Eleven theses on Psychoanalysis

In response to a long and interesting thread on Larvatus Prodeo, I think it timely to provide some clarificatory remarks on psychoanalysis, a much-maligned and oft-misunderstood discipline. I will try to be as schematic as possible.

1. Psychoanalysis is radical. The notion of a psychoanalytic unconscious, a part of ourselves that is fundamentally and irreducibly unknowable, beyond any control, and causative of a range of 'symptoms' (from the hysteric's phantom pains, to dreams, to the symptomatic nature of our romantic lives) is radical. Other psychoanalytic notions can make claims of being radical, however, the psychoanalytic unconscious is what gives the discipline its revolutionary character. Whilst Kant, Hartmann, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others all dipped their toes into the murky waters of a radical unconscious, none were as detachedly systematic, whilst at the same time frighteningly intimate as Freud.

Nonetheless, psychoanalysis is not politically radical, Reich being the obvious exception. Freud rejected Marxist theories of the origins of society, and Lacan too was dismissive of Marxism, at least, until the uprisings in 1968 Paris. It is possible that, being Jewish, many early psychoanalysts thought it impolitic to also be socialist, given the Zeitgeist in which they operated. A strong sense of social justice can be found in psychoanalysis, from Freud's Free Clinics to the low-cost services provided by psychoanalytic schools today. This notwithstanding, Freud, and psychoanalysis is best understood, in 19th Century terms, as neither conservative nor radical, but as liberal-bourgeois.

2. Psychoanalysis is not a science. At least, it is not scientific in the sense by which we understand the term in physics or mathematics. Psychoanalysis is a science of the particular, which means it will never deal in the relatively tidy universals of the 'hard' sciences. All the same, psychoanalysis displays greater rigour, reasoning, and explanatory power than most of the rest of psychology, which is why today's neuroscientists, such as Damasio, or Kendall, are turning to Freud rather than Beck or Skinner.

Those who proffer narrow and dogmatic notions of scientificity (that is, most of academic psychology) will find psychoanalysis wanting. However, psychoanalysis is perfectly 'empirical' - it deals with a series of 'ones' rather than seeking to apply structural equation modelling or alpha-tests to subjects reduced to some kind of statistical totality. Like any of the 'human sciences', psychoanalysis incorporates 'qualitative' methodologies, which, though they eschew statistical methods, nonetheless proceed by way of evidence and reasoned argumentation. Indeed, given the flimsy conceptual foundations of mainstream psychology, the latters' fear and hostility towards psychoanalysis must be explained by means other than a recourse to notions of 'empirical validation'.

3. Psychoanalysis is not an art. The discipline, as least in its clinical guise, is not simply some whimsical expression of its practitioner's fancy. Nonetheless, unlike other 'therapies', true psychoanalysis cannot be 'manualised', that is, broken into a recipe book-style series of prescriptions for a therapist or subject. Psychoanalysis stands closer to the arts than any other of the psychologies, partly because art itself is 'symptomatic' and 'over-determined', but also because psychoanalysis does not suffer from the same knee-jerk rejection of all that is not narrowly scientific that its psychological cousins exhibit.

4. Psychoanalysis is anti-authoritarian. When practised by way of assisting the analysand to interpret his or her own associations, psychoanalysis is far removed from the likes of CBT, and refrains from issuing directives and imperatives. Furthermore, psychoanalysis does not stigmatise and pathologise in the manner of the DSM-IV; after all, in psychoanalysis, neurosis is 'normal', or even a best-case scenario, given that the alternative is psychosis. Clearly, someone like Foucault was not enamoured of psychoanalysis, yet any criticism that he (or Deleuze or Guattari) might have made could be doubly said of the highly authoritarian treatment 'regimes' currently predominating in our healthcare systems

5. There are different schools of psychoanalysis. Few analysts would accept all of Freud's teachings, though virtually all would cite Freud as the founder of their discipline. In the post-Freud era, psychoanalytic schools include the Anna Freudian, ego psychology, Bion's analysis, object relations, Kleinian approaches, Lacanian analysis, and the intersubjective school. In addition, there are various offshoots initially inspired by, but ultimately distinct from psychoanalysis, such as Jungian psychology, the neo-Freudians, and Adler's individual psychology. Whilst some of these approaches differ sharply from each other, there is no more sectarianism that what one would find in any other discipline, and the dominant form of analysis that one learns is often a result of one's time and place, or the orientation of one's school. Still, psychoanalysis is not homogeneous.

