Toward a Psychoanalytic Theory of the Subject
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2.The Background of Psychoanalytic Thinking
As expected, most psychoanalysts considered the effort to locate
psychoanalysis within the Western Culture waist of time, and irrelevant to
their work. In fact, this belief is embedded in another more significantly
misleading: psychoanalysis is an applied technique of psychotherapy that has
‘sort’ of a theory of psychopathology, and likely has some useful input for
other areas of the humanities. Thus, all one only needs to learn its
theory of psychopathology and the technicalities of practicing it as psychotherapy.
Consequently, psychoanalysis wold look at as an entity in its own right, and
could (should) be learned in specialized institutes, and the graduates form
closed communities of people of a kind. At best, those communities open their
doors very narrowly to allow a little knowledge to seep out, but always protect
psychoanalysis from being contaminated by foreign -none analytic- ideas or
ideologies. The result of this common belief -as we all acknowledge by now- is
a steady deterioration of psychoanalysis itself, declination of its status that
was once of a highly-admired enterprise, and an obvious drop of interest in its
restoration. Although psychoanalysis is not suffering from this progressive
condition equally in every part of the world, there is no denying, though, that
it is happening universally creating a global crisis.
The general trend in contemporary psychoanalysis is to keep
correcting or improving its current bad condition, and ignore the call for
making the necessary changes that address the causes of the crisis. Albeit that
all attempts at correcting psychoanalysis have failed, there is vehement
reluctance to even look at our resistance to change. I believe this reluctance
comes from four sources that when actualized in unison they become irrational
objections to change. They are: 1.change is an implicit admission that
psychoanalysis is not perfect as we keep claiming, 2.unlike all other
epistemologies it does not need revision from time to time, 3.we
do not know what changes to
be introduced and how to to do them, 4. and what will psychoanalysis be
like if we change it? I am not underling the fear of the major disagreement
amongst us if we decided to make changes to what we hardly already agree
on now. Those four issues are a result of psychoanalysis being treated
by us as an epistemology without any roots or links with anything that came
before or came after.
The simple and direct reason to locate psychoanalysis within its western culture’s framework is to reveal that it is essentially linked with other active elements of that culture, therefore it should be been evolving and progressing with those elements. I firmly believe that those links would show that psychoanalysis is still as important as it has always been to the culture as whole, not only to its practitioners. Accepting this point of view puts the practicing psychoanalyst in a bind: deny its links it has with the rest of the culture, thus let it die while the culture keeps renewing itself, or widen his knowledge to include in his learning none-clinical literature keep it developing it with the rest of the culture. Up till now, learning what is not clinical has not been of significance in analytic training, and there is no conscious concern about how our future will look like, as an isolated epistemology. Moreover, instead of seeing Freud as major link in a significant chain of thinkers, he idealized as an isolated lonely genius who does not belong to anything or anywhere in the past or in his time. He is deprived of his status as a main contributor to a major culture.
I want to frame this idea as a central question in my attempt at
approaching the theory of the human “subject”: Is Freud a link in a
chain of interlinked thinkers and philosophers, or a link without a chain or
any other attachment that could locate his place in his culture?
My immediate answer right away is that Freud is an important link
in a chain of great thinkers who led him to where to started contributing to
his culture. His link connects psychoanalysis to other links, despite analysts’
admitting that hesitantly or giving it a lip service. Freud’s link has been and
is open for many other chains of idiographic sciences. Those chains should be
recognized in order to connect psychoanalysis to its culture and give it a
serious push toward a theory of the human subject, which is the only
possible and real future for it.
A prelude to psychoanalysis:
Western culture started with its subject being alive but not
really extant; an object and agent of knowledge but not emoted or humanly
definable. The reason was an underdeveloped sense of separation from his physical
world (social infantilism). With the evolution of the subject the he acquired a
sense of being outside the world around him; the subject of the Cogito. Ultimately,
the culture advanced to form the principal question a culture of its nature and
calibre had to pose and puzzle about: what about the subject's sense of
existence and his awareness of “being
within a culture, yet not part of it”'? What does it mean that the
subject has an existence? When we look back at the Cartesian Cogito we realize
that the first step taken to acknowledging the subject’s existence was by
underlining his duality (a thinker and the thinker of thinking). This might
sound, today a frivolous question because we are so familiar with the
manifestations of the subject to wonder about his existence. Nonetheless, the
question would mean something if acknowledge that the subject was the creator
of his knowledge, and also able to realize that he was the precipitator of his
ignorance, because his ignorance became a key to unlock that secret. Positing the
problem that way confronted the thinkers and the philosophers with a puzzling subject: he was more
than the object of the scholastic philosophy of the pre-Descartes times; he was
both an item of nature and a transcendental awareness of nature itself,
that is, his knowledge of it. The subject had an “exteriority” that turned him
into an object of empirical presence, but his transcendence of his empirical
existence pointed to a stubborn “interiority” that always transcended his
empiricism.
The subject’s duality changed from “I think, therefore I am” to “I
am, even when I am not thinking.” Foucault (1970), in response to this shift in
the concept of the subject, said, “The cogito will not therefore be the sudden
and illuminating discovery that all thought is thought, but the constantly
renewed interrogation as to how thought can reside elsewhere than here, and yet
so very close to itself: how it can be in the form of non-thinking” (p. 324).
As we will see later, the problem was not the separateness of two modes of the
subject’s existence expressed in a duality, but rather finding the solution that would
sustain the subject’s duality in spite of his duality that could make him
stranger to himself. The question was where is the link between the poles
of this dual existence? The reason for not coming up with the an answer- from
the beginning- was that scholastic philosophy, which dominated the emerging
western culture from the twelfth century to the seventeenth century was not
interested in the human subject as such, but in his mind and empirical
existence (a trend that some analysts keep alive by striving to turn psychical
events into empirical facts). Scholastic philosophy was overwhelmed by the
richness of the empirical subject that was then-for the first time – a
participant in solving his empirical existence.
After an admirable effort by the scholastic thinker to account for
the subject’s empirical attributes, philosophers, and German philanderers in
particular, turned around to look at the interiority
of the subject. A brief account of the efforts of the thinkers and
philosophers in revealing the human subject is a very valuable step-by-step guide
to the final discovery of the duality of the conscious\unconscious, which was
Freud’s lot in life to explicate and work on to give us psychoanalysis. Without
reviewing that effort, it would be impossible to understand, and appreciate
Freud's half-century of efforts to discover the unconscious. Without reviewing
the philosophical background of psychoanalysis, it will look as if Freud has
stumbled over psychoanalysis and its birth was just a stroke of luck.
After Descartes’ initial stab at the barrier between scholastic
philosophy and the exploration of the subject’s interiority, philosophers began
a great trek toward the core of the subject’s duality. Spinoza’s (1632–1677)
thinking was influenced by the Cartesian difficulty in regard to the issue of
causality, which resulted from the separating the predicate of existence from
its attributives in the Cogito. Thus, Spinoza founded his philosophy on the
single and only substance that has the basis and the multiplicity of attributes
that constitute the reality in which we live (nature or God). His monotheism
had one system that underlay the reality of everything but still had two
attributes: thought and extension [material and not-material].
In that sense, the subject was both mind and body but in unison. Damasio (2003)
put it this way: “The reference to a single substance [in Spinoza] serves the
purpose of claiming mind as inseparable from body. Both created, somehow, from
the same cloth. The reference to two attributes, mind and body, acknowledged
another duality the distinction of two kinds of phenomena, a formulation that
preserves an entirely sensible ‘aspect’ dualism, but rejects substance dualism”
(p. 209). Spinoza had the notion that the mind contained the capacity to
perceive facts but could also perceive its perception (apperception) or become
conscious of its own capacity; a more elaborate way of putting the cogito in a
different mode of duality of the subject. He specified a third duality based on
the previous one: cause and reason. Perception dealt with the
world and led to uncovering its causes, while apperception dealt
with the reason of things (its grammar!). This dualism reflected a fourth
duality: even though brain and mind were inseparable, they were two distinct
entities, physical and psychological. In spite of Spinoza’s monotheism, he
resorted to the notion of attributes to account for the perceptible dual nature
of the subject. Spinoza, in spite of his basic premise was insightful of the
impossibility of dealing with any subjective attribute without having its
double in perspective.
Leibniz (1646–1716) developed a theory of a world composed
of units, self-contained centres of force of which everything is formed. He
called those units “Monads.” Each Monad was perceptive and desiring, and the
subject was constituted of those dualities. In those dualities, perception was
geared toward facts and was distinguished from apperception, or the awareness
of perception and the reasoning of the perceived. Therefore, the truth of a
fact referred to the principle of sufficient reason (nothing takes place without
a reason). This principle was a passive quality of the mind and just mirrored
the factual world around it. Truth of reason, on the other hand, referred to
the principle of identity, which stipulated that a thing could not also be its
opposite. This principle was innate and an active attribute of the mind
(apperception). Leibniz’s conception of the dynamics of perception and
apperception put the duality of the subject in a context of polarities that are
qualitatively disconnected but connected hierarchically (quantitatively). Monads
were organized in a hierarchy in which the Monad of the soul, for instance, was
above that of the body and exerted control over it. His theory led to a concept
of unconsciousness that was closer to the desiring aspect of
the Monads, which did not abide by reason. The unconscious in that definition
could return in other states of consciousness, like in the form of dreams, for
instance. Leibniz’s philosophy, though monotheistic in form, was dualistic in
substance.
Kant (1724–1804), as he himself stated, was the Copernicus of
philosophy. He shifted the duality of the subject’s world into a duality in the
subject’s mind. In other words, he did not accept that the world imposed on the
subject a dual approach to perceiving it; rather, he believed that the
subject’s mind was capable of only a two-stage approach to reality. In his
theory, the human subject was endowed with “sensibility,” a passive and
receptive quality of the mind, which was affected by things as they are.
Sensibility generated intuition, which was an active quality of the mind.
Intuition begot the understanding of what was sensibly perceived. Intuition in
turn was a product of “a priori” categories in the mind that configured the
domain of objects into a domain of concepts, thus engendering thought.
Knowledge did not conform to the domain of objects; rather, it was the objects
that conformed to sensibility and the categories innately utilized in forming
those categories, concepts, and thought. Sensibility and understanding were the
limits of our interpretation of our world and the reason that we could not
perceive “things in themselves” but only things as they appeared to us. Kant
introduced the concept of imagination (which transcends perception) as the compromise
between sensibility and understanding. It provided the synthetic categories of
causality, reality, reciprocity, etc. It allowed perception to become thought,
thought to become understanding, and understanding to become judgment. His view
was that natural sciences deal only with the appearance of things and do not
yield any knowledge of things in themselves.
Fichte (1762–1814) thought that Kant did not explain the link
between sensation and understanding and did not expound on the derivatives of
the innate categories that organized our knowledge. However, he took Kant’s
notion of I think as the datum of experience and embarked on a very novel
metaphysical trip into duality. He stated that both the world and I were strangers
to us, though it was the I that apprehended both the external (the non-I) and
the mental states (the I). The I that apprehended the mental states did that
transcendentally and not by taking the mental as an object of its action,
because the I was not a thing or a substance. It was an activity of
self-positing that existed in self-awareness but was continually in a
dialectical engagement with the non-I (the antithesis), a dialectical negation
to affirm the existence of each of them. A second duality was born: that the I
has to negate itself in order to become the synthesis of that duality. The most
important outcome of the dialectics of the I was Fichte’s expansion of the
issue of understanding. He considered the I’s understanding to be geared toward
causality because causality was an internal understanding, while reason was
external (note his reversal of Spinoza’s formulation).
Hegel’s (1770–1831) approach to comprehending the subject was more
straightforward and penetrating. He considered the entire history of
Man’s intellectual development a continuous effort of the mind to know itself. He
perceived knowledge as a process that is dialectical. At any stage of its
progression it unravels the ignorance that needed to be removed by virtue of
that knowledge. Thus, a kind of new knowledge emerges as a synthesis of
previous knowledges and the ignorance that constituted its antithesis.
Nothingness becomes the antithesis of being and forces the mind to discover
itself. This dialectical motion produced rationality, which is the equivalent of
reality, therefore making anything real intrinsically rational. Hegel’s
philosophy was an examination of the subject’s mind and its natural way of
knowing, and it was, at the same time, the natural way of knowing the subject’s
mind.
Fichte and Hegel’s dialectics were not helpful in analysing the duality of the subject. There was no clue to
which of the representation or the represented constituted the thesis, so we
could constitute a clear polarity of thesis/antithesis that would permit
further analysis. Even the notion of the link as a synthesis did not lead to
anything of value, because it contained nothing more than elements of both the
represented and the representation. However, this time the subject took centre
stage once again; this time as the location of that link. The subject turned
out to be the creator of the link and the one who should discover it. His
success or even his failure in discovering that link meant an effort to
discovering his “self.” The previous dualities between the subject and nature
gave way to a duality between a subject’s reason and his emotions. The subject
alone was to unlock that puzzling secret. The subject who was supposed to know
had become the object of that knowledge, and the process thus came to a gradual
halt. The subject had become a subject
and an object of knowledge, both waiting for someone to find a way to introduce
them to each other and unlock that impasse.
Schelling (1775–1854) took the opposite position from Kant’s view
of where duality existed. He was of the opinion that duality is a quality
inherent in nature, because nature effectuated and expressed itself according
to the law of “polarities,” or as pairs of opposite though complementary
forces. He talked about the unconscious in the context
of a process that strives toward its negation. Thus, he posited it in the
context of a duality with consciousness. He considered the whole nature of life
a teleological advancement toward consciousness, thus the unconscious, in his
consideration, was a manifested finality that is a teleological advancement
toward consciousness. It is not clear whether he meant that nature has that
quality of unconsciousness or he conceived of nature as the unconscious state
of the human mind that strives toward consciousness (see Hegel).
Schopenhauer (1788–1860) viewed the world as a representation of
the way the principle of sufficient reason (Leibniz) is applied in the four root
areas of thinking: the physical world we perceive; judgment or the logical
sphere, where truth lies; spatial and temporal intuitions (mathematics);
motivation and will. Comprehending the laws of causality led him to understand
their conceptual representation (Vorstellogen), which was secondary to
abstraction. Schopenhauer distinguished between the thing (the phenomenal) and
the thing-in-itself (the noumenal). He applied that duality to the subject and
came to the conclusion that the nature of the nominal subject is unconscious,
and that his unconscious was a storehouse of motivations and desires, while the
phenomenal Subject was conscious, even if only of part of himself. Thus, the
unconscious was reflective of the subject’s truth and will. Schopenhauer’s
unconscious was very much the antecedent of Freud’s id (a reservoir of
the instincts).
Von Hartmann (1842–1906) tried to find the common ground between
Schopenhauer and Kant. He agreed with Schopenhauer that the ultimate reality of
the subject was unconscious, but he did not agree that it was “blind” will. Von
Hartmann regarded the unconscious as having two coordinated functions: will and
idea. Will was unable to produce any teleological processes and was accountable
for the sense of existence of the that, or the world, while idea was incapable
of objectifying the world and accounted for the what of the world, or the nature
of that world. He suggested that the end of telos is the
liberation of the idea from servitude under the will. Therefore, it becomes
possible to advance toward consciousness.
In the nineteenth century, the metaphysics of German idealism were
matured enough to start declining. However, exhausted it looked, it succeeded
in leading to the point where the subject’s perception of himself as an object
of consciousness, and his consciousness of his consciousness, revealed an
intrinsic and definite gap, if not an abyss in those dualities. This gap,
demanded bridging. Metaphysics in general and the issue of the subject’s
duality were facing unavoidable shifts due to a general acceptance and
assimilation of the ‘subject’s duality’. One of the most prominent of those
shifts was Marx’s (1818–1883) dialectical materialism and what
he referred to as turning Hegel’s dialectics downside up. He was critical of
Hegel’s notion that reality is a product of ideas, which made the thought
process an independent act of the spirit (mind). Marx’s penetrating insights
into the limitations of Hegel’s idealism emphasized that the subject’s
consciousness and his being were determined by the material social conditions
he lives. Marx was the only philosopher yet who linked the subject’s duality
with social reality. He explained consciousness as a reflection of inter-social dynamics that initiates awareness on a social scale. His inter-social dynamics
related awareness to interaction with between the subject and his society, i.e., not in vacuum.
Although Marx meant the subject as a constituent of his society-not
an ontological entity- he was the first philosopher who indirectly
(unconsciously) raises the issue of the intrapsychical structure of the
individual. In Marxism, the subject is an entity that is moulded by
its society, thus whatever the subject is, his ‘potentials’ will be arranged
according to the demands put on him from his society in order to join and fit
in it. The subject is the elaboration of the workings of the social forces.
This conception is the underpinning of Freud’s exploration of role of the
interfamilial dynamics in ‘making the subject’.
German metaphysical idealism led to a subject that, first of all,
is not an ontological entity but a phenomenon of being and becoming. It also
established his dual property as his basic condition and not a matter of
opinion or choice. Thus, the subject emerged from all those philosophical endeavours
a phenomenon of existence and not merely an empirical entity. The phenomenologists and the existentialists
(e.g., Husserl and Heidegger, 1889–1976) considered the subject’s duality an
existential dilemma. There is no escaping from the fact of the non-singularity
of the subject, but the subject is a singularity that is of being-in-the world.
The dilemma of comprehending the dual existence of the subject is the gap
between the constituents of his duality. The essence of the dilemma was a gap,
which is very much the essence of his existence, because the subject’s
consciousness and whatever was not yet in his consciousness (Foucault called it
the unthought) are together his existence. In other words, duality stood for a
schism in the subject that gave him a bi-existence. The most that could be done
with this dilemma came from the notion that bi-existence in the world
introduced the concept of the counterpart.
The subject is himself and a counterpart of himself. But what is the counterpart? Is it
different from Schelling’s unconscious or Schopenhauer’s? Yes, it is different,
as we will see a bit later.
This very brief -almost hasty- exposition of the dealings of the
thinkers with the issue of the human subject highlights points of interest that
relate from near or afar to issues that were examined in a ‘psychoanalytic’ way
by Freud, in his 53 years of working on the human subject. Freud is a product
of that philosophical heritage (he thought of becoming himself a philosopher.
Every philosopher in the chain of Western philosophy uncovered and aspect of
what is human in the human subject. They reached the point where duality has to
be “meaningful”. Duality had to find its explanation not in philosophy but
outside its sphere, i.e., virtue is not only a religious demand but is also a
social value.
Psychoanalysis was then born; the
subject and his counterpart
learned to speak and listen to each other.
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