often averted, and serious discussion as to what clinical experiences could lead theorists to promulgate divergent viewpoints is squelched. I could easily cite several specific examples of each of these situa‑
tions, but for the sake of diplomacy I will decline to do so.
We need to understand why these situations occur, and the most chari‑
table explanation refers to the fact that training to become a psychoanalyst is quite unlike training to become a geologist or a biochemist. A central reason for this, which is somewhat difficult for an outsider to appreciate, is that the discipline of psychoanalysis has to be transmitted by means of each trainee having a personal psychoanalysis. Quite rightly, one must undergo at least one full psychoanalytic treatment if one is to become a psychoana‑
lyst. This is a necessity and perhaps the one issue on which all genuine psychoanalysts agree – only a charlatan will call him or herself a psycho‑
analyst if he/she has not undergone the process. Unfortunately, this mini‑
mal standard still leaves much leeway for dogma, egotistic conceit, and hegemonic elitism. The discipline is a discursive praxis, and thus requires far more than subscription to a set of abstract theoretical propositions or the disengaged acquisition of a set of technical precepts. The requirement to undergo a full personal psychoanalysis as the centerpiece of disciplinary training is the unique strength of psychoanalysis and also, arguably, a source of profound vulnerability. Despite a huge literature of psychoana‑
lytic ideas, the most potent mode of disciplinary transmission is the oral tradition embodied in this relationship, and the unconscious power of psychoanalytic processes is such that it is virtually impossible for any psychoanalyst to get beyond the invisible web of identifications and
counter‑identifications (that is, reactions against identification) with the thinking and the personal style of his or her own psychoanalyst.
If the psychoanalyst who trains you is a zealous Kleinian, it is next to impossible to avoid becoming a psychoanalyst whose labors are not inflected with the marks of Kleinianism. You become, willy‑nilly, either a psychoana‑
lyst who upholds the Kleinian banner or a psychoanalyst who tries very hard not to be too Kleinian. Moreover, all too often, what is entailed by upholding Kleinian doctrine is that you are vehemently against – or, at the very least, trenchantly skeptical of – any mode of psychoanalytic practice that is not Kleinian. I pick this example not to impugn the successors to Melanie Klein’s work. These processes are everywhere evident – in every psychoanalyst and every psychoanalytic organization. Most ego theorists (those who uphold the structural–functional model of the mind) think that Kleinian practice is some sort of a bizarre aberration, even if they keep this thought relatively private.
Equally, Kleinians consider ego‑psychology an apostasy that has lost sight of the unconscious, and especially the influence of what Kleinians call “uncon‑
scious phantasy” over the patient’s inner world or “psychic reality” (Segal, 1994; Segal, 1996; Steiner, 2003). Lacanians tend to disparage any practitio‑
ner who is not in the Lacanian fold. All too frequently, interpersonalist prac‑
titioners, relational psychologists, “intersubjectivists,” and self‑psychologists smugly believe themselves to be on the cutting‑edge of clinical practice, all the while ignoring the serious criticisms that have been leveled against them.
And so forth.
We can never fully free ourselves from the ambivalence and the ferocity of our oedipalized attachments to the psychoanalysts who conducted the per‑
sonal treatment required for our training. This has been discussed as the problem of filiation and the authoritarianism of disciplinary transmission (e.g., Granoff, 2001a, 2001b; Roustang, 1975), and the entire history of psy‑
choanalysis has been castigated for this issue (e.g., Castel, 1976). Our psycho‑
analytic career is routinely limited by unanalyzed (or perhaps more precisely, insufficiently analyzed) wishes to succeed our Training Analyst, to surpass him or her, to be subordinate to him or her, to honor, to rival, to rebel, and so forth. In this sense, a psychoanalyst who mentors a trainee assumes some of the importance of a parental figure and, despite the most diligent effort to understand and overcome these bonds of affection and animosity, affiliation and antagonism, they can never be entirely relinquished. The point is that personal psychoanalysis for training purposes is absolutely necessary, yet inevitably fraught with insuperable risks. No matter how open‑minded and free of narcissism one’s Training Analyst may be, or how open‑minded one determines oneself to be, all of us are bound, in ways that are often deeply tricky, to these identificatory and counter‑identificatory processes. Such psy‑
chological bonds are a breeding ground for dogma and for intolerance toward those who differ or diverge in their opinions or their personalities. That these processes are subtle, and that so many remain unconsciously compelling
despite the most diligent efforts at psychoanalytic exposition, makes their impact on us all the more pernicious. Perhaps what is most remarkable about this oedipalized transmission is not just that every psychoanalyst starts by identifying with a particular mode of practice, but rather how often psycho‑
analysts become rabidly condescending or dismissive toward each other – sometimes politely so, occasionally not. In groups, psychoanalysts are some of the most gossipy individuals imaginable (and, as was taught many centuries ago by Gautama Buddha, gossip always involves malice). In organizations, psychoanalysts fight and fragment with thinly veiled dramatics that do not typify any other discipline or profession (Reeder, 2004). Despite the fact that we practice one of humanity’s most powerful and profound methods for the attainment of insight and wisdom, we as psychoanalysts often cannot see what fools we become.