6. Psychoanalysis is neither misogynist, nor anti-feminist. Whilst feminism has an uneasy relationship with Freud and psychoanalysis, there is a relationship nonetheless. Freud made several problematic statements in relation to feminine psychology, which can be attributed to 3 basic origins:

1. Freud was a (relatively enlightened) product of his times, and consequently gave voice to a number of fairly typical prejudices.
2. The exigencies of some of Freud's theories, and the extent to which he took these theories literally, inevitably led him to some odd conceptual formulations. The Oedipus Complex, when applied to females, is among the more notorious of these.
3. Some of Freud's statements are in fact sexist, and seemingly have no basis in either theoretical or empirical necessity, and cannot be explained away via 19th Century prejudice.

Having established this, it should be remembered that not all feminists are hostile to Freud or psychoanalysis. American analysts such as Nancy Chodorow or Jessica Benjamin are excellent examples of a feminist (and intersubjective) engagement with psychoanalysis.

7. Psychoanalysis is not always encountered in its pure form. Indeed, whilst the neuroscientists and 'cognitive analysts' say that they engage with psychoanalysis, it would be more accurate to describe this engagement as one of colonisation. Psychoanalysis is often subordinate to some other discipline, or else the more radical and subversive aspects of its teaching are neutered. For instance, American ego psychologists, and the CBT practitioners (former analysts) shift the focus from the unconscious to the controllable and knowable conscious. Or take the difficult notion of the death drive, which has been virtually neglected by all post-Freudians other than Klein and Lacan. It is surely no coincidence that psychoanalysis becomes more acceptable, and more 'scientific' to people once it has been stripped of the unconscious, sex, and death.

8. Psychoanalysis is analogous to Marxism. That is to say, as Foucault pointed out, both psychoanalysis and Marxism are discourses that critically interrogate other discourses, often discourses of mastery. In psychoanalysis, discourses of mastery belie the subject of the unconscious, repressing to produce this illusion of 'mastery'. In Marxism, analysis is directed to looking at how class-relations are perpetuated through ideology, and how 'neutral' discourses are often sodden with ideological blindspots. This contributes to both disciplines being 'unacceptable'. Freud's discourse is further unacceptable because it engages meaningfully in those things often presumed to be meaningless, that is, the nonsensical elements of experience normally banished from polite academic company, such as neurotic symptoms, jokes, dreams, and slips of the tongue.

Whilst both psychoanalysis and Marxism undermine discourses of mastery, neither were intended to be applied in a haphazard, reductionist fashion. For instance, whilst a Marxist analysis of 'crime' enable us to observe how class relations and private property underpin our notions of legal transgression, phenomena such as sexual assault can never be exhaustively reduced by an analysis of class relations alone.

9. Psychoanalysis is not post-modern. Despite the protestations of Sokal, and others, there is nothing that Lacan has in common with the likes of Derrida, or Baudrillard, other than a similarly difficult oeuvre. Whilst psychoanalysis is applicable to non-clinical phenomena, there are many examples of what Freud called 'wild analysis' in this field. In addition, Kristeva and Irigary, inspired by analysis, have consciously engaged with the 'post-modern'. It should be remembered, however, that in his New Introductory Lectures, Freud explicitly said that the Weltanschauung of psychoanalysis was scientific and medicinal. All of the major theorists of psychoanalysis have since continued in this tradition, albeit incorporating the concerns of feminism, or linguistics. The struggles of psychoanalysts are not merely confined to obscurantist debates on paper; French analysts, for instance, have documented their battles with an unsympathetic and cynical healthcare system in the journal Lacanian Praxis.

10. Psychoanalysis is not dead. In particular, psychoanalysis thrives in places where Latin languages predominate, from Portugal to Quebec. It is Buenos Aires, and not New York, that actually has the highest per capita amount of psychoanalysts. In fact, psychology in Argentina is taught with mandatory units in philosophy, and does not waste its time with the niceties of statistical analysis. Last year, as I travelled through Europe, it was clear that Freud's 150th birthday was celebrated in London, Berlin, and Vienna. On the other hand, psychoanalysis, as enduring as it is, will never be the dominant paradigm, cumbersome as it is to both the 'normalising' discourse of bureaucratic-medical models, and to consumer capitalism. Historian of psychoanalysis, Eli Zaretsky, said much the same thing in the speeches he gave in Melbourne in 2005.

11. Psychoanalysis is on the side of freedom. This may be paradoxical, given Freud's apparent commitment to a thoroughly determinist model of mental functioning. Nonetheless, if we adopt a notion of freedom that is not simply either/or in nature, we can observe how psychoanalysis helps the analysand obtain freedom by degrees, by replacing ignorance and compulsion with knowledge and awareness.

It is no coincidence that psychoanalysis has been demonised by totalitarian regimes everywhere, from Hitler's Germany, to Stalin's Russia, and is today excluded from authoritarian modes of 'treatment' peddled in consumerist regimes. An anecdote that I heard from an Argentinian Lacanian suggested that Lacan's work found resonance in this latter country precisely because the obscurity of its language kept it from the attention of authorities.

Psychologist have ever but sought to change the human subject, that is, transform him/her into an object, force him/her to identify with a 'therapist', or to become the 'healthy', narcissistic, alienated subject of consumer capitalism.

The point is not to change things, but to interpret them. Through interpreting, change follows in any case, or moreover, analysand interprets for his or her own self. Psychoanalysis teaches the analysand how he or she 'enjoys' his or her symptoms; it does not enjoin the subject to necessarily cease this enjoyment.

Of Dry Facts, Creative Conjunctions & Hirsute Slovenians

A recent and, at times, heated discussion at Larvatus Prodeo, pondered the future of 'the Left', in light of the continued propagation of the Euston Manifesto and the work of theorist Zygmunt Bauman. Inevitably, the discussion turned to a debate over Iraq, with a variety of second-rate, 'third way' spivs and turncoats (á la Hitchens and Cohen) purporting to demonstrate that 'liberals lost their way' by opposing military conquest and the like. It appeared, to me, at least, that focus on the relative merits of the Eustonite's propositions obscured opportunities for sketching sketching a variety of leftward possibilities.

This post will not be an attempt to either churn out a manifesto, or to show the 'true' way forward, but merely to reflect, briefly, on a couple of characters who might provide us with some orientation in these matters.

Despite his name being absent from the discussion, it ought to be almost self-evident that MIT linguist Noam Chomsky is one of the most enduring and important progressive voices in the US. Despite the unceasing verbal attacks against him, he has been a vociferous critic of the US Government, primarily, in matters of foreign policy; but also, to a lesser extent, domestic policy.

Chomsky's political work draws mainly from mainstream media sources, and declassified US Government documents. He has consistently eschewed the supposed obfuscations of 'theory', preferring instead to stick to the dry 'facts'. And, in Chomsky's hands, the 'facts' do speak for themselves, particularly as regards his compelling accounts of media bias, and US Government/CIA devastation of Latin America. His sympathies lie with the 'hard' sciences, and his comments on the 'soft' are generally rather circumspect. Chomsky is particularly dismissive of French theorists; in one discussion, he averred that Derrida's Of Grammatology was 'based on pathetic misreading', and that Jacques Lacan, whom Chomsky had met, was a 'charlatan'. No doubt these sorts of attacks are symptomatic of the (American?) Left's troubled relationship with all things po-mo, of which the Sokal affair is another illustrative example.

Still, Chomsky's analyses are usually well-researched and argued thoroughly, and he does not shy away from offering solutions to political dilemmas, (these solutions mainly consisting of activism at a grass-roots level). Despite his seeming lack of a theoretical framework, and despite the mudslides to which he has been subjected over the years, I am yet to read a convincing rebuttal of his basic political propositions. Certainly, his work takes us some way beyond the casuistry of the Nick Cohen kind. Nonetheless, I think one way of appreciating it best is by juxtaposing it next to the work of this guy:

The fellow above is, of course, Slovenian leftist Slavoj Žižek (pronounced Slahv-oy Zhi-zhek). Žižek's background is in Lacanian psychoanalysis, but he was also involved in Slovenian politics, and he now functions as a kind of intellectual celebrity. He produces works at a rapid rate, the price for this being that much of the work is 'recycled' material. The current crown prince of theoryland, his knowledge of Lacanian formulae and German idealist philosophy is formidable, and applied, with varying degrees of success, to topics as diverse as conflict in the Balkans, the films of Hitchcock and Lynch, pop culture, Leninism, and theories of ideology.

Žižek is, in many ways, a kind of antithesis to Chomsky. Whereas the latter has a natural suspicion of 'theory', Žižek seems to go out of his way to engage the latest intellectual of note; early in his career, this often involved critiques of Derrida and Butler; more recently, he seems to have been taking his cues from Agamben and Badiou. Žižek has few solutions to any political problem - in any case, I cannot recall any instance of him advocating grassroots political action, at least, not without a distinct tone of ambivalence.

Just as Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, enjoined his readers to counterpose Hegel with his antithesis, Kierkegaard, so it would seem that, once the Left has emerged from pseudo-debates with Eustonites, the proper polarity might be one between the brute facts and pragmatic activism of Chomsky, and the high po-mo theorising and revolutionary zeal that we see in Žižek. It might be easy, particularly for those who affect to be 'realists', to simply dismiss Žižek, but, given his psychoanalytic inclinations (which I myself share), I am not inclined to do so. His perspective can certainly elucidate the limits of the 'facts' of the Chomksyian approach, as Žižek points out in an interview:

Or take Chomsky. There are two problematic features in his work — though it
goes without saying that I admire him very much. One is his anti-theorism. A
friend who had lunch with him recently told me that Chomsky announced that he'd
concluded that social theory and economic theory are of no use — that things are
simply evident, like American state terror, and that all we need to know are the
facts. I disagree with this. And the second point is that with all his criticism
of the U.S., Chomsky retains a certain commitment to what is the most elemental
ingredient of American ideology, individualism, a fundamental belief that
America is the land of free individuals, and so on. So in that way he is deeply
and problematically American...

I think that basically the facts are already known. Let's take Chomsky's
analyses of how the CIA intervened in Nicaragua. OK, (he provides) a lot of
details, yes, but did I learn anything fundamentally new? It's exactly what I'd
expected: the CIA was playing a very dirty game. Of course it's more convincing
if you learn the dirty details. But I don't think that we really learned
anything dramatically new there. I don't think that merely "knowing the facts"
can really change people's perceptions.

Having said that, Chomsky also highlights the limits of Žižek's theorising, namely, that it (often) lacks any empirical basis, and that it offers little by way of a path forward. Žižek criticises Chomsky's 'individualism', and his alleged incorporation of 'American' values, but forgets that Chomsky is a polyglot linguist of Russian-Jewish background, who lived in a kibbutz for a year or two. Žižek forgets his own Eurocentrism; the intricacies of wars on the Balkans remain obscure for most on the other side of the Atlantic, and, at least in Australia, 'French' and 'theory' are almost dirty words, at least for some.

We have with Chomsky and Žižek two poles of the Leftist spirit, two antitheses without a sublation (to put an Hegelian flourish on it). Where is this synthesis to be found?

Two cursory possibilities come to mind. Australia, whilst politically beholden to America, owes far more to Old Europe in terms of its culture. Australian democracy derives from British, not American models, and, at least in cities such as Melbourne and Sydney, non-Anglo European cultural influence is widespread.

Secondly, a possible synthesis of these approaches could perhaps be found in any thinker who is willing to traverse both Euro and Anglo spheres of thought. One possible thinker of such a synthesis may be, of all things, a French philosopher, namely, Alain Badiou - whose Polemics I am currently reading. But this shall have to wait for another post.

More Anti-Gallic Bile

Predictably, The Australian editorial today ran the line that France is a country badly in need of neo-liberal 'reform'. The recent vote saw a large turn-out of voters, without about 84% casting a ballot, far more than the numbers at any recent American election.

Nonetheless, French-style democracy does not appear to be to The Australian's liking, for, despite the huge turn-out of voters:

What France needs is not just for voters to turn out at the polls, but to
recognise that the country's low economic growth and high unemployment are the
result of the governments they have chosen.

Comprendez? Although voters don't want US-style 'free' trade, and working conditions slaughtered at the altar of 'economic growth', their elected leaders should have what The Australian calls 'the courage' to impose these 'reforms' anyway.

Of course, Anti-French sentiment became prominent in the Anglophone media around the same time that the French government declared its reservations about the Iraq war. Hardly a coincidence. The likes of right-wing piss stain Mark Steyn (I won't link to him) regularly and eagerly prophesy a French apocalypse at the hands of Islamic hordes.

There is no doubt that France is a country with its share of problems. Still, compared to that bastion of democracy just north of Mexico, it does seem to have a few advantages, like quality of life, fairer distribution of resources, and better healthcare. Oh, and fewer shootings.