The Truth About Freud's Technique. Michael Guy Thompson

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СКАЧАТЬ this kind of criticism of academic philosophy that is shared by modern existentialists and phenomenologists such as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gabriel Marcel, Paul Tillich, Miguel de Unamuno, and a host of others. Although Edmund Husserl is credited as the father of phenomenology—the philosophical foundation for modern existentialism—Heidegger is credited with the “existential turn” away from the tedious abstractions of HusserPs thought. He based his philosophy of existence on a more passionate, everyday, and concerned interpretation of Husserl, borrowing heavily from the nineteenth-century philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche and Soren Kierkegaard. Whereas Husserl—who, like Freud, was Jewish—became a devout Christian, Heidegger, an agnostic, was deeply concerned with theological questions, such as the nature of Being, revelation, and truth. Although Heidegger wasn’t a religious man, his philosophy was adapted by theologians and atheists alike due to the extraordinary power of his thinking and its applicability to everyday, and contemporary, ethical concerns. Yet, there was no kinship expressed by Freud toward the existentialists and apparently no relationship between them. Attempts have been made to link Freud’s early education to Franz Brentano, HusserPs mentor, but even the most casual reading of Brentano’s work would show a clear antipathy toward the very notion of anything akin to an “unconscious” (Spiegelberg 1972, 128). On the other hand, Freud was apparently influenced by Brentano’s lectures on Aristotle and attended several of them. Brentano’s Christian background seems to have touched Freud and for a time he was so taken with this strikingly handsome and charismatic man that he once confided to a friend, “Under Brentano’s influence I have decided to take my Ph.D. in philosophy and zoology” (Vitz 1988, 52). But mysteriously, Freud neglected to acknowledge this debt in any of his published writings. Even if Freud might have looked on Heidegger’s philosophy more favorably than he did HusserPs, a philosophy much closer to the Greeks, they were hardly contemporaries. Freud was an old man in 1927 when Heidegger published his first major work, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit).

      Still, Freud’s quest throughout his life, by his own admission, was a search for truth, a philosophical quest. Freud’s professional life was concerned with establishing the universal acceptance of psychoanalysis—the “science of the unconscious”—which aimed to disclose the nature of reality. This is an unusual thing for a scientist to be concerned about. Few psychoanalysts today talk about the nature of reality. It is simply accepted as a given. We all know what it is. As far as the question of truth is concerned, there aren’t even many philosophers who are preoccupied with it; most deny that it’s knowable! But Freud’s life was devoted to unravelling the nature of truth and what it means for something to be real. Perhaps the most distinctive concern that set Heidegger apart from his contemporaries, and this is even more relevant today, was his criticism of modern philosophers whom he accused of having forgot to ask the following question: “What is the nature of truth, and what is the nature of a being who can ask this question?” Perhaps Freud and Heidegger—unlike so many of their contemporaries in psychiatry and philosophy—were asking the same question: “Who are we, what are we doing here, what do we want?”

      Although Freud never openly asked about the nature of truth, he instructed his analytic patients “to be truthful” in order to obtain the most beneficial outcome of their analysis, knowing it was impossible for them to be entirely successful. His reflections on the nature of reality (see Part One) are philosophical queries, not scientific “investigations.” His use of the word real is frequently meant to convey a sense of what is inherently true rather than what is objectively factual. He wasn’t looking for accuracy but rather for what a person sincerely and genuinely believed to be so. Freud’s use of concepts such as phantasy and repression were invaluable for determining what was true about the things that were said, felt, experienced, and actually occuring in the analytic situation. What, then, is the nature of this truth, and the reality it imposes on us?

      Freud’s conception of reality fostered irreversible consequences for the development of his views about psychic structure, emotions, and the nature of psychopathology. If your conception of reality, for example, were rooted in your experience of anguish, as was Freud’s, you might, in turn, conceive of phantasy as an alternate reality that you could retreat to—Freud called it a “reservation”—in order to escape from the pain of existence. These phantasies would, you might infer, be experienced as reassuring and pleasurable. Psychic structure, if it were faithful to this premise, would be conceived accordingly. If my experience of reality is frightening, then my conception of reality should be frightful. In the face of it, I might contrive to split myself into separate entities or “selves” in order to avoid my experience of un-pleasure. My ego (I), in order to cope with reality, may have to employ a subterfuge (call them defenses) to protect my secret (call them unconscious) wishes, as added security from the possible intrusions of an environment (reality) that is frequently opposed to those wishes. Freud’s conception of reality depicts it as inherently uncooperative. Whatever my wishes may be, reality is my master. Yet, my phantasies allow me to be master, in a fashion. Although they temporarily appease, reality can’t, however, be held in abeyance forever. Freud’s conception of primary and secondary thought processes is based on this view of reality. It conveys a quality of harshness and difficulty, but it isn’t inherently pessimistic, as some have supposed. In fact, a closer reading would suggest the contrary. When Freud characterized “real” love as the kind that submits to the reality principle while upholding a capacity for genuine pleasure, the seemingly irreconcilable barrier between pleasure and reality, between primary and secondary thought processes, between id and world, dissolved.

      Freud’s tendency, however, of equating reality with what is externally valid compromised his philosophical quest for truth, diluted further by the limitations imposed by empirical verification. By articulating his search for truth within the confines of observable data, Freud’s hopes for establishing the foundations for an epistemology of the unconscious—which is intrinsically unobservable—became increasingly remote. This is why there is no “philosophy of truth” in Freud’s body of work—even if psychoanalysis is concerned with no other question. The unconscious, by definition, can’t possibly be observed. It can only be thought. If psychoanalysis is going to be used to explore experience, this exploration needs to answer the most fundamental questions about human knowledge—its truths and its reality. If Freud’s vocabulary obscures this question, how can we justify the inherently philosophical interrogation his clinical work introduced? If a psychoanalytical conception of truth was never finally articulated by its founder—who nonetheless devoted his life to this task—where might we find one?

      Why not turn to philosophy itself? And what better philosopher to ask than the de facto founder of existential philosophy, Martin Heidegger? Why Heidegger? After all, we know the contempt that so many analysts feel toward existential philosophy generally and against Heidegger, the acknowledged Nazi collaborator, specifically.¹ When we talk about a road less traveled—the one between psychoanalysis and existentialism, between Freud and Heidegger—we know the obstacles must be real, even passionate. But there is more to the rift between psychoanalysts and Heidegger than “the Nazi question.” Even if Heidegger is sometimes accused of anti-semitism—whether jusdy or not—or if his betrayal of his former teacher, Husserl—a Jew—was politically motivated or personal enmity, there is more to these accusations than personalities or politics. Heidegger’s thought is assumed to be fundamentally opposed to any psychology that is founded on the notion of an “unconscious.” This perception, I believe, is wrong. Existential thought has always entertained the dimension of the latent and concealed, that place from which consciousness belatedly appears under the guise of “symptomatic” expression. The problem we all face, philosophers and psychoanalysts alike, is determining the nature of this latency and a method by which it may be understood. Once this misunderstanding about existential philosophy has been corrected, we can travel that road from Freud to Heidegger and see what is there.

      1. Space doesn’t permit me to go into Heidegger’s relationship with National Socialism, prior to and during World War II. A heated controversy has recentiy ensued over the extent of Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazis and why (Farias 1989; Rockmore and Margolis 1992; Wolin 1991). For a balanced view of this controversy, which examines the motives surrounding СКАЧАТЬ