There is indisputably much foolishness within the history and organiza‑
tional functioning of this discipline, and this is why procedures of the most serious self‑questioning and reappraisal are especially meritorious. Most scientists – think here of plant physiologists, neurologists, or electrical engineers – engage their disciplinary skills, rarely feeling the need to return to questions such as what exactly are we doing and why? With psychoanalysts, this is not the case. Indeed, I believe a responsible practitioner must return to such questions continuously. As André Green once stated, with appropriate vehemence, “if we are not constantly recreating psychoanalysis, we are, in fact, killing it” – or at the very least, letting it die.
The horizons of reappraisal and renewal may be ever‑present, but a centen‑
nial marker such as this – a hundred years after Freud’s establishment of the
“Secret Committee” – prompts their reflective engagement in what is perhaps a more thorough‑going manner. It is in this context that I write this book.
Its ethos is not to excoriate those who practice something that I consider other than psychoanalysis, but rather to present students and colleagues with a brief, sophisticated, and hopefully stimulating exposition of what I compre‑
hend as the core of this still revolutionary discipline.
In defining a disciplinary “core,” Freud assists us with a starting‑point that I believe warrants being taken most seriously. As I mentioned previously, in the course of writing a brief essay for a 1923 dictionary, Freud described his discipline foremost as a method of inquiry and then also – one might say derivatively – as a systematized set of theories and as a way of treating psy‑
chological distress. Thus, method is unquestionably the sine qua non of his discipline. However, as I indicated earlier, the connection between many of his chief theoretical formulations and his quotidian method of inquiry often remains unclear, as indeed it does for every practicing psychoanalyst. For it is notoriously true that the relationship between what psychoanalysts do in practice and the grand theory to which they subscribe is often uneven, to say the least. For these reasons, my focus is on psychoanalytic method, the dis‑
course of the discipline, and the method is free‑associative discourse. Thus, I
shall argue here, contrary to some eminent clinicians who view free‑association as nonessential, that this discourse is indeed the indispensable “heart and soul” of the discipline (see Bollas, 2002; Green, 2000b; Kris, 1996). However, more must be said. Since instrumentalist reason is always suspect, as demon‑
strated in the powerful writings of Max Horkheimer (1967) and others (e.g., Schecter, 2010), one remains wary of defining a discipline solely in terms of its method. In relation to this caution, Freud is consistently clear throughout five decades of writing: If we listen to free‑associative discourse, we discover the repressed unconscious, and moreover the repressive (and suppressive) functioning of consciousness is only elucidated by listening to the sequential flow of its own free‑associations, which Freud also called the train or “chain of thought” (die Kette von Gedanken). This understanding of the unconscious is the focus of the next chapter. To this proposition, Freud regularly offers four addenda:
1 Our egotism inevitably resists free‑associative discourse – which is also to be discussed in the next chapter.
2 Free‑associative listening illuminates how the past influences the present, specifically by what is called “repetition‑compulsivity” (the focus of Chapter 3).
3 Free‑associative listening demonstrates how the sensuality of the “body”
impinges upon the self‑conscious “mind” (or, more precisely, it demon‑
strates the priority of the bodymind’s erotic impulses over its cognitive and emotional functions, which will be the focus of Chapter 4).
