What is ?

In a radically powerful interpretation of the human condition, this book redefines the discipline of psychoanalysis by examining its fundamental assumptions about the , the nature of personal history, our sexualities, and the significance of the “.” 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, 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 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 First published 2013 by Routledge 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Barnaby B. Barratt The right of Barnaby B. Barratt to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 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 all beings be happy and free; may these writings contribute to the happiness and freedom of all beings.

Contents

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

About the author

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)

Preface

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 xii Preface 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 Preface xiii 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 or 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 and numerous oth- ers – and again, this corrals theorists as different as Winnicott, , and 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 , Heinz Hartmann, and David Rapaport. 5 There are those whose practice follows the concepts of self‑psychology and who admire especially the work of . 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 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 xiv Preface 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 Preface v x 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 easyo ‑t ‑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. xvi Preface

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 Preface xvii 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 xviii Preface

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 Chapter 1 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 2 Opening the question 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 ) and 1926 (translated as Inhibitions, Symptoms and ) 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 Opening the question 3 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 in 1911, engaged in the process of profoundly painful divergences with (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 . 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 , Sándor Ferenczi, , 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 4 Opening the question 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. Opening the question 5

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 6 Opening the question 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 Opening the question 7 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 8 Opening the question 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 Opening the question 9

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. ’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: 10 Opening the question

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. Chapter 2 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 12 Consciousness and dynamics of repression

“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 Consciousness and dynamics of repression 13 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 14 Consciousness and dynamics of repression 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, , nonconscious, or a‑conscious) as non‑conflictually and non‑contradictorily related to consciousness (Barratt, Consciousness and dynamics of repression 15

1984, 1993). Subsequently in continental philosophy, notably in the tradi‑ tion of German idealism, the unconscious is the absolute from, and within, which the productions of consciousness harmoniously arise. By “harmoniously,” I mean that unconscious entities, events, or meanings can be brought under the total control of consciousness, appropriated by consciousness, or that this unconscious constitutes the totality of functions required for the operation of the mechanisms of consciousness, even if it merely forms the mute substrate that functionally nurtures the contents of consciousness; to quote Schelling’s aphorism, “nature begins as unconscious, ends as conscious.” In other words, there is no sense in which it could be said that this unconscious operates in a contradictory or conflictual relation with the contents of consciousness. For Descartes, the ego cogito is a pure starting‑point, immediately available to the reflection of self‑consciousness, which absolutely secures and assures the epistemology and ontology of consciousness; it is, so to speak, uncontami‑ nated by unconscious impulses (Derrida, 1967a, 1967b, 1980). For the sub‑ sequent tradition of idealist formulations, such as those of Schelling, Schopenhauer, and the romantic tradition, it is assumed that whatever might be “unconscious” ultimately joins with consciousness in a mutually inclusive unity. Whatever partition pertains initially between what is conscious and what is not, it is eventually to be brought to resolution. It is these sorts of assumption that Freud’s method challenges in a radical way that must be accurately comprehended.

The widening view of the unconscious after Freud It is evident that Freud did not discover the unconscious as such. He did, how‑ ever, discover the way in which consciousness represses – and suppresses – mental contents that it finds intolerable and, in this sense, he did indeed discover the repressed unconscious. However, he seems to have veered toward the error of imagining this repressed aspect of mental life to be the “prototype” of all mental contents and functions that are not conscious. As we will now see, such a claim gives rise to some conceptual problems. Writing just a matter of weeks after he had submitted the dictionary entry mentioned earlier, Freud referred to the repressed as “for us” the Vorbild of the unconscious, which can indeed be translated as the “prototype,” but also as the “standard” or “exemplification.” This assertion appears in the opening chapter of The Ego and the Id, and it is surely interesting that Freud adds this qualifier “for us,” hinting that this might not be the case for scholars and scientists outside the psychoanalytic field. That the repressed is what is impor‑ tant for those of us engaged in the psychoanalytic process is undoubtedly true – since the repressed is the existentially and spiritually relevant dimension of all the aspects of mental life that are unconscious or nonconscious, it is the crucial coordinate of the discipline. However, the potential conflation of the repressed unconscious with all these other nonconscious or a‑conscious aspects has 16 Consciousness and dynamics of repression caused some monumental confusions around the relationship between psycho‑ analytic discovery and the findings of empirical science through the latter portion of the twentieth century and into our present times. Experimental psychology and neuroscience have amply demonstrated how much of psychic life is not available to the reflections of consciousness (e.g., Hassin, Uleman, and Bargh, 2006; Kessel, Cole, and Johnson, 1992; Revonsuo and Kamppinen, 1994). To remedy some of these confusions and to appreciate what aspect of Freud’s innovations were, and are, distinctive, we must: (i) clarify the way he differentiated between the repressed unconscious and mental contents that are only descriptively unconscious (foreconscious or preconscious contents); (ii) review how contemporary science and cognitive philosophy have expanded the notion of the unconscious even while, more often than not, still failing to grasp the significance of Freud’s discovery of the repressiveness of consciousness; and (iii) discuss how he offered a distinction between defensive repression (which he called “repression proper”) and his conjectures concerning “primal” repression.

The repressed unconscious and the suppressed preconscious In the sense that Freud discovered repression, and in the sense that counts in the course of a psychoanalytic treatment, repression is defensive. It is the process whereby thoughts and feelings are exiled or concealed both from the purview of consciousness with its capacity for reflection, and from the purview of the foreconscious or preconscious. Freud well understood that, at any particular time, there is only a very limited range of contents in the immediacy of consciousness. For me, at this moment, these might include my thoughts about my next sentence, the sen‑ sation of my fingers on the keys of the laptop, and so on. But there is an enormous range of contents that are preconscious (Freud came to prefer this term to his initial use of the word “foreconscious”). If I shift my attention, there is the barking of my dogs in the garden, the lingering taste of coffee in my mouth, the recall of what I ate for breakfast, the recollection of pleasur‑ able activities last night, and a host of memories from my more distant past. All of these are readily retrievable to consciousness (even if the retrieved ver‑ sion is always at variance with the original experience). However, in the preceding moment, they were descriptively “unconscious.” Then there are items that are not so readily retrievable. I cannot remember the telephone number of a former lover, but if someone supplies me with the information, or if I find it in a telephone directory, I have the reaction “oh yes, that’s it.” I could not retrieve it, but I recognize it (either as correct or at least as plau‑ sible), and I do not try to resist its acknowledgement. All these contents are, in Freud’s terminology, “preconscious” (Vorbewußten). Although in a colloquial sense preconscious contents are, in the moment, not conscious (that is to say descriptively they are unconscious), they have not Consciousness and dynamics of repression 17

been repressed (verdrängt) from consciousness; rather they are suppressed (unterdrückt) from the immediacy of consciousness, yet known to it. Indeed, I can experience myself as able to put thoughts about last night “out of my mind,” so that I can turn my attention back to my writing, in which case it could be said that I am suppressing the former thoughts volitionally. However, the vast majority of suppressive acts occur automatically (without suppression I would be unable to attend to anything as my conscious aware‑ ness would be unbearably cluttered). Indeed, what empirical psychology demonstrates is that the preconscious is vitally important to our functioning, and indeed that much that occurs in this domain is not known to consciousness, even though it has not been repressed. Most processing of affective and cognitive events occurs outside of consciousness. For instance, since the 1970s, psychologists such as Robert Zajonc (who in the 1980s was lauded for recycling Freud’s position on the primacy of affect, the idea that preferences need no inferences) have contrib‑ uted an enormous body of knowledge demonstrating how much of our psy‑ chological life is indeed outside of our conscious purview. His work, to give just one example, concords with Freud’s notion that we “judge” something good or bad (pleasurable or unpleasurable) before we have even “judged” whether it exists or not (Zajonc, 1980, 1984). Malcolm Gladwell’s popular‑ ization in his 2007 book, Blink (on “the power of thinking without think‑ ing”), summarizes the substantial evidence on the extent to which we make judgments without conscious formulation. Mostly, these occur preconsciously and, on reflection, consciousness is able to own them. However, there are occasions that, when asked, our conscious reflections give an entirely errone‑ ous account as to why a particular judgment was rendered. This raises the question whether repression is also occurring, and also brings up the issue of “unconscious” psychological mechanisms that are neither repressed nor suppressed, which we will address shortly. Freud was clear that there are “gradations of clarity” (Deutlichkeitsskala) between consciousness and all the contents that are, by suppression, precon‑ scious. By contrast, between these domains (consciousness and the preconscious) and the repressed, there is a “boundary” or “barrier” (Schranke), such that if a previously repressed idea is presented to consciousness, or in some sense “breaks through” to the preconscious, and thence into consciousness, it can be articulated only on the condition that it is negated. This is discussed sev‑ eral times by Freud, such as in his brilliant but challenging 1925 paper on the significance of negating. As an example, think here of the homophobic man who witnesses a homosexual act, angrily or disgustedly yelling “this makes me know I am definitely not a damn homo.” The man is aroused, although ostensibly not in a sexual manner, and he indeed has the idea of his own homosexual wishes now articulated in consciousness but only under the aegis of negation or . From a psychoanalytic standpoint, it is an obvious guess that he harbors intense homosexual feelings that have been repressed 18 Consciousness and dynamics of repression

(but that are beginning to surface under the aegis of negation). By contrast, I may not want to think about how attractive the man I met last night was, and I may try to put erotic thoughts of him “out of my mind” (this morning I may even self‑pleasure while deliberately conjuring a sexual fantasy about a woman, as if to exorcize his allure). But if am compelled to think about him, I know that I find him attractive. Here the sexual spark is being held precon‑ sciously, with the operation of suppression or condemnation (Verurteilung); there is no evidence of repression involved, for if it surfaces from its suppres‑ sion it will be owned by the “I” of consciousness. This distinction is critical to the understanding of Freud’s approach to the human condition. Again, there are gradations of access between reflective consciousness and that which is suppressed, but there is a sort of barrier between reflective consciousness and that which is repressed from its purview (as we shall discuss in Chapter 5, this barrier corresponds to the self‑blinding of Oedipus).

Contemporary science and cognitive philosophy Freud’s distinction, with its dramatic relevance to our spiritual and existen‑ tial understanding of ourselves and others, has frequently been unintention‑ ally obliterated in the course of empirical findings about the functioning of the psyche. Since the 1970s (and the work of researchers such as Zajonc, whom I mentioned above), a rapidly growing body of empirical research has shown how much of our functioning is entirely outside the reflective purview of consciousness and outside the domain of the preconscious (Hassin, Uleman, and Bargh, 2006). These psychological phenomena are “unconscious,” at least in the descriptive sense that they are not in consciousness (and typically una‑ vailable to its reflections). Often they are mechanisms or rule systems that are required for the operation of consciousness and the preconscious, yet never part of the content of its experience. Let us briefly consider the example of automatisms and of the deep structures of language. You tie the laces on your shoes, and know consciously that you are making the appropriate bow. But you are not conscious of every movement of your fingers and, if you had to give verbal instructions as to how to tie the two ends of the shoelace together, you would likely give incorrect ones – perhaps comi‑ cally so. One could argue that, if you think hard enough, you could probably generate a set of coherent and correct instructions as to how to tie your shoe‑ laces together, and that indeed the repertoire was conscious back in your early years when your caretaker struggled to teach you this mundane skill. Perhaps even more dramatically, my fingers know how to find the “r” key on my lap‑ top, but if I close my eyes and do not allow myself to wiggle my fingers, I am utterly incapable of telling someone that the “r” key is four rows up and fifth from the far left. These may or may not be the most felicitous examples; but the point is that here are preconscious or nonconscious repertoires, which you consciously know you have available to you, even if you are not consciously Consciousness and dynamics of repression 19 able to specify or formulate how you do them. Moreover, if you articulate the repertoire in consciousness, there is no difficulty in the “I” of your conscious‑ ness owning the knowledge and the experiences that are involved. Thus, if someone tells me “the ‘r’ key is four rows up and fifth from the far left,” I have no difficulty in knowing that I somehow know that already, even if I could not have consciously articulated the information in that manner. Also consider the following: all the complex coordinative skills involved in walking across the room without falling over; the “unconscious” procedures involved in your finding this person to be erotically “hot” whereas another is less so; or the mechanisms required for mathematical computation. We have an enormous repertoire of automatisms, performances we know how to do without knowing how we do them (and without resisting the knowledge as to how we do them, if someone should be able to tell us); there is usually no reason to believe that either suppression or repression is involved. However, in large measure and often entirely, these processes are opaque to consciousness. The “deep structures” of language and of other higher representational processes (think here of depth perception, impression formation, and other judgmental functions) provide other sorts of example. The proverbial “person in the street” can readily distinguish a sentence that is grammatical (“The dog slept peacefully on the chair”) from one that is not (“The slept chair peacefully the dog on”), but only a trained linguist, such as Noam Chomsky, can explain the rules by which we are all able to make this distinction. We depend on implicit rule systems of which we have no explicit knowledge. Even if we acquire such knowledge – for instance, by reading scholarly lit‑ erature on syntactical linguistics – it remains quite abstract. Such knowledge is about the phenomena; it never becomes part of our “felt experience.” Even the most expert linguists, who know all about deep structures, continue to utter sentences correctly without consciously making use of this knowledge; their knowledge is acquired not by conscious introspection, but by sophisti‑ cated inferences that are part of the methodology of linguistic science. Consider also how I know that my hand is closer to me than my laptop and that the latter sits on the table and in front of the window. But if someone challenges me as to how I know all these things, I perhaps become concerned that I might be victim of a trick (“Why is he asking me this, isn’t it obvious?”) or subject to some sort of sneaky illusion, and the justification that I give for the veracity of my elementary act of depth perception is likely to be, to say the least, garbled. It is very unlikely to be a valid account of the procedures that my perceptual performance actually followed in arriving at this judgment about what is closer and what is farther away. To gain a full understanding of the mechanisms of an everyday act of ordinary depth perception did not result from the labors of introspection, but rather has taken years of careful experi‑ mentation on the part of empirical psychologists. All these phenomena, into which there is a burgeoning body of scientific investigation, are nonconscious, although regrettably they have often been 20 Consciousness and dynamics of repression referred to as “unconscious” (Barratt, 1984). This has been the source of much confusion, because this is not the unconscious that Freud discovered. Perhaps it is a little silly to tout this as “the new unconscious,” despite a very useful anthology by that title (Hassin, Uleman, and Bargh, 2006), for the term is being deployed quite differently from its psychoanalytic usage and this has been the cause of befuddlement (even among scholars and scientists whom one might have hoped would know better). Most of the research into the huge range of nonconscious or a‑conscious aspects of mental life has had little relevance to Freud’s major discovery, although there has been some empirical investigations of the mechanisms of repression that are instructive (see reviews by Brakel, 2009, 2010; Horowitz, 1988; Shevrin, Bond, Brakel, Hertel, and Williams, 1996). In this sense, there is a substantial body of important empirical evidence that vindicates, in contexts outside the psychoanalytic session, Freud’s notion of repression as well as his views on suppression (the latter being more extensively studied as the psychology of attention, memory, and so forth). However, much of this research has been tied to Freud’s topographic model of the mind, which I will shortly bring under criticism.

Defensive repression and primal repression Given the growing body of empirical research on preconscious and noncon‑ scious mental life, we can be clear that if Freud really were to have claimed that defensive repression is the “prototype” of the unconscious (in general, rather than “for us” as psychoanalysts, which is how he qualified his claim), it would have been an error. The repressed unconscious is but one dimension of all that is not conscious in the cognitive and affective operation of our mental life as is demonstrated experimentally. This is the case even if it remains true that the repressed is, for us as patients and psychoanalysts, the most significant dimension. However, Freud’s perhaps throwaway remark, in the opening pages of his 1923 book, about the repressed being the prototype of everything that is unconscious, has another context. Freud quickly follows the remark by acknowledging that there are “two kinds of unconscious, one which is repressed and one which is not” and it is clear that the latter is not merely a reference to the preconscious. Although the term is never used in this 1923 text, Freud’s acknowledgement harkens back to his 1915 notion of primal repression, which we now need to address. From his earliest publications on the meaning of dreams that marked the advent of psychoanalysis, Freud emphasized that the key to this discipline is the discovery that there is a schism between what can be appropriated by the “I” of consciousness and that which is defensively repressed from it (der Zwiespalt zwischen dem Unbewußten und dem Bewußten – dem Verdrängten und dem Ich). Thus, repression initially refers solely to the process by which drive‑ridden thoughts and feelings threatening to the equilibrium of our egotism, which is associated Consciousness and dynamics of repression 21 with our organized mental life, are expelled from consciousness (as well as from the domain of the preconscious). These defensive processes of repression are amply demonstrated by psychoanalytic method. Indeed, in the 1914 paper that defined psychoanalysis as the psychology of repression, Freud had referred to it as “a phenomenon which can be experienced (which one can come to know), as often as one pleases, if one undertakes psychoanalysis…” (my emphasis), and only through the psychoanalytic process can one come to know it experientially (as contrasted with knowing about it as an abstract model of the mind). However, a few months after this 1914 essay (indeed, just as he began what I have described as his drift away from methodically grounded discoveries toward the generation of more systematic and speculative theorizations), Freud wrote a paper entitled “Repression” in which he announced his assumption that there must be two types of this process. “We have reason to assume” (Wir haben also Grund), he wrote, that there is “primal repression” as well as defensive repression (which he called “repression proper”). This new concept, primal repression, is speculative. Moreover, the operation of primal repression, which is a conjecture about the origins of mental life, remains almost entirely – so it would seem – unaffected by psychoanalytic processes. It is, however, important for us to understand it because it indicates how Freud (and many but not all subsequent psychoanalysts) imagined the devel‑ opment of the law and order of mental life from out of the fluidity of our bodymind’s desirousness. This is, in a certain sense, pivotal to what might be called the “metaphysics” of psychoanalysis, although some would probably disagree with this designation (Cavell, 1996; Draenos, 1982; Levine, 1999). The notion of primal repression stands for Freud’s conjecture as to how the structured edifice of mental life, with all its representations and transforma‑ tions between representations, comes to be differentiated from the chaotic abyss of the primordial unconscious, the vortex of disorganized desires, unknowable impulses, and apparent meaninglessness. The notion presents a speculation as to how the temporally linear forms of psychic structures emerge, or differentiate themselves, from the nonlinear complexity, the seem‑ ingly undifferentiated morass, of psychic energy (Karlsson, 2010; Mills, 2010; Rapaport, 1996). From his earliest years, Freud understood the human bodymind to be composed of representations (object‑representations, self‑ representations, representations of action states or affective states, and so forth) and “energy,” which might or might not be “invested” (which has been poorly translated as “cathected”) in such representations and the transforma‑ tions between them. In my 1993 book, I suggested that this understanding of “mental life” (although we are actually not just addressing issues of the “mind” but of the entire human bodymind) might be better discussed in terms of the way in the semiotic systems of representationality (the edifice of what is commonly called the mind) are built out of the kinetic fluidity of “desire,” which is “in” the thoughts and feelings that we designate as “mind” but is not, so to speak, “of” them. In this sense, whether our terminology is 22 Consciousness and dynamics of repression that of representations and energies, or of semiotic structures and desire, it is possible to conjecture that all the aspects of psychic organization might depend on an originating rupture that could be named “primal repression.” Out of this rupture the rudiments of structured thoughts and feelings estab‑ lished themselves from the free mobility or “chaos” of the energies of desire. In a supplemental terminology that we will later discuss in some detail, structure developed out of the abyss of freedom by means of the repeti‑ tion‑compulsivity (Barratt, 1993). The appearance of linear narratives, the organization of events as having a beginning, middle, and end, develops paradoxically out of repetitiousness that is anterior to the beginning. This is a critically significant speculation that, in a certain sense, comes from psychoanalytic experience, although in a speculative rather than a directly experienced manner. It is a conjectural possibility that consciousness could never ratify for itself. Consciousness cannot ascertain its own origin, however well it may come to reflect on its own operations; contrary to Fichte the “ego” cannot posit itself (Henrich, 2008). This is also not the sort of con‑ jecture that could possibly be amenable to empirical investigation, although there is one qualification to this statement that will be mentioned momen‑ tarily (Kerslake and Brassier, 2008; Mills, 2010). The notion of primal repression specifies a point of the origination of consciousness at which sci‑ ence necessarily falters. Indeed, it is an ontogenetic parallel to the speculation so poetically described in the opening verses of the Torah. The formless earth was void with total darkness on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved and called forth the differentiation of light. This is not unlike trying to imagine the unimaginable (e.g., “What happened before the Big Bang?”). Interestingly enough, the emergence of a scientific specialization that exam‑ ines the links between psychoanalysis and neuroscience, so‑called “neuropsycho‑ analysis,” includes an attempt to marshal empirical evidence relevant to this speculation. Research on the connections between the forebrain and the brain‑ stem, or on the hemispheric differentiation and asymmetry of the cerebrum, is provocative in this regard (Karlsson, 2010; Northoff, 2011; Solms and Turnbull, 2002). Also interesting in this regard are Gerald Edelman’s prodigious writings on the neuroscience of consciousness, with his distinction between primary, which is a sort of unreflective awareness, and secondary consciousness, which I am calling reflective consciousness or self‑consciousness (Edelman, 1990, 1992, 2004, 2006). Although all this material is of great interest for psychoanalytic practitioners, caution must be exercised, because the empirical researches of neuroscience do not begin with the interrogation of consciousness in order to disclose the temporality of its repressive functioning. In this respect, the discov‑ ery of the repressive functioning of consciousness is strongly linked to the method (although, I would insist, not an artifact of this method). Freud articulated this caution in his 1918 writing about the infamous case of the so‑called “Wolf Man,” when he wrote that “the whale and the polar bear can‑ not do battle because each inhabits its own element and they cannot meet; it is Consciousness and dynamics of repression 23

just as impossible for me to debate with workers in the field of psychology … who do not acknowledge the postulates of psychoanalysis and consider its results to be artifactual.” Earlier – in his 1915 essay on the unconscious – Freud wrote of the “hiatus” between biological and psychological statements, and insisted that psychoanalysis is “independent, in this respect, and may advance according to its own necessity.” Later – in his 1926 essay in support of “lay” practitioners – he would assert that the material substrate of thoughts and feelings is “of no psycho‑ logical interest; psychology can be as indifferent to it as optics is to the question whether the walls of the telescope are made of metal or pasteboard.” In 1913, Freud had predicted that his methods would come into “conflict with official sci‑ ence” and that this would be the destiny of his discipline that he had, as early as 1901, contrasted with all philosophies and phenomenologies of consciousness by calling it a “psychology of repression” (eine Psychologie der Verdrängung). As inter‑ esting and important as empirical evidence concerning the functioning of the nervous system is, or as significant as the findings of social science may be, Freud thus insists that psychoanalytic science journeys on an altogether different path, one that is existential and spiritual in its commitment to the interrogation of consciousness (as I will further discuss). Freud did wrestle throughout his career with the sort of cosmological and neuroscientific arguments that might be applied to the question of the ori‑ gins of human consciousness in the course of each individual’s development. However, these questions are akin to asking, in the genesis of consciousness, how does presence ever emerge from absence and how does identity emerge from difference (questions so brilliantly explored in the writings of Derrida and his successors). Being a profound and adventurous savant, Freud offers speculative answers to these questions, even while, at the end of his life, branding his own metapysychological speculations as a sort of professional mythology, “fantasizing” (this, of course, contrasts with the bravado he dis‑ played between 1887 and 1902, when he seems to have imagined that his metapyschology might answer all metaphysical questions). In the context of Freud’s theorizing, the notion of primal repression is consistently pivotal to all his efforts. His answers to the questions about the genesis of consciousness can only seem bizarre to our ordinary mindset, despite the fact that they are of remarkable power if one undertakes to com‑ prehend why Freud advanced his speculative ideas. For Freud’s paradoxical suggestion is that repetition precedes origination (Forrester, 1985, 1990). He advanced this suggestion in a number of ways throughout his career. First in his neurological essay of 1985, he argues that an energized hallucination of an object appears before an encounter with the object itself. Then in his 1911 formulation of the two principles of mental functioning, he shows how our assessment of what is real somehow has to develop out of our prior assessment of what is pleasurable (recall my mention of Zajonc’s work on how preferences need no inferences, and on the primacy of affect). Finally, in the deceptively straightforward 1925 paper on negating, attribution (is it “good” or “bad”?) 24 Consciousness and dynamics of repression is held to precede judgment of existence (does it exist or not?). Thus, in Freud’s words, every object finding is already an act of refinding; psycho‑ analysis asserts the primacy of desire over existence. This is perhaps the aspect of Freud’s understanding of the psychic reality in which we all live, that is most challenging to grasp: covertly or overtly, the sensual whirlwind of our desire animates each of us seemingly endlessly and far more powerfully than does our semiotic comprehension of consensual realities. The implication of this is that the organization of our mental life is always under the sway of repetition-compulsivity and what I have called the “narratological impera‑ tive” (these are discussed at some length in my Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse, and will be reviewed again in later chapters). Let us set aside the question whether and how such speculations about the origins of mental life and the notion of primal repression have any immedi‑ ate relevance to the actual processes of psychoanalytic inquiry, except to mention one issue preliminarily. It requires courage to enter into a psycho‑ analytic process, for there comes a point at which so much of what the patient had taken to be assured (so much that his or her egotism had pre‑ sumed to be what is, proper, right, true, and effective) begins to crumble, and he or she realizes the extent to which what we take to be everyday life is itself illusory or delusional. This is surely why so many practitioners, ter‑ rified of the inexhaustibility of the deconstructive momentum of psychoana‑ lytic process, become so dogmatically convinced that their favorite theory, their organizational affiliation, and their own particular struggle with the oedipal complexities of their training, makes them superior to others. This can be understood as the resistance of psychoanalysts to their own discipline (e.g., Derrida, 1998; Larivière, 1997). It takes great courage to live in the “now,” the aliveness of this universe of unknowing that psychoanalytic process opens for us. At this juncture, all we need to note is how much mental life is in fact unconscious or nonconscious, as presented by the work of experimental psy‑ chology and contemporary neuroscience, such that we comprehend how the dynamically repressed unconscious is just one dimension of all that is “unconscious” – and why it is the most existentially and spiritually salient one.

Against the spatial depiction of mental life Through the interrogation of consciousness in the course of the psychoana‑ lytic process, Freud discovers an “unconscious” that is repressed from the knowable domain of the “I” of consciousness. Unfortunately, he then attempted to present his discovery to a general audience by offering a model of the mind, in which consciousness (and the domain of the preconscious) is in one “place” and the unconscious is in another. This is the so‑called “topo‑ graphic model” and, in my opinion, it has caused almost endless misunder‑ standings. A simplified version of it is presented in Box 2.1. Consciousness and dynamics of repression 25

Box 2.1 Thoughts and Feelings that are in CONSCIOUSNESS

(Thoughts and feelings may be suppressed or brought out of suppression)

Thoughts and Feelings that are in Foreconsciousness or the PRECONSCIOUS

(This is the repression barrier: Thoughts and feelings are modified if they cross it in either direction)

REPRESSED UNCONSCIOUS

In this model, the dynamics of mental life involve a ceaseless repositioning of thoughts and feelings (the representations that are the stuff of mental life) between these three locations: Conscious, Preconscious, and Repressed Unconscious. Representations are being shunted from one locale to another by psychic energies that are, allegedly, more or less indifferent to the content whose movement they affect (this raises substantial theoretical problems that I shall, for the moment, sidestep, but to which we will later return). The usefulness of this model is that it enabled Freud to talk about the way in which thoughts and feelings operate differently according to where they are located. If “in” consciousness or the preconscious, our thoughts take account of the events of external reality, are logical or at least somewhat so, and are organized according to linear time, which means that all narratives have a beginning, middle, and end, and every event is past, present, or future. However, when thoughts and feelings are “in” the unconscious, external reality holds no weight, wishful illogic reigns, and the perpetuation of their content is zeitlos or “timeless” (see Green, 2002; Campbell, 2006; Wood, 1989). Additionally, one crucial fea‑ ture of these repressed mental contents is that they do not lie inertly in the uncon‑ scious. Rather, they are constantly trying to regain expression in consciousness, and this is the so‑called “returning of the repressed,” a complexity of temporal relations that will be addressed in the next chapter. In short, the repressed not only persists, but also insists on its expression. Obviously, what this implies, which is so valuable from a clinical standpoint, is that whatever “crazy” thought or feel‑ ing I had as a child, which was repressed because at that time it had traumatic implications or associations, is actually still with me, and continues to exert an influence, albeit in a disguised form, on my current conduct. Again, we will discuss this further in the next chapter, as we come to explore in somewhat more detail the “time of the mind” (Green, 2002; Campbell, 2006; Wood, 1989). 26 Consciousness and dynamics of repression

It cannot be overemphasized how important these ideas are for clinical practice, and indeed for our understanding of the human condition. That notwithstanding, the model is seriously misleading. Mental represen‑ tations are not shunted about, from one location of the mind to another, and to imagine that they are instigates a gross misunderstanding of our mental life. Although the enunciation and transformation of representations depends on neuronal operations (and indeed on the entire functioning of the body‑ mind), and although the brain (along with it the rest of the nervous system) is indeed located in space, it is an error to assume that therefore a representa‑ tion is spatially located or locatable, rather than merely temporally organized in relation to other representations. Let us give a simple example of a preconscious content. If you now resolve to count from 1 to 100, at some point you are going to be conscious of the number 73. However, this should not be taken to imply that the representa‑ tion of 73 exists and is somehow there, stored in a preconscious space, at the moment you articulated your resolution to begin counting (and that it is then brought into another space, consciousness, somewhere around the time you are counting 69, 70, 71, 72…). By the same token, let us return to my earlier example of the man who sees a homosexual act and angrily or disgustedly yells “this makes me know I am definitely not a damn homo.” It is clinically war‑ ranted to suggest that he must harbor intense homosexual feelings that are currently repressed. But it would be a mistake to conclude that representations of wishes to suck a penis, to receive one anally, or to penetrate another man anally, are currently there, existing, fully formed but stored in the mind’s unconscious basement (from whence they may or may not be brought to the surface at some later time). Rather, what the astute clinician anticipates is that, if this man’s homophobic blathering were to be interrogated in the course of a psychoanalytic process, such wishes would eventually arise and become known to consciousness (and they may also come to the surface sooner or later, with‑ out psychoanalysis, but in the course of life’s subsequent vicissitudes). Although we cannot return to Descartes and comfortably accept his philoso‑ phy of the supremacy of the ego cogito with its dichotomy of body and mind, his writings do allude to something profoundly significant when he argued that the body and the brain (res extensa) exist in space, whereas thoughts and feelings (res cogitans) do not. Freud’s discovery of the dynamically repressed unconscious is actually a discovery about the repressive character of consciousness, and the way in which consciousness harbors contradictory temporalities within itself.

The dynamically repressed and the temporalities of consciousness Thus far, we have sketched the three main propositions concerning the psy‑ chology of repression (that is, the repressiveness of consciousness and thence the psychoanalytic discovery of the dynamically repressed unconscious): Consciousness and dynamics of repression 27

· It involves a process in which the “I” of consciousness is unwilling to experience and own certain thoughts and feelings, either because they were once traumatically conscious and have been expelled from that domain defensively, or because in some other way they threaten this domain’s self‑assured equilibrium. · Whatever is repressed persists and insists, and thus has a dynamically active impact, in a repetitious manner, on the transformative structuring of consciousness. · Discursive processes that might bring consciousness into a different relation with whatever is suppressed and repressed (for example, the process of lis‑ tening to the free‑associative stream of thoughts and feelings) will always be forcefully resisted by our egotism (which is frantically invested in preserving its sense of law and order, as well as advancing its delusion of control).

Before I proceed to illustrate how psychoanalytic discourse interrogates con‑ sciousness to elucidate its repressive functioning, one additional issue must be mentioned. Between 1937 and 1938, Freud began writing a paper (only published posthumously in 1940) on processes in which the ego organization splits itself for defensive purposes. These processes involve the capacity of consciousness to deny and then to disavow (Verleugnen) contents that it finds traumatically unacceptable, thus producing a division or splitting in the ego organization’s construction of reality (as if multiple realities can be con‑ structed simultaneously yet held apart from each other). Denial followed by disavowal is thus held to produce a condition of unconsciousness somewhat dissimilar from that produced by denial, suppression, and repression (Bass, 2000; Fink, 1999; Goldberg, 1999; Green, 2005; Matte‑Blanco, 1975, 1988; Spillius and O’Shaughnassy, 2011). The processes of disavowal and splitting, which give rise to what is sometimes designated a “perverse” or “borderline ego organization” (as compared with neurotic, narcissistic, and psychotic styles of organization), differ significantly from those first described by Freud (Bass, 2000; Bokanowski and Lewkowicz, 2009; Grotstein, 1981, 2000; Kaës, 2002; Laplanche, 1987). This distinction has generated a voluminous clinical literature on splitting and “projective identification,” especially from within the Kleinian approach to the discipline (e.g., Grotstein, 1981; Ogden, 1977; Spillius and O’Shaughnassy, 2011; Steiner, 1993), and it has also insti‑ gated a discussion of the “dissociative unconscious” or the “vertical uncon‑ scious” as contrasted with the “horizontal” one constituted by repression (e.g., Calich and Hinz, 2007). I propose to sidestep this issue, not because it is unimportant (indeed, far from it), but because Freud’s coordinate defining the discipline is specifically that of repression and the returning of the repressed. Moreover, as will probably be clear from what follows, notions of the “vertical unconscious” are as problematic for their spatialized depiction of mental functioning as the topographical understanding of the repression. These models have in common the ubiquitous limitation of over 100 years of 28 Consciousness and dynamics of repression psychoanalytic theorizing, namely our failure to realize that Freud’s discover‑ ies revolutionize our understanding of the temporalities of psychic life. So, focusing on the repressed unconscious, let us now try to illustrate how the discursive process of psychoanalysis discovered these disturbingly revolu‑ tionary insights. Although it must be emphasized that all such clinical illustra‑ tions of intrapsychic or interpersonal processes invariably simplify phenomena that are intricate and ultimately not replicable, such narratives may still serve as a useful teaching device. Here I will discuss a vignette that I originally presented in an earlier essay (Barratt, 1991b), returning to it because it has a clarity that may help us to comprehend how psychoanalytic discourse touches an incomprehensible dimension of life that is always in our midst. Toward the end of a Friday session, I suggested to my patient that his repeatedly forgetting to reimburse me for the previous month’s sessions might indicate that he was struggling with some hostility toward me. For the moment, we do not need to assess whether this was a “good enough” inter‑ pretation; but we need to note that the patient greeted it with denial couched as a joke (“you’re always harping on our relationship, as if it has to do with everything including the sinking of the Titanic”). He started Monday’s ses‑ sion by announcing that he had been “edgy” (which in this context is a col‑ loquialism for anxious) since Friday, but was puzzled that he could recall nothing about our Friday session. He then recounted how, over the weekend, his young son had been mad at him; he felt unable to cope with it, so he went to a bar for a few hours (if it does not seem too farfetched, we might keep in mind that I am a “bar/ratt”). As he told me about the weekend, he suddenly and unexpectedly started thinking about the Rabbi who had tutored him for his Bar Mitzvah (again a “bar”). He said that he had not thought about this Rabbi in years. Now feeling sad, the patient told me that the tutoring was around the time of his Father’s illness, from which his Father died. He had become close to the Rabbi, but on one occasion became angry at him over some now forgotten disappointment, after which the Rabbi abruptly dis‑ tanced himself from their relationship. What next sprang to the patient’s mind was the recollection of the previous night’s dream – a dream fragment he had forgotten on waking and only now recalled. In the dream, he and I are walking in some pleasant countryside and we are like “bosom buddies.” It is certainly not farfetched to see a thematic sequencing to these narra‑ tives, in which person X expresses anger toward person Y, and person Y quits the relationship. However, what is yet more significant is the way in which the theme transforms through the sequence. On Friday, I said some‑ thing like “You may be angry toward me.” In hindsight, it might have been preferable if I had been able to say “You are apprehensive about expressing any anger toward me, because you fear it will cause me to withdraw from you.” However, I did not have the information, the insight, or the wit to offer this more comprehensive and empathic comment at that time – so I merely commented on his possible hostility toward me. The patient’s response (after his significant jocular comment, which both jabs at me for the Consciousness and dynamics of repression 29 self‑aggrandizement involved in my taking myself to be so important to him, and which ominously suggests perhaps that our relationship could sink like the Titanic) was to forget the contents of our session but become anxious or “edgy.” Over the weekend – the recent past with respect to the Monday session – his son became angry at him, and he absented himself from their interaction. He then recalls how – in the distant past with respect to the present session – he became angry at his Rabbi, and the Rabbi distanced himself from their relationship. And then he remembers a dream, the time‑ frame of which may have been the previous night, but its content and its recollection position it immediately in the present of the psychoanalytic relationship (Green calls the time of a dream “pure present”). In the dream’s imagery, the contingency of anger and rejection appear to be entirely abol‑ ished, as he and I walk in friendly and perhaps even intimate fashion through some pleasant countryside. A schematization of these thematics is shown in Box 2.2.

Box 2.2 On Friday: I say something like “Patient / Anger at / Other” (which in this case is myself, his psychoanalyst, and the scenario is in the present of our relationship).  The weekend intervenes with anxiety and the forgetting of Friday’s session.  On Monday, the Patient’s associations go as follows:

When “Other (Son) / Anger at / Me (Patient)” then “Me (Patient) / Rejected or Abandoned / Other” occurred in recent past.  When “Me (Patient) / Anger at / Other (Rabbi)” then “Other (Rabbi) / Rejected or Abandoned / Me (Patient)” occurred in distant past.  Dream: “Me (Patient) + Other (Psychoanalyst) in close and friendly relationship” The contingency of anger leading to rejection or abandonment (presented in the two preceding scenarios) is now abolished. The timeframe is now the presentness of a recollected dream. 30 Consciousness and dynamics of repression

The schematization is, of course, grossly oversimplified, and it is immediately apparent how much it leaves out. Not least of these omissions are the ominous allusions to death as suggested by the Titanic joke and the father’s illness (which was terminal), as well as the possible connotations of the bar (as the place of libation, as the pubertal entry into manhood, as a reference to some‑ thing barred or prohibited, and as a contraction of my name Barnaby Barratt), and the erotic implications of being “bosom buddies” enjoying some pleasant countryside (yet more alliterative “Bs,” we might note, as in my name). However, as limited as it is, the schematization suggests how the sequence permutes a contingency of affect or action (in which anger leads to rejection or abandonment), relations between an actor and a recipient (of the anger and of the rejection or abandonment), and a timeframe (present, recent past, distant past, present as portrayed in the immediacy of a dream’s recollection). It is easy to surmise that, when I suggested to the patient that he might be struggling with hostility toward me, his conscious and preconscious response was to deny the possibility but his “unconscious” thought or feeling was that, if such a possibility were to occur and his anger to be expressed, then his psychoanalyst would abandon or reject him. However, these thoughts or feel‑ ings are suppressed and repressed respectively. What then occurs is that the repressed material surfaces in consciousness during Monday’s associative chain in, at the very least, three disguised forms (story about the son, story about the Rabbi, recollection of the dream). Perhaps I should apologize if this vignette seems somewhat androcentric (being about a male patient interacting with a male psychoanalyst around issues of fathers and father figures, the position of the son, sexuality and death). However, I would insist that the same pluritemporal structuring would be equally apparent if I had presented a clinical example with an entirely different content (in my 1993 book, I examined a parallel vignette of the free‑associative stream experienced by a female patient). For the essential theoretical point pertaining to the present example is that we do not need to postulate some sort of mental space in which the thought, “If I get angry at my psychoanalyst, he will surely reject or abandon me,” is stored at the time of Friday’s session. Rather, what is illustrated here is that, in each of its trans‑ formations from one narrative segment to another, consciousness is always both concealing and revealing something otherwise than that about which the “I” of consciousness believes itself to be thinking and speaking. In short, the repressed is nowhere except in the repressiveness of consciousness. The notion of the “repressiveness of consciousness” thus points to the way in which consciousness simultaneously both reveals and conceals something otherwise than it knows itself to intend. That is, the repressed is always “in” but not “of” the narrative constructions of consciousness, and is intimated by the associative sequencing of these constructions. The discovery of the repressed unconscious is that of the contradictoriness of multiple temporali‑ ties occurring repeatedly in the enunciation of our conscious thoughts and Consciousness and dynamics of repression 31 feelings. To grasp this requires that we open our thinking to the idea that the “time of the mind” involves multiple complexly intersecting temporal rela‑ tions (see Campbell, 2006; Green 2002). It would be genial if this could be schematized as a diagram, parallel to the one just offered depicting the erro‑ neous spatialization of mental contents involved in the so‑called “topographic model.” But of course, a spatial depiction of temporal relationships inevitably commits us to exactly the kind of misleading thinking from which psycho‑ analysis has suffered for over a century.

The first coordinate Let us summarize the significance of this first coordinate of psychoanalytic sci‑ ence. Three notions that are crucial to the understanding of psychoanalysis come together: unconscious, repression, and resistance. They are all part‑and‑ parcel of a single discovery about the conditions of consciousness. Along with personal history, sensual embodiment, and oedipal complexities (which will be the focus of our next three chapters), these are what Freud, in his 1925 auto‑ biographical study, called the “principal constituents” of his discipline. He inaugurated a healing science that is a psychology of repression grounded in the interrogative discovery of the way in which the structures and transformations of consciousness dynamically repress the experience of meanings that are “in” but not “of” those that it intends. The repertoire of what clinicians call “defense mechanisms” depends on the suppressive and repressive functions of consciousness and the preconscious, and these functions indicate the inherent contradictori‑ ness of consciousness, the polysemous temporalities – or pluritiemporalities – that are involved in the construction of the edifice of egotism within the overall erotic nature of our bodymind. This is what Freud, through the insights gained from his experiences with free‑associative discourse, teaches us about the human condition.

Mistaken paths We will return to the way in which psychoanalysis elucidates the human condition in my discussion of the three additional coordinates that will next occupy us. Let us conclude this chapter by indicating the three major ways in which the psychoanalytic discovery of the repressed unconscious can easily be misunderstood, and its revolutionary significance be obfuscated by the resus‑ citation of pre‑Freudian ideologies. The first mistake restores a Cartesian‑Kantian model of the mind, under‑ standing the unconscious as inexorably “other” than the organized function‑ ing of the mind (the so‑called “ego structures”). The topographic model courts this misunderstanding, by depicting the unconscious as if it were a territory, located in space, that the conscious mind of our egotism faces as its special “other” that needs to be tamed, conquered, and possessed. 32 Consciousness and dynamics of repression

The implication of this is that the ego organization has a relationship with the unconscious that parallels or mirrors the relationship it supposedly has with external reality, according to the presuppositions of “analytic” epistemology (which has also been called “logical empiricist metascience”). According to this view, the ego organization (or more precisely the conscious and self‑observing aspects of its functioning, along with all its synthetic and integrative functions) attempts to make observations, inferences, and “insightful” formulations about the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of its own personhood; it thus acknowl‑ edges the reality of its unconscious as “other,” calculating the nature and impact of its contents. The ego organization does all this in much the same manner that it grapples with the externality of things in the world. The success of such enterprises of instrumental reasoning permits our egotism to believe that it predicts and controls these two “other” realms: the external reality of things and the unconscious reality of bodily‑based drives. Supposedly, our egotism thereby gains an increment of dominative mastery over both, becoming more “adaptive” in its functioning and rendering the person more developmentally “mature” (these concepts of adaptation and maturation will be examined in later chap‑ ters). In a simplified version, this is the ego psychological or structural–func‑ tional model of the mind that originated in Freud’s thinking in the 1920s (as well as in the 1930s papers, written in his last years of life), and was notably amplified by commentators such as Anna Freud (1936), Heinz Hartmann (1927–1959, 1958), and David Rapaport (1996), as well as their various col‑ leagues and successors. This model boasts a rapprochement between psycho‑ analysis and empirical‑experimental psychology (which Freud had cautioned was not possible); and it came to underpin the medicalized practice of allo‑ pathic psychiatry that dominated the profession in North America through the middle part of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, ego‑psychology is a cul‑de‑sac. I have criticized this epistemological model extensively in Psychic Reality and Psychoanalytic Knowing. In brief, its problem is that it supposes that con‑ sciousness or the ego organization treats “the unconscious” as having the “there‑being” of a thing‑in‑itself, and that it engages in observational, infer‑ ential, and instrumentally manipulative activities about this “other” that is presumed to be necessarily and immutably external to the knowing “I” of subjectivity. That is, the ego organization’s control over its personhood is supposedly enhanced by its insightful formation of concepts and narratives about the contents of the unconscious other that remains external to it. This is not psychoanalysis for at least three reasons.

1 These epistemological suppositions foreclose Freud’s discovery that the unconscious is generated, at least in part, because consciousness represses contents from itself; whereas, in analytic epistemology, it would be an absurdity to suggest that the knower actively ousts from itself the domain that is to be investigated. Consciousness and dynamics of repression 33

2 This sort of subject/object epistemology also forecloses Freud’s finding that the repressed unconscious is desirous toward consciousness; whereas, in analytic epistemology, the idea that the thing‑in‑itself wishes to make itself conscious would be an absurdity. 3 The epistemological suppositions of ego‑psychology thus preempt psy‑ choanalytic elucidation of the way in which the repressed always insinu‑ ates itself within the flow of conscious contents, being revealed and concealed simultaneously in the sequencing and segueing of the con‑ structions owned by the conscious subject (in this sense, the repressed is “in” but not “of” the meanings that consciousness takes itself and under‑ stands itself to be expressing).

Ego‑psychological theorists attempt to rescue Cartesian‑Kantian epistemol‑ ogy by specifying that there must be a “conflict‑free sphere” of the ego organization’s functioning, which thus preserves its dominative potential by being, so to speak, “above the fray” of consciousness’ relations with its uncon‑ scious. While this theoretical legerdemain may have comforted many practi‑ tioners, it fails to recognize the radical implications of Freud’s discovery. An ego organization cannot possibly discriminate a priori those parts of itself that are uncontaminated by unconscious resources from those that are both actively repressing and thus impacted by the returning of the repressed. The proposition that there is a “conflict‑free sphere” of ego functioning thus proves to be an ideological dodge, by which we can reassure ourselves that there is somewhere a solid, incontestable subject of right‑minded knowing that should be supported in its potential to manipulate and control its own contaminated aspects. Perhaps more tellingly, the authority of this sphere not only restores consciousness’ own certainty about itself, but also bestows on clinical practitioners their breezy confidence that they, being “well analyzed,” are the ones who can know “what’s what.” Such a sense of certainty and con‑ fidence might, of course, merely amount to the expression of a communally ordained psychosis, in which the assertions of dominative power preempt our capacity to listen to the truthfulness of our own being. What Freud discovers is both the way in which the “I” is estranged or alien‑ ated from that which is repressed, and the way in which the repressed always reveals and conceals itself within the stream – the train or chaining – of con‑ scious contents. This discovery (in which the being of the “object” that is unconscious is actively and contradictorily in the epistemological “subject” of consciousness) is utterly incomprehensible to a logical empiricist epistemol‑ ogy. Consequently, the suppositions of ego‑psychology do not allow us to understand essential Freudian notions such as the interrelationship between knowing and being, the dynamically contradictory constitution of psychic reality, the returning of the repressed in temporal relation to repetition‑ compulsivity, and the way in which free‑associative discourse is the sine qua non of psychoanalytic science. 34 Consciousness and dynamics of repression

The second mistaken path in understanding Freud’s discovery of the repressed unconscious invokes the epistemology of structuralism (as the model that influenced much of the social sciences in Europe following the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure) or the hermeneutic ontology that has influenced European philosophy since Heidegger’s 1927 response to Husserlian phenom‑ enology (and to Hegelian metascience). This mode of philosophy sidesteps the problems with Cartesian‑Kantian epistemology by offering an ontological exposition that poses the conscious subject not as master – or even potential master – of life’s texts, but as subjected to them. Language is not the ego’s tool; rather, language is there‑being’s mode of being, a totality that produces the “I” of conscious experience. As the famous aphorism of contemporary ontology expresses it, “language speaks us.” This type of philosophy turns away from the bipartite metaphysical structure of knowledge as either objectivistic or subjectivistic, in order to understand both object and subject as mere deriva‑ tives or positionings within the primordial ground of the being of things as given to us by the totality of language practices (or representationality). In Psychic Reality and Psychoanalytic Knowing, I have also criticized quite extensively the effort to understand Freud’s discovery of the repressed uncon‑ scious in terms of contemporary ontology. Lacan’s self‑styled “reading” of Freud’s psychology falls within this philosophical tradition, providing a thor‑ oughgoing – and seriously mistaken – reformulation of Freud’s seminal discoveries in terms of structural linguistics. Here “language” as a totality forms the human subject in its own image (Lacan, 1953–1954, 1954–1955, 1959–1960, 1964, 1966, 1972–1973; Weber, 1978). Although Lacan’s critique of ego‑psychology is to be appreciated for its emphasis on the “ex‑centricity” of the human subject, I have discussed elsewhere the problems of his reformulations (1984, 1993). In brief, his discussion of the unconscious “Other” (capitalized in Lacan’s theorizing) as the totality of rules of linguistic practices that lacks being, but “wants‑to‑be” (manqué‑à‑être) in relation to the conscious subject (whose self‑knowledge is forever lacking) is problematic in several ways. These are outlined as follows:

1 The Lacanian unconscious, as the totality of language, is structured, closed, and immutable (as well as logocentric and phallocentric) in a way that, at the very least, de‑emphasizes the role of repression in the creation of psychic reality, and thus deviates significantly from the emphasis of psychoanalytic discovery. 2 This deviation is also evident in the powerlessness of the Lacanian subject to engage in any meaningful praxis, and in this sense Lacanian theory appears to be a sort of inverted or capsized Cartesianism in which the unconscious is now all powerful, and the “I” is merely the subjugated voicing of an ontic momentum. 3 Correspondingly, Lacanian theory regresses away from Freud’s emphasis on the contradictory dynamic of psychic reality in repression, repetition‑compulsivity Consciousness and dynamics of repression 35

and the returning of the repressed, as well as missing the curative significance of free‑associative discourse.

As I shall suggest in Chapter 4, Lacanian theory also tends to disembody the human subject, in that the unconscious as “Other” is now linguistically struc‑ tured but remote from the impulsivity of our fleshly being. Despite these issues, Lacanian psychoanalysis is and has been enormously influential, gaining many clinical adherents especially in Europe and South America, and contributing some outstanding clinical writings (e.g., Leclaire, 1998; Nancy and Lacoue‑Labarthe, 1973; Nasio, 1992). It has also inspired “new views” of the unconscious somewhat emulating Lacan’s infatuation with mathematized formalizations, and suffering from the same sort of mistaken Kantianism, inverted or not (e.g., Matte‑Blanco’s use of Bertrand Russell’s mathematical logic in 1975 and 1988, or Bion’s epistemological use of Poincaré’s epistemology in the 1960s). These reformulations are highly valuable for the way in which they empha‑ size the Freudian critique of Cartesian‑Kantian epistemology. Lacan’s exco‑ riation of ego‑psychology is to be appreciated, precisely for the way in which his theoretical exegeses show how the conscious subject cannot be the master of representationality, but rather is produced by such a system; the authority of this epistemological identity is thus forever subverted. However, as Green (2002, 2005) and several others have suggested, Lacan underestimates the distinction Freud made, from his earliest studies of aphasia in 1891, between suppressed ideation as “word‑presentations” (Wortvorstellung) and the return‑ ing of the repressed as “thing‑presentations” (Sachvorstellung or Dingvorstellung). I will discuss some of the implications of this in Chapter 4, because I believe Freud’s metapsychological speculations have to be revised to reflect the way in which “thing‑presentations” reside in the libidinal energies of our embod‑ ied experience; that is, in the impulses of the flesh. However, what is impor‑ tant to note here is that his distinction between the modalities and processes of “presentation” suggests that in some way the repressed becomes detached from language (whereas the suppressed remains within the domain of linguis‑ tically structured representationality). This validates Green’s appreciative yet critical assessment of Lacanian psychoanalysis; the proposition that the unconscious is structured like a language does not do justice to the power of psychoanalysis because “Freud very clearly opposes the unconscious to the preconscious” and “what is related to language can only belong to the precon‑ scious” (quoted in Jacobus, 2006). Thus, there is a sense in which Lacanian theory de‑emphasizes the importance of the “repression barrier” and accord‑ ingly the significance of the flesh. The third and most prevalent path of misunderstanding the significance of the psychoanalytic discovery of the unconscious effectively disowns or disre‑ gards the distinction between the repressed and the descriptive unconscious. Theories that focus almost exclusively on the content of mental representations 36 Consciousness and dynamics of repression and that set aside Freud’s focus on the mind’s functioning – specifically, any serious consideration of the implications of the inherent repressiveness of con‑ sciousness – invariably regress away from any clear comprehension of the sig‑ nificance of the repressed unconscious and start using the term “unconscious” merely descriptively. In a sense, this tendency begins with Freud’s own writ‑ ings after 1914 – both with theorizing initiated by the set of essays written between 1915 and 1918 that, in addition to other aspects, set the framework for more advanced models of self‑ and object‑relations, and with theorizing initiated by his controversial 1920 essay that posited the notion of thanatos or “death instincts.” Thus, my criticisms here are directed toward Kleinian and so‑called “neo‑Kleinian” psychoanalysis (see Karnac, 2009), as well as “object‑relations theories” such as those of Winnicott (1957, 1965a, 1965b, 1968, 1971) and his successors (see Karnac, 2007), but even more emphati‑ cally toward Kohutian self‑psychology (see Kohut, 1971, 1977, 1978, 1980) and the motley grouping of interpersonal, relational, intersubjective, and phe‑ nomenological (or from a Husserlian standpoint quasi‑phenomenological) psychologists (see Lohmar and Brudzinska, 2011; Mitchell and Aron, 1999; Orange, Atwood, and Stolorow, 1997; Renik, 2006; Stern, Mann, Kantor, and Schlesinger, 1995). In Psychic Reality and Psychoanalytic Knowing, I address the problems with understanding the Freudian discovery from the standpoint of phenomeno‑ logical thinking, at least in relation to its Husserlian incarnation. It is this sort of thinking that led Jean‑Paul Sartre (1943), in his existential exposition of the aporias of consciousness, to argue that the Freudian “unconscious” merely implies an act of “bad faith” by a subject of consciousness being unwilling to acknowledge its own desires (see Gardner, 2007). Such a per‑ spective fails to comprehend the power of consciousness’ own repressive func‑ tioning; repression is not equivalent to an act of denial in which consciousness knows full well what it disowns. Apart from any other consideration, that which is denied may incessantly be the object of attention (for example, when I fast, I seem to constantly think about food); but the denied content does not reassert itself in consciousness in the disguised manner that characterizes the returning of the repressed. Rather, it surfaces clearly in consciousness but under the aegis of negation (much like the rabid homophobic who bores us with his insistence “I am not a damn homo”). The point here is that if your theory confuses the repressed unconscious with mental contents that are descriptively unconscious (that is, preconscious or nonconscious but con‑ demned, denied, negated, or suppressed), then it commits you to a threefold error. First, the significance of there being a repression barrier is again missed. Second, the way in which the repressed unconscious always returns to consciousness in disguised form will be missed (that is, the significance of conscious and preconscious contents both revealing and concealing, by con‑ densation and displacement, that which is repressed). Third, the role of free‑associative discourse, as the sine qua non of psychoanalytic method, will Consciousness and dynamics of repression 37 be misunderstood; for this discourse is the only way in which the conscious and preconscious mind can open itself to the returning of the repressed, even though conscious awareness can never achieve a full and final comprehension of that which it represses. In short, the phenomenological approach, with its emphasis on the way in which consciousness may be able to bracket certain of its own presuppositions cannot get beyond the purview of the unconscious in the descriptive sense; phenomenology misses the psychology of repression. As Freud well knew, the distinction between the repressed unconscious, with its focus on the repressiveness of self‑consciousness, and the notion of mental life that is merely descriptively unconscious is crucial to understand‑ ing the significance of his discipline. This is, after all, why he postulated the notion of a “repression barrier,” why he emphasized the constitution of con‑ sciousness as the “returning of the repressed,” and why free‑associative discourse remains the sine qua non of the psychoanalytic method by which self‑consciousness may interrogate itself. Yet this is a distinction that is lost on many of those who claim to be his successors, and who acknowledge only an unconscious that is descriptively so, or who suggest, rather absurdly, that the individual unconscious is reconstituted with every interpersonal encoun‑ ter (although, of course, the way the repressed is expressed will be modified with variations in the quality of interpersonal relations). The confusion of the repressed and the descriptive unconscious seems at issue in Kleinian psychoanalysis, despite the fact that it is far from phenomenological in its conduct (and has even been said to have an affinity with Hegelian dialec‑ tic). I hesitate to critique this mode of practice, because in many ways its emphasis on the role of “unconscious phantasy” in the governance of our psy‑ chic reality is exquisite. However, there is little or nothing in Kleinian or neo‑Kleinian psychoanalysis that explains the processes by which such phanta‑ sies become unconscious, and the methodology by which they are rendered conscious has less to do with the rigors of the deconstruction of self‑consciousness through free‑associative discourse, and more to do with the intuition of the psychoanalyst and his or her alleged attunement to the patient’s material. In a far more pronounced fashion, other theories have dubbed themselves “psychoanalytic” while seeming to ignore in their theoretical structures the significance of the distinction between the repressed and the descriptive unconscious. For example, Kohutian psychology, emerging as it does from the American ideology of selfhood and particularly from the Chicago school of social science (George Herbert Mead and his successors), essentially abolishes , overlooking or underestimating the inherently conflictual or contradictory constitution of psychic reality, and thus ignoring the repressive power of consciousness. Instead, “self‑psychology” focuses on the damaged self and the recuperative momentum of its capacity for “trans‑ muting internalizations” (Kohut, 1971, 1977, 1978, 1980). Perhaps with the exception of Fairbairn, who offers an elaborate theory of the way in which the ego organization may partition itself, the object‑relations 38 Consciousness and dynamics of repression theories of the “middle group” of British psychoanalysts (who positioned themselves somewhere between the ego‑psychology of Anna Freud and the emphasis on unconscious phantasy propounded by Kleinian practitioners) also seem to ablate the crucial distinction between the repressed and the descrip‑ tive unconscious (e.g., the prodigious writings of Winnicott, including his 1971 book). However, the writings of the interpersonalists, relational psychologists, and intersubjectivist “psychoanalysts” represent the apotheosis of this error because, despite their grandiose claims to offer a complete theory of this dis‑ cipline, there is nothing in their theorizing to discriminate the notion of the repressed from the descriptive unconscious; indeed, the significance of the former, and especially of its corollary, the notion that consciousness is always temporally displaced from itself in its constitution as the returning of the repressed, appears to have been long since forgotten. Indeed, we now have theories of “psychoanalysis” that have little in their theoretical structures to distinguish their conduct from a sophisticated version of the practices of counseling and coaching. Evidently it is easy for many of those who claim the title of psychoanalysts to have actually repressed the very discovery about consciousness that launched their discipline. This is the forgetting of psychoanalysis by its own practitioners – our common resistance to the liberating possibility that con‑ sciousness might open itself to its own repressiveness. It is also facile to develop all sorts of clinical practices – some of which may be therapeutically effective in the promotion of “maturity” and sociocultural “adaptation” – on the basis of theories about the content and development of mental life that never acknowledge the conscious subject’s own temporal dislocation from itself. However, psychoanalysis is far more than and radically different from this. The notion that consciousness always represses, and indeed that its con‑ struction and momentum is driven by what it represses, is the foremost essential tenet of the discipline. That consciousness is always formed from elsewhere is not only Freud’s major discovery, it is – as Freud wrote several times – the shibboleth on which psychoanalytic discipline is founded. And it is the reason why free‑associative discourse is this discipline’s proleptic method, requiring a willingness to give oneself over to the kinetic flow of this discourse in anticipation of what may be dynamically reappropriated. Yet all this is grievously lost upon many of those who claim to be adherents of psychoanalytic practice. Chapter 3 Personal history and repetition-compulsivity

Every person who is sufficiently educated to recognize that there is such a discipline as psychoanalysis knows that its practice is held to unlock the influence of the past over the individual’s awareness and functioning in the present. Psychoanalysis does indeed amplify and radicalize the famous 1905 aphorism from George Santayana’s The Life of Reason: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” However, aside from the vindication of this aphorism on the level of the individual’s life‑history (combined with the commonplace, but exceedingly cryptic, claim that the healing process of psychoanalysis is either powered by, or results in, the expansion of recollection and remembrance), there is a wealth of confusion about the way in which psychoanalysis discovers new dimensions and ways of addressing personal history. Indeed, given the nature of the unconscious as a perpetual returning of the repressed, the role of awareness on the path of liberation from the vicissitudes of our personal histories becomes yet more challenging to contemplate. For example, beyond the obvious platitude that our thoughts and feelings do not spring out of nowhere – that the present moment does not arise de novo – what does it really mean to assert that every individual might be constantly repeating the events of an unremembered past? Repeat how? Moreover, does remembrance really terminate or alleviate the repetitious condition of our psy‑ chic life, permitting an increment of spontaneity, or is it not itself a modified mode of repetition? Indeed, what is the veracity of any act of memory, and in what sense is this question of veracity critical, or not so critical, to the way in which remembering might have healing properties? How, and by what procedures, does recollection gain its capacity to heal, and is this sort of reap‑ propriative expansion of remembrance inherent – and necessary – to psycho‑ analytic processes or a sort of benignly interesting byproduct of their momentum? Why would knowing the past emancipate us from its grip, and is this a matter of “knowing about” or of some sort of “felt‑sense knowing” that involves a palpable and renewed – yet somehow “new” and “aware” – repetition? In this chapter, we will address these questions, and we will find that the psychoana‑ lytic answer to a seemingly simple question (How does the past influence the 40 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity present?) takes us to the heart of the complex originality of this discipline, in that the psychology of repression actually initiates a radically dissident way of thinking about time itself.

On “having” a life What is a life? More specifically, what is a human life? Depending on how you read this question, it elicits a mundane biological answer, which is actu‑ ally far more complicated than might be anticipated, or it reeks of theological grandeur (or it seems sublime in its silliness). Neither the biological nor the theological response addresses the question from the standpoint of experi‑ ence. What is the experience of being alive and thus “having a life”? The naïve response that a life is our personal identity formed by whatever we experience between the cradle and the grave is actually quite abstract or speculatively remote from the immediacy of real experience, in as much as we can experience neither the beginning nor the end of experience itself (Lichtenstein, 1977). It is a sort of conjecture remote from the felt‑sense of living, an addendum to any immediate sense of personal identity. And if we try to think beyond this ordinary narrative – what hermeneutists might call the “vulgar notion” – of a human life as a sequential cacophony of events that occur between the melding of conception and the terminality of rigor mortis, we collide with a set of profound and perplexing questions about personal identity. For example, at what point did this entity called “Barnaby” (for heuristic purposes, insert your own name here) come into existence? And is not his “personal identity” entirely constructed, so to speak, extrapersonally? This touches on the issue mentioned in the previous chapter – how self‑conscious‑ ness cannot arrive by reflection at its own origins and how the “originating act” of self‑consciousness might already be a repetition, a “primal repetitious‑ ness” that comes from elsewhere. Consider the following. To what extent do I come to know I am Barnaby, because I am thus designated in the narratives told and retold by others, in what Lacanians would call the “symbolic” register of language (Fink, 1996; Pelt, 2000; Ragland‑Sullivan, 1987; Smith and Kerrigan, 2009)? Think here of the way in which toddlers will narrate their own actions using their own name in the third person as they gradually gain facility with their place in the linguistic network of signifiers. But now notice that that there is also a forceful sense in which this Barnaby existed even before the sperm fused with the egg, and certainly before he was inducted into the realm of language such that he could enunciate other people’s utter‑ ances about himself. For instance, Barnaby was manifested in the fantasies of others even prior to the act of conception, in the proverbial twinkle of his Father’s eye, in his Mother’s childhood play with dolls, and so forth (on the plane of what Lacanians call the “imaginary” register). Subsequently, through‑ out the pregnancy and into the post‑partum phase, this entity called Barnaby Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 41 featured in other narratives, both consciously articulated and latently con‑ structed by others; predestinations such as “he will disrupt our household” or “he will compensate me for my loss” to “he will fulfill my dreams” and “he will be the death of me.” He was formed as an “object” in all the rampant projections, spoken and unspoken, that seem to occur around every baby’s crib. And at some point, he was formally named (and in many cultural cir‑ cumstances he would also be mutilated ritualistically) to designate his status as a possession of his caretakers and his tribe. All this usually happens even before Barnaby can self‑referentially utter a “me” representation. We tend to resist thinking along these lines too strenuously. It creates anxiety to consider too deeply the extent to which we were, and are, formed from outside. To dwell on this too sensitively makes us seem, and feel, para‑ noid (even though, in a sense, this is in fact the “paranoid‑schizoid” condition that Kleinian theory specifies as the psychological position from which we all began). Considering this too intensely causes us rapidly to feel we are losing our grip on ourselves. Who exactly am I? How robust would my identity be – for example, my deeply invested notion of myself as being a psychoana‑ lyst, or my current experience of myself as engaged in the act of writing this chapter ­– if it ceased to be affirmed and confirmed by others? Even my sense of myself as “a large man” physically could easily be shaken if I were suddenly transported to a Swiftian world in which comparative data did not verify this experience of who and what I take myself to be. Place any of us in a sensory deprivation tank for more than a few minutes and we lose our grip on the physicality of where we begin and where we end, body boundaries become problematically indiscernible, paranoid fantasies are frequent, and – very significantly – our sense of time rescinds dramatically (Lily, 2006; Zubek, 1969). Pertaining to many different levels of experience, there is an abun‑ dance of evidence, from social psychological experimentation (especially from the days in which experiments now forbidden as unethical were routinely conducted), from vivid literary writings and, alas, from anecdotal reports of how people break down when tortured or forced into isolation (Ojeda, 2008). All of this indicates how tenuous our sense of identity can be if deprived of communal–narratological or sensorial endorsement. The establishment of our personal identity is more fragile than we care to think. It is a coagulation of consciousness that could easily fall apart, because it is maintained by our egotism’s seemingly endless repetitions of the semiotic constructions of “me” and “my” – “this thought is held by me, this hand is me, these are my notes, this is my desk,” and so forth. Such repetitious utter‑ ances serve to reassure us that there is indeed a solid identity somewhere con‑ structed as an edifice of apparent – perhaps illusory or delusional – stability amid a cacophonous sea of eventualities. We locate this identity, with all its seemingly incessant repetition of “micro” narratives, within a “macro” story‑ line called “my life” (Badiou, 1982; Barratt, 1993; Borch‑Jacobsen, 1982; Cavell, 2008; Fink, 1996; Kennedy 1998, 2002, 2007; Nancy, 1996; Perry, 42 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity

1978, 2008; Rorty, 1975; Shoemaker and Swinburne, 1984). We figure that, like all stories, it has to have a beginning, middle, and end. Yet if we say “my birth” or “my death,” it seems strangely remote from our actual experience. This idea of my life as a historical sequence is actually formed externally. It is in the communality of discourse that we conceptualize John Smith as having had a beginning to his life, a middle portion of it, and then an ending (after which we suppose that his identity dwells only in the posthumous memorializing engaged by people other than himself). And we can be quite sure that John Smith never directly experienced himself as having a life‑ history organized in this manner. The entity “me” – this Barnaby – has only a shaky and abstract sense that I must have had a beginning. After all, every‑ thing does (and, as discussed previously, self‑consciousness cannot reach back to its own initiation). As has been argued famously by Freud, but also by many others, I can conceptualize my own death only in a limenal act of dis‑ belief; after all, “nothing resembling death has ever been experienced,” as Freud writes in his 1926 book. Even though “deathfulness” is inherent in every moment of our subjectivity, my egotism can scarcely conceptualize the vertiginous void of its own death, as the void in which all conceptualization is annulled (see Barratt, 1999, 2004a; Becker, 1998; Boothby, 1991; Derrida, 1993; Gillespie, 1995; Green, 2002; Laplanche, 1970; Lingis, 1989; Ragland‑Sullivan, 1994; Wood, 1989). My death as the terminus ad quem, the nullification of the experiential edifice of my personal identity, is like an idea that cannot be thought through, a solid conjecture but not “anything resem‑ bling” an experience. “Knowing about” death scarcely addresses the issue; death remains enigmatic to the reflections of our consciousness. In this breach of understanding, our egotism consoles itself with stories that abrogate the definitiveness of death. There will be an afterlife in heaven or in hell (but God forbid that there be neither!). We will “live on” in whatever our life has cre‑ ated (books, buildings, bank accounts). Others will carry us forward in their fond (or not so fond) memories, and so forth. But from the standpoint of experience, the beginning and the end of our life‑history are both certainty and speculation. It is only the “middle” of our lives that we actually experi‑ ence. How this middle is experienced as having history, and how it is indeed historical, must be further explored.

Psychic reality, historicity, and historicality As psychoanalysts, we are neither historians nor biographers. The patient who tries to turn his or her sessions into an exercise in autobiographical story‑ telling actually derails the potential of psychoanalytic discourse (the patient’s fearful egotism preempts the healing process, often with the psychoanalyst’s collusion). Psychoanalysis does not conceptualize or categorize the individual from an external point of view; I write this not to diminish any interest in the discipline of “psychobiography,” but merely to emphasize that its methods Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 43 are not equivalent to that of psychoanalysis, whatever the theoretical affilia‑ tions of the scholars engaged in such work (see Fisher, 1991; Loewald, 1978; Novey, 1968; Runyan, 1982; Schultz, 2005). Psychoanalytic discourse engages the lived vicissitudes of experience, the “inner” world of psychic real‑ ity, and does so distinctively, indeed uniquely. Such vicissitudes are often called “subjectivity,” which is quite misleading since not all experience is owned by the self‑conscious subject, in that the felt‑sense of some aspects of experience is not taken to be “me” and indeed is negated or disowned by the subject (see the preceding chapter, and also Barratt, 1984, 1993). Psychic reality encompasses both the organized aspect of our mental life consisting of representations as well as the transformations between them (which in Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse, I discussed as the semiotic law and order our psyche), and the otherwise nature of “desire” (which we will discuss further, when we come to explore the libidinality of our embodi‑ ment). Mental organization has “history” in at least two respects, which I will call historicality and historicity, borrowing these terms from contemporary hermeneutic philosophy and bending them to suit the purposes of this essay (see: Carr, 1991; Ermarth, 1991; Gadamer, 1972; Heidegger, 1927; Ricoeur, 1983–1985, 2004). Every mental representation refers to a timeframe. Even those that are figurative rather than literal have a timeframe, although as we shall see there is an added complexity with the former. Representations are, so to speak, time‑tagged. If my next mental image or idea refers to a statue of Buddha, I more or less know if it is present, as the statue sitting next to my desk; if it is a memory of some statue I have seen previously; or if it is a statue that I imagine and might hope to see in the future. If my next mental image or idea is of a Jabberwocky (with apologies to Lewis Carroll), then the issue is, like the images and ideas of a dream, more complex; like dreamtime, the tempo‑ rality of fantasy is something akin to a purely absent presence. As long ago as the earliest years of the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo (397–430) expressed this cogently but rudimentarily when he pointed to the threefold present of the psyche: the presence of past states, the presence of present states, and the presence of future states (and it was Augustine who pointed out that we only know time so long as no one asks us what it is). This then is the historicality of representations. If a representation presents itself “in my mind,” it will likely be tagged as past, present, or future. However, in the context of consensual reality, my tagging – so to speak – may or may not be correct. So there are complications here that are not only very significant to the labors of psychologists, but also of issue to the society in which the individual operates. For example, if the representation of my deceased Mother is taken by me to be a present reality, such that I believe she is in the room in what we consensually call “reality” (leaving aside the ques‑ tionable veridicality of ghosts, supernatural visitations, and hobgoblins), and if this seems so real to me that I start talking with her, then I am said to be 44 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity delusional or to be having hallucinations. In short, the confusion of timeframes causes disorganization – and a detachment or dissent from ordinary reality as consensually constructed by a discursive community – in a way that is usually labeled “psychotic” (Buckley, 1988; Laing, 1960; Minkowski, 1970). Like a dream, it is a pure presence of something absent that is not treated as such. We might note again here what a strange status our inner world of figura‑ tive representations has (as well as those figurative representations that are communally shared). Dreams provide the most striking example (e.g., Alston, Cologeras, and Deserno, 1993; Lansky, 1992; Meltzer, 1983); assum‑ ing, at least for now, that dreams are the dreamer’s personal construction and not, as is believed in so many cultures, communications from another person or another world (see Krippner, 1990). Consider the timeframe of the dream that appeared in the vignette discussed in the previous chapter. Both the psychoanalyst and the patient know that the story of the son refers to some‑ thing in the recent past, and the story of the Rabbi refers to something in the comparatively distant past. This is the case, even if the psychoanalyst is also thinking that the stories entail an implication for the current relationship in the treatment, the so‑called aspect of the relationship (e.g., Arundale and Bellman, 2011; Esman, 1990; Little, 1981; Macalpine, 1950; Racker, 1968; Reed, 1994; Zetzel, 1956). However, the dream fragment that next surfaces is somewhat anomalous. The patient and the psychoanalyst are walking together in pleasant countryside as “bosom buddies.” The fragment presents itself as a newly-formed recollection of a dream that actually occurred during the previous night’s sleep, and we generally assume that the patient is indeed correct in remembering it as such (although with dreams we never know the extent to which the waking memory of the dream corre‑ sponds to whatever occurred at the moment of dreaming). This is, so to speak, the presence of a past state, a memory of what happened last night. However, it now “comes to mind” as referring to something immediately being experi‑ enced by the patient with the psychoanalyst in the present moment. This is not taken as literal, since neither the patient nor the psychoanalyst mistake the consulting room for pleasant countryside. It is, however, the presence of a present state. But as such it also has a wishful quality in that it seems to depict something that could happen in the future, and indeed is desired. So this is, in a certain sense, the presence of a future yet presently absent state. Obviously, that some representations are tagged as literal and some as figurative is a crucial issue that enters into the significance of the vignette. But this does not only apply to the dream. It applies to all representations that are explicitly figurative (for example, if I tell my friend “writing this book is a breeze”). It also applies to all representations that are implicitly or potentially figurative. For example, most clinicians will speculate that the Rabbi somehow stands for the psychoanalyst in the transference. That is, they will hypothesize that the patient unconsciously fears that if he is hostile toward the psychoanalyst, as he was toward the Rabbi, the psychoanalyst Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 45 will similarly reject him. So the Rabbi in the story is a literal memory of the mentor who tutored the patient for his Bar Mitzvah, but also functions figuratively – in a temporal displacement – as a representation of the psy‑ choanalyst. The latter function is preconscious or descriptively unconscious; it may even be emerging from some prior condition in which it was, in some sense, repressed. The ambiguity of timeframe reference characterizes repre‑ sentations that are figurative and those that may be treated as possibly figu‑ rative – representations that are metaphoric, metonymic, allegorical. Dreams are merely the most dramatic example because, unless you believe that spir‑ its other than the dreamer’s literally appear to the dreamer in the dream imagery, then the entire production must be taken figuratively (for a con‑ trary view relating to shamanic practices, see Kalweit, 1988). This is why Freud in his 1900 Interpretation of Dreams called them the via regia or “royal road” to understanding the dynamically repressed unconscious, and (1951) later wrote that “dreams are like a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.” We will return to many of these issues later. The historicity of representations is quite different from their historicality or referential time‑tagging. As we have just discussed, historicality is the quality of a representation that enables us to know, or usually to believe we know, to what timeframe it refers. By contrast, the historicity of a representa‑ tion concerns the way in which it is inevitably formed on the basis of some prior representation or representations. It has abundantly been demonstrated by cognitive and developmental psychologists that every mental representa‑ tion is built on the basis of its predecessors; nothing comes to mind de novo, and in fact if one encountered something that was entirely novel, one could not cognize it. In Piagetian terminology, there has to be some prior represen‑ tation that can be modified to accommodate any new event and to which it can be assimilated (Piaget, 1978); this is central to any developmentalist perspective. From the standpoint of experience, there is a dual implication to the historicity of our representational functions, concerning the way in which current experience is built from prior experiences, and concerning the way in which memories of prior experiences necessarily accord with the mandates of current experience. Consider the following. My experience of the statue of the Buddha that sits next to my desk, here and now, is conditioned and constrained by all my previous experiences of such statues. This may seem subtle but it is far from trivial, for there is a clinically important sense in which my experience of this statue is different from anyone else’s. If a practitioner happens to have seen the same movie that the patient did, an adept psychoanalyst will never assume that he or she saw the same movie as the patient did! Psychoanalysis is not a process that aims to manipulate and mold experiences into conformity with a norm. Rather, it respects the truthfulness of psychic reality as being idiographic. More person‑ ally salient examples of the historicity of our experience come from the area 46 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity of our most intimate relationships. My experience of my current lover is con‑ ditioned and constrained by my experiences with my previous lover (and also contextually by my experience of non‑lovers). Of course, the process by which my attachment to this individual is “conditioned and constrained” by the preceding experience may be varied. To give a simplistic example, I might be especially prone to fall for someone whose temperament is scholarly because my prior experience was a wonderful relationship with a scholar. Conversely, I might be especially inclined to fall for someone who is uneducated because I disliked the predecessor’s preoccupation with scholarship and perhaps found it threatening. Either way, previous events condition and constrain the pres‑ ent experience. Of course, my experience with the lover prior to the present one was conditioned and constrained by my experience with the lover (and with non‑lovers) prior to that, which was in turn conditioned and constrained by my experience with that lover’s predecessor, and so on. This goes all the way back to the point where Freud at the end of his life could boldly assert that the bonding with a primary caretaker (typically one’s Mother) is “estab‑ lished unalterably for a whole lifetime as the first and strongest love‑object and as the prototype of all later love‑relations for both sexes.” This is actu‑ ally a profound insight, conveying a truth far more powerful than we usually choose to acknowledge, which is thus widely and sometimes vehemently resisted by those who have not personally experienced the exposing momen‑ tum of psychoanalytic treatment. The idea that all love affairs are ultimately conditioned and constrained by the erotic experiences we had with our earliest caretakers – that is to say, with an incestuous “object” – can be deeply repugnant. However, if it seems coun‑ terintuitive (“my Mother always smelled of the fish she cooked every day, but my lover wears the sweetest of perfumes”), consider how the notion of a “prototype” or “model” (das Vorbild was Freud’s word) holds multiple poten‑ tials, as indicated by my example above. It allows that, having passed through oedipal complexities, one may fall in love with a person precisely because he or she appears conspicuously different from the – incestuous – “primary object,” but nevertheless the impact of this previous experience persists and resonates through the course of every life history. As an aside, it may be noted that there was a significant empirical investigation undertaken in the 1960s, which I believe remains unpublished but was frequently mentioned during my various studies in the 1970s with anthropologists such as Johnny Whiting and David Maybury‑Lewis. In this study, cultures for which there is sufficient ethnographic documentation were categorized according to their normative style of heterosexual intercourse (variables such as fast/slow, rough/ tender, emotionally warm/distant, and so forth). Having analyzed a substan‑ tial sample of cultures from data available in the Yale Human Relations Area Files (Frayser, 1985), it was found that the only factor that significantly pre‑ dicted the qualities of adult intercourse was the culture’s specific style of breast‑feeding and of weaning its infants. It might also be noted that even a Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 47 distinguished sexologist such as John Money, who was notorious for his anti‑psychoanalytic polemic, consistently acknowledged, on the basis of his clinical and empirical investigations, that our adult sexual patterning is established in the crucible of our earliest experiences (e.g., Money, 1989). These considerations bear on the way in which prior experiences impact those of the present. Consider now how previous experience influences the recollection of prior events – the formation of representations that are tagged as memories of the past. If I now bring into consciousness a memory of my deceased Father (that is, a representation whose historicality is “in the past”), what I am actually “calling to mind” is not an image of my Father stored since the time he was alive and now retrieved in the pristine condi‑ tion in which it was initially consigned to storage, but rather an image based on the previous occasion in which I remembered him, and on every remembrance of him prior to that (Andrews and Neumann, 2011; Howes, 2006; Mace, 2010; Neiser and Hyman, 1999; Ross, 1992). Two issues are pertinent here:

1 My “choice” of this particular memory as the one I call to mind is condi‑ tioned and constrained by my present state. To give a simplistic example, if I am currently feeling very sad, it will be a challenge to conjure into consciousness an exuberantly happy memory of my Father (unless I am trying to cheer myself up). Despite the fact that happy memories of him are in my repertoire of remembrance, it will likely be difficult to find them and, if I do manage to call one to mind, it will likely be “just the facts” and will not have its usual emotional charge – it will, so to speak, have lost its color. 2 Even with respect to the factual aspects of the memory, I can have little or no confidence that I am recollecting the particularities just as they happened at the time. What I am calling to mind is most closely related to whatever I called to mind on the previous occasion that I brought this memory to consciousness. It is as if the mind operates on the protocol of “remember the last time you remembered that event with your Father, which in turn was based on the previous time you remembered that event with your Father, which was in turn…” (remember remembering, remembering, remembering, and so on). This is also seriously troubling to our egotism, which insists that it really knows “what’s what” and what actually happened). I want desperately to believe that my Father really was the way I remember him. And I do not like to contemplate the pos‑ sibility that, with none of my cherished recollections of my Father, can I actually be sure that he was the way I have memorialized him. Indeed, the image of far more recent events, such as what I ate for breakfast this morning, is already distorted (as well as colored by my current state of hunger, satiation, feelings about the lover who volunteered to do the cooking, or whatever). 48 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity

Here we begin to see how the historicity and the historicality of psychic real‑ ity can affect each other to create the inner world in which we live.

On the immixing of historicity and historicality One of the most charming illustrations of the immixing of the processes of historicity and historicality is presented in Freud’s first published essay on a work of literature; his 1907 discussion of Wilhelm Jensen’s novella Gradiva, which was published four years earlier (see Jensen and Downey, 2010). In this novel, a young archaeologist named Norbert Hanold, whose life is entirely preoccupied with his work and who is disinterested in the company of women, becomes intrigued by a sculpture he sees in a museum. It depicts a girl or young woman pulling up her long flowing dress and exposing her feet and lower legs, stepping forward as if to cross a street in rainy weather. He starts fantasizing about this girl’s life in Pompeii during the first century. He begins to engage in a “scientific” study of young women’s feet and their pos‑ ture as they cross the street. He has a dream in which he is living in Pompeii and sees the young woman. In his waking life he begins to imagine that they once lived as contemporaries. Norbert names the girl “Gradiva” – “the girl who is stepping along” – and at one point believes that he sees her walking just outside his home in northern Germany. He spontaneously decides to take a trip to Italy, but when he arrives he is contemptuously bothered by all the amorous couples he sees on vacation there. Strolling through Pompeii, Norbert suddenly spots the Gradiva depicted in the sculpture now unmistak‑ ably stepping lightly over the lava stones in the street. She is just as he had seen her in his dream. He approaches the young woman and addresses her in Latin; to his amazement, she responds, “If you want to speak to me, you must do it in German.” He recognizes her voice from the dream and from his fan‑ tasies, and he asks to see her the next day, but she seems to disappear and reappear as he wanders through his vacation. He is still convinced she is an apparition and cries out to himself “Oh! If only you still lived.” Norbert meets her again, and learns that the young woman’s name is actually Zoe, meaning “life,” although she seems to play along with his conviction that she is an apparition. There is much elaboration to this story, but in its denoue‑ ment the girl announces that she is actually Zoe Bertgang, with whom Norbert had been a close childhood friend and who has recently moved into a house just across the street from Norbert’s residence; she too is now in Pompeii on vacation. Only gradually surfacing from his delusion, Norbert protests that she does not look like his childhood friend, but this is, of course, because she is now a fully-grown young woman with the same elegance that Norbert perceived in the centuries-old sculpture. Although only a minor essay in the span of Freud’s writings, his exegesis of this novella is valuable because it details the complex way in which the present realities that captivate us reflect and refract past experiences repetitiously. Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 49

Such a forgotten personal history, in this case an intimate childhood friendship that seeds an adult love affair (against the awareness of which there are com‑ plex defenses), impinges on the presencing of the present in a way that entwines the historicity and historicality of the subject’s representations. The inner world becomes structured with illusions and delusions, which is not to imply that any of us live anywhere other than in our inner worlds. Zoe plays with Norbert as if to facilitate the birthing of his childhood longings into the consensual reality of their adult relationship (in a certain sense, she works and plays with a similar maieutic function to that of the psychoanalyst). Confirming the insight of the dharmic tradition in which the world we inhabit is understood as ma-ya- (see Dasgupta and Dasgupta, 2010), psycho‑ analysis treats all life as a dream, in that the historicity and historicality of the lived world of representationality are inextricably intermingled. Norbert’s story merely illustrates, in stark and dramatic fashion, processes in which we are all embroiled. The blurring of reality and dream is such that we can never just “live in reality” (and even if we could, it would be extremely unadvis‑ able), nor can we even ascertain where one begins and the other ends. In this sense, all life occurs in a “transitional space” and not just some aspects of it (as Winnicott seems to have conceptualized it). While agnostic on the issue of any “life” beyond that of one’s personal history (see Perry, 1978), psycho‑ analysis is nonetheless the disciplinary heir to the words of Pedro Calderón de la Barca in his seventeenth century play, La vida es sueño: “How if our waking life, like that of sleep, be all a dream in that eternal life to which we wake not till we sleep in death?” (Calderón de la Barca, 1629–1635). One of the delights of Jensen’s Gradiva is that it illustrates for us, in a simplistic but vivid manner, not only the deeper dimensions of personal his‑ tory but specifically the way in which past events (or as I shall call them past-futures) animate the experience of the present. The seemingly bizarre sequence of events through which the story’s protagonist glides or stumbles (depending on your viewpoint) appears as a repetition of the past as well as an anticipation of the future; the obsession with the sculpture is driven by his childhood closeness with the girl and anticipates his falling in love with a young woman (who happens, not coincidently, to be the very same person as the girl). There is much detail in the novel that I have omitted (and that Freud addresses with his customary appearance of great thoroughness), but the significance of the sequence is still evidentiary. A man apparently indif‑ ferent to adult women becomes infatuated with an ancient sculpture that depicts a girl, her dress hiked up to reveal her sandaled feet, crossing the street. He begins “researching” (or “re‑searching,” in line with Freud’s insis‑ tence that every “object finding” is always a “re‑finding”) similar women in his present surroundings. He comes to believe, delusionally, that he sees the girl in the statue now walking the streets of his home town and then again on the streets of Pompeii (the sight is, so to speak, an experience “between reality and fantasy,” which is actually where we all live). So compelled by his 50 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity experiences is this man that he takes an unplanned vacation. Annoyed by the presence of those fellow vacationers who are couples in love, he strolls the streets until he encounters what appears to be the woman in the statue. There is a profoundly significant sense in which he thus re‑finds his childhood sweetheart and perhaps now graduates into an ability to undertake a love affair with an adult. In short, pasts that anticipate the possibility of a future different from the present animate the experience of the present itself. “Past‑futures” thus impinge upon the presencing of present experience, its structural transformations and its contents; in this respect, we may conclude that present experience both reveals and conceals what was and what is to become. However, our self‑consciousness is supremely unaware that this is how it is itself constituted; as Green (2002) formulates it, “the unconscious is unaware of time, but consciousness does not know that the unconscious is unaware of time” (and, I might add, it is not within the possibility of con‑ sciousness to come to know this, in the sense of it being a felt‑experience). What we consciously believe we are thinking and feeling, and why we believe we are thus having such thoughts and feelings, is never “all that is the case,” for something “otherwise” is always being revealed and concealed, and this is a “timeless otherwise.” This incessant process of revelation and concealment of what is otherwise characterizes the constructions owned by the conscious subject – or more precisely, the otherwise repressed insinuates itself in the segueing and sequencing, as well as the rupturing, of consciousness as it moves from one construction to another. Through the transformations in the stream of consciousness, something “in but not of” the intentions and mean‑ ings that consciousness takes itself to have, is both revealed and concealed repeatedly, and this is evidence of what has been called the “fundamental heterochrony” or “diachronic heterogeneity” of the psyche. This is the essence of the repetition-compulsivity that governs the temporalities of the psyche or human soul.

On the governance of repetition-compulsivity We are accustomed to think of time as having “two tiers” (as Julius Fraser expressed it in 1975). Paul Ricoeur (1983–1985) and others have called these phenomenological and cosmological time; John McTaggart (1908) previously called them the “A‑” and “B‑series” respectively. Cosmological time represents the sequencing of events, which Plato described as a unitary movement and which the Judeo‑Christian‑Islamic tradition established as a singular linear timeline along which everything can be ordered as “before” and “after” or “earlier” and “later.” Aristotle, Galileo Galilei, and many others have charac‑ terized this tier of temporality in terms of the movement of the planets and of physical bodies, yet held it to be independent of them; such that Isaac Newton, in his 1687 Principia, would write that “absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 51 external.” Following Albert Einstein, contemporary physics cannot separate time from space, understanding the sequencing of events in terms of the dis‑ solutive properties of energy (Einstein, 1921). Cosmological time is now derived from motion, rather than motion from time. By contrast, phenomeno‑ logical time does not fall within the purview of the physicist, for it is the experiential division of time into past/present/future – the extraordinary and enigmatic ability of our minds to designate this moment as “now” and to organize our representations of ourselves and our world around it (Barratt, 1993; Brockelman, 1986; Dastur, 2001; Forrester, 1985; Minkowski, 1970). While the division of past/present/future has no meaning in physics, our capacity to think about cosmological time is, in a certain sense, dependent on the ability of human consciousness to think in terms of the phenomenology of “now.” This ability of consciousness to presence a present moment has been explored in the Western philosophical tradition from Aristotle and Augustine of Hippo to Edmund Husserl, Henri‑Louis Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida (see Wood, 1989). The production of an experience of the “now” is almost certainly contingent on the represen­ tational structuring of our mind – on language, to use this term loosely (Kristeva, 1975, 1992). We think about a past and a future (and we tag our representations accordingly) because we believe we experience the presentness of the present, the apparent fullness of the “now.” Contrary to certain popular spiritual teachings, which exhort us to live more powerfully in the “now” (e.g., Tolle, 2004), this “now” is, in the most profound sense, more empty than we care to imagine. As Leszek Kolakowski wrote in his 1988 Metaphysical Horror, the “I” (meaning the Cartesian ego that establishes “I am now thinking, there‑ fore I exist”) “is a kind of black hole.” If “I” has no meaning other than the endless locutions of “me this” and “me that,” then the apparent fullness of the presencing of the present moment becomes a gaping abyss (I will return to this in later chapters). Cosmological and phenomenological time can both be represented in con‑ sciousness. Cosmological time corresponds to the historicity of representa‑ tions, the way in which one follows another, building on its predecessor in the sequencing of events (which is a sort of energy flow, as we shall discuss in the next chapter). Phenomenological time corresponds to the historicality of representations, the way in which we tag mental images according to whether they belong in the past, the present, or the future. However, what psycho‑ analysis discovers is that the two tiers of temporality are not cozily nested within each other but are the locus of an inescapable contradictoriness in the transformative sequencing of consciousness. It discovers that every represen‑ tation of the present is compulsively infused with “otherwise past‑futures” in a way that makes the consciousness of “now” complexly repetitive. The compulsive repetitiousness of consciousness creates a sequence of pres‑ ent experiences for which it is as if mental representations that have been previously exiled from consciousness persist and insist themselves on the 52 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity formation of each current experience. As I have discussed, the movement of free‑associative discourse intimates how conscious representations always both conceal and reveal something otherwise than whatever consciousness takes itself to intend or mean (Barratt, 1993). However, as indicated previ‑ ously, it is a mistake to imagine that this “otherwise other” is of the same order as that which consciousness represents or can ever represent; accord‑ ingly, it is a serious mistake to imagine that the repressed unconscious is a space in which mental contents are stored as representations. Consciousness can represent its other, or others, but not an “otherwise other” that is the brio of life, eventuating as if outside‑of‑time. What impinges on the temporalities of consciousness, contradictorily immixing the historicity and historicality of its representations, is otherwise than the law and order of the representational world. So it is more accurate to formulate this as follows: The discovery of the repressed unconscious is the free‑associative finding that consciousness, in the sequential formation of its representations, always reveals and conceals desir‑ ous past‑futures that are otherwise that what it takes itself to intend or mean. Self‑consciousness (as well as personal history) is subjected to a more complex interaction of pluritemporalities than it can itself grasp. The notion of repetition‑compulsivity – and the entirely new and disturb‑ ing depiction of personal history that it offers us – is essential to understand the psychoanalytic discovery that consciousness is continually constituted as a disguised returning of that which has been repressed. I have organized this book around the idea that there are four coordinates essential to understand‑ ing what psychoanalysis is. These are typically listed as: repressed uncon‑ scious, personal history, bodily sensuality, and oedipal complexities; however, to this list, I have emphatically added three integrally connected and essential notions:

1 The emancipative momentum of free‑associative discourse. 2 Our resistance to the awareness of what is otherwise than that which our egotism ordains within consciousness. 3 The governance of consciousness by processes of repetition‑compulsivity (and the inherently polysemously or pluritemporally contradictoriness of the human condition that this implies).

Without this understanding of the “four‑plus‑three” Grundpfeiler, psychoa‑ nalysis becomes confused with an ordinary procedure of psychotherapy that aims to manipulate the patient’s representations (conceptually and narrato‑ logically) to conform more adaptively to prevailing sociocultural conditions and constraints (we will discuss this further in Chapter 6 and thereafter). Repetition‑compulsivity is perhaps the most challenging aspect of Freud’s discovery of the dynamically repressed unconscious to understand, for it requires nothing less than a thorough rethinking of our notions of time. As Green (1967, 2000a, 2002, 2005) and others have pointed out, few commentators Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 53

have realized how the discovery of the repressed unconsciousness compels us radically to revise our ideas about temporality, and in this respect Freud’s inno‑ vations are revolutionary and much of subsequent “psychoanalysis” has retreated to pre‑Freudian positions. This is profoundly problematic even if understand‑ able, for it is difficult enough to think about time in its two ordinary senses, but here is the free‑associative discovery that the “time of the mind” not only refuses to observe the rule of clock‑time, but indeed is neither singular nor linear. The “unconscious is timeless” (zeitlos) was the only way Freud could articulate his discovery, but this formulation is, of course, inadequate. Yet it points to the way in which the free‑associative method, as the sine qua non of the discovery of the unconscious, actually shatters our temporal security (in Green’s words, it leads the subject into an experience of temps éclaté). The operation of repetition‑compulsivity is even more complex than the longstanding idea that time might be unitary but cyclical rather than linear, an idea to which Plato in the Timaeus (and Aristotle in his Physis) conformed, as did the Pythagoreans (see Barratt, 1993; Kristeva, 1974, 1977a, 1977b, 1992). Cyclical time is well known to Vedic and the post‑Vedic dharmic philosophies, as well as being celebrated in Chinese, Aztec, Mayan, Norse, and other mythologies (Campbell, 1959–1968). The repetitiousness of life was explored extensively in the mid‑nineteenth century by Kierkegaard (1843), and the nature of time as potentially cyclical was discussed by Freud’s contemporary, Nietzsche (1882, 1883–1885), in his doctrine of “eternal recurrence” (see Heidegger, 1936–1946; Jung, 1934–1939). The notion had been previously discussed by Schopenhauer (1818/1844), with whose writ‑ ings Freud was familiar, and had also appeared in lesser known texts by Eugen Dühring as well as in the literary works of Heinrich Heine. Yet Freud’s discovery radically blows open the notion of time as unitary yet cyclical, exploding all preceding models of temporality. The discovery of repetition‑compulsivity does not point to a simple cycling of experience, in which one event faithfully replicates or reproduces an event that occurred previously in a circular loop of reiteration. Rather, the compulsive repeti‑ tiousness of the human psyche is a ceaseless process of repetition‑with‑a‑ difference, or more precisely différance in Derrida’s terminology (see Caputo, 1987; Deleuze, 1968; Harvey, 1986; Laruelle, 1986; Wood, 1989). Freud’s discovery calls into question not just the linearity of time, but also its unicity (which has been assumed since classical Greek philosophy). In short, to understand the psyche, one needs to attempt to think the unthinkable: namely, that in the “time of the mind,” there are multiple tem‑ poralities that move in progressively complex, nonlinear, and interdependent twists and turns, coiling eddies, orbits and curls, spirals and loops, whirls and whorls, pirouettes and all manner of other eccentric gyrations. The determi‑ nacies of our personal history and the moment‑by‑moment functioning of our psyche are at least as chaotic as the weather, as modeled in Edward Lorenz’s famous research on deterministic flow systems and nondeterministic dynamics 54 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity

(see Devaney, 2003). To reduce these determinacies to an encapsulated and rationally ordered narrative is not only to commit a simplification (which is certainly the case in the story of Norbert Hanold), but is also, in a sense, to commit a violence against the human spirit. This is, of course, a manner to be strenuously avoided in the day‑to‑day practice of psychoanalysis.

The aporias of recollection Even if they are not always aware of it, practicing psychoanalysts struggle daily to understand the pluritemporality of psychic reality as it is exhibited by the segueing, sequencing, and rupturing of the flow of free‑associative discourse – the way in which our “train of thoughts” and our stream of emo‑ tions discloses the polysemous and contradictory constitution of what we commonly call our “mind.” This struggle is illustrated by a range of theo‑ retical and clinical concepts – such as amnesia, reenactments and regressions, symbolic or symptomatic acts, screen memories, personal myths, retrospec‑ tive fantasies, and Nachträglichkeit, which I will shortly discuss. All of these are part of an effort to grasp the complex temporalities of psychic reality, and specifically the way in which what we commonly call the “present” relates to what we commonly call the “past.” I will now attempt, in the briefest possible manner, to give some examples of this extraordinary and enigmatic complexity. Perhaps the only aspect of this topic that is easy to understand is that our egotism labors to forget that which it finds disturbing to remember – the simple principle of amnesia. What is far more complex to understand is both the way in which the forgotten persistently impacts consciousness and the way in which psychoanalytic process might work and play, in some sense, to reappropriate the forgotten (the anamnesic truthfulness of its discourse). Let us start with the notions of reenactments and regressions; what is not recollected in the verbal and pictorial imagery of memory is “remembered” in the sense that it is repeated reenactively (which was powerfully discussed by Freud in his 1914 essay, “Remembering, Repeating and Working‑Through”). It does not seem remarkable that people who are under some sort of stress often behave at what might be – from the standpoint of developmentalist theorizing – designated a “lower level” of functioning. After a hard week, many of us “veg‑ etate” at the weekend; most of us, when on vacation, do not function as well as we are capable, either intellectually or physically. Nor does it seem remark‑ able that some cultures actually facilitate periods of “not having to cope.” For example, my Jewish tradition relieves mourners of the obligation to function normally; the bereaved who “sit shiva” are not expected to shave, bathe, clean their home, exercise, or prepare their own food for a specified period. None of these phenomena cause us to invoke the idea that the past is being re‑lived in the present; however, they may be compared with three clinical examples (Bálint, 1979). One of my patients, an intelligent and ambitiously successful Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 55 businessman, reported a period in his life during which he drank vodka throughout the day, stopped bathing or doing any work, and ceased to have penile–vaginal intercourse with his girlfriend, instead spending literally hours cuddling with her and sucking on her breasts. Most clinicians will think of this as a period of regressive behaviors; he is acting like an infant who cannot care for himself, relinquishing “mature activities” in favor of oral indulgences. Another patient, a sophisticated and cosmopolitan individual who had won prizes for his intellectual acumen, greeted an interpretation that I made con‑ cerning his childhood sexual interests by suddenly screaming at me like an enraged little boy, “You are a bad man, bad, bad, bad!” (and doing so in his mother tongue, which was not the language of the treatment). Again, most clinicians will think of this as a moment of regression. During her psycho‑ analysis, a third patient, who is a university professor, went through a period during which, at some point in most sessions, she would curl into a fetal position on the couch and proceed to suck her thumb. This too would be considered a symptomatic act that is regressive. In the psychoanalytic literature, reenactments and regressions are consid‑ ered a way in which the past asserts itself and is “re‑lived” in the context of the individual’s present functioning. Interestingly, some commentators argue that, if the patient regresses to any major extent, it indicates that the treat‑ ment is going awry; whereas others hold that a certain amount of regression is necessary for a successful treatment. In a rather absurd theoretical posture, free‑associative discourse has been described as a regressive mode of mental functioning. However, the important theoretical controversy around the con‑ cepts of reenactment and regression concerns the processes by which the past is thus impacting the present. For example, are regressive phenomena a literal performance, so to speak, of behaviors as they actually occurred earlier in life? Or are they a way in which the ego organization behaves as if it might have done previously, in a sort of figurative mimicry that somehow re‑performs what it believes was useful in the past; and if so, why does it believe this? As we shall see, this sort of question can be replicated with every phenomenon in which the impact of the past on the present is clinically observed. Perhaps it is not only the past that influences the present in some complex way, and not just because in the present we typically make plans for the future. More subtly, the present experience itself will, in a certain sense, be shaped by the future; for example, the present experience of any specific event will be “distorted” by the subject’s anticipation of its future significance. Even if you have never been mugged, when you are approached at night by a thug‑ gish‑looking man, your experience of him will likely be influenced by the anticipation of an assault and not just by the “reality” of his features. It can be argued that this influence is due to the recollection of past experiences (you know what sort of appearance is “thuggish,” you have heard previous stories of others being assaulted, and so forth), but this scarcely alters the fact that the “future” can, in a certain sense, shape the experience of the present as well as 56 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity this experience making a difference to possible futures. In this context, it is noteworthy that, during the 1920s, Freud became fascinated with, and sought a rational explanation for, the experiences of precognition, premonitions, and prophecies, as well as the occult and other paranormal experiences. The present experience of an event will be “distorted” not only by the affec‑ tive state of the subject, but also by the power of fantasy or imagination. Three examples that are commonplace (even if rarely recognized as such) will suffice. A young girl is told that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden and, on seeing the movement of some bushes in the evening breeze, becomes convinced that she has actually seen one. A young boy, having heard tales of his peers pushing crayons into their rectum, boastfully tells his Father that he has engaged in the same behaviors (and there can be little doubt from his excited demeanor that he believes his own fabrication). An adult patient tells a lie to an insurance agent, claiming that some valuables have been stolen, and then becomes indignant when the agent queries the veracity of the alleged theft and is reluctant to offer compensation for the “loss,” such that it is clear she has come to believe emotionally in the “reality” of the theft. None of these events necessarily qualify as delusional or hallucinatory (nor as lying, in its specific sense), but they demonstrate that not only do we rou‑ tinely fail to discriminate between actuality and fantasy, sometimes because we cannot (the discriminatory data are lacking) but often because we do not even wish to make such a discrimination. Our egotism is also quite capable of knowing for sure that it is fabricating an idea (that is, lying), but then coming to believe it to be true; this is a phenomenon discussed under the rubric of pseudologia fantastica (Fenichel, 1939; Healy and Healy, 1915). In short, as is well known since the earliest of Freud’s discoveries, the expression of wishes often prevails over the construction of “reality” in our ego organiza‑ tion’s representation of how things are, and how they are remembered. Additionally, as I have already mentioned, a past experience will never be recollected as it was actually experienced at the time, but will be “distorted” by previous instances of remembrance. Previously I gave the example of my memories of my deceased Father – for instance, of an occasion in which he became slightly disinhibited with alcohol and started doing a goofy but, to me, utterly charming dance. When I call up this memory, the representation that “comes to mind” is not actually that of the experience as it happened at the time, but rather an image based on the previous occasion that I remembered the event (as I indicated earlier, it is as if we never remember the experience itself, but we remember remembering it, remembering it, remembering it…). Indeed, if we accept this fact, it can make us sad to think that even our most cherished memories are actually quite remote from whatever we experienced at the time. Moreover, not only will a past experience never be recollected as it was actually experienced at the time, nor even as it was represented at the previous instance of remembrance, but it will also be “distorted” by the affective conditions under which I attempt the recollection. For example, I am able to recall the image of Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 57 my Father dancing in much more vivid detail when I am experiencing tender feelings for my son, and am almost unable to recall any of the details when I am in a hostile mood. Most of us are aware of this sort of difference. As the previous examples suggest, a recollected event may be additionally “distorted” because of its reorganization in a manner that serves the ego’s con‑ temporary defenses against more veridical recollection (if such is even possi‑ ble), or because the event never actually occurred but was fantasized or imagined at the time and later recollected as “real.” There are many variations of such processes. These are discussed under the rubrics of “screen memory,” which Freud described as early as 1899, personal myth and myth‑making (e.g., Hartocollis and Graham, 1992; Kris, 1956a, 1956b; Ross, 1992), and Jung’s notion of “retrospective fantasizing” (Zurückphantasie), which he debated with Freud (McGuire, 1974). Such phenomena probably occur ubiquitously, but are only rarely recognized by the subject for the “distortion” that is involved – that is, they pass unnoticed, constituting the “reality” of the ego organization in which the individual lives. In relation to screen memories, it is commonplace that a patient will begin treatment reporting a seemingly benign childhood memory that, as the psy‑ choanalytic process unfolds, comes to be remembered in a different manner that has more disturbing implications. For example, a patient initially recalls quite vividly an episode occurring when she was six years old, in which her Mother slipped laughingly and was helped to her feet by a concerned Father, but as this patient’s psychoanalytic treatment progresses, she comes to realize that the reason the Mother fell was that the Father hit her violently and that she must have actually witnessed this assault. Another patient reported a vivid image, seemingly from his fourth year, of his Mother standing by some billowing curtains; only in the course of his psychoanalysis to realize that these “curtains” must relate to his Mother’s chiffon maternity dress, worn just prior to the stillbirth of his sibling. Similar examples have been documented frequently (e.g., Grinstein, 1999). In relation to personal mythologizing, the entire literature of autobio‑ graphical writing suggests how commonplace it is for individuals to render a mundane childhood into a lyrical narrative of personal history, tragic or heroic (Gardner, 1989; Olney, 1972; Pilling, 1981; Rubin, 1986). Marcel Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (1913–1927) is often cited as exemplary of these narcissistic tendencies. A commonplace clinical example would be the patient who told me that, when he was in high‑school, he produced a television show that was virtually world class (which seems unlikely since there is no record of his receiving any accolades for this production). Another patient, who was indeed the victim of what might be called “soul murder” (Shengold, 1991, 2000), insisted for many years that she had had “the worst childhood in the entire world” and refused to admit any pleasant recollec‑ tions, although, much later in her psychoanalysis, memories of the pleasures of listening to music with an Aunt were recollected. 58 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity

In relation to the impact of fantasizing, I have already suggested how memories of past events may be fabricated – indeed, in a sense, they always are. For example, the young boy who imagined that he had pushed crayons into his rectum may create a vivid image of actually doing so, such that it will be recollected in adulthood as a veridical childhood memory. This process is particularly controversial in relation to childhood memories of sexual encoun‑ ters with adults that may not have actually occurred (or at least not in the way they are remembered), but have been wishfully imagined at the time. As is well known, Freud was impressed by the frequency of such recollections. Jung, who also favored the hypothesis that there are genetically encoded racial memories, used the term Zurückphantasie to describe how, as we look back on our childhoods, our ego organization can create fantasies of events that we then assign to the “reality” of the past. This means that in their fantasies, adults will reinterpret their past in terms of their need to express symbolically their cur‑ rent difficulties (Jung, 1957a, 1957b). Although our egotism resists this insight, it is undoubtedly a frequent occurrence that an experience that never actually happened may be recollected as a memory that is “real.” But note that this in no way diminishes the significance of actual experiences which, because they are traumatic, succumb to the amnesia caused by suppression or repres‑ sion, and which are later retrieved with whatever “distortions” may or may not be implicated in the newly acquired recollection. This brings us finally to Freud’s critical notion of Nachträglichkeit, meaning afterwardness, “in a deferred fashion,” deferred effect, after‑effect, or belatedness (see Solms, in press). Strachey translated this term rather unsatisfactorily as “deferred action” for, as John Forrester (1990) asserts, the French translation, après coup, is “far more pithy and accurate” (in Spanish, posterioridad ). Eidelberg (1968) suggested that “deferred reaction” might be a more accurate term. The notion refers to the way in which the significance of a recollected event – for example, in terms both of the causal attributions assigned to it and of its capacity to determine the formation of symptoms and character structures – may be produced long after the event is actually experienced and subsequent remembrance of it thus “distorted.” In short, lived experiences, impressions and memories can be later revised in accordance with subsequent experiences or the acquisition of new structures of representation, and the new meaning‑ fulness created by this sort of revision can have a significantly novel impact on the life of the individual. Thus, an event that may not have been especially traumatic when it occurred in early childhood becomes traumatically signifi‑ cant when recollected at a later phase of development (this is often the case with memories, as I will later discuss). For example, erotic play between two children might be innocently pleasurable at the time, but the later recollection of it may become a source of considerable shame, guilt, and inner conflict. As we learn from Freud’s 1926 critique of Rank’s ideas about the significance of birth trauma (Rank, 1924), the experiences of being birthed might indeed be traumatic, not so much because the infant can Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 59 cognitively record them at the time and later remember them as they hap‑ pened, but because they are recollected as traumatic in the course of being understood somewhat later. A patient of mine began her psychoanalytic treatment recounting, almost casually and without much emotion, the following experience. Her partner had exited the bedroom and instructed one of his friends to enter the dark‑ ened room, slip into bed with her, and engage her sexually; the latter did so, and the woman, somewhat inebriated, did not know until the next morning that she had actually had penile–vaginal intercourse with a stranger. Only as her psychoanalysis progressed did the recollection of this experience become traumatic. My patient came to realize that she had indeed been raped and she began to feel the full force of the betrayal involved, as well as her accompany‑ ing rage. In a sense, the experience became retroactively traumatic by a pro‑ cess of delayed reaction, deferred action, or après coup. The trauma caused her not only to end the relationship with her boyfriend but to become, for some years thereafter, almost clinically paranoid in her distrust and suspiciousness toward men (including myself in the transference relationship). Moreover, in later years, when she recalled the event, not only the emotional tone of the recollection but also the factual details of the narrative differed significantly from the way in which she had recounted the story at the beginning of my relationship with her. Although this is far from a perfect exemplification of Nachträglichkeit, it does serve to illustrate some of the complexities of the way in which memo‑ ries impinge upon the present, and indeed of the processes by which they generate psychological conflict. This is why Freud wrote in 1896 “the trau‑ mata of childhood operate in a deferred fashion as though they were fresh experiences; but they do so unconsciously.” It is as if, in Freud’s words to Wilhelm Fliess (Freud, 1887–1904), there is a failure of “retranscription” or translation, whereby the absence of something can have causal consequences at some later point in time – a notion that Freud had debated with (Forrester, 1990). In psychic reality, determinism can run backwards as an experience that was not particularly traumatic at the time can become profoundly traumatic when remembered at a later date, sometimes even many years later, as the historicity of the patient’s subsequent development leads him or her to comprehend aspects of the historicality of the recalled event in a different manner. As Green (2002) quotes from the poetry of René Char, time “turns back upstream.” Thus, in clinical practice, we can encoun‑ ter complicated situations in which, for example, a young child might actu‑ ally have enjoyed being genitally fondled by an adult family member at the time this violation occurred, yet be traumatized by the recollection of the event at a later point in time when he or she comes to recognize the incestu‑ ously unacceptable character of the abusive experience. Meaningfulness does not necessarily follow a path from what occurs previously to what occurs subsequently. As Freud humorously wrote in one of his first discussions of the 60 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity bidirectional condition of psychic processes, sometimes the rabbit chases the hunter. In another example of the “timeless illogic” of our psychic realities, a man, who is accused by his neighbor of having returned a borrowed kettle in a damaged condition, says to this neighbor “I gave it back to you undamaged, it had a hole in it when you lent it to me, and I never borrowed it in the first place.” The notion of Nachträglichkeit is crucial to our understanding of the disci‑ pline of psychoanalysis, especially as it pertains to the first and second coor‑ dinates. It is also acutely important for any clinical practice. Although I am critical of Lacanian psychoanalysis, I believe we owe Lacan’s 1953 “Rapport de Rome” (published in his Écrits) and his 1964 Séminaire a debt of gratitude for pointing to the profound significance of this notion within the discipline of psychoanalysis. Yet despite exegeses by and Jean‑Bertrand Pontalis (1968, 1974) and others (e.g., Forrester, 1985, 1990; Mahony, 1986; Cheshire and Thomä, 1991), the notion remains neglected by many psycho‑ analysts, perhaps because its implications are so vertiginous to consider – for at least three reasons. First, that the temporalities of our inner world move in complexly nonlinear and interdependent twists and turns leaves our egotism feeling dizzily uncer‑ tain of its own foundations. In several of the above examples, I wrote of expe‑ riences being distorted, placing the verb in inverted commas (“distorted”), because in fact psychoanalysis challenges profoundly the belief that conscious‑ ness can ever experience anything in a manner that is undistorted. As Freud wrote as early as 1899, we now question “whether we have any memories at all from” the past, for perhaps “memories relating to” the past are all we can hope to possess. In scholarship current in the humanities, it is fashionable to talk of the “ambiguities of memory,” but psychoanalysis shows how the notion of “ambiguity” is far too weak for the abyss that underlies our egotism, and even Forrester understates the issue when he writes that “Freud’s Nachträglichkeit renders the status of the past peculiarly fluid.” Yet, the topic of memory – even if recollection is always “in” consciousness but not entirely “of” the past – remains crucial, pertaining as it does to vital human issues of creativity versus stagnation, hope or hopelessness, liberation or imprisonment. Second, we are challenged as scientists to find ways to express the multiple temporalities of psychic life. Spatial models are unacceptable, and have already led psychoanalytic commentators down too many mistaken paths. That the absence of something can cause an effect, that time can be neither unitary nor linear, are discoveries that still beg for improved theorization. Third, as Lacan has shown with the notion of Nachträglichkeit, it becomes evident that psychoanalysis is not a developmental discipline in the ordinary ontogenetic sense. In my terminology (which is not Lacan’s), psychoanalysis is a spiritual and existential practice, not a developmentalism (and this will be further discussed in later chapters). This is because the assumptions of con‑ tinuous change and linear transformation over time are radically contested by the discovery of Nachträglichkeit. Consider here how developmentalists Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 61 inevitably assume that whatever comes earlier must, in a certain sense, be more significant than whatever comes later. Developmentalism cannot accommo‑ date the notion that the determinative significance of an event might not arise until long after it has occurred – that is, subsequent circumstances might generate determinative significance to an event that long antedated them and that had no such significance until and unless such circumstances arose. Moreover, a developmental perspective invariably winds up imposing a falsify‑ ing teleology that specifies in advance the changes and transformations through which the individual should progress. The endpoint or ideal of devel‑ opment is supposedly known and all that antedates it is assessed in terms of its shortcomings with respect to this pre‑specified terminus. In short, devel‑ opmentalism promotes the cult of normativity; its assumptions may character‑ ize the non‑scientific practices of psychotherapy, where progress is benchmarked by ideologies of maturation and adaptation (which I will critique in Chapter 6), but it is inimical to the science of psychoanalysis.

The second coordinate Psychoanalytic experience elucidates how, in every moment of our personal history, we are condemned to repeat the past, but it also demonstrates how, contrary to the optimism implicit in Santayana’s aphorism, remembering the past is not some facile route toward our liberation from this destiny. Indeed, acts of recollection, remembrance, and reconstruction may be just as much a product of repetition‑compulsivity as the ignorant enactment of recurrent behaviors. We cannot avoid the truthfulness disclosed by psychoanalytic dis‑ cipline about each of our personal histories; namely that these histories are insurpassably variable, revisable, and aleatory. Personal history inevitably involves recurrent discontinuities and a radical rupturing that occurs, most dramatically and universally, around our passage through oedipal complexi‑ ties (as I will discuss in Chapter 5). Telling stories of the childhood formation of our adult personality – and thus rendering coherent a past that was ani‑ mated by deep and irresolvable incoherencies that are the precarious brio of life itself – may serve to adjust the individual “therapeutically” to the myths and ideologies of the community. But it is not healing (in the sense that I shall discuss healing practices in Chapter 6), and it is not psychoanalysis. This is because such narratological enterprises can neither trace nor replicate the truthfulness of the individual’s life course; just as the formulation of “insights” into the content of the unconscious cannot appropriate what has been lost, but rather traps the individual in a revised state of self‑alienation. The free‑associative discovery of the repressiveness of consciousness is pro‑ foundly disturbing both because it exhibits how, within each individual’s bodymind, temporality is dismembered or dispersed, and because it offers a way of healing as an emancipative freeing of ourselves from the grip of repe‑ tition‑compulsivity that requires acceptance of the inherent “castratedness” 62 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity and “deathfulness” of our being‑in‑the‑world. Of course, this is a freedom strenuously and even violently resisted by our egotism, with its grandiose ambitions of conquest; our egotism cannot tolerate the abyss that lies within every present moment, as it retroactively reverberates and anticipatorily her‑ alds an otherwise dimension of our being‑in‑the‑world that comes to us incessantly as if from “elsewhere” (as Freud was inclined to say in his early texts). Freud discovers how we live in “shattered time” and his method exposes the unitary path of time as an ideological illusion (Green, 2000a, 2002). Pluritemporality characterizes the human bodymind; in a different terminology, this is the fundamental heterochrony or diachronic heterogene‑ ity manifested by the dynamic of a “timeless unconscious” incessantly insert‑ ing itself as libidinal movement within a consciousness that strives to assert the chronos‑logos, the law of clocktime as regular and uninterruptable sequenc‑ ing and the order of life securely divided into past/present/future. How, and in what sense, we may ever free ourselves from repetition‑compulsivity, the healing that psychoanalysis offers, will be discussed in Chapter 6. Before we can proceed to that topic, however, we need to understand how our sensual embodiment determines the pluritemporal character of the human condition, and how oedipal complexities fracture each of our personal histories and mutilate our own knowledge of our psychic life.

Mistaken paths It is extraordinarily challenging for the rational aspects of our functioning to grasp the way in which our thinking and feeling results from temporal rela‑ tions that are neither linear nor unitary – to consider the pluritemporality of our bodymind’s functioning and that our psychic reality moves in a manner that reflects and refracts its polysemous and contradictory constitution. Despite the claims of psychoanalysis to offer a new vision of personal history, most theorizing since Freud has retreated from this challenge; in the past century, the psychoanalytic literature on the temporality of our inner world has been both sparse and unimpressive. Ego‑psychology, for example, asserts the possibility of an organized mind that incorporates the unitary and linear temporality it encounters as external reality, and insists that this ego organization must have a “conflict‑free sphere” that is uncontaminated by the returning of what it has repressed. As I indi‑ cated previously, this ignores Freud’s recurrent declarations from 1896 to around 1914 committing his discipline to the radical understanding of the unconscious as the intentional center of psychic reality and the “original” sub‑ ject of human desire; it ignores his warning that the repressed perpetually “signals its presence” in the waking life of every human being. In response to Freud’s injunction that “everything conscious has an unconscious precondi‑ tion,” ego‑psychology uses the term “unconscious” to refer to mental organiza‑ tion that is only descriptively unconscious (what would otherwise be called the Personal history, repetition-compulsivity 63 subconscious, foreconscious, preconscious, or nonconscious functioning that is non‑conflictually and non‑contradictorily related to consciousness). This struc‑ tural–functional theory of mental organization thus restores a pre‑Freudian ideology, in which our egotism confronts its own “unconscious” as well as a quasi‑external unconscious that it has itself repressed. Tellingly, this theory can never specify how the egotism distinguishes between the impacts of these two unconscious domains, although presumably the authority of the clinician (as someone who is more mature, socially adapted, and has the benefit of a superior sense of reality to that of the patient) is crucial to the success of ego‑psychological treatment. This ideology poses the rule of the ego organiza‑ tion as masterful – first the clinician’s and then, by education and identifica‑ tion, the patient’s, and buttressed by a developmentalist model of what should happen. In so doing, the rule of “rationality” against the “timelessness” of the repressed is ensured; the triumph of organized thought, that appears to operate on a unitary and linear temporality, over the chaotic abyss of that which free‑associative discourse exhibits (see Campbell, 2006; Green, 2002). The various post‑Freudian theories of “object‑relations,” both Kleinian and independent, also slide into the treatment of the time of the mind as unitary and linear, committing themselves to the very developmentalism that our understanding of Nachträglichkeit implodes. Klein’s account of the influence of paranoid–schizoid functioning is notable for its preservation of the idea that a “timelessly” disorganized substrate of unconscious phantasies remains actively impactful throughout much of the individual’s life history. Although Kleinian literature rarely addresses directly the temporality of psychic reality, Kleinian contributors have – as I have already indicated – a tendency to assume that unconscious phantasies that surface in adulthood represent early experiences, sometimes as far back as infancy, as they actually happened and were experienced at that time. This renders the practice sus‑ ceptible to the rebuke that everything psychological is progressively reduced to a reenactment of the infantile past, to the point where the individual’s destiny is foretold in the first months of life or even in the womb (or even in the moment of conception, as some “prenatal psychologists” claim). Paradoxically, since no one would accuse Kleinian theory of de‑emphasizing the power of the unconscious, this viewpoint flattens or erases the dynamics of psychic reality in which repetition-compulsivity immixes the historicity and historicality of our conscious representations contradictorily. This criticism can be stated even more bluntly when directed towards theo‑ ries of self‑ and object‑relations that treat early relationships as if they are repeated throughout the life history in a manner that is more or less unmodified – a developmentalist viewpoint that assumes a linear and unitary timeline. As I indicated previously, to accept Freud’s insight that early relationships establish the “prototype” for all later ones does not imply a simple transpositioning across the supposedly unified temporality of the life history. The repetition- compulsivity involved in the dynamics of repression and the returning of the 64 Personal history, repetition-compulsivity repressed immixes the historicity and historicality of conscious representations in such a way that the connection between the “prototype” and subsequent iterations is always complex. Yet this point seems lost on most theorists who adhere to self‑psychological, object‑relational, interpersonalist, relational, and intersubjectivist formulations. Lacanian psychoanalysis is perhaps the most subtly complicated of the mis‑ taken paths by which the psychoanalytic discovery of our pluritemporality is ideologically expunged. Despite Lacan’s important contribution in pointing to the significance of Freud’s discovery of Nachträglichkeit, his theory of the uncon‑ scious as the capitalized “Other” implies a synchronic depiction of the human condition with little room for any appreciation of the time of the mind except as the chains of signification and the narrative structures that impose on every eventuality a beginning, middle, and end. For Lacan, the Other is an immutable totality that, in a certain sense, maintains the unicity of representational time. Despite his welcome break with developmentalism, Lacan’s “reformation” of Freud’s discipline thus misses much of what is unique to psychoanalytic dis‑ course, specifically the pluritemporality disclosed by free‑associative discourse and the significance of our sensual embodiment. Chapter 4 Sensual embodiment and the erotics of experience

As is well known, in the very last years of the nineteenth century Freud exposed the remarkable properties of free‑associative discourse, thus initiating the discipline of psychoanalysis. I am discussing this in terms of the discover‑ ies of the dynamically repressed unconscious, our resistance to understanding the repressive or revealing–concealing construction of self‑consciousness, and the implied contradictorious pluritemporality of the human psyche. Most of this – perhaps with the exception of the issues of temporality – is widely acknowledged but, as I have shown, much misunderstood. Also well known is that Freud, at least in his early career, recognized that our modes of sexual expression are of critical significance to human suffering and to our potential for happiness. What is most seriously misunderstood is exactly how his radically new understanding of our sexuality and of the founding of the human condition in our embodied experience is integrally connected with these discoveries of free‑associative discourse. That is, how in the “discovery of the unconscious” and the returning of the repressed, Freud came to a profound realization that the mind is bodily (and the body is mind‑ ful), and that what we call our mental life is not only constituted as an inner world of representations but must also be understood as moved by desirous energies that are altogether different from, or otherwise than, repre‑ sentationality as such (in contemporary philosophical terms that come from deconstruction, this is an issue of différance). Freud was not entirely unsupported in this realization. Philosophers throughout Europe had already engaged similar notions, directly or indi‑ rectly, in their various efforts to break both with anti‑erotic tendencies in the institutional teaching of Christianity, and with the Cartesian dualism of the mind/body split that had so captivated both their discipline and the par‑ lance of public discourse, and that continues to captivate many of us to this day (see Barratt, 2010a; Derrida, 1992; Judovitz, 2001; Nancy, 1990–1992, 2003; O’Connor, 1969). For example, 100 years prior to Freud’s first psycho‑ analytic publication, Schelling (1797) had argued that the unconscious is both historical and corporeal. Also, in the same decade that Freud was pub‑ lishing ground‑breaking papers on forgetfulness in 1898 and on memories in 66 Sensual embodiment and erotic experience

1899, Nietzsche somewhat similarly argued for the historical and corporeal condition of the unconscious (Chapelle, 1993; Nietzsche, 1882, 1883–1885). Freud, however, radicalized this contention as he came to appreciate the extraordinary and enigmatic power of the free‑associative method. In addition to whatever philosophical reading he had undertaken, there were probably two sources for Freud’s readiness to realize the corporeal nature of the psyche – a realization that evidently came to him in the process of his discovering the way in which self‑consciousness both reveals and conceals its historical unconscious. These are as follows. The first was his medical training and his early preoccupation with specu‑ lations about the neurological substrate of psychological mechanisms (Pearce, 2003; Solms and Saling, 1990). This culminated in his authoring over 100 neuroscientific papers in the final decades of the nineteenth century, and spe‑ cifically his 1895 essay in which he sketched a highly speculative “psychology for neurologists” (how he described it in his correspondence with Wilhelm Fleiss). In the course of his earliest investigations, I believe Freud discovered something about the subtle energies that animate our psychic life. He was initially enticed by the anti‑vitalist viewpoint exemplified by the influential physiologist‑psychologist Hermann von Helmholtz (with whose work Freud was familiar) and so somewhat desperately attempted to fit his discovery into a hypothetical model of neurological functioning. The 1895 Entwurf (his “Project” or “Sketch for a Scientific Psychology”) was the result of these attempts. However, it is highly significant that Freud started to abandon this enterprise almost as soon as he had drafted the manuscript, even though the notion of energies, or libidinal impulses, seemed to him to be essential to the dynamic appreciation of the functioning of the psyche. Although it can be argued that after 1914, with his shift toward systematic theorizing, the significance of energetics in Freud’s writing became obscured at the very least, I shall argue that the notion of subtle energies impacting the entire functioning of what I shall call the human “bodymind” remains essen‑ tial to psychoanalytic discipline (Galatzer‑Levy, 1976). These subtle energies are still not acknowledged in the neurological science that currently accom‑ panies allopathic medicine. However, I will argue that Freud’s discovery of them reflects his clear commitment to understanding the “bodymind” holis‑ tically and thus to breaking, in an existential vein, with Cartesian dualism (see Barratt, 2010a; Lingis, 1985, Mollon, 2005, 2008). The second source for Freud’s realization – that there is more to psychic life that the multiplicity of representations and the transformations that occur between them – surely came from his conviction that human suffering is often caused by inhibitions and conflicts around sexual pleasure and specifi‑ cally the barriers to orgasmic enjoyment. This conviction was again articu‑ lated alongside his discovery of free‑associative method and the dynamically repressed unconscious; for example, in his 1898 paper on sexuality and the etiology of neurotic conflict. Freud quickly moved away from a brief dalliance Sensual embodiment and erotic experience 67 with the simplistic idea that physical interventions, specifically a healthy orgasmic release, could reliably heal neurotic conflicts. Indeed, by 1905, he theorized a rather restrictive model of supposedly normative sexual matura‑ tion, although the notion that full‑bodied orgasmicity is indicative of the freedom that comes with the healing of conflicts was brilliantly carried for‑ ward by and others (see Barratt, 2010a; Ferenczi, 1916; Freud and Ferenczi, 1908–1933; Gross 1901–1920; Reich, 1927, 1927–1953, 1933, 1936; Roazen, 1992; Robinson, 1972, 1993). Freud, however, gradu‑ ally began to develop some quite sophisticated ways of thinking about the interaction of fantasy and sensuality in the lifelong vicissitudes of pleasure, and this focus requires an understanding of the energies of the psyche and cannot be understood merely in terms of representations and their transfor‑ mations. His consideration of this “interaction” developed precisely alongside his understanding of the temporalities involved in Nachträglichkeit (Forrester, 1990; Laplanche and Pontalis, 1968, 1974). As every sexologist knows, and Freud was perhaps one of the first leading theorists to explore in a theoreti‑ cally articulate fashion, our sexuality is as much “in our heads” as in our bodily sensations (e.g., Barratt, 2005; Francoeur, 1991; Gregersen, 1983; Morin, 1995). Moreover, the sexuality of bodily sensations is not restricted to the genitals. Indeed, what the holistic notion of libidinal energies asserts is that the entirety of our embodied experience is “sexual,” in that it is sensually endowed and is the foundation of our psychic realities. Thus, the notion that the sensuality of our embodied experience consti‑ tutes a wellspring of energy that animates every moment of the life of the psyche remains crucial to the understanding of Freud’s discipline, even though in the latter phases of his professional career he moved away from what has been called the early “hydraulic” model of psychic energy. Psychoanalysis cannot be understood within the Cartesian framework, despite the fact that almost all the extant schools of psychoanalysis, as well perhaps as Freud himself after 1914, have attempted to do so. Paradoxically, this would include the anti‑Cartesianism of Lacanian theory, if one accepts that this theory is, in Anthony Wilden’s verdict, a “capsized” Cartesian model (1968, 1972). “Psychoanalysis” loses itself whenever it formulates the func‑ tioning of a mind that is separate from and has some sort of governance over a body. Yet this sort of formulation conspicuously characterizes the struc‑ tural–functional tradition of ego‑psychology, from Anna Freud’s 1936 book onwards (Freud, 1936–1980). It also seems endemic to the currently fashion‑ able concept of “mentalization” (e.g., Allen, Fonagy, and Bateman, 2008; Busch, 2008; Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist and Target, 2005), and it characterizes, as I will show, the various lineages of object‑relations theory (perhaps most conspicuously in Fairbairn’s jettisoning libidinality in favor of the speculation that the ego organization is inherently “object‑seeking”), and the decidedly disembodied phallocentric model of the mind initiated in the work of the Lacanians. 68 Sensual embodiment and erotic experience

Against Cartesian dualism, to understand the radical distinctiveness of psy‑ choanalytic discourse we are required to try to think in terms of what I am calling the human bodymind (as elaborated in my 2010 book, The Emergence of Somatic Psychology and Bodymind Therapy). It is not just that the mind is located in a body, which most people believe, specifically arguing that the mind is housed in the brain or at least certain parts of the brain; Descartes was even more precise, nominating the pineal gland or epiphysis as the “seat of the soul” (see Antonietti, Corradini, and Lowe, 2008; Baker and Morris, 2002; Spicker, 1995). Nor is it akin to the simplistic proposition that the body is located within the mind (although the notion that the body is indeed “mindful” and capable of mental operations throughout its entire physicality has merit, as is well discussed in recent texts on somatic psychology). Rather, the challenge here is to think holistically, beyond the duality. In my opinion, to do this requires that we acknowledge the vital existence of subtle energies that perme‑ ate both what are traditionally called “mental” and what are traditionally called “bodily” operations. Teachings about subtle energies are found in almost every known epoch and culture; they were, however, ostracized by the mecha‑ nistic vision of “science” that has preoccupied the West since the time of Galileo and Newton (see Reiss, 1982, 1988; Thompson, 1989). My argument is that Freud re‑introduced such a notion of subtle energies concurrently with his discovery of free‑associative method, because alongside this discovery he increasingly wrote about psychic energies as the vicissitudes of libidinality. This notion is, I am convinced, essential to any serious understanding of his discipline for it describes how the sensuality of embodied experience under‑ pins the cognitive and affective constructions of our psychic life.

The radical notion of libidinality As I have indicated, from the time of his earliest psychoanalytic writings, Freud understood psychic life as composed not only of representations and their law‑governed transformations, but also of something otherwise than representations yet vital to their genesis and their vicissitudes. He wrote of Intensitäten (intensities), of Triebe (driving forces, impetuses, urges, propensi‑ ties, or desires), and Besetzen (as in to fill or occupy a position). These processes of Besetzung are crucial to understanding Freud’s discoveries – and were com‑ prehended by the first generation of psychoanalysts including Jung (Harding, 1973; Samuels, 1985). The term is reasonably translated in the French edi‑ tions of Freud’s writings as investissement, something “invested” in representa‑ tions that is not itself representational; in Spanish, carga means to load or to charge. But this idea is misleadingly translated in Strachey’s Standard Edition by coining a Greek term, cathexis, although Strachey himself recorded that Freud himself was unhappy with such pseudo‑technical jargon; indeed, according to Mark Solms, it has been argued that Strachey “threw profes‑ sional integrity to the winds” (Solms, in press). Thus, representations might Sensual embodiment and erotic experience 69

be cathected, decathected, countercathected, or even hypercathected. This pseudo‑technical jargonizing has been criticized by Bruno Bettelheim (1983) and several others (see Solms, in press; Solms and Saling, 1990), including myself in 1984. The point is that representations are invested or impelled (or divested, counter-invested, hyperinvested, and so forth) with or by something radically different from the properties of their own construction. One might add that this difference or différance is ontic in that energy and representation are not of equivalent modes of “being” (Barratt, 1983, 1984). The investment in representations is with psychic energy and the nature of such energies is otherwise than that of the representations themselves, and is not itself repre‑ sented or even representable. As Freud made clear in his earliest writings, the movement of desire is the essence of our being (der Kern unseres Wesens, he wrote in 1900). This process of investment, or impulsion, is the driving force governing a representation’s salience (or lack of salience) in relation to consciousness. As is well known, representations acquire their representable meaning by their connection with other representations. For example, the meaning of “dog” necessarily depends on a network of other “not‑dog” representations – this has been amply dem‑ onstrated by linguistics since Saussure (1906–1911), by the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce (1931–1958), and in Wittgenstein’s later philosophi‑ cal writings (1945–1949). Yet in our psychic life, representations have a meaningfulness that goes beyond and is otherwise than their location within a network of similar constructions, for they acquire their salience by being filled with this subtle but powerful energy that, again, is not itself a repre‑ sentation nor of the same sort of “being” as representationality (Galatzer‑Levy, 1976). Freud was quite convinced that this desirous “otherwise” force, which impels or is invested in representations and their transformations, must be understood as psychic energy or libidinality and that it “comes from” – so to speak – the sensuality of our embodied experience (Barratt, 2010a). From the standpoint of Western science in the modern era, libidinal energy is a strange notion that is more or less incomprehensible, requiring us to think not only in terms of the holistic bodymind and the fundamentality of embodied experience in the constitution of our psychic life, but also beyond the categorizations of either/or. Here is a paradox, which I do not think is adequately recognized by those commentators who merely assert that the concept of “drive” functions as intermediary between bios and psyche. On the one side, is not itself a representation, but accounts for the desirous mobility of representations. In this respect, it has no meaning in and of itself, but is vital to the procedures of making meaning (comprising a recondite dimension of the temporality and corporeality of meaningfulness). On the other side, libido is not itself a pure energy of quasi‑abstract qualities, nor is it the mere organic substrate that mutely underlies the constructions of con‑ sciousness, for it is essentially desirous and thus constitutes an enigmatic and extraordinary mode of occult intentionality. Not only is it, in Freud’s words 70 Sensual embodiment and erotic experience of 1900, the source of wishes that are struggling for expression (nach Ausdruck ringenden), yet severed from consciousness (vom Bewußtsein abgeschnitten) and indeed inaccessible to conscious representation (bewußtseinunfähig), such that it cannot be expressed in any representational formulation that is “about” the wishfulness of its urgings. It also seems to desire particular sorts of expression that are associated with the sensuality of our embodied experience; and indeed that may be retrodictively associated with particular zones of embod‑ ied experience (see Bristow, 1997; Fliess, 1956; Nagera, 1981; Sterba, 1942). In short, libidinal energies want something that can never be satiated by the constructions of representational designation, and the “something” so desired arises from various aspects of the sensuality of embodied experience. In this respect, libidinal energies are both/and as well as neither/nor: both physical and mental, yet neither just a matter of physiological and neuronal functioning nor wholly independent of these functions. As Lacan indicated in his 1954–1955 Séminaire, this is a sort of qualitative “quantity which you don’t know how to measure,” but which must always be assumed to be pres‑ ent (Bristow, 1997; Kennedy, 2001). Thus the notion of these subtle energies, as a sort of quantity that cannot be quantified, is limenal – a “frontier‑ concept,” as Freud called it in writings between 1905 and 1915. Libido has a sort of intentionality in that it is directed toward an expression in our rep‑ resentational life that it can never achieve concordantly, because the law and order of representational construction actually prevents it. Free‑associative method exhibits the subversive kinesis of desire, as libidinal impulses become engaged in a less restrictive manner than the law and order of “making sense” would allow; these impulses carry a meaningfulness that is temporally dis‑ ruptive and dispersive, mobilizing the transgressive and indefatigable brio of life as, so to speak, libidinality‑unto‑death. Psychoanalytic method thus exhibits the fluxes, flows, fluidities, vibrations, and undulations of an a‑thetic or non‑propositional “meaningless–meaningfulness” – it exhibits the unthought known, the unsayable, and the powerfully articulate inexpressibility of sensual desire (Barratt, 1993). As I have discussed elsewhere, libidinality is like Levinas’s notion of the “trace of the other” – where the “other” is the sensuality of our embodied experience in relation to the representational law and order that governs the structure of consciousness. This is an illeity that, in Levinas’ words, has “a way of concerning me” without ever “entering into conjunction with me” (Levinas, 1947, 1961, 1974). Recall here the example of free‑associative sequencing that we discussed in Chapter 2. Each particular moment – for example the memory of the Rabbi who long ago rejected the patient in response to the patient’s anger – both conceals and reveals meanings besides and beyond, or otherwise than, that which the recollected narrative purports to mean. Moreover and most importantly, the movement of consciousness – from the story of the son to the memory of the Rabbi, and from the memory of the Rabbi to the recollection of the dream – suggests the operation of a Sensual embodiment and erotic experience 71

restless energy, an embodied experience that is not yet designable and that animates consciousness towards an expression that can never be fulfilled rep‑ resentationally. Thus, this desire animates the segueing, sequencing, and rupturing of the stream of free‑associative discourse, yet is neither concor‑ dantly represented nor exhausted in any particular representation. In short, in Freud’s terminology, the “chaining” of thoughts is never represented by any particular thought; rather, this desirous momentum is like the trace of a “wandering cause” – neither precisely present, nor ever entirely absent. It is the presence of something that is not properly present, namely what I have called a past‑future indicative of our bodymind’s pluritemporality. This sort of standpoint is well discussed by Levinas and by Derrida, as well as in remarkable expositions of contemporary scholars such as Mark Taylor (1987a, 1987b, 1990, 1993, 1998, 2009). Yet it sounds like gobbledygook to the positive rationality of Western science. Modern science – the mechanistic models of positive rationality that have dominated our intelligence from Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton to almost the present day – cannot make sense of this notion of subtle energies, which are neither pre‑representational nor post‑representational. Yet the existence and operation of subtle energies has long been known to the allegedly “non‑scientific” thinking of ancient wisdom traditions, named as a sort of “spirituality incarnate” and used as the basis for healing practices (see Barratt, 2010a; Feinstein, Eden, and Craig, 2005; Feuerstein, 1997, 1998; Gallo, 2002, 2004; Gerber, 2000, 2001; Oschman, 2000; Sabetti, 2007; Thompson, 1989). For example, the teachings of sana-tana dharmic lineages (from the Vedas onwards) refer to such energies as pra-na- (as well as a series of related terms), and call upon them in yogic spiritual practices and in a-yurvedic medicine. The Chinese lineages of Taoist and Confucian thinking refer to them as chi (ki in Japanese, lom in Thai, and so forth), and deploy them simi‑ larly. Qabbalist teachings refer to or and related notions. Christian–Islamic mysticism, both Gnostic and Sufi, has used other terminologies. Almost every indigenous culture has referred in some way to the operations of the (holy) spirit; this is mana in certain Oceanic cultures, orenda for some Native American groups, and od in ancient Germanic traditions. It can also be argued that allusions to the existence and operation of subtle energies have recurred in Western philosophy, including just prior to, and contemporane‑ ously with, Freud’s innovations. For example, Schopenhauer had written about the “will‑to‑live”; Karl von Reichenbach (1852–1856) had presented his notion of the “odic force” in 1845; and Bergson elaborated this sort of vitalist notion in his 1907 Creative Evolution with his discussion of the élan vital that is essential to our being. Heidegger’s 1927 Being and Time must also be mentioned here for his assertion that all experience is grounded in “care” and for his notion of freigebende Sorge, freely-given care. In many respects, one can argue that subtle energy systems are being redis‑ covered scientifically in contemporary cosmology and microphysics, both of 72 Sensual embodiment and erotic experience which have broken the spell of mechanistic reductionism inherited from the time of Descartes, Galileo, Newton, and Pierre‑Simon Laplace. This revolu‑ tionary shift has been well discussed by many competent writers (e.g., Bachelard, 1934; Kauffman, 2010). Not only is physical reality now dis‑ cussed in terms of the energetic motion of sub‑atomic strings, but conscious‑ ness is shown to be a real and emergent feature of the universe such that certain life‑forms are, arguably, non‑reducible to conventional physics. In sum, it is confidently argued that there are aspects of the biosphere and of the human condition that are partially indescribable in terms of the natural law and order that can be represented in ordinary consciousness. Such shifts in our worldview led the contemporary theoretical physicist, Stephen Weinberg (1993) to famously write: “The more we know of the universe, the more meaningless it appears” (see Weinberg, 1994, 2008). The quote admirably analogizes the situation of psychoanalysis, for the deeper we dive into the emancipative discourse of free‑associative method, the more we experience the inexhaustibility of the dynamically repressed unconscious and the desir‑ ous vitality that comes from the libidinal energies of our embodiment. I do not want to overemphasize the various analogies I have suggested here between Freud’s subtle energy notion of libidinality and the range of seem‑ ingly parallel ideas such as pra-na-, chi, odic force, élan vital, and freigebende Sorge (about which, with the possible exception of Schopenhauer’s, Reichenbach’s, and Bergson’s various ideas, Freud probably knew next to nothing). Nor do I think it warranted to imagine, with schoolboyish enthusiasm, that contem‑ porary physics and the “new sciences” are going to validate, in some seem‑ ingly simplistic manner, the scientificity of psychoanalysis (a possibility already being propounded by a few commentators). However, as I have already indicated, I think it is correct to assert that there is a sense in which Freud’s notion of libidinality and the desirousness of its impact on the holis‑ tic functioning of the human bodymind anticipates the contemporary discov‑ ery of dynamic nonlinear complexities (Gros, 2010; Zubiri, 1989). As he discovered free‑associative discourse, he was compelled to think in terms of subtle energies. However, unlike the wisdom that preceded him – such as the wisdom of the pra-na-, élan vital, and so on – Freud realized that subtle energies do not merely animate consciousness, but run contradictorily in relation to the law and order of its representational constructions (Barratt, 1993). This is the feature that breaches the assumptions of the modern era in science and philosophy. Here is the crucial issue: By discovering free‑associative dis‑ course, Freud demonstrates that psychic life arises from a perpetual tension – an unsurpassable contradictoriness – between the meaningfulness of that which can be represented, and the otherwise momentum of the subtle ener‑ gies of our embodiment that come to be invested in representations and that impel their flow through consciousness. This is what might appropriately be called the revolutionary character of Freud’s discipline. Psychoanalysis dem‑ onstrates how the static edifices of ordinary consciousness – the way in which Sensual embodiment and erotic experience 73

thinking and feeling posit and reposit the meaningfulness of significatory formations – build repressively over the kinesis of desire. As I wrote in Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse, “free‑associative discourse exhibits libidinality as an incomprehensible and incompossible mobility through and against the stases of significatory positing and repositing,” by which the conscious subject attempts to make sense. Thus, libidinality is intimated to us as a sort of ex‑pository commotion, coursing within and through the temporality of representational law and order (its chronos‑logos). These intimations indicate or exhibit the alienation or estrangement (I will discuss these two notions at a later point) of the sensual‑ ity of embodied experience from the law and order of “making sense” semi‑ otically. They are a conveyance of a sort of “otherwise” meaningfulness through and against the positive rationality of the representational world, which is the way in which the subtle energies of our sensual embodiment make themselves heard.

Sensual energies as the wellspring of psychic life The folly of the Cartesian worldview is that it establishes a depiction of the mind and body as separate but reciprocally impactful, while leaving the modalities of their mutual influence unexplained, and more or less inherently inexplicable (Damasio, 2005). It is not, of course, that the invocation of sub‑ tle energies resolves all the scientific and philosophical problems of Cartesian dualism. However, the notion of libidinality does indicate the strong com‑ mitment of psychoanalytic practitioners to the priority of embodied experi‑ ence as fundamental to the possibilities of any more abstract, or seemingly disembodied, modes of thinking and feeling. In this sense, psychoanalysis profoundly and effectively challenges “Descartes’ error” (to borrow from Antonio Damasio), and Freud stands at the head of what we now call “somatic psychology” (Barratt, 2010a). In this book, I cannot delve too far into the various ways in which Freud attempted to refine the notion of libidinality (although I will shortly examine his notion of “polymorphous perversity,” and in the next chapter I will need to discuss the distinction between prephallic and phallic sexualities). Thus, I will only mention in passing his effort to categorize libidinal zones and what have been called “component instincts” such as oral libido, anal libido, phal‑ lic libido, and so forth (Fliess, 1956; Nagera, 1981; Sterba, 1942). I will also only briefly mention his clinically important distinction between narcissistic libido (or “ego‑libido”) and object‑libido (e.g., Bálint, 1960, 1979; Holmes, 2001; Ostow, 1961), and his metapsychological ambition to generate a com‑ plicated account of the way in which the ego functions score their energies from the “id” (the sort of piracy about which Rapaport speculated so bril‑ liantly in his seminars and publications during the 1950s). Some of these theoretical enterprises may be useful to the student of psychoanalysis. Others 74 Sensual embodiment and erotic experience may, I believe, be irrelevant to the practice of psychoanalytic interrogation or even theoretically misleading. Rather than proceed to these issues, I will focus on the crucial implications of this essential coordinate of psychoanalysis as a discipline – the way in which the sensuality of embodied experience animates everything that we consider psychological. If we reflect on the most basic features of our life experiences (beyond the banality of Abraham Maslow’s 1943 theorizing), I believe we indubitably arrive at operations such as tensing versus relaxing, finding versus losing, holding versus releasing, gaining versus letting go, or taking‑in versus get‑ ting‑rid‑of. These operations are always accompanied by what might be thought of as an experiential “flavor” in terms of their “lived experience.” That is, they always seem to involve some sort of contentment or discontentment, attraction or aversion, pleasure or unpleasure‑pain (Lust/Unlust), and so forth. What Freud insists upon is the understanding that, conveyed by the move‑ ment of subtle energies, all such operations are essentially somatic experiences and that they are somatic experiences occurring temporally and ontologically prior to, or otherwise than, any capacity we have to form representations about them. It is additionally crucial to note that all such basic features of our life experiences – these fundamental experiences of embodiment – come with some sort of duration. That is, they accord with the rhythmicity of bodily functions, impacting us with a temporality that is not that of clocktime, nor even that of a unitary and linear sequencing. To give an example, long before we know that “I can see that my hand is closer to my face than is the wall,” or that “Mommy takes care of me,” or that “2 + 2 = 4,” we experience the above mentioned somatic operations, which are actually prerequisite for all other modes of experiencing. Somatic opera‑ tions are thus the “presentational” or pre‑/post‑representational figurations (much like the “past‑futures” mentioned previously) that are required for the formation of our representational life. These operations of our embodied experience not only occur “long before” the representationality of psychic life; they remain ubiquitously beneath, besides, and beyond it. Contrary to the beliefs generated by our reflections, we do not somehow grow out of them. Indeed, we become so accustomed to our “higher” forms of cognition (and to our ability to reflect upon them) that we have effectively forgotten how all cognitive operations are ultimately generated from bodily experience (Green, 1997; Kestenberg, 1995; McDougall, 1989, 1995). Thus, we treat thinking and feeling as if they were merely mental and we lose the sense of the continuous involvement of our embodied experience, our sensuality. By its method of free‑associative discourse, psychoanalysis reappropriates this sense. This is why the psychoanalytic pioneers were able to show quite vividly how much thinking and feeling are grounded in our experiential embodiment. For example, Karl Abraham (whom Freud dubbed his “best pupil”) offered a series of influential and rigorous papers (specifically those of 1921 and 1924) showing how our basic fantasies (or “unconscious phantasies” Sensual embodiment and erotic experience 75 as Melanie Klein would later call them) of taking‑in and getting‑rid‑of are grounded in the orality and anality of embodied experience (see Abraham, 1979; Klein, 1921–1960; Steiner, 2003). In these sorts of operation, the dis‑ tinctions between “good” and “bad,” or between “this” and “that,” are gener‑ ated, and these are, of course, fundamental to all manner of higher processes of thinking and feeling. We might also consider here how much our experi‑ ence of duration is founded on the sensations and the sensuality of the intes‑ tinal tract, from the lips to the anal sphincter. And we might additionally consider, with appreciation for the work of Didier Anzieu and others, how much our ability to distinguish between that which is “me” and that which is “not‑me” depends upon the erotic properties of our skin (see Anzieu, 1985, 1987; Anzieu and Tarrab, 1990; Bick, 1968; Field, 2003; Jablonski, 2008; Montagu, 1978). Many schools of psychoanalysis have lost the bodymind perspective that Freud discovered, listening only to the content of represen‑ tational constructions that are about the physicality of our embodiment (or about other, safer, topics, such as the formation of our relationships). The radicality of Freud’s discipline, however, lies in a method that allows embod‑ ied experience to become more freely able to speak for itself.

Listening to the voices of our sensual embodiment It is possible to take free‑associative discourse merely as a sequence of repre‑ sentations that leads to seemingly new and interesting productions of think‑ ing and feeling. These productions may be about the patient’s self, about the various things, events, and persons in the patient’s world, or about the patient’s body. The license to express consciousness free‑associatively may thus open the patient’s thinking and speaking to all sorts of novelties of speculation and imagination – to daydreams and “unconscious phantasies.” It may even lead to the generation of interpretive formulations that seem to be powerfully and profoundly insightful. However, if this is all one takes free‑associative discourse to signify, then sooner or later it will be claimed that interpretations and insights can be generated with equal validity with‑ out the aid of the free‑associative method. And indeed, this is exactly what many practitioners claim today – that their discipline can be conducted with‑ out the free‑associative method, or that this method is merely a useful instru‑ ment (e.g., Hoffman, 2006). At most, they treat it as a means to an end – one “data generating” instrument among many – that is consequently neither necessary nor sufficient for the conduct of psychoanalysis. This disregard for free‑associative discourse seems to result not only from ego‑psychology but from all the developmentalist versions of the discipline, including those that are object‑relational and interpersonal. However, I am convinced that demot‑ ing the significance of free‑associative discourse in this manner actually misses the essence of psychoanalysis in terms of the way its discourse moves the subject’s being (Bollas, 2002; Green, 2000b; Kris, 1996). 76 Sensual embodiment and erotic experience

What free‑associative discourse exhibits goes beyond the procedures by which representations may be combined and permuted in all sorts of meta‑ phorically and metonymically novel formations. Rather, as I have indicated, such discourse opens the speaking subject to the fluxes, flows, fluidities, vibrations, and undulations of desire and thus exhibits an alternative dimen‑ sion of the subject’s being‑in‑the‑world in a way that is perpetually enigmatic and extraordinary. If attended psychoanalytically, the free‑associative method invites the sensual voice of embodied experience into a conversation that is representationally constructed so as to exclude its meaningfulness. In short, free‑associative method is not merely an epistemological device; it is not merely a way of acquiring new “data” that contributes to revised formulations about the patient’s functioning (that can be generated by the patient, the psychoanalyst, or both). Rather, this method is foremost and fundamentally “ontic,” in that it moves the patient’s being by bringing an excluded dimen‑ sion of this being to work and play (“workplay” as I call it) within the patient’s experience, with a vivacity that was previously prohibited. In my psychoanalytic practice, I have developed an augmentation of the free‑associative method that, in my experience, powerfully confirms the truthfulness of what is suggested here. At this juncture, a brief description will suffice. Psychoanalysts are very accomplished (almost to the point of self‑parody) in various ways of asking the patient, What comes to mind? This may be beneficial as far as it goes (although its Cartesian inflection endangers both the patient and the psychoanalyst toward an intellectualizing and nar‑ rative‑obsessed treatment). Unfortunately, it is far rarer for psychoanalysts to listen for and to consider, What comes to body? (see Felman, 1980; Gallop, 1988; Goldenberg, 1990; Grosz, 1994; Kirby, 1997). In parallel, patients will often say something like, “I had a thought that just came into my head,” and it is a far more aware patient who can say anything like “An image is now coming into my abdomen” – to give just one example. In my practice, I have found that the following invitation is especially beneficial, particularly when the patient finds that nothing “comes to mind” and conscious productivity seems arrested: “If you scan your bodily sensa‑ tions, does anything speak to you?” This is, of course, equivalent to saying, “What comes to body?” but in a manner that does not stall the patient because of its unfamiliarity or apparent quirkiness. Over the years, and under the influence of the writings and clini‑ cal teachings of some of the most talented exponents of somatic psychology (e.g., Aposhyan, 2004; Gendlin, 1997; Johnson, 1983; Kurtz, 2007; Levine, 1997, 2010; Lowen, 1958, 1965, 1975, 1980; Rubenfeld, 2001; Scaer, 2007; Staunton, 2002; Veldman, 2001, 2004), I have further elaborated this proce‑ dure as follows. Very frequently, in response to the “If you scan…” question, the patient will identify a moment of tightness, discomfort, or pain in a par‑ ticular location (such as “there is a crick in my neck/a knot in my stomach/a twitch in my thigh … and it was not there earlier”). The patient is always Sensual embodiment and erotic experience 77

lying comfortably on the couch, so the likelihood that this tension has arisen because of physical contortion is small. I will then request the patient to consider doing the following: “Imagine that you are breathing in and out of that location (that is, that the breath is being inhaled at the crick in the neck, or wherever, and exhaled from that same spot) and see if anything arises or surfaces.” Obviously, there is an educational aspect to the issuance of this invitation. There is indeed almost always a need for the psychoanalyst to educate the patient as to how to workplay psychoanalytically with him or herself. To give another example, there is an educational aspect at the beginning of a treat‑ ment when the psychoanalyst will usually have to explain to the patient the benefit of breaking down a dream into its elements and then associating to each (rather than falling into the temptation of giving a global account of the dream’s potential meanings). But most significantly, if this procedure is followed, something almost always arises or surfaces in response to the process of breathing and attending. Typically, an image, a feeling, a memory, or a discordant thought will surface and free‑associative speaking will resume with a renewed vitality (and the “resistance” that caused speaking to flounder prior to the procedure will ­usually be illuminated beneficially). These sorts of phenomena are commonplace to the practitioners of the recently emerging “bodymind therapies.” My use of the “breathing into and listening to what arises” method has been influenced not only by these contemporary thera‑ pies, but also by my study of yogic principles and practices from Patañjali’s Sutras to more recent exponents of pra-na-ya-ma, such as Yogi Ramacharaka, Swami Satchidananda, Pattabhi Jois, and others (see Barratt, 2006, 2010a; Feuerstein, 1997, 1998; Osho, 2002; Rosen 2002; Vessantara, 2005). Yet these sorts of healing and emancipative methods have become almost entirely overlooked by the psychoanalytic establishment – precisely because so many schools that teach this discipline consider the mind to be merely, and no more than, a system of representations (and because their theories have, usually unwittingly, relapsed into Cartesian assumptions). Such schools have forgotten the significance of libidinality (although they may retain the term in a manner emptied of its significance), and thus to practitioners in these schools the idea of allowing our embodied experience to “speak its mind” is inherently senseless, even crazy.

What is sexuality? From the early days of psychoanalysis, the discipline has been lampooned for its alleged obsession with sexuality. The lampooning is, of course, mostly an indication of the culture’s general around sexual expression. Indeed, far from being sex‑obsessed, the history of the psychoanalytic movement from at least the late 1920s until the late 1990s (or continuing to the present) is 78 Sensual embodiment and erotic experience more aptly characterized in terms of sex‑phobia. This is perhaps most con‑ spicuous in North America (which will be the focus of this discussion, simply because I resided there from 1973 to 2010 and was somewhat active in the politics of sexuality). On that continent, psychoanalysis is often given credit for a post‑1960s lib‑ eralization of sexual attitudes that is exemplified by a generation of popular figures such as Benjamin Spock and Alex Comfort (although actually the sex‑positive commitment of both of these popular figures is perhaps less arrant than might be supposed). This putative liberalization has been fueled by the increased availability of effective contraception, increments of progress toward the acceptance of sexual minorities, and more recently the internet’s provision of greater accessibility of erotic imagery (Allyn, 2000; Reis, 2001; Reiss, 1997). Such cultural developments have been extensively discussed by many commen‑ tators, either in an alarmist tone that sees sexual liberalism as destroying – the nostalgic myth of – Norman Rockwell’s America, or in a sanguine tone that welcomes some relief from oppressive sexual restrictions (D’Emilio and Freedman, 1997; Giddens, 1992; Segal, 1997; Shorter, 2005; Weeks, 1985). However, my “take” on American developments over the past four or five decades is rather different, for I believe that, despite the increased visibility of sexuality on the surface of cultural life, Americans are scarcely any less fear‑ ful of sexuality than they ever were (note that the frequency of unwanted pregnancies and sexual diseases has not significantly declined in the United States over recent decades, despite availability of the technology and the pharmacology to prevent these tragedies). What I have labeled the “sexifica‑ tion of America” is a cultural process in which, as sexuality appears ever more explicitly on the surface of cultural life, individuals become either more sex‑obsessed or more sex‑phobic, and both reactions are indicative of a deep and ongoing anxiety or fearfulness around sexual expression (see Barratt, 2005, in press). I mention this argument (and will not go further into its details) only because what has happened to sexuality within the psychoana‑ lytic establishment has similar characteristics. As has been well documented by commentators, a certain sort of sexual radicalism characterized some of the early psychoanalytic practitioners (Roazen, 1992; Robinson, 1972, 1993; Rudnytsky, 2003). Here we might consider the varying contributions of Ferenczi, Rank (whom Freud once called his “right‑hand man”), Reich, (1911–1927, 1922–1926), Gross (a notable advocate of free love), Georg Groddeck (1923), and more recently Theodor Reik (1941–1944), as well as Michael Bálint (e.g., 1938, 1948, 1956). However, over the decades since the First World War, and perhaps especially through the 1940s and 1950s when the United States and the United Kingdom became dominant forces in the international politics of the psychoanalytic movement, the notion of libidinality was sidelined by most schools (preserved in name only by some, disappearing altogether in many), and sexuality became treated merely as just one type of behavior among many. Sensual embodiment and erotic experience 79

Few, if any, retained the insight that sensual expression is the wellspring both of human suffering and of the human capacity for joy. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that most practitioners and theorists within the psychoanalytic movement ignored the evidence provided by the agonies of their patients, and instead attempted to assimilate themselves to bourgeois ideology that treats our embodiment merely as a commodity. The distinction between sensuality and sexuality is perhaps also an expres‑ sion of some theorists’ wish to “clean up” psychoanalytic theorizing and its clinical practice to make it more ideologically acceptable (see Efron, 1985; Gregersen, 1983). Although I have used both terms, ultimately the distinc‑ tion leads nowhere, for the entire bodymind is sexual. Every aspect of our sensuality is, in this sense, sexual. Moreover, although the acts of “sex” may occur “in the head,” our sexuality is always foremost an expression of the sensuality of our embodiment – although our contemporary culture does not present the truthfulness of the body in this manner (see Armstrong, 1998; Lock and Farquhar, 2007; Shilling, 1993). This is not to imply that sensual‑ ity is necessarily genderized or “sexuated,” to use a contemporary term, for this is a matter of the representations that alienate or estrange us from the sensuality of our experience (see Moncayo, 2008; Ragland‑Sullivan, 2004; Salecl, 2000). Rather, it is to reassert the wisdom of psychoanalysis that the libidinality or subtle energies that ground us in our sensual embodiment are a sexual–experiential force that underpins every aspect of our psychic life.

The essential theory of polysexuality I have emphasized how, in the earliest years of his revolutionary innovations, Freud wrote of libidinality as an energetic substrative process that grounds and inspires all psychic life, and how this description was implicated by the discovery of free‑associative method. I have also mentioned how, after around 1914, it seems as if Freud started to understate this insight, losing his focus as more systematized theoretical frameworks engaged his attention. However, it might be noted that even later in his life he continued to assert that his early valorization of sexuality would be one of his lasting contributions to understanding the human condition. There can be no question that Freud was personally caught between his allegiance to bourgeois ideology and the implications of his discoveries for sexual radicalism. Such radicalism would be notably carried forward by younger colleagues such as Otto Gross and Reich (and later developed by social commentators such as Géza Róheim, Norman O. Brown, Herbert Marcuse, Bertell Ollman, and many others). Freud’s allegiance to prevailing ideology, which treats sexuality in either a compulsively phobic or a compulsively obsessive manner, is evident in his privileging of heterosexual intercourse as the “highest” form of erotics, and his ambivalent or ambiguous attitudes toward female pleasures. Although his failure to comprehend that the external clitoral glans is functionally and 80 Sensual embodiment and erotic experience anatomically connected to the deeper roots of the clitoris and thus to the “G‑spot” is understandable, given the limited knowledge prevailing at that time, it caused him to make statements that we can currently see as absurd (Komisaruk, Beyer‑Flores, and Whipple, 2006). One example would, of course, be the idea that vulval pleasure would, in a “mature” woman, get phased out in favor of vaginal experience. This is an unfounded dogma known to have caused many women to suffer, not least some of Freud’s most loyal female followers. For example, it is reported that Maria Bonaparte underwent several Halba‑Narjani surgeries to relocate her clitoral glans closer to the vaginal entrance, in a lifelong yet ultimately unsuccessful effort to achieve through penile intromission (Bertin, 1987; Roach, 2009). Freud was also in error with his occasional condemnation of self‑pleasuring, which is now known to have many beneficial aspects (Barratt, 2005; Marcus and Francis, 1975). Freud consistently maintained liberal social attitudes toward sexual minorities, as illustrated by a public stance he took in 1905, as well as by a 1935 letter, which was forward to and published in 1951. Yet it might be surmised that he was personally troubled by diversified modes of sexual expression unless they could be viewed as a step on an increasingly restrictive ladder toward “maturity” – a maturity that Gayle Rubin (1975) humorously, but incisively, called the “teleology of the mis‑ sionary position.” The result of Freud’s conflict is his unfortunate yet impor‑ tant concept of humanity’s “polymorphous perversity” or “polymorphously aberrant predisposition” (polymorph perverse Anlage), which perhaps echoed Immanuel Kant’s famous verdict: “Of such crooked wood as man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.” In Chapter 6, I will discuss further the problems that have been caused by psychoanalytic practitioners being generally wedded to a developmentalist model of maturation, which inevitably becomes a framework of diagnostic thinking by which some (adult) patients are judged to be more “infantile” in their functioning and others less so. At this juncture, we need to examine the notion of “polymorphous perversity,” illuminate its strengths and weaknesses, and propose a formulation of human sexuality that remedies the latter. In short, I suggest here that Freud was correct in asserting that our inborn capacities for pleasure are polymorphous, but that he was misguided by the prevailing ideology when he insisted on the dual aspects of a theory of “perversity” (Barratt, 2005). The first of these aspects is evidenced by his pre‑ scription that certain modes of pleasure naturally would, or more accurately should, be suppressively and repressively eradicated in the course of the indi‑ vidual’s ontogenetic travails toward an alleged “maturity” that engages more or less exclusively in the “higher” forms of (hetero)sexual expression (meaning penile–vaginal intercourse). The second is his concomitant assumption that, if an individual retains, to any significant degree, a capacity for pleasure in any of the “lower” modes of expression – for example, enjoyment in having the anal sphincter stimulated and the rectum penetrated – it is to be judged an Sensual embodiment and erotic experience 81

“infantile fixation” or perversion. There is no evidence for these dual assump‑ tions because, although some psychoanalytic practitioners take them as vali‑ dated by clinical events, these same practitioners have invariably assumed that there are in fact “higher” and “lower” modes of sensual expression, before they even entertained their clinical engagement with patients in psychoanalysis. Influenced by psychoanalytic commentators such as Francois Peraldi (1981) and by sexologists such as William Stayton (who in 1980 championed the notion of every human’s “panerotic potential”), I have proposed that the ideological components of Freud’s notion of humanity’s “polymorphously aberrant predispositions” be remedied by a sex‑positive theory of our poly- sexuality. This asserts the pluripotentiality of our capacities for sensual plea‑ sure, and is more or less equivalent to the non‑psychodynamic idea that human beings have panerotic potential. This refers to the idea that all humans are born with the potential to respond erotically to almost any person or thing within their experience and that this potential is gradually attenu‑ ated by what sexologists typically call “scripting” or conditioning to the prevailing ideologies of the sociocultural environment. The psychodynamic notion of polysexuality is prefaced in my Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse (1993), succinctly stated in Sexual Health and Erotic Freedom (2005), and further discussed in my The Emergence of Somatic Psychology and Bodymind Therapy (2010a). It has subsequently been discussed by others with various modifications; for example, Mark Blechner (2009) offers a queer view of desire, “polymorphous without perversity.” Succinctly stated, the theory of polysexuality has three evidence‑based axioms.

1 The human infant is born into this world with an enormous and wide‑ranging potential for sensual pleasure throughout the entirety of his or her embodiment. We are not born to suffer for our erotic nature, nor is it inherently necessary that this pluripotentiality become constrained or curtailed, conditioned, and restricted by all the inhibitions and prohibi‑ tions that are typically encountered in the course of the infant’s subse‑ quent experiences of socialization and acculturation. What is also implied by this polymorphous capacity for sensual–sexual pleasures is that, although individuals may differ in their biological constitution (there being, for example, variations in anatomy and endocrinology), there is no genetically pre‑established path (“erotic pattern” or “lovemap” in the ter‑ minology of contemporary sexology) that will determine whether the individual is going to like one type of pleasure more or less than another. For example, there is no such thing as an infant who allows him or herself to enjoy having one part of the body caressed, but not some other part. Similarly, there is nothing in the constitution of an infant that determines whether, as an adult, he or she will prefer anal stimulation to oral (or vice versa), or be aroused more by men than women (or vice versa). Babies have the potential to experience every sort of sensual pleasure known to 82 Sensual embodiment and erotic experience

humanity; they are not predisposed to be hetero, homo, or to identify with any other sexual pattern. 2 Invariably but not necessarily, the vicissitudes of the individual’s experi‑ ences in the lifelong course of development result in the innate pluripo‑ tential for sensual enjoyment being narrowed, as traumatic events constrain or curtail the bodymind’s capacity for erotic pleasure and the individual becomes increasingly alienated from his or her full‑bodied sexuality. These developments involve what psychoanalysts typically call “defenses” – that is, procedures by which unacceptable sexual impulses are censored from the individual’s repertoire of pleasures. Here I use the notion of trauma to refer to any anxiety‑evoking or fear‑generating experience that causes the individual to suppress or repress some facet of his or her capacity for sen‑ sual pleasure. In the clinical situation, psychoanalysis traces these traumas, and – as will be further discussed in subsequent chapters – the manner in which this tracing is undertaken is critical for the issue of healing, for treatment can either free the patient to enjoy his or her embodiment more fully, or it can degenerate into a therapy that re‑inscribes societal oppres‑ sion within the patient’s bodymind. 3 The taboo is the inherent and uniquely necessary source of our fearfulness toward our embodied pleasures. This is one of the most remarkable insights of Freud’s psychology – a phenomenon crucial to our understanding of the human condition, about which previous commenta‑ tors had barely dared to speak – and it will be discussed further in the Chapter 5. What is encountered again and again throughout the course of any psychoanalytic interrogation is the way in which the fundament of gets unnecessarily extrapolated to a veritable multitude of anti‑sensual and anti‑sexual inhibitions and prohibitions. Not only is this taboo integral to our repertoires of shame and guilt, it generates the repression barrier and is the force behind all the processes of alienation or estrangement from the sensuality of our experiential embodiment. I will elaborate this in subsequent chapters.

In sum, I believe the essential issue that Freud exposes is how we are each born with a wellspring of libidinality – a wellspring, exhaustible only in death, of subtle energies and sensual impulses that flow freely throughout our embodiment. In the course of our personal history, blockages are installed such that, by means of repetition-compulsivity, this mobility of sensual potentiality is channelized, conditioned, and constrained. We then suffer as our libidinality is no longer free‑flowing and we become alienated from our capacity for erotic joy. As I wrote in Sexual Health and Erotic Freedom (2005),

we are born into this world exquisitely designed for pleasure and for the enjoyment of life … we start life with an open potential for erotic Sensual embodiment and erotic experience 83

enjoyment – we are polysexual – and then, through repeated processes of traumatization, our repertoire of sensual and sexual pleasures becomes much stifled and truncated, marked by anxiety, and increasingly compulsive. (p. 89)

This, then, is the psychoanalytic coordinate of polysexuality and our ground‑ ing in the libidinality of our experiential embodiment. This is Freud’s notion of polymorphous “perversity” now shorn of its ideological cast, and recon‑ ceived in the interests of human freedom.

The third coordinate With this understanding of the energetics of libidinality, together with this notion of the polysexuality of the human condition, we can now comprehend the connection between the first and second with this, the third coordinate. Most importantly, we can state what Freud never quite brought himself to articulate directly; namely that the force of the repressed, as continually striving for expression in consciousness (even if such expression always both reveals and conceals its intentionality), resides in the impulses of our experiential embodiment. Freud wrote of the way in which the repressed becomes disengaged from – or, so to speak, alienated from – the realm of representation‑ ality; the repressed subsists, persists, and insists, as what he called “thing‑ presentations” (Sachvorstellung or Dingvorstellung), rather than as presentations structured by the law and order of representationality. The latter, “word‑ presentations” (Wortvorstellung), constitute the semiotics of preconscious and conscious ideation, the meaningfulness accessible to reflection. The repressed resides in the embodiment of our experience, which is the sensuality–sexuality that makes us human. The libidinal energies of the repressed – seemingly indefatigable unto death and anarchically “timeless” – comprise a specific and unique mobility within the psyche, scattering the timeframe constituted by the ego organization. The desire of the repressed is powered by the exuberant liveliness of life itself, even while it bears the trace of our inevitable trauma‑ tization (what I have elsewhere called our “castratedness” and our “deathfulness”). As desire – the desire of the repressed – mobilizes the streaming of consciousness as a continual revealing and concealing of that which is other than the law and order of semiotic constructions, the unified linearity of representationality is exposed as fiction, dismembered, and dispersed. The temporality of psychic life is as much a multiplicity as the energies of our experiential embodiment, and the exuberance of these energies shatters the narratological organization of life into past/present/future, and gives the lie to the apparent identity of the now. This then is how the first three coordinates are indeed aspects of a single discovery that is facilitated by free‑associative discourse. 84 Sensual embodiment and erotic experience

Mistaken paths Surveying the history of the psychoanalytic movement in the past 100 years, it is not difficult to conclude that its theorists and practitioners are more or less as fearful of embodied experience as is the general culture in which they live. Freud was resolute in his early assertions about the significance of libidinal energies and of conflicts over sexual expression. Perhaps his fearfulness showed in the designation of polymorphous erotics as “perverse” and the privileging of penile–vaginal intercourse as the supremely “mature” expres‑ sion of sexual arousal. In succeeding generations, there has been a steady retreat from the willingness of practitioners to address the erotics that define the human condition. This retreat has taken three interrelated forms. In the first form of theoretical retreat, the notion of libido is revised, dis‑ carded altogether, or discounted as an abstractly disembodied energy (which, because not observable, becomes merely a “murky energy concept,” as one American psychologist told me). If it is not subtly censored entirely from the psychoanalytic dialogue, sexuality is then treated as just one set of behaviors among many. It becomes of no particular significance to the human psyche, except for the fact that it is regulated in a more complex manner by social rules and regulations than is, for example, stamp collecting, grandiloquent speech‑ making, skeet shooting, military training, or gambling on the stock market. Of course, there is a concomitant failure to recognize that activities such as stamp collecting, grandiloquent speechmaking, skeet shooting, military training, and gambling on the stock market might have a basis in frustrated erotic impulses. With this comes a certain amount of conceptual wrestling with the idea that “sublimation” is necessary for the proper maintenance of (bourgeois) culture and an allegedly decent form of civilization. We will return in the next chapter to review the considerable difficulties encountered by psychoanalytic commen‑ tators in ascertaining what the “right” amount of sublimation might be (e.g., Arlow, 1955; Boesky, 1994; 2007; Hartmann, 1955; Heimann, 1942; Kaplan, 1993; Kubie, 1962; Muller, 1987, 1999; Róheim, 1943; Singh, 2001). In the second form of retreat, the notion of libido is subordinated to a bio‑ logical model of normative development and an ideology of maturation. It is as if there is a pre‑determined catenation of “libidinal positions” through which the individual will necessarily progress – unless the ordained series becomes derailed by pathological fixations or regressions. Such progression is necessitated in order to attain the type of intimacy that is (pre)judged “mature.” One hesitates to specify what the latter might or might not entail in the value system espoused by many practitioners. Is the individual’s “goal” necessarily to achieve a durable, even if unhappy, marital relationship in which penile–vaginal intercourse satisfies both partners at a frequency of at least once a week? This sort of developmental theorizing about “psychosexual stages” does at least maintain a focus on bodily functioning and sexual expression, against the tide of “psychoanalytic” viewpoints that virtually forget the erotic character Sensual embodiment and erotic experience 85 of the human condition (e.g., Fliess, 1956; Nagera, 1981; Sterba, 1942). However, the problem with this sort of rendition of the vicissitudes of libid‑ inal life into a biological or quasi‑biological model of development is that it installs a certain sort of hegemonic account of cultural normativity that serves as the implicit foundation of the theory (which is then treated as if universally applicable). The actual lived experience of any erotic activity comes to be understood teleologically – that is, in terms of how near or far it is from the presumed endpoint of maturation. The endpoint is specified in advance by whatever activities are generally considered the “proper, right, true, and effec‑ tive” modalities of intimacy and sexual expression (in my parody, the durable bourgeois marriage with orgasmically satisfying penile–vaginal intercourse at least once a week). This maturational “ideal” (of what is the “proper, right, true, and effective” mode of mature intimacy and sexual expression) is actu‑ ally a matter of sociocultural valorization; one might even say, bourgeois ideology dressed up as science. As a result of such developmentalist thinking, which is inimical to psychoanalytic science (as I shall argue further in Chapter 6), the clinician understands the patient’s actual pleasures mostly in terms of the task of getting him or her to the next “more mature” stage of psycho‑ sexual functioning, of understanding why the patient is fixated on, or has regressed to, an “infantile position.” With developmentalism, the psycho‑ analytic challenge of listening to lived experience is subordinated to an ideological attachment to a theoretical schematization. In the third form of retreat from the erotics that define the human condi‑ tion, libidinality virtually disappears from psychoanalytic consideration. Psychoanalysis is no longer understood as the inauguration of somatic psy‑ chology (Barratt, 2010a), but is revised into a theoretical and therapeutic enterprise that prioritizes ego functioning, object‑relations, the self, interper‑ sonal relationships, or the linguistically structured “Other.” Since the writings of Hartmann, the structural–functional perspectives of ego‑psychology have effectively sidelined the theorizing of sexuality and sen‑ suality in psychic life by positing a “conflict‑free sphere” of the ego organiza‑ tion that allegedly operates on sublimated energies. In terms of object‑relations perspectives, I have already mentioned how Fairbairn (1931–1964, 1952), whose collected papers are appropriately titled From Instinct to Self, discards libidinality to posit the notion that the ego organization is inherently “object‑seeking.” This theoretical move has been aptly criticized by Green (1997, 2002) and others who ask why this organization would ever wish or need to seek an object, if not for reasons of desires derived from our embodied sensuality. Somewhat similarly, although he is less forthright than Fairbairn about his theoretical antipathy toward libidinality, Winnicott’s prodigious writings often seem to prioritize relational functioning over considerations of embodied experience (see Hughes, 1989). Indeed, the effort to theorize sexu‑ ality from a Winnicottian perspective is flawed by its strange remoteness from the actual experience of the body (e.g., Caldwell, 2005). Thus, in the 86 Sensual embodiment and erotic experience context of a discussion of object‑relations theorizing, particularly as it has developed in the United Kingdom, Roger Kennedy (2001) points out that “the place of libido theory … seems to have virtually disappeared.” The sexu‑ ality and sensuality of our embodiment seem to fade out of consideration in most varieties of interpersonalist, relational, and “intersubjective” practice, and we might note that terminology pertaining to sexuality is scarcely to be found anywhere in Kohut’s prodigious writings (Barratt, 1991a; Kohut, 1950–1981). In all these formulations, it becomes clear that practitioners find it far more congenial to talk about the forces of love and hate (e.g., Suttie, 1935) or to think in terms of defensive functions in relation to hostil‑ ity (e.g. Berke, 1988), than to consider the bodily impulses that are the foundation of our ability to love and hate, as well as our defenses against awareness of the sensual embodiment of our lived experience. Interestingly, bodies and bodily parts make a frequent appearance in Kleinian and neo‑Kleinian discourse but it seems that they do so almost exclusively as the topic of “unconscious phantasies,” which are somewhat remote from the actual impulses of embodied erotic experience. Although there may be some important exceptions (e.g., Meltzer, 1973), it is often as if Kleinian practitioners are adept at talking about breasts, penises, wombs, and the like, in a manner that can easily preempt the process of listening to the voicing of our embodiment. Additionally, the emphasis of this perspective is so trenchantly focused on the destructiveness that is held to be inherent to the beginnings of every human’s formation that the erotics of our embodied experience tend to be overlooked; as one practitioner told me, Kleinian prac‑ tice is concerned “only with the patient’s mind, nothing else.” Paradoxically, the erotics of the human condition often seem similarly obfuscated in Lacanian. Here, the theorizing of the three “registers” of human functioning (Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real), as well as the revisioning of the unconscious as the capitalized Other (which is linguistically structured and mathematically specified), serves to produce a clinical discourse at some con‑ siderable distance from the fleshiness of our erotic experience. In this instance, in common with all the other vantage points mentioned above, it would seem that the practice of listening to the voicing of embodied experience has little or no place in the theorizing of psychoanalytic discipline. Throughout the twentieth century, and despite the radical contributions not only of Freud’s earlier work but also of diverse contributors such as Reich (1927, 1927–1953, 1933, 1936), Ferenczi (1916; Ferenczi and Rank, 1924), Rank (1912), Stekel (1911–1927, 1922–1926), Gross (1901–1920), Groddeck (1923), and even Reik (1937, 1941–1944, 1948), psychoanalytic theories became progressively disembodied. Towards the end of that century, there was evidence of some sort of concerted effort to restore a focus on sexuality to the discipline. Some interesting texts were published (e.g., Adelson, 1975; Green, 1997; Kaplan, 1989; Karasu and Socarides, 1979; Kernberg, 1984; McDougall, 1989, 1995; Roiphe and Galenson, 1981; Stoller, 1992). Additionally, the Sensual embodiment and erotic experience 87

Barcelona Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1997, under Etchegoyen’s presidency, was themed “Psychoanalysis and Sexuality,” and in the same period the American Psychological Association’s Division of Psychoanalysis attended to this topic. However, reading the proceedings of these conferences, one can easily be impressed by how, despite diligent efforts to reverse this trend, the theorizing of psychoanalytic practitioners had become markedly remote from the lived experience of our sensual embodiment. While in the subsequent decade there were some encouraging attempts to refocus psychoanalytic theorizing on the significance of our experiential embodiment (e.g., Bloom, 2006; Blechner, 2009; Muller and Tillman, 2007; Stoller, 2005), the discipline as a whole has trenchantly maintained its position of retreat from our sensual and sexual foundation. Although Freud stands at the head of somatic psychology and his theorizing is a bodymind approach to the erotic, the discipline that bears his name has all too frequently become a “science” of the disembodied subject. Chapter 5 Oedipal complexities

The significance of the three coordinates we have discussed thus far is epis‑ temic and ontic, concerning the possibilities of knowing and the conditions of our being‑in‑the‑world. That is, they concern the productive structuration of the representational world and the transmutative momentum projectively caused by the desirous impulses of embodied experience that is unrepresented and unrepresentable. As I have indicated in the preceding chapters, the prior coordinates (the processes of repression and resistance, of repetition‑compul‑ sivity, and pluritemporality, and of the fundamentality of our sensual embod‑ iment as conveying the desirous “unthought known” of experience) all depict dimensions of the structure and movement of representations in relation to that which is unrepresented and unrepresentable. But these processes are, in a certain rather limited sense, neutral with respect to the content of represen‑ tations. For example, a representation that is repressed might be about any‑ thing that happens to be threatening to our egotism; although, as we will see in this chapter, there are certain – incestuous – experiences that are necessar‑ ily repressed and that determine the formation of the “repression barrier.” In a sense, the “Oedipal Complex,” which is the fourth coordinate defining psychoanalysis as a discipline, is of a different order from the other three (epistemically and ontically), in that it is bound to matters of particular con‑ tent – namely the forbidden content of incestuous desire. It involves matters of conflictual relationships about and between representations of self and other that are loved and hated; but most profoundly, it concerns the limits of human desire in relation to the ubiquitous traumata of the incest taboo and the way in which the limits of desire delimit the possibility of our knowing and our being. As I will demonstrate, it is these ubiquitous traumata that are fundamental to the processes of necessarily not‑knowing that characterize the human condition. As early as 1897 and elaborated in the following years, Freud began to make a remarkable discovery, finding that the human condition is defined, in multitudinous ways, by each subject’s inevitable encounter with – and poten‑ tially his or her passage through – what I am going to call “oedipal com‑ plexities.” Toward the end of his career he wrote, “If psychoanalysis could not Oedipal complexities 89 claim any other achievement beside the discovery of the repressed Oedipus Complex, this alone would give it the right to a place among the new and precious conquests of humanity.” As we will see, there is a certain interesting irony in referring to this discovery both in the singular, “complex,” and as being a “conquest” – because, perhaps above all, the multiple ways in which our humanity is oedipally constituted stipulate a delimitation of desire, which can neither be mastered nor overcome. These complexities are, in a certain sense, universal traumata that are constitutive of every human subject, as being scarred by the processes of repression; they establish what I shall call the inherent “castratedness” of being human. This then is the fourth coordinate that defines the discipline of psycho‑ analysis and, as I shall show, it is intricately tied to the other three coordinates, despite having a somewhat different epistemic and ontic status. Indeed, the entire body of psychoanalytic theorizing – repression and our resistance to the returning of the repressed, the temporal heterogeneity of psychic life, and the foundation of the psyche in the erotics of embodied experience – revolves around the vicissitudes of human desire and its recurrent delimitation. As I will show, this inherent delimitation is both structural and processive. In examining the complexities of oedipus, we discover how, for every human subject in the process of becoming human, desire is bound to be frustrated, repressed, and destined to return to our consciousness contradictorily. To use the scotomatous analogy of the visual field, these complexities explain how we are all inevitably self‑blinding.

The literary precursor It is well known that, from the beginning of his career, Freud chose to present his insights with diplomacy and discretion. Clinical material that was about himself was occasionally presented as if that of a patient or acquaintance. The argumentation around certain difficult issues was sometimes presented labo‑ riously and – certainly in his 1900 presentation of a new approach to dream‑ work – with diligent erudition in the acknowledgment of scholarship that had preceded him. As is well known, the unpalatable discovery of oedipal complexities was eponymously justified by referencing the tragic dramas of Sophocles (c. 429 bce), which would have been quite familiar to most edu‑ cated persons in his milieu. Freud probably believed that, by contextualizing his discoveries in this manner, he might allay public resistance to their impli‑ cations. No doubt he accurately anticipated this resistance precisely because, with courage and brilliance, he recognized his own personal reluctance to acknowledge the very processes he was discovering within himself, as well as in his patients (see Freud, 1887–1904). Under the influence of Aeschylus’ dramatizations, Sophocles wrote three plays about the kingdom of Thebes; Oedipus, The King was probably not the first to be written, but is primary in terms of the chronology of the overall 90 Oedipal complexities narrative about this protagonist (Beer, 2004; Smith, 2005). Oedipus’ story is complicated, especially in its nuances, but may be sketched as follows. Laius, king of Thebes, hears a prophecy that he will be killed by his own son and so takes the infant Oedipus, pierces his ankles’ and arranges for him to be cast out and left to die on the pathless hillside of Mount Cithaeron. Oedipus is rescued and later adopted by a childless Corinthian couple, Polybus and Merope, who know nothing of his history. Now grown but unaware of his adoption, he leaves Corinth because he has heard a prophecy that he would kill his Father and marry his Mother. During his travels, the club‑footed Oedipus encounters, at a crossroads, a man riding in a carriage, accompanied by his servants on foot. The man behaves rudely, his carriage pushing Oedipus off the path. In response, Oedipus angrily kills the man and his servants, ­supposedly not knowing that his victim, King Laius, is actually his biological Father. Subsequently, Oedipus marries Laius’ widow, Jocasta, who is actually his Mother (but, of course, he is supposedly unaware of this), has children with her, and becomes the new king of Thebes after solving the riddle of the Sphinx. Significantly, the Sphinx is female, and the middle concerns ageing and, by implication, death. However, the kingdom then suffers a strange plague that begins to destroy the productive and reproductive foundations of its politics and its economy. Oedipus is determined to discover the cause of this malady, despite the fact that he is warned, both by his Mother–Wife Jocasta and by the blind prophet Teiresias, against this pursuit of knowledge about the causes of the plague and accordingly about his own personal his‑ tory. The malady is, of course, meted by the gods as the kingdom’s punish‑ ment for the dirty secret of the recondite corruption, which involves both the patricide and the incestuous marriage. As the truthfulness of these events surfaces, Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus, after taking one last look at his Mother–Wife’s nude body, blinds himself. He then leaves Thebes, placing himself in exile at Colonus, accompanied by his loyal daughter, Antigone (and these subsequent events provide the material for the other two plays in the cycle). Central to the sheer power of the narrative’s construction – and most rele‑ vant to our understanding of psychoanalytic discourse – is not only a familial scenario that is multiply homicidal, but also the way in which the truthfulness of events unfolds and “fate” takes its course, despite the strenuous efforts on the part of the characters involved to avoid the horror of incestuous revelation. There has been much psychoanalytic commentary on the significance of this saga, with Sam Kimball (2007) providing one of the best exegeses (see also Ahl, 1991; Cameron, 1968; Freeman, 2000; Johnson and Price‑Williams, 1996; Keitlen, 2003; Knox, 1971; O’Brien, 1968; Pucci, 1992; Segal, 2001; Woodard, 1966). What is unarguable is that Freud exploited the story in a manner that is somewhat reductive and tendentious, even if serving the purpose of his teaching, and consequently there have been variations in the treatment of the attendant issues (e.g., Britton, Feldman, and O’Shaughnessy, 1990; Caldwell, 1974; Clément, 1978; Green, 1979; Greenberg, 1992; Hartocollis, Oedipal complexities 91

1999; Moncayo, 2011; Mullahy, 1955; Nagera, 1975; Nasio, 1998–2006; Pollock and Ross, 1988; Rudnytsky, 1987). In several of his writings, Freud seems to present the major theme of the narrative merely in terms of a boy’s forbidden wishes to be rid of any rival for a Mother’s erotic attention, and indeed even to commit patricide in order to remove what is perceived as the major impediment to incestuous gratifications (Faber, 1970; Ferenczi, 1916; Goln, 1967; Jones, 1918, 1933; Rado, 1956; Rank, 1912; Van der Sterren, 1952; Young, 2001). As has been discussed extensively, this partial reading of the saga overlooks some inherent thematic dimensions, including infanticidal, homoerotic, and sociopolitical motifs (see, for example Balmary, 1979; Barratt, 1999, 2004a, 2009b; Bross, 1984; Covitz, 1998; Devereaux, 1953, 1963; Girard, 2004; Horney, 1932; Kanzer, 1948, 1978; Kovacevic, 2007; Nasio, 1998–2006; Pollock, 1983; Ross, 1982, 1994; Verhaeghe, 2009). What I shall suggest in this chapter and in what follows is both how the story of Oedipus illustrates the “castratedness” of the human subject in the delimitation of our desire and hence our knowledge, and how the tale illus‑ trates (perhaps less directly, via the contextualization of Oedipus’ life by his Father’s infanticidal intent) the “deathfulness” of the human subject in its constitutive preoccupation with its own absence or mortality. Central to the mythematic lessons that have benefitted psychoanalytic wis‑ dom are the issues of knowledge and blindness. Oedipus’ relentless search for knowledge that will save his kingdom and disclose his personal history brings him to encounter a delectable horror (the realization of his incestuous indul‑ gences and the immediate vision of matrem nudem, to borrow Freud’s delicate phrasing in an 1897 letter to Fliess) that moves him to stab out his own eyeballs. According to Apollodorus’ Chronicles (Caldwell, 1974), Teiresias, who may have been transgendered, had been rendered blind by the deities, in a somewhat par‑ allel manner, either for disclosing the secrets of the gods to mortals or because he had seen a goddess naked. In the Sophocle’s drama, he functions as the seer who cannot see the light of day, but can “see the truth in the light of his mind” (Ricoeur, 1965; Róheim, 1946). Psychoanalytic interpretation, as the discipline that investigates the parameters of not‑knowing, emphasizes the various themes of scotomization, the pursuit and the avoidance of unacceptable or forbidden truths and the literal self‑blinding. Blindness, whether inflicted as the punitive retribution for having seen something forbidden or as an active refusal to see, denotes the erotic potential of looking but also, in a symbolic connotation which links the eyes to the genitals, self‑blinding implies auto‑castration. In what sense there may be life after knowledge – that is, the possibilities or impossibilities of restitution that are engaged subsequently by the blinded Oedipus at Colonus – is also of central concern to psychoanalytic practitioners (see Bálint, 1950a, 1950b; Hoffer, 1952; Kanzer, 1948; Klein, 1952; Reich, 1952; Rickman, 1952). What principally concerns this chapter is the way in which self‑blinding, as an epistemologically demarcative act between what may be known and what may not, signifies or symbolizes both the repression barrier and the barrier of the incest taboo. 92 Oedipal complexities

Let us sidestep any further commentary on Freud’s particular reading of Sophocles’ tragic drama and also set aside criticism of the reductive under‑ standing of the oedipal issues that typifies the public’s appreciation of the way in which every human being reenacts this drama (“little boys want to kill their Fathers and have sex with their Mothers”). Rather, let us follow Freud’s license in appropriating the story. For our purposes, “oedipus” will be employed as a common noun and “oedipal issues” will refer to universal complexities that constrain or constrict the polysexual or panerotic subjectivity of both men and women, and delimit our capacity to know. Here I will introduce the notion of oedipal complexities by the simplifying strategy of showing how they may be described in terms of a triple encounter or induction that is inevitable, that is intensely conflictual, and that is of seminal importance in the formation of every individual’s personality (Barratt, 2010b). This triple “encounter” occurs more or less concomitantly in the formation of the individual, and is:

· with the incest taboo; · with the male/female differentiation of sex roles and genders; · with the triangulation of relationships and the dilemmas of phallic sexuality.

This triune phenomenon affects, or even generates, the three coordinates of psychoanalysis that we have already discussed, and all of these aspects affect the permutations and transformations of representations that involve the identities of the self and the character of attachments to others, as well as the way in which these represented aspects of psychic life are invested consciously and unconsciously.

The impact of the incest taboo What Freud discovered through psychoanalytic exposition was the way in which the very existence, as well as the foundational structuring, of our psy‑ che depends on the prohibition against incest. Indeed, it can be aptly argued that this discovery of the significance of the incest taboo for all aspects of human functioning is perhaps the most profound and powerful of all psycho‑ analytic contributions to the understanding of our humanity – relating as it does to the formation of the repression barrier and to the formative impact of oedipal passages. Let us begin to comprehend this significance by consider‑ ing, descriptively, the crucible of the child’s entry into the social order of discourse – the inevitable impasse confronted by every child. It is surely evident that the child’s earliest sensual feelings are both evoked and molded in a relationship with a particular person or persons, usually a parent (and traditionally, at least, the Mother or primary female caretaker). As I indicated in Chapter 3, psychoanalysis as well as anthropological evi‑ dence elucidates, in Freud’s words, how “the first object relation is the proto‑ type of all love relations.” This is a profound insight, but one that is typically Oedipal complexities 93 resisted adamantly by those who lack psychoanalytic experience. Of course, the reason for this resistance is the implication that all erotic connections are ultimately founded in a context that is incestuous (Ambrosio, 2005; Angot, 1999; Ceccarelli, 1978; Highwater, 1990; Racamier, 1995; Stein, 1973). However, if this is challenging for most adults to acknowledge, consider how much more difficult and dangerous, indeed traumatic, it necessarily and inevitably is for the child. We may think of the impasse encountered by the child as follows. It is vital for our health and happiness as infants, toddlers, and children – as well as thereafter – that we are touched, cuddled, and caressed. No one can survive and thrive without being warmly embraced and stroked tenderly, by our earliest caretakers, in a way that stirs libidinal energies toward them. Yet somehow each of us discovers, in a shock that traumatically disappoints our childhood sensibilities, how the very same caretakers who initiated the rela‑ tional nexus of our libidinal energies are forbidden to us as partners in life’s sweetest adult pleasures. Of course, the “shock” does not usually occur as a single episode, but rather a series of encounters; however, these occurrences may surely be considered traumatic in that they evoke thoughts and feelings that overwhelm the child’s comprehension. This, then, constitutes every sub‑ ject’s inevitable, poignant, and frequently devastating struggle with the incest taboo – a struggle that occurs, in the descriptive sense, almost entirely unconsciously. But from where does this taboo come? The answer to this question is actu‑ ally surprisingly enigmatic, and continues to challenge psychoanalysts and other social scientists to this day. Most explanations fall short of providing a satisfactory account of the range, depth, and power of this universal taboo. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, there was a burgeoning schol‑ arly interest in understanding the foundations of the incest taboo. However, prior to Freud, this interest focused almost entirely on its sociological and anthropological significance. The impact of the taboo on the formation of the individual’s psyche was left unaddressed. The scholarly interest that escalated during Freud’s early adulthood arose in part from an awareness of the preva‑ lence of child abuse, but more from the accumulation of ethnographic data indicating the extent to which cultures vary in their interpretation of this universal prohibition; for example in the degrees of kinship regulating the marital contract and the possibility of parenting (Lang and Atkinson, 1903; Raglan, 1933). This interest was augmented by a wave of early research on totemic belief systems and the manner in which they might serve to imple‑ ment the incest prohibition (e.g., Frazer, 1910). In 1865, John McLennan had published Primitive Marriage (which was later amplified and re‑published in 1876, when Freud was 20 years old, under the title Studies in Ancient History). In this book, McLennan discussed the prevalence of the symbolic or literal capture of women in so‑called “primitive races,” arguing that such rituals ensure marital exogamy and systems of kinship based on what he called the 94 Oedipal complexities

“natural laws” against incest. The exact status of a concept such as “natural law” – as well as its mode of installation within the individual’s psyche – was controversial and remains so today. However, the importance of the incest taboo is unarguable, and by 1898, just as Freud was inaugurating his disci‑ pline, Émile Durkheim published a ground-breaking paper emphasizing the significance of the taboo for social cohesion and the transmission of culture. Several implausible explanations for the taboo have been presented. For example, there was a rationalist explanation that individuals are somehow aware of the genetic dangers of and therefore choose sexual part‑ ners exogamously. The forefather of the sociology of law, Henry Maine, had argued along these lines in his 1875 The Early History of Institutions. Yet it seems unlikely that, as individuals become sexually aroused, they take time to cogitate on the genetic consequences of incestuous reproduction, and indeed few individuals ever observe such consequences since they typically only become manifest after a few generations (Thornhill, 1993). On these grounds, a rationalist account of the taboo seems mistaken; something other than conscious deliberation is at stake. Around the time that Freud and Durkheim addressed this issue, there were other more psychological, but non‑psychoanalytic, accounts of the taboo. For example, in 1905, Havelock Ellis argued that there is an “innate revulsion” toward endogamous sexual partnering – an explanation that seems far from adequate, and indeed that fails to explain why young children can be eroti‑ cally bonded with their caretakers, only to be later impacted by this allegedly innate sense of repugnance. Similarly, just prior to Freud’s earliest psycho‑ analytic labors, Edvard Westermarck (1891) had propounded what became known as the “Westermarck Effect,” which also postulated an innate or natu‑ ral antipathy. But, contrary to other commentators, Westermarck argued that this repulsion is not necessarily toward individuals who are biologically related, but rather to those who are close during one’s formative years. This is an interesting viewpoint, especially since it takes account of the operation of the taboo in circumstances of adoptive parenting or blended . But again, although Westermarck debunks the exclusively genetic explanation, he also fails to explain how an initial erotic bond transforms into a supposedly innate antipathy. The various sociological or anthropological accounts of the incest taboo – such as McLennan’s – fail to account for the way in which cultural prohibition operates within the psychology of the individual. Indeed, until Freud’s discov‑ ery of oedipal complexities, this aspect seems to have been of almost no interest to the scholars who discussed and debated the taboo. Another eminent example of this failure would be Herbert Spencer’s opus magnum (1864–1897), which approached the topic from a social Darwinist standpoint. Such a standpoint again implies that the individual somehow “knows” about this taboo because it is encoded genetically. Even if this were plausible in terms of our contempo‑ rary understanding of behavioral genetics, such an account fails to explain its Oedipal complexities 95

operation in the psychological odyssey of the individual. The sociological and anthropological literature has been well reviewed in Claude Lévi‑Strauss’ highly influential Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949) and also critically discussed in Lord Raglan’s Jocasta’s Crime (1933). Much of the assumptions in this literature are directly or indirectly challenged or augmented by Freud’s speculative ven‑ tures in social theorizing; for example, in the 1912 book, Totem and Taboo (which owed significantly to Frazer’s 1910 publication on totemism and to other works such as Atkinson’s 1903 writings on “primal law”). Cultural variability in the performance of the taboo is one type of evidence that the foundations of the taboo are complex, and that they are not merely encoded in our chromosomes, as if in a universal “instinct.” All known cul‑ tures have rules or laws against incest, although the specifics of these regula‑ tions vary considerably (Francoeur and Noonan, 2003; Hernandez and Krajewski, 2009; Stephens, 1962). For example, in some contemporary Caribbean as well as Central and South American cultures, Mothers are encouraged to soothe their infants into sleep by caressing their genitals, whereas in many other cultures, specifically in Europe, this practice is deci‑ sively forbidden. In relation to penile–vaginal intercourse, it may be noted that, in many cultures, marriage to a first cousin cannot be considered whereas in others it is entirely acceptable; often the law differs depending whether the cousin is from the Father’s or the Mother’s side of the family. Raglan (1933) discusses these cultural variations quite diligently, for exam‑ ple, when he points out how in certain West African cultures it is a capital offense for a man to have sex with any woman of his Mother’s clan, however distantly related (even while he may be required to marry his paternal aunt’s daughter); whereas with certain South Asian groups it is forbidden for a man to marry a woman of his Father’s clan (but he may marry his own sister’s daughter). Some Chinese groups forbid marriage between persons of the same surname, even if there is no known relationship. In some cultures, the prohi‑ bition extends to any persons who are familial by adoption or fosterage rather than by , whereas in others it does not. However, despite the multitude of these variations, in no culture is a boy able to engage his Mother in penile–vaginal intercourse with impunity and, although the consequences are sometimes less dire, in no culture is intercourse between a girl and her Father condoned. Such prohibitions stand not because of any external legality, but on the basis of its deep internal inscription in the psyche of every indi‑ vidual. This universal taboo is not so much “out there” in reality, nor is it solely “in here” in the sense that it is decisively encoded in our chromosomes, explicitly taught by our caretakers and learned accordingly, or authored by some aspect of conscious intentionality. Consider how there really is no physical or material reason why incest can‑ not be committed. To focus on the case that seems most extreme: there is no reason why a boy, having attained a certain physical stature and prowess, can‑ not engage his Mother in penile–vaginal intercourse, assuming she is willing. 96 Oedipal complexities

Indeed, Freud’s somewhat slanted reading of the Sophocles’ play emphasizes this boyhood aspiration (which King Oedipus achieves, but only on the con‑ dition that he does not know with whom he is lovemaking and that, on learn‑ ing Jocasta’s identity as his Mother–Wife, he stabs out his own eyes). Contrary to myth, genitals do not wither or rot if Mother–Son intercourse is undertaken; although the lore of many cultures is that madness and death will necessarily ensue. Indeed, when such intercourse does occur, the partici‑ pants always mutilate themselves, psychically if not physically. Note how, prior to Oedipus becoming aware of what he has done, he has already been mutilated by his Father piercing his ankles, his kingdom later suffers a strange malady inflicted by the gods as retribution for the crime of incest, and, when Oedipus realizes with whom he has been sexually intimate, he self‑mutilates (and self‑emasculates) by stabbing out his eyes and sending himself into exile at Colonus. In the accounts of contemporary ethnography, when incest is alleged to have actually occurred, a horrible disaster invariably befalls the participants. Thus, the idea that incest is avoided merely because it is socially proscribed, or because participants somehow know that there are genetic consequences to inbreeding, is implausible. The former because, even in situations where the participants elude punishment by their community, they invariably go mad, self‑mutilate, or die; the latter, both because such consequences as the birth of a deformed baby are distant from the act of impregnation, and because, when such genetic consequences occur, they typically only do so after several generations. In the social sciences, the concept of human “instincts” has been found to be unhelpful, serving only as a “garbage category” that has been promiscu‑ ously used to refer to whatever begs for explanation. This has been amply proven by critics of William McDougall’s Introduction to Social Psychology (1908), in which “instinct” becomes a concept of convenience (Boden, 1972); for example, if humans build houses, then there must be an “instinct for con‑ struction” and so forth. In relation to the incest taboo, it is otiose to suggest that there is an “instinct against incest,” even if descriptively this indeed points to a profound and ubiquitous feature of our humanity. Moreover, given the evidence coming from the comparative study of the behavior of other spe‑ cies, it also seems unlikely that our chromosomal heritage includes some, as yet unidentified, gene that decisively forbids incest, although it is possible that there is some sort of genetic determinant to the prohibition (especially since some non‑human species do not reproduce incestuously, whereas others do). Contrary to the speculations of those clinical theorists who affiliate them‑ selves with the discipline of ethology, such as John Bowlby (1969–1980), the individual’s confrontation with the taboo is definitely not to be explained merely as the triggering of a genetic encoded program, such as a so‑called “fixed action pattern,” that operates by an innate releasing mechanism during a critical period of childhood (Gould, 1982; Lorenz, 1982; Tinbergen, 1951). Although it is possible that there is a genetic component to the incest taboo, Oedipal complexities 97 this sort of ethological explanation fails to account for individual and cultural variations in the taboo’s operation. Indeed, even a cursory review of research in behavioral genetics indicates that, whereas physical characteristics, such as eye color, may be decisively determined by one’s chromosomal composition, the determination of behavioral patterns is, at most, only a matter of predis‑ position (Kim, 2010; Plomin, DeFries, McClearn, and McGuffin, 2008; Rutter, 2006). Yet the taboo is, so to speak, “deeply wired” within us, and critical to the processes that found our psychic life. At least to some degree, it must be “learned” or internalized, although this is no simple process of indoctrination. Contrary to the pronouncements of some clinical theorists, it cannot be as uncomplicated as, for instance, a Father explicitly threatening to punish a child who interferes with his sexual access to the Mother. Such direct threats do, of course, sometimes occur. Consider the South Asian myth of Shiva beheading his son, Ganesha, simply because the latter obstructed the Father’s intent to rape the young boy’s Mother (Barratt, 2009b). However, it is naïve to imagine that there must be the threat of punishment in order for an indi‑ vidual to react to, and accommodate, the incest taboo. Yet, in the history of psychoanalysis, this is indeed the mistakenly simplistic account of “” adopted by some clinicians (see Alexander, 1921–1961, 1946; Fenichel, 1925; Stärke, 1921; Ward, 2003; Woolf, 1955). Indeed, Freud himself engages this mode of explanation, and has long since been criticized for it (e.g., Raglan, 1933). Against such an account, we know from compara‑ tive data that the experience of the taboo is often as intense for individuals without Fathers as it is for those whose Father is a threatening presence in their lives (see Burgner, 1985; Freeman, 2008; Greenspan, 1982; Herzog, 2001; McDougall, 1995; Stephens, 1962; Thomas, 1998; Ward, 2003). In some respects, patriarchal authority may be foundational to the incest taboo, and Father-figures may be significant in every human’s psychological journey, but an actively present and vociferously proprietorial Father-figure is not necessary for the taboo’s intergenerational transmission (see Dumas, 1997; Erikson, 1980; Etchegoyen and Trowell, 2001; Faimberg, 2005; Mitscherlich, 1963; Ross, 1994). Against simplistic explanations either in terms of learning or in terms of genetics, psychoanalytic practice teaches us that the child encounters the taboo against incest as if it were a primordial “no” that is performed in some way by caretakers, although its conscious communication is unnecessary for its opera‑ tion and the notion of an “encounter” may also be somewhat misleading. The qualities of the performative injunction may vary greatly, but are always of profound significance to the way in which the child’s personality is formed, to his or her relationship with their own erotic potential, to his or her capacity for adult love relations, and so forth. Obviously, this is one of the many ways in which inner conflicts, and indeed a whole pattern of defensive procedures (as well as the establishment of the repression barrier), are transmitted and 98 Oedipal complexities replicated intergenerationally. By this transmission, the unconscious of the child reflects the inner conflicts of the adult, although the manner of this reflection can be various. Despite the enigma of the taboo’s genesis, what the discipline of psycho‑ analysis demonstrates powerfully is the impact of this taboo in the life of the individual, and that the potency and universality of this taboo cannot be explained as a simple interpersonal negotiation. The incest taboo may involve the experience of a primordial “no” that is conveyed intergenerationally, but there is a crucial sense in which the taboo is neither merely learned, nor imposed externally. Perhaps the most plausible account of this enigma – an account for which we owe much to Lacanian and post‑Lacanian speculation – is that the prohibition inheres to the deep structures of the very “languages” by which we represent our worlds, that it is a deeply encoded feature of repre‑ sentationality as such (Nasio, 1998–2006; Verhaeghe, 2009). This insight accords with much of what we have learned in the course of the twentieth century about the nature of language, how it structures our worlds, and how we are constituted as subjects within it (Losonsky, 2006). It also accords with recent theories regarding the evolution of language. Specifically it is now believed that, in the late Pliocene or early Pleistocene epochs (straddling the tertiary and quaternary periods), the institution of social Fatherhood emerged and, along with it, the advent of the representationality of language as a sym‑ bolic system (as distinct from a signaling system), and the incest taboo in its contemporary forms (see Bickerton, 2010; Coward, 1983; Eller, 2001, 2011; Taylor, 1996; Walby, 1991; Wilson, 1983, 1991). What has been far too little emphasized in the psychoanalytic literature is that the incest taboo is, psychologically, the “boundary of boundaries.” It both founds and epitomizes the distinction between what is permitted and what is not; in this sense, it is the “law of laws.” What psychoanalysis discov‑ ers is that the taboo concerns desire that can be known and owned, versus that which cannot. In this way, the contours of the repression barrier reflect the boundary of the incest taboo. It is the “encounter” with this taboo that frac‑ tures the domain of representable meaningfulness, tearing it away from the embodied wellspring of human desire. But to understand this discovery, we must further examine the way in which oedipal complexities constitute the human subject.

Male/female differentiation and triangulation The nature of language, as a symbolic system, is that it appears to represent things in binary oppositions, although a “third‑term” is always involved, even if it is hidden. In addition to other scientific and scholarly sources, we have known this since the advent of Saussurean linguistics, Peircean semiot‑ ics, and the later philosophy of Wittgenstein. As I discussed in Chapter 4, the meaningfulness of a representation such as “dog” depends on a network of Oedipal complexities 99

“not‑dog” representations. Although we may appear to construe the world in dichotomies, as George Kelly (1955) insisted, such that either it is a dog or it is something other than a dog, there has to be, as Peirce showed definitively, more than one representation of not‑dog for the meaningfulness of the dichotomy (“dog/not‑dog”) to be established. Although we should not overdo the analogy, there is a parallel here with the constellations of human relating – that is, the psychological attachments and identifications that make us who we are. Winnicott (1957, 1965a) famously said that there is no such thing as an infant, meaning that an infant is actually always positioned in the world of discourse as a Mother–Infant dyad (here and elsewhere, “Mother” should be taken as shorthand for “pri‑ mary caretaker”). To this, Green famously responded that there is no such thing as a Mother–Infant dyad; for example, he writes “you and I are not enough to make a world, the place of the one who is absent needs marking” (2002). There is always a third term essential to the formation of any dyad, such as a Father-figure who, even if physically absent, nevertheless constitutes the appearance of the dyad within the meaningful world and allows for the meaningfulness occurring within the dyad. It is descriptively evident that the life of the infant (etymologically, in‑fans, the person in formation) appears initially to be composed dyadically, even if semiotically there has to be more than the subject and one other to make the composition of this dyad possible (and, of course, biologically, there have to be male and female genes for conception). It would seem as if the world of the infant is formed in dyadic representations of “Me–Other,” which are always bonded by some sort of affect or action. An example would be, Me– Nipple(Good), although initially the “Me” of this example cannot possibly involve a fully formed self‑representation, so the actual cognitive structure is more likely to be something like Mouth–Nipple(Good). Piaget and others have discussed how the world of the infant undoubtedly expands as rapidly as the “sensorimotor” repertoire of such dyadic structures, which he called “action schemas” (Müller, Carpendale, and Smith, 2009); so for Piaget, the more accu‑ rate description would be something like Mouth–Nipple(GoodSucking). Since Freud’s earliest writings, the quality of these schemas, or “part‑objects,” as producing either pleasure or “unpleasure” (Lust/Unlust) when presented has been emphasized. Thus, the infant’s world is constituted in terms of things or experiences that are “good” and those that are “bad.” These are cognized as separate and different, even if “in reality” the good thing is identical with the bad thing, but experienced at a different time. This world‑in‑formation is thus “preambivalent” because only gradually is the good experience of the nipple integrated with the bad experience of the nipple, as the baby comes to realize that one‑and‑the‑same nipple gave the “me” two different experiences. Consider again: Mouth–Nipple(Bad) as representing the event of sucking that is not pleasurable. We presume that something like this, as the trace of a bodily experience when sucking has been unpleasant (Unlustig), is one of the 100 Oedipal complexities earliest representations available to the infant. We also presume that gradually, with further embodied experiences of both the Good and the Bad, representa‑ tions are integrated into what Freud, perhaps optimistically, called “whole objects” (to distinguish them from “part objects”); I write “optimistically” because, of course, we never are able to represent the whole of anyone, includ‑ ing our most intimate lovers. Foremost of these would be something like Me–Mother (by which I mean “primary caretaker”) and these dyadic representa‑ tions would initially be separated according to the quality of the accompany‑ ing affect or action: Me–Mother(SmileHappy) would be a separate representation from Me–Mother(UncomfortableFidget), or something of this nature. Most cognitive psychologists suggest that, somewhere midway through the first year of life, multiple caretakers are discriminated (Oakes, Cashon, Casasola, and Rakison, 2010; Stern, 2000). The primary caretaker (tradition‑ ally “Mother”) and the secondary caretaker (or caretakers, including “Father”) come to be distinguished from each other, and also distinguished from strangers (Katan, 1972). Thus, a variety of Me–Other representations become operative, including Me–Father, Me–Aunt (or whomever else may be familiar), Me–Crib, Me–Toy, and so forth. However, descriptively speaking, the infant’s relations remain dyadic, even though such relations multiply and the infant’s world expands. Continuing with this schematic description, it seems evident that, at some point, the infant becomes able to cognize not merely that there are multiple others – for example, the Father who is different from the Mother – but also that there is a relationship between these others. This is the point at which the infant enters into the expression of language as a symbolic system, which is probably the point at which the infant babbles grammatically, even though he or she cannot yet utter comprehensible words (Lust and Foley, 2004). In short, with the symbolic capacity of representations, cognition and affect are triangulated (Muller, 1995); not only does the child now discriminate Me– Mother and Me–Father (or Me–Woman and Me–Man), but is able to represent their relatedness as Mother–Father (or Woman–Man, Female–Male) in relation to the Me. Psychoanalytic experience demonstrates amply that this triangu‑ lated representation, in which the child both relates to a male‑figure as well as to a female‑figure and relates to their triadic relationship (that is, forms himself or herself in relation to ideas as to how men and women are in relation to each other) has a profound and lasting impact on the formation of the child’s personality. Specifically, these triadic experiences govern the way in which the child orients himself or herself to erotic matters of gender identi‑ fication and the vicissitudes of sexual wishes that are “phallic.”

Triadic relations and primal scenes With recent advances in scholarship, we have become accustomed to the sophisticated idea, as well as the empirical fact, that the human species Oedipal complexities 101 manifests several different genders (see Breen, 1993; Bullough, Bullough, and Elias, 1997; Butler, 1990, 1993, 2004; Disch, 2009; Domenici and Lesser, 1995; Frosch, 1994; Gould, 1997; Stryker, 2008; Sullivan, 2003; Wharton, 2011; Wilchins, 2004). Nevertheless, the child typically confronts a binary world in which the possible multiplicity of genders – transgender, intersex, and so on – is scarcely discernible beneath the overwhelming evi‑ dence that the world is divided into the “pinks” and the “blues.” As is well known, even when parents try to obliterate this crude dichotomization (for example, by dressing their infant in yellow and green clothing, or by encour‑ aging their sons to play with dolls and their daughters to play with trucks or building blocks), young children invariably become preoccupied with the distinction between female and male. Young children are insistently curious not only about what I am colloquially calling the “pink/blue” distinction and “who does what,” but this issues also into an intense curiosity about “who does what to whom” – that is, a curiosity about how men and women treat each other. The motivation for such curiosity is perhaps obvious. The child’s personality or sense of self develops through attachments and identifications. These imply that the child must figure out – so to speak – “what is me” and “who is me” in relation to the major differences between people, and in rela‑ tion to their experiences concerning the way in which different types of per‑ son relate to each other. This is what we call “triadic relating” and it depends on the “triangulation” of representationality. Personality develops as the child attaches to female figures and/or to male figures, and also identifies with these figures. Identifications form on the basis of attachments that may be founded in affection or in fear. For example, if one “loves” another person, one may be moved to become like him or her, and also to become like the person whom this other “loves.” Also, if one loses the other or if one fears another person, one may be moved to become like them; the latter, “identification with the aggressor,” is a well documented, but perhaps tragic feature of human functioning (Arlow, 1990; Beattie, 2005; Blum 1986). However, in the triadic context, these processes become more complicated, as is indicated by the psychoanalytic discovery of the “primal scene,” which is a crucial experience in terms of the child’s observations and fantasies about how men and women interact. Freud introduced the notion of a primal scene in 1897 to describe certain sorts of traumatic infantile experiences that become organized into scenarios – observations and memories of actual events as well as fantasies – that have an ongoing impact on the formation of the subject. Initially, he did not restrict the term to scenarios involving sex acts, although later many commentators have restricted the notion to the child’s encounter with adult intercourse (both the possibility of witnessing it and, in any event, the certainty of having ideas and fantasies about it). In my opinion, it is legitimate to broaden the notion of the primal scene to include an entire set of childhood representations as to how adult men and women relate, or are supposed to relate, to each other (see 102 Oedipal complexities

Lukacher, 1988). For example, as (1922–1937, 1937) and oth‑ ers have argued, the child typically experiences a whole series of factors in which the “pinks” and the “blues” not only differ, but which furnish the attri‑ butes of relations between them; traditionally, these include differentials in domestic roles, as well as social power and prestige. Whatever the significance of the child’s impressions of these cultural arrangements, the fact that the child has a special curiosity about sexual relationships should not be underesti‑ mated. The recognition that adult men and women have particular ways of relating to each other is undoubtedly contextualized by the child’s lively inter‑ est in the sensuality of relationships (Fleischhauer‑Hardt and McBride, 1975; Kestenberg, 1973, 1995; Sandfort and Rademakers, 2001; Smith, 1981; Smith and Sparks, 1986). Thus, even if a child were never to be exposed directly to adult intercourse (and even if all caretakers were of a single gender), the child’s lively curiosity about infantile origins (Where do babies come from?) would provoke certain sorts of primal scene, and this would be influential and integral to the child’s passage through oedipal complexities. The experience of witnessing, or of generating inferences and fantasies about, the nature of adult intercourse is thus crucially significant in the basic formation of the child’s personality. There are many variations of the primal scene, but typically children come to recognize that the primary female figure in their lives, the object of their earliest erotic attachments, has sexual ways of relating with the primary male figure in their lives, from which they are themselves excluded. This is profoundly impactful for at least three reasons. First, the child realizes that, with respect to adult heterosexual inter‑ course, one can, in actuality, only be in one or the other of two positions. Despite fantasies of “combined parent figures,” such as have been well elucidated by Kleinian psychoanalysts (Aron, 1995; Hinshelwood, 1989; Meltzer, 1973; Spillius, Milton, Garvey, Couve, and Steiner, 2011), the child recognizes that, in such an act, one is either the person with the penis or the person with the vulva‑vagina (this occurs even if the recognition is also ­disavowed and the child comes to believe that he or she could be both). The child’s jealousy of whatever he or she does not have (whether so‑called “” or “womb envy,” which are usually more accurately described as intense modes of jealousy) can readily be inflamed by this recognition, which in turn modifies the attachments and identifications that accrue from the encounter with this scenario. Although bisexuality – or in the terminology discussed in the previous chapter, polysexuality – may be inherent to the human condition, in the experience of the primal scene the identification with the male and the identification with the female are cast into conflict. The child typically experiences the situation as one in which he or she could be one or the other but not both, even if both are desirable (although, as indicated above, it sometimes happens that a child, in an eventuality referred to as “perverse,” will disavow this experience of either/or and insist that he or she will be both). Oedipal complexities 103

Second, with regard to intercourse between adults, children recognize that, even if they were to be victorious in rivalry and to have one or other of the participants in the primal scene as their own partner, their physical being is too immature to perform satisfactorily. In a heterosexual context, despite fantasies to the contrary, the boy comes to know (especially as he progresses from intuitive, preoperational thinking to concrete operational thought, as described by Piaget in 1937) that his “little widdler” could never sexually satisfy a grown woman; and in a homosexual context, he comes to know that his mouth or anus could barely accommodate an adult erection, and that his “little widdler” would not excite a grown man. Correspondingly, the girl knows that her “little pussy” could never pleasurably accept the intromission of an adult penis and, indeed, such an event might rip her apart (the prospect of giving birth to a baby can evoke equally terrifying fantasies of destruction); lesbian ambitions tend to be somewhat less forbidding. Additionally, the encounter with adult intercourse can often be a terrifying experience in and of itself. Although the adults involved may – or may not – experience their activities as a delightful source of pleasure, the child often perceives the scenario of such action differently. Adult intercourse is frequently observed or fantasized as a violent act. The male may be seen as battering the female, damaging her genitals with his erect penis; the female may be seen as destroying the penis (or at least making it disappear), and so forth. Fearful ideas, as well as sexual wishes, motivate the child’s wish for the physical and erotic attributes of the adult – for a bigger penis, for breasts, for a mature vulva‑vagina, for a womb in which to create babies, and so forth. Third, the primal scene not only stirs the realization that the child cannot be both, as well as the jealous wishes to have the sexual attributes of the adult, but it also diminishes the child’s sense of being adequate and desirable in other ways. The primal scene is an experience of exclusion, in that the child recognizes that adults engage in activities and in modes of relating from which he or she is barred by incapacity or by prohibition. This is a profound and disturbing shock to the young child’s narcissistic sense of himself or herself. It is a crushing blow to what has been called “infantile omnipotence” (see Beiser, 1979; Kramer, 1974; Levin, 1986; Pumpian‑Mindlin, 1969). In a sense, the primal scene epitomizes the traumatic aspect of the child’s formation within a nexus of attachments and identifications that are triadic or triangulated. The drama and the trauma of this scenario are compounded by the phallic constitution of the child’s sexuality. This must be discussed briefly before we can describe some of the various passages that are under‑ taken through oedipal complexities.

Phallic positionalities As discussed in the previous chapter, the notion of libidinality is required of any process that is genuinely psychoanalytic. Without the notion of libinality, 104 Oedipal complexities free‑associative discourse can be understood as nothing but a meaningless caprice. Yet the popular accusation that this results in a discipline that is “about sex and nothing else” is both correct and incorrect, for the ego organ‑ ization transmutes the sensual energies of our embodied experience into dif‑ ferent forms and manifestations, many of which are demonstrably “anti‑sexual.” Similarly, the popular charge that psychoanalysis privileges the accomplish‑ ments of the penis is seriously mistaken (despite the fact that many so‑called psychoanalysts, perhaps including Freud himself, have held to masculinist prejudices). Rather, what is at issue is the psychoanalytic discovery both of the phallocentricity of representationality (that is, the manner in which the semiotic system that the human subject is “born into” is organized around the abstract, but privileged, signification of the “phallus”) and of the ways in which we commit ourselves to the patriarchal confusion of the phallus, which no one can ever have, with the possession of a penis, thus denying or disavow‑ ing the inherent and inevitable “castratedness” of every human subject (which will be discussed further in the next chapter). With reference to Peircean semiotics, I earlier indicated how representa‑ tions that appear binary or dyadic (“I/Thou,” Me–Other, or “dog/not‑dog”) always involve a third‑term even if it is frequently hidden (Muller, 1995); just as every relationship that appears to be established as a dyad actually involves others. However, the phallocentric system of representationality, which every subject is – so to speak – “born into,” is constituted such that differences are always construed in terms of deficit and domination. Consider here how “not‑dog” appears subordinate to “dog,” if the former is understood as the absence of a dog; this is because presences appear to overcome absences (even if the reverse is more profoundly the case). However, if one considers other dyads, for example elephant/dog, our constructions immediately become comparative: bigger/smaller, stronger/weaker, big‑trunk/no‑trunk, and so forth. The point here is threefold. First, that the cognitive and affective sys‑ tem within which we operate presents us with a world that appears to us in terms of oppositions. Second, it is thus presented such that we cannot escape understanding any particular entity in terms of it being better or worse than some other entity; the representational system is ineluctably hierarchized. Therefore, third, as an organized totality, there has to be a central or supreme symbol that maintains the apparent coherence of the system as a whole, even if this “supreme symbol” is an abstraction. It is a symbol that, so to speak, makes sense as to why there can never be something rather than nothing, and as to why the one always seems either deficient or dominant with respect to its other. This is the logos of representationality in Derridean terminology, in which the word appears as if it is the origin of all things, thus instituting a philosophy of determinateness; in terminology developed from Ludwig Klages, the world of representationality is thus logocentric (e.g., Derrida, 1967b, 1967b). Derrida (e.g., 1972, 1980) also argues for the term phallocen‑ tric to indicate the way in which logocentric philosophies become genderized Oedipal complexities 105 by masculinist and patriarchal ideologies (see Cixous and Clément, 1975; Coward, 1983; Gallop, 1982; Irigaray, 1974, 1977, 1984; Mitchell, 1983). Thus, to the extent that Freud’s texts have been misinterpreted as establish‑ ing the inferiority of the feminine, “psychoanalysis” becomes a phallocentric discipline, as it does when Lacan emphasizes the immutability of the phallus as the “signifier of signifiers” (Grosz, 1990; Lacan, 1964–1980, 1966; 1972– 1973). As we will see, there is indeed a demonstrable sense in which the very structures of nomination and predication install the supremacy of the phallus, and we are thus born into a world that appears immutably phallogocentric. We will later indicate the potentiality of psychoanalytic method as a dis‑ course that moves against the phallogocentric construction of the discursive structures within which we think and act. On the plane of discourse, if any human subject were actually to be the author of his or her own meanings, he or she would indeed be speaking from the locus of the phallus. But this is never the case, as the psychoanalytic method actually demonstrates with enigmatic and extraordinary adamancy. We are spoken even more than we can ever claim to speak; in Heidegger’s words, “language speaks us” (Heidegger, 1950–1960, 1959a, 1959b, 1969), or as Nietzsche wrote, in a tone that seems closer to Freud’s phraseology, “it thinks in me.” Our enunciations and utterances are always already formed by the system of representationality within which we operate, whatever our illu‑ sion that we are able to generate them de novo – the catastrophe of Humpty Dumpty. As much as we may experience ourselves as the creator of our own meaningfulness, this is an illusion of our egotism, for genuine acts of creativ‑ ity are always a pastiche of meanings already created from elsewhere (in Freud’s 1900 words, as if from elsewhere, another “scene,” from eine andere Schauplatz, as discussed by Lacan discusses in his Écrits). This is true for even the most seemingly creative of poetics (Bloom, 1973). Humpty Dumpty may proclaim his mastery by scornfully announcing that when he uses a word “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more or less,” but this does not make it so! Rather like human egotism, Humpty Dumpty is only an empty egg destined for a fall and unable to be restored to his grandeur by even the mightiest forces in the land (Ackerman, 2008; Carroll, 1872). On the plane of sexual functioning, in every patriarchal culture (which effectively means all known cultures), the possession of a penis is commonly confused with the locus of the phallus (Eller, 2001, 2011; Gallop, 1982, 1988; Lerner, 1986; Walby, 1991). Freud makes this mistake in his notorious 1931 paper on female sexuality, in which he argues that young children observe the male and female genital only to conclude that the latter is a punitively castrated version of the former – the punishment being for inces‑ tuous wishes (Jones, 1933). Many feminist critics have pointed to the mascu‑ linist prejudice endemic to this particular thesis (e.g., Breen, 1993; Brennan, 1992; Chodorow, 1989, 1994; Cixous and Clément, 1975; Clément, 1978; Felman, 1993; Gallop, 1982, 1985, 1988; Goldenberg, 1990; Horney, 1932; 106 Oedipal complexities

Irigaray, 1974, 1977, 1984; Jardine, 1985; Kristeva, 1974, 1975, 1977a, 1977b; Mitchell, 1974, 1985; Rubin, 1975; Sayers, 1982, 1986). In this context, Freud not only fails to ask why visual experience should be thus prioritized (whereas in terms of tactile experience, the vulva‑vagina are cer‑ tainly no less deliciously enervated than the penis and testicles); he also fails to question why it is that young children conceptualize difference in terms of deficit and domination (for he assumes that the vulva‑vagina are immediately understood as a deficient or damaged edition of the penis and testicles, and the latter are thereby construed as dominant and desirable). At this juncture, we can set aside speculation as to whether young children do indeed have such an observational experience and whether they necessarily draw the con‑ clusions that Freud suggests; there may be clinical evidence that many chil‑ dren engage in such traumatic fantasies, but this may be somewhat tangential to the central issue. Freud may have been mistaken when he assumed that the literal experience of observing the difference between male and female geni‑ tals is necessarily traumatic for young children in that it precipitates what is called the “castration complex,” but he may nevertheless be insightfully cor‑ rect in his 1925 assertion that this complex has “the profoundest importance in the formation of character.” The crucial issue here is to comprehend the way in which, within the discourse structures of patriarchal cultures, sexism is ubiquitous and our egotism struggles with the illusion that it might be aligned with the powerfulness of the phallus. That is, we need to comprehend more fully and profoundly why the phallus, which is an abstraction, is routinely concretized in our thinking – as my penis, as my Father’s penis, as a porn star’s penis, as Shiva’s Lingam, and so forth (see Eilberg‑Schwartz, 1994; Green, 1997; Guiraud, 1978; Jennings, 1892; Taylor, 1996). We also need to imagine whether discourse might be structured otherwise – that is, to investigate thinking, such as surfaces in free‑associative discourse, that might break the hegemony of our patriarchal acculturation. Thinking within the discourse structures of patriarchal cultures, our egotism, whether of male or female, offers us the illusion that we might be aligned with the phallus, be able to author our own meanings, and thus to attain mastery of self and other. The castration complex, which is common to both men and women, is thus shorthand for every individual’s refusal or disavowal of the inher‑ ent “castratedness” of being human – the awareness that we are all, always and in all ways, created from elsewhere (Barratt, 1999, 2004a, 2009b). What are called prephallic sexualities – in common psychoanalytic jargon, this means the erotics of the skin, mouth, and anus – are expressed in what we have described as dyadic relationships. However, with triadic relations and triangulated thinking, the erotics of penis‑testicles and vulva‑vagina become organized under the dual aegis of the primal scene and of oedipal complexities, with difference being understood in terms of the semiotic motifs of domination and deficit. The hallmark of phallic sexualities is that of possession (both as possessing and as being possessed) in either the active or the passive mode, and Oedipal complexities 107 with this comes the motif of domination/deficiency. Men agonize over what they do or do not possess – whether a sufficiently ample penis, a woman, the ability to have a baby, or whatever. In somewhat different modalities, women agonize over what they do or do not possess – whether a penis, a man, the abil‑ ity to have a baby, or whatever (Deutsch, 1925; Kaplan, 1989; Kulish and Holtzman, 2008; Lacan, 1964–1980; Nagera, 1975). Imagining that their genital might give them access to the phallus, men fear its loss and crave its enhancement; their sexual expression is often inflected with the fantasy of mas‑ terful conquest and domination, aspiring to become virile, vanquishing, and vindictive. Women perhaps imagine that their clitoris might give them some sort of inferior access to the phallus, that impregnation will give them such an access, or that submission to, or conquest of, a man’s penis will similarly empower them. Phallic sexuality is thus erotic expression organized not only around the confusion of the penis with the phallus (the permutations of posses‑ sion and being dispossessed, of powerfulness and powerlessness, of active and passive positionality). It is therefore also infused with the dominative aggres‑ sivity that comes of jealousy and fearfulness. It is born of our refusal to accept that, in terms of the discourse within which we express ourselves, we are all castrated (and deathfulness infuses the very constitution of our subjectivity). Whether there is erotic expression available to men and women beyond that of phallic sexuality is a question of profound importance to psychoana‑ lytic sexology. That is, we must ask whether men and women can engage in lovemaking that is not infused with the aggressivity of domination/deficit, not inflected by the telic motif of mastery over what is other and otherwise, and thus not bound to the oppressive structures of patriarchal culture. Freud points to an answer to this question when he attempts to define “genitality” and to distinguish it from phallic expression. It is, however, entirely clear that Freud was unable to elaborate this distinction, partly because it was probably not within his personal repertoire, and partly because he labored under erro‑ neous assumptions about anatomy in relation to the channels of subtle energy movement. For example, Freud did not know that the deeper roots of the clitoris extend back to the anterior wall of the vagina, thus making the vulva and the vagina functionally and anatomically connected. So he propounded the misguided principle that women mature by relinquishing vulval plea‑ sures in favor of passive vaginal penetration. He also seems to have had no inkling of the distinction between ejaculating and orgasming. Yet this is a crucial distinction, especially for the understanding of male sexuality because, for men, phallic sex is merely ejaculatory, whereas genitality is extensively orgasmic (Barratt, 2005, 2006). Freud was clear that genitality would be a mode of sexual expression that transcends the aggressivity inherent to phallic sex acts, and that it could only occur with the resolution of the subject’s pas‑ sage through oedipal complexities. But aside from these important tenets, he seems to have been limited in his ability to explore the vital distinction between phallic and genital sexuality. 108 Oedipal complexities

Genitality seems to have been better understood by some of Freud’s succes‑ sors, perhaps notably Reich because of his openness to elucidating the notion of libidinality as a doctrine of subtle energies (Barratt, 2005, 2010a, in press). There have been a few other discussions within the past 100 years of psycho‑ analytic thinking (e.g., Bálint, 1938, 1948; Efron, 1985; Kernberg, 1984); however beyond these, the profoundly significant distinction between phallic and genital sexuality seems to have been forgotten. Phallic sexuality involves the goal‑oriented phenomenology of what I have called the “quick fuck” (Barratt, in press); it differentiates male and female in positions of domina‑ tion/deficit, active/passive, penetrative/receptive, and it aims only for the limited climax that is provided by ejaculation or by a “clitoral orgasm.” By contrast, genitality is oriented to what some sexologists call the three “P”s. It is processive (facilitating a paratelic focus on the sensuality of embodied experi‑ ence, rather than goal‑directed fantasy); it is oriented to the extensive and intensifying distribution of pleasure (rather than the release from tension); and it is playful (whimsically disorganized by the leisurely caprice of our body’s erotic energies, rather the governance of clock‑time, fantasy, and narrative structure). This distinction is best elaborated in the esoteric teachings of tan‑ tric meditation, which promote the expression of genitality as leading to a transcendent, or “dedifferentiated,” connectedness between the partners involved and the universe (Barratt, 2004b, 2005, 2006, 2009a, in press). As I have discussed elsewhere, the ability to engage in such essentially spiritual practices depends on the subject’s acceptance of his or her own castratedness, as well as what I have called the “deathfulness” of our being‑in‑the‑world (Barratt, 1999, 2004a, 2009b, in press). It also depends on a resolution of the individual’s passage through oedipal complexities, such that the inherent oppressiveness of phallic sexuality can be surpassed.

Oedipal passages To amplify this discussion of the fourth coordinate of psychoanalytic practice, I will descriptively schematize various common modes of passage through oedipal complexities. If we consider the traditional situation in which the Mother is the primary object of the child’s attachment in the so‑called “preoedipal” dyad and the Father is a secondary figure, we can arrive at several permutations of the oedipal situation, as follows.

· In the dyad, the boy is primarily attached to, and identifies with, his Mother; he both desires her and wishes to be the object of her desire, to please her and to be the way she wants him to be. As triadic relations develop and his Mother’s sexual connection with the Father is recognized, to the extent the boy remains attached to his Mother and wishes to be the object of her desires (now articulated as an active‑phallic wish to possess his Mother), he will be motivated to form a secondary identification with Oedipal complexities 109

his Father and will see the latter as a rival. Thus, the initial concordance of attachment and identification processes in the dyadic situation gives way to the secondary divergence of these processes in the triadic configura‑ tion. There is a continuity of erotic attachment (although it becomes more actively phallic) with a shift in sexual identification (from a primary feminine prephallic identity to a secondary masculinized phallic identity). This is a hetero‑erotic version of one type of male oedipal scenario, in which homo‑erotic wishes are suppressed and repressed. · However, there is always an actively competing male scenario: In the dyad, the boy is primarily attached to, and identifies with, his Mother; he both desires her and wishes to be the object of her desire, to please her and to be the way she wants him to be. As triadic relations develop and his Mother’s sexual connection with the Father is recognized, to the extent the boy becomes attached to his Father and wishes to be the object of his desires (now articulated as a passive‑phallic wish to be possessed by his Father), he will be motivated to form a secondary identification with his Mother and will see the latter as a rival. Thus, the initial concordance of attachment and identification processes in the dyadic situation gives way to the secondary divergence of these processes in the triadic configu‑ ration. There is continuity of sexual identification (although it becomes more passively phallic, as it moves from a primary feminine prephallic identity to a secondary feminized phallic identity) with a shift from female to male erotic attachment. This is a homo‑erotic version of one type of male oedipal scenario (although it applies more to homosexual men who assume a “bottom” rather than a “top” position with their sexual partners); hetero‑erotic wishes are suppressed and repressed. · In the dyad, the girl is attached to, and identifies with, her Mother; she both desires her and wishes to be the object of her desire, to please her and to be the way she wants her to be. As triadic relations develop and her Mother’s sexual connection with the Father is recognized, to the extent the girl becomes attached to her Father and wishes to be the object of his desires (now articulated as a passive‑phallic wish to be possessed by her Father), she will be motivated to form a secondary identification with her Mother’s femininity and will see the latter as a rival. Thus, the initial concordance of attachment and identification processes in the dyadic situation gives way to the secondary divergence of these processes in the triadic configuration. There is a continuity of sexual identification (although it becomes more passively phallic, as it moves from a primary feminine prephallic identity to a secondary feminized phallic identity) with a shift from female to male erotic attachment. This is a hetero‑erotic version of one type of female oedi‑ pal scenario, in which homo‑erotic wishes are suppressed and repressed. · However, there is always an actively competing female scenario: In the dyad, the girl is attached to, and identifies with, her Mother; she both desires her and wishes to be the object of her desire, to please her and to 110 Oedipal complexities

be the way she wants her to be. As triadic relations develop and her Mother’s sexual connectedness with the Father is recognized, to the extent the girl is attached to her Mother and wishes to be the object of her desires (now articulated as an active‑phallic wish to possess her Mother), she will be motivated to form an identification with her Father and will see the latter as a rival. Thus, the initial concordance of attachment and identifi‑ cation processes in the dyadic situation gives way to the secondary diver‑ gence of these processes in the triadic configuration. There is a continuity of erotic attachment (although it becomes more actively phallic) with a shift in sexual identification (from a primary feminine prephallic identity to a secondary masculinized phallic identity). This is a homo‑erotic ver‑ sion of one type of female oedipal scenario (although it applies more to women who assume a “butch,” rather than a “femme” position with their sexual partners); hetero‑erotic wishes are suppressed and repressed.

Perhaps this sort of schematization is helpful to understand modes of passage which affect (and effect) us all; however, it is possible that it obscures the dramatic variability of oedipal complexities. The schematization says nothing about the way in which “preoedipal” experiences shape the passage through oedipal complexities. It says nothing about the interactive quality of Mothering or of Fathering as the child proceeds through oedipal complexi‑ ties, nor does it allow for the critical role that may be played by female and male figures other than the Mother and the Father (always presuming that there are two such extant figures). The schematization says nothing about the powerful role of fantasy in the experience of these figures – for example, the way in which the Father is often a distant figure, compared with the interac‑ tive immediacy of the Mother, as Chodorow (1978, 2000) and others have so well discussed. It also says nothing about the crucial issues surrounding the quality of the primal scene experiences – the child’s exposure to gender rela‑ tions and sexual relations that are affectionate or aggressive, respectful or demeaning, egalitarian or exploitive, and so on. It says nothing about the ways in which cultural institutions may help or hinder the individual’s move‑ ment through oedipal complexities – the role of mutilations, rites of passage, and so forth. And, of course, this schematization says nothing about those family configurations where a man serves as the primary caretaker, where both parents are gay, and so on. This simplified schematic discussion also omits how, from the crucible of oedipal complexities, special forms of identification occur that produce a set of internalized representations that is never fully integrated with the ego organization. This is the structure that Freud called the Über‑Ich or “Superego” (which is built on the prior, dyadically formed, representations of the Ich‑Ideal or Ego‑Ideal). These internalized structures account for many of the phenom‑ ena of our psychic life; for example, the ego‑ideal for the intensity of deep‑rooted shame; the superego for the intensity of deep‑rooted guilt. Oedipal complexities 111

Additionally, these internalized representational structures compel the ego organization’s socialization, and significantly the superego becomes, in Green’s 2002 words, the “orientator of time.” In sum, whatever the seemingly endless variability of ontogenetic jour‑ neys, no human being is formed without his or her unique passage through oedipal complexities, and the existentially crucial issue of acceptance or non‑acceptance of his or her “castratedness.”

The fourth coordinate The incest taboo may be ineffable in its origination, but is perhaps the most powerful and ubiquitous organizing force in human life. As Freud correctly asserted, without the operation of this universal taboo, even the most minimal forms of social organization collapse and the life of the psyche might devolve into the chaotic tyranny of malice. Simply formulated, oedipal complexities involve each individual’s encounter with, and formation by, this taboo in a world appearing dichotomously structured in that the “me” must be varyingly either male or female, identified with the Father or with the Mother, even while aspiring to be attached to both or neither, to one or the other. Oedipal com‑ plexities are unavoidable given the triangulated foundations of representation‑ ality, and the triadic structure of relations in which the subject must variously compose himself or herself in relation to the experienced and fantasized rela‑ tions between the one and the other, the male and the female. The incest taboo is the “boundary of boundaries,” the ultimate ground on which all law and order rests. How this taboo manifests may be extraordinarily and enigmatically varied, but each individual “encounters” it oedipally, as experiences in which something desirable is allowed to someone other than me, in which I can only be the one or the other, and in which other possibilities are to be suppressed and repressed. As I have suggested, the importance of what psychoanalysis discovers here cannot be overestimated, for the boundedness of the incest taboo consti‑ tutes, as if in a silhouette, the contours of the repression barrier by means of each individual’s passage through oedipal complexities. In an important sense, Oedipus’ self‑blinding not only emblematizes self‑emasculation, the destruc‑ tion of the eyeballs substituting for the mortification of the testicles; but also, in an even more profound sense, it signifies what I am calling his “castrated‑ ness,” which is his utter powerlessness to master fully the meaningfulness of his life. This condition of castratedness characterizes the human condition, for men and for women. No one is master of their life’s meaningfulness, for each of us is caught in a consciousness that is perpetually mobilized as the disguised return‑ ing of the repressed. The self‑blinding of Oedipus is thus an allegorical demar‑ cation of the barrier of repression, the divide between meaning that may be known and owned, and that which is the tracing of unknowable desire. Although this fourth coordinate is, so to speak, distinctively content‑oriented, pertaining to the qualities of actual experience, it is fundamental in the 112 Oedipal complexities structuration of psychic life that is designated by the first three coordinates: the repressiveness of consciousness, the pluritemporality of personal history, and the significance of our sensual embodiment. Thus, these three dimensions of the human condition – the structure of consciousness as the incessant returning of desires that have been repressed, the dissipation of temporalities in the forma‑ tion of the life of the psyche, and the way in which the egotism’s domain of representationality is fractured from the fleshly experience that is the sensual wellspring of human desire – are all shaped by each individual’s passage through oedipal complexities.

Mistaken paths Oedipal complexities and their significance for the formation of each human being are the sine qua non of psychoanalysis, and the reason why it makes sense to engage the healing properties of free‑associative discourse. There has been a major line of retreat from this coordinate, as well as a conservative reaction to it. The conservative reaction has, of course, been to interpret the findings of the castration complex as an endorsement of male supremacy (and indeed heterosexist supremacy), although nothing of the sort is implied by the dis‑ covery that this complex has what Freud called a “decisive” impact on the formation of the person. The major line of retreat has been to focus, almost exclusively, on the quality of the child’s preoedipal experiences and the fallacy of such an emphasis is that it ultimately obliterates the first three coordinates of the discipline. I have already begun – at the end of Chapters 3 and 4 – to indicate the mistake involved in trying to comprehend psychoanalysis as a developmental discipline, and we will have occasion to return to this issue in Chapter 6. If you conceive of the formation of the human being in terms of the layering of stages or phases within a unitary timeline (as Freud seems to have done in his 1905 writing on psychosexuality), then you can easily revert to a linear understanding of psychic temporality (which Freud emphatically did not, as is attested by his 1918 study of the history of an infantile ). It is certainly correct that every experience builds on the basis of some prior rep‑ resentation or representations (in Chapter 3, I discussed this as the historicity of the representational system). However, Freud throws any linear develop‑ mental model off kilter, not only when he shows, as in the study of Jensen’s Gradiva, how historicity and historicality are complexly inmixed in ways that are both estranging and unpredictable, but also with his critical notion of Nachträglichkeit, which demonstrates the multidirectional splintering of the temporality of psychic processes. Again and again, Freud’s successors have retreated from the challenge of Freud’s revolutionary insights on time and determinacy in order to uphold a simplistic “genetic” model of linear development. With such a model, investigation can allegedly proceed backwards from the data of adulthood, Oedipal complexities 113 as if peeling back layers of prior development, to arrive at “insights” into what was experienced at each prior phase or stage. If one holds to the sort of genetic model that I have just described, then each phase or stage is to be examined simply in terms of its antecedents. The phenomena of a particular phase (let us call it phase n) must be explained in terms of those of the subsequent phase (phase n-1), which in turn can only be understood in terms of later phases (phase n-2 and so forth). This assumption results both in naïve depictions of the human being as well as those that have understandably elicited incredulity. Often what seems to be involved is a procedure in which adult observers project back into childhood what they imagine must have occurred. Three examples of this in the history of psychoanalysis might be as follows. First, the Kleinian baby seems to operate with what is virtually a fully fledged sense of Me and the object world, as well as a veritable battery of unconscious phantasies. Second, Rank contentiously resolved the oedipal situation by reverting to the trau‑ mas of birthing. Third, there is a veritable infantophilic and rhapsodic vogue for studies of the Mother–Infant dyad with its journey of separa‑ tion‑individuation written as if there were little more that needs to be said about human emotionality and our interpersonal relations once the child has graduated to toddlerhood (e.g., Beebe and Lachmann, 2005; Mahler, Pine, and Bergmann, 2000; Rochat, 1995). Such developmentalist theories are strikingly diverse in the conclusions they generate about the beginnings of being human; for example, the Kohutian baby basks in the warmth of being “center stage” of his or her existence, whereas the Kleinian baby wrestles with the chaos of an aggressivized world. However, what is held in common is that developmentalist theories almost always treat adult memories, both recollected and reenacted, as if they were – at least potentially – an expression of what was actually experienced at the period of time to which the memory seems to refer. Although Freud was correct in asserting that “the first object relation is the prototype of all love relations,” to conclude that all subsequent relations simply build on their predecessor, on a timeline that is linear and unified, is willfully to ignore both the pluritemporal‑ ity of the psyche that Freud discovered and the significance of Nachträglichkeit, but also to avoid recognition of the decisiveness of oedipal complexities in the formation of the human subject. Oedipