Body Memory and the Unconscious

In traditional psychoanalysis the unconscious was conceived as a separate intra-psychic reality, hidden ‘below consciousness’ and only accessible to a ‘depth psychology’ based on metapsychological premises and concepts. In contrast to this vertical conception, this chapter presents a phenomenological approach to the unconscious as a horizontal dimension of the lived body, lived space, and intercorporeality. This approach is based (a) on a phenomenology of body memory, defined as the totality of implicit dispositions of perception and behaviour mediated by the body and sedimented in the course of earlier experiences. It is also based on (b) a phenomenology of the life space as a spatial mode of existence which is centred in the lived body and in which unconscious conflicts are played out as field forces.

Introduction: Know Thyself

This Handbook examines the contributions of philosophy to psychoanalysis and vice versa. It explores the most central concept of psychoanalysis—the unconscious—in relation to its defences, transference, conflict, free association, wish fulfilment, and symbolism. It also considers psychoanalysis in relation to its philosophical prehistory, the recognition and misrecognition afforded it within twentieth-century philosophy, its scientific strengths and weaknesses, its applications in aesthetics and politics, and its value and limitations with respect to ethics, religion, and social life. The book explains how psychoanalysis draws our attention to the reality of central aspects of the inner life and how philosophy assists psychoanalysis in knowing itself. This introduction elaborates on the phrase ‘know thyself’, the words inscribed at the Temple of Delphi, and illustrates the connection between matters philosophical and psychoanalytic in relation to the Delphic command by highlighting their mutual concern with truth and truthfulness.

From Geschlechtstrieb to Sexualtrieb: the Originality of Freud’s Conception of Sexuality

This chapter returns to the 1905 edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality to argue, against claims to the contrary, for the originality of Freud’s conception of the sexual drive (Sexualtrieb), in relation to his philosophical and psychiatric predecessors. After examining the claims that have been made concerning the relation between Schopenhauer and Freud on the question of sexuality, it lays out the conception of Geschlechtstrieb in Freud’s immediate psychiatric predecessors (particularly Krafft-Ebing and Moll) and its connection to the treatment of the same topic in Kant, Schopenhauer, and Hartmann. It then demonstrates how Freud’s conception of the sexual drive, which is divorced from any reproductive aim, is quite different to the earlier conceptions of the Geschlechtstrieb. The chapter ends by suggesting how Freud’s theory of sexuality can be understood as a contribution to a philosophical anthropology.

Ethics: Introduction

This introduction provides an overview of the three chapters in this section, which explores central issues in ethics in the context of psychoanalysis, including the nature of virtue, the ground of normativity, moral development, the relation between reason and passion, naturalism and moral motivation. One such issue concerns Sigmund Freud’s theory of the superego, which is said to undermine the ‘authority’ of morality. The first chapter argues that the superego represses conscience, and that our ‘moral-psychological difficulties’ can be understood only in light of repressed love. The second chapter examines the place of psychoanalysis in the relationship between virtue and mental health, and between vice and mental dysfunction. The third chapter discusses the idea of an ‘evolved development niche’ to address object relations and their role in moral development.

‘A Ritual of Discourse’: Conceptualizing and Reconceptualizing the Analytic Relationship

Freud embarked on his exploration of an unconscious domain hand in hand with his clinical practice. He was thus forced to think deeply about the relationship between doctor and patient. He could not afford—quite literally—to do otherwise. In the postscript to ‘Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria’ (1905), he pondered Dora’s abrupt decision to end treatment and spelled out what he had failed to appreciate in good time: transferences. Subsequent generations of psychoanalysts, particularly Melanie Klein, Bion, and Betty Joseph, pressed on along two separate—but certainly not parallel—tracks: first, stretching the concept of transference; second, introducing the concept of projective identification and rethinking countertransference. The first took off from the expansion of psychoanalytic practice to include children; the second from its expansion to include the seriously disturbed. Taken together these advances, in theory and in practice, led to reconceptualizing the analytic relationship.

Making the Unconscious Conscious

How should we understand the distinction between conscious states of mind and unconscious ones? This chapter briefly reviews an answer to this question that the author has set out and defended in earlier work; it then suggests a new answer—one that supplements, rather than replaces, the old answer. In spelling out this new answer, the chapter offers an account of a distinction that is related to, but not identical with, that between conscious and unconscious states of mind, viz. the distinction between conscious and unconscious expressions.

A New Kind of Song: Psychoanalysis as Revelation

Conceptions of psychoanalysis as science typically construe its key formulations as providing posits to be referenced in inferences to the best explanation of the clinical phenomena. Such was Freud’s own vision of the discipline he created, and it is reflected in his ambition to prove his fundamental formulations warranted. The first half of this chapter argues that this approach and this ambition significantly underestimate the significance of the psychoanalytic project. The suggestion is that it misconstrues foundational—and therefore unaccountable—forms of revelation, apprehension, poiesis, and grammar as merely factual claims, accounts, representations, and posits which, as such, now falsely appear to require scientific accounting. The second half of this chapter explores the significance of this for attempts to capture psychoanalytic theory and therapy within the ‘reflective scientist practitioner’ model of contemporary clinical psychology.

Ricœur’s Freud

Ricœur’s reading of Freud is one of the most comprehensive, perceptive, and judicious explications of Freudianism—one that begins with his early ‘Project’ of 1895 and culminates with the last book that Freud published, Moses and Monotheism. Ricœur is successful in exposing some of the weaknesses in Freud, and even more importantly, in showing why there is a need to move beyond Freud. He also develops the significant idea of a dialectical relationship between a hermeneutics of suspicion and a restorative hermeneutics of meaning—and that they are integral to each other. Ricœur is successful in showing how, if one relentlessly pursues the logic of Freud’s thinking, it leads beyond Freud. But, even though he gives some indications of how such dialectic is to be developed, this remains a task (an Aufgabe) that lies ahead.

Clinical Theory: Introduction

This introduction provides an overview of some of the central issues in clinical psychoanalytic theory explored in this section, such as those relating to drives and symbolism, the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious, and the intentionality of defences. The chapters in this section deal with topics ranging from transference and ‘transference neurosis’ to Sigmund Freud’s contributions to psychoanalysis, with particular emphasis on the shifts in the psychoanalytic theory of symbolism since Freud, his drive theory, his core concept of wish fulfilment, and his understanding of mourning, repetition, and the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis. Also discussed are therapeutic transformation and making the unconscious conscious, along with the meaning of inner integration.

A Better Self: Freud and Nietzsche on the Nature and Value of Sublimation

The notion of sublimation is essential to Nietzsche and Freud. However, Freud’s writings fail to provide a persuasive notion of sublimation. In particular, Freud’s writings are confused on the distinction between pathological symptoms and sublimations, and on the relation between sublimation and repression. After rehearsing these problems in some detail it is proposed that a return to Nietzsche allows for a more coherent account of sublimation, its difference from pathological symptoms and its relation to repression. In summary, on Nietzsche’s account, while repression and pathological symptoms involve a disintegration (of the self), sublimation involves integration. The chapter provides a brief consideration of some post-Freudian accounts of sublimation that, arguably, represent a return to a more Nietzschean approach. In closing, the chapter contrasts the different bases of Nietzsche’s and Freud’s valorization of sublimation.