4 Free‑associative discourse exhibits not only the inherent contradictori‑
ness of consciousness but also the way in which the cognitive and emo‑
tional functioning of the “mind” is structured by oedipal complexities (which will be explored in Chapter 5).
Although I have emphasized the multiplicity of Freud’s efforts at theorizing his discipline, he assists us quite clearly in our effort to define his discipline.
In several places in his writings – including in works published after 1914 – he introduces the idea that his discipline has Grundpfeiler. These are the foun‑
dational pillars, the main supports or principal tenets that define the discipline. James Strachey’s Standard Edition translates Grundpfeiler as “corner‑
stones,” perhaps conveying the idea that every discipline is a sort of edifice that would collapse if any one of these were to crumble. In my opinion, the transla‑
tion has two problems. First, it depicts the discipline as if it were a static entity, a building that sits in one location rather than a vehicle that undertakes a journey. Second, cornerstones are, by their function and design as the footing of the edifice, separate from each other, whereas the Grundpfeiler of psychoa‑
nalysis are – as we will see – mutually implicated. For these reasons, I prefer the notion of a coordinate to that of a cornerstone. Freud offers four coordinates that define the discipline of psychoanalysis. In my terminology, these are:
1 The free‑associative method that discovers the dynamically repressed unconscious, and our resistance to this discovery as it pertains to ourselves.
2 A profoundly distinctive understanding of the impact of personal history, which involves the way in which consciousness is governed by processes of repetition‑compulsivity.
3 The significance of our sensual embodiment as the ground of our psyche, and thus of our sexual life as fundamental both to our wellbeing and to our distress.
4 The ubiquitous influence of oedipal complexities on the functioning of the human condition, and the way in which processes that are called
“preoedipal” impact these complexities.
In the next four chapters, I will examine each of these in turn, for they are the fundamental coordinates of psychoanalysis as a discipline. I propose to offer my “reading” of the significance of each of the four coordinates for our psy‑
choanalytic understanding of the human condition, concluding each chapter by briefly pointing, under the rubric of “Mistaken Paths,” to the manifold ways in which “psychoanalysts” since Freud have distorted or disavowed his revolutionary discoveries.
Consciousness and the dynamics of repression
It is widely believed that Freud is to be credited as having “discovered the unconscious.” However, this is mistaken. It would be accurate to applaud him as the brave and brilliant pioneer who did indeed discover a revolutionary method of exposing a particular dimension – indeed, the existentially and spir‑
itually most significant and powerful dimension – of the unconscious that ani‑
mates all human beings. This dimension consists of that which is repressed from consciousness. The issues and all the distinctions around the notion of the
“discovery of the unconscious” are somewhat complex, and in this chapter we will take up the challenge of exploring the clinically pertinent aspects of this topic.
In an invited contribution written for the 1923 sexological dictionary edited by Max Marcuse, Freud himself defined the specific activity of psycho‑
analysis als Wissenschaft vom seelisch Unbewußten, “as the scientific (scholarly and methodical) pursuit of the psychic unconscious.” This is a fine definition – except that it leaves open questions about the sort of unconscious and the sort of scientific pursuit that might be involved when a patient and a psychoanalyst engage together in this process. As I just indicated, to tout Freud as having
“discovered the unconscious” is a gross simplification that leads to all sorts of serious confusions. This is not to belittle his accomplishment; rather, it sharp‑
ens our appreciation of it. I believe that his claim is valid if we emphasize that Freud did indeed discover a scientific method for the pursuit of one vital dimension of the psychic unconscious, namely that which is repressed (and also that which is suppressed). The discovery of a methodical way to interro‑
gate the thoughts and feelings that consciousness has repressed from itself was revolutionary. The discovery of a way to illuminate what has been suppressed is also remarkable but less earthshaking. As I have just hinted, Freud’s achieve‑
ment, the discovery of the dynamically repressed unconscious, was – in a spiritual and existential sense that will be discussed in later chapters – enigmatically and extraordinarily momentous. And this is the foremost coor‑
dinate of his discipline.
It may seem an unusual strategy for a book such as this, but let us begin this chapter with an exploration of what is meant by the dynamically repressed unconscious by highlighting three “mistakes” that Freud made in the presentation of his own discovery. These were certainly understandable
“mistakes” and probably unavoidable given the period of his innovations and the professional audience he addressed; they are outlined as follows.
1 Freud’s slight tendency to claim to have discovered the unconscious as such; rather than qualifying the claim as the discovery of a method by which to pursue the dynamically repressed dimension of unconsciousness.
It must quickly be added that his hagiographers, his disciples and succes‑
sors, as well as the simple‑minded writers of undergraduate textbooks in psychology, are far more prone than Freud himself to commit this error.
2 The over‑reaching claim that the repressed unconscious is the “proto‑
type” of all other unconscious processes – although I will discuss one special sense, the speculative notion of “primal repression,” in which this claim might be correct.
3 The presentation of his discovery in a spatial model of mental life – the so‑called “topographical model” of his metapsychological theorizing – when what were actually discovered were contradictory and complexly conflictual temporal relations that impact the functioning of consciousness.
These “mistakes” will occupy the next three sections.
Intimations of the unconscious before Freud
To begin with, we should note that, even at the time of Freud’s first profes‑
sional writings in the final decades of the nineteenth century, the idea of an unconscious as the substrate, origin, or foundation for conscious and self‑
conscious mental life was nothing new (Ellenberger, 1970; Whyte, 1978). In the Western tradition, it could be said to have been known to Plato, especially in his Timaeus, and expanded in subsequent works of neo‑Platonist thinkers (Plotinus, Porphyry of Tyre, Proclus Lycaeus, Meister Eckhart). Intimated in the fifteenth to seventeenth‑century writings of Paracelsus (Philippus von Hohenheim), Baruch de Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz, the idea of the uncon‑
scious features in the early seventeenth‑century writings of Jakob Böhme, which in turn influenced the work of Franz von Baader and Friedrich Jacobi some 200 years later. The idea is developed in Friedrich Schelling’s 1797 Naturphilosophie, which impacted the romanticism of Johann von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and many others all across Europe. More specifically, the notion of the unconscious is also developed in Georg Hegel’s work, perhaps especially in his famous 1807 critique of Johann Fichte’s philosophy of the “I”
or self (Fichte, 1794–1802; Mills, 2002). The second edition of Arthur Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of Will and Representation, published in 1844, addresses issues of the unconscious and was undoubtedly well known to Freud, as would have been some of the works of Søren Kierkegaard and Freud’s con‑
temporary, Friedrich Nietzsche (Carrere, 2006; Chapelle, 1993; Cole, 1971;
Ferguson, 1996; Sussman, 1982). The notion of the “stranger within thee” had
been a theme of fiction since the late eighteenth century, and thus an aspect of Freud’s intellectual environment (Cox, 1980). But more specifically, Eduard von Hartmann’s popular Philosophy of the Unconscious, written in 1869, was mentioned indirectly by Freud in his 1901 book, although strikingly it is not referenced in the preceding work, Interpretation of Dreams (the first chapter of which reads like a conscientious doctoral dissertation that meticulously reviews the extant literature on its topic, going all the way back to antiquity).
Thus, employed in several different ways, the notion of the “unconscious”
preceded Freud’s own contributions quite extensively.
Although trained as a neurologist and natural scientist, Freud was philo‑
sophically sophisticated. He had, after all, sat alongside Edmund Husserl at the University of Vienna where they attended lectures by Franz Brentano (the philosopher best known for his reintroduction of the notion of “intentional‑
ity” as the defining quality of mental acts). So despite Freud’s notorious dis‑
paragement of James Jackson Putnam’s plea for a melding of psychoanalysis with philosophy as merely amounting to a “decorative” addition to the for‑
mer’s scientific labors, Freud was usually both appreciative and admiring of his philosophical precursors (see Boothby, 2001; Hale 1971, 1995; Hale and Heller, 1971; Jones, 1953–1957; Prochnik, 2006; Tauber, 2010). Many of these issues are well documented and discussed in Henri Ellenberger’s 1970 Discovery of the Unconscious, in Jon Mills’ current spate of valuable writings (Mills, 2002, 2010), and elsewhere (e.g., Ricoeur, 1965).
Leaving philosophical and theological precursors aside for a moment, we should note that Freud’s contemporaries in the fields of psychology and psychiatry – leading figures such as Jean‑Martin Charcot, Pierre Janet, Alfred Binet, Carl Stumpf, William James, and Boris Sidis – all used the term
“unconscious” in a variety of ways. But as I will emphasize, none employed the term in the revolutionary manner that Freud developed.
Finally, the impact of Eastern traditions on the milieu of fin‑de‑siècle Vienna warrants mention. In contrast to Jung’s eager, but somewhat haphazard, study of yogic science and related mythologies (Jung, 1932, 1938; Samuels, 1985), including his praise for the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (Evans‑Wentz, 2000), Freud’s interest in Eastern thought seems notably cau‑
tious. His connection to Kabbalist Judaism has been well explored (Bakan, 2004; Klein, 1987; Meghnagi, 1993), but less so his connections with the
“Hindu” and other post‑Vedic lineages of the Sana‑tana Dharmic traditions (Parsons, 1999; Vaidyanathan and Kripal, 1999). Freud’s caution may be an expression of some ambivalence when compared with his strikingly avid interest in the beliefs and mythologies of Western antiquity (Armstrong, 2006; Santas, 1988). Nevertheless, we know that he conversed about Buddhism with the Japanese psychologist Yaekichi Yabe, as well as being in somewhat regular communication with enthusiastic Hindu scholars, Romain Rolland and Bruno Goetz. Perhaps by contrast, Freud’s relationship with Girindrasekhar Bose, who founded the Indian Psychoanalytic Society and
who had translated Patañjali’s Yogasutras, seems to have been strained, per‑
haps because the latter had contested Freud’s reading of the oedipus conflicts and thus initiated an entire debate about the “Indian Oedipus” (Obeyesekere, 1990; Vaidyanathan and Kripal, 1999). It is also worth noting that ideas from various other Eastern traditions, including Taoist and Confucian think‑
ing, became increasingly well known to the Western intelligentsia through‑
out the late 1800s, and may also be very relevant to our understanding of psychoanalysis, specifically in relation to Freud’s psychoanalytic innovations (Roland, 1996; Suler, 1993).
I believe that the impact of Buddhism on late nineteenth century European scholarship and its commonalities with psychoanalytic practice today merit further attention. Apart from other considerations, Buddhist scholarship on the different states and processes of “consciousness,” with its attendant notion of the importance of the “mindstream,” is a longstanding tradition of com‑
plex, sophisticated, and highly intense exposition, which inter alia offers insights into the significance of whatever is not conscious (e.g., Fromm, Suzuki, and DeMartino, 1960; Molino, 1999; Safran, 2003; Wallace, 2003).
Buddhism influenced both Hellenic and Roman philosophy from well before the Common Era and, with the expansion of European colonization in Asia from the eighteenth century onwards, there was a steadily growing interest in Buddhist ideas on the part of Western thinkers (Skilton, 2004). For exam‑
ple, Schopenhauer had read Buddhist texts prior to his major philosophical productions, and Nietzsche was sufficiently familiar with such texts as to praise Buddhism in his writing of Der Antichrist in 1888. All of this suggests the extent to which Buddhist teachings were, at the very least, a significant part of Freud’s intellectual milieu, even if not in the bibliography of his personal curriculum. Moreover there are still commonalities between atheis‑
tic spiritual practices (such as Buddhism can be) and the notion of psycho‑
analysis as a special path of spiritual practice (as will be discussed in the last chapter) that beg for further exploration (Marcus, 2003).
So if Freud did not exactly “discover the unconscious,” what is the distinc‑
tive claim of psychoanalytic method? It is, in words he wrote in 1901, to have initiated eine Psychologie der Verdrängung, a psychology of repression. In a 1914 paper reflecting on all he had achieved in the course of his career up to that point, Freud wrote that the notion of repression is the foremost of the Grundpfeiler from which the entire psychoanalytic endeavor takes off (the notion “on which its whole structure rests”). It is unarguably the most essen‑
tial tenet on which the discipline depends. Freud was clearly aware that ini‑
tiating a psychology of repression was a revolutionary stand that contrasted with all the “philosophies of consciousness” which had so enthralled Western thinking at least since René Descartes. The latter prioritize the ego cogito, or some related notion, and views everything that is not conscious (unconscious, subconscious, foreconscious, preconscious, nonconscious, or a‑conscious) as non‑conflictually and non‑contradictorily related to consciousness (Barratt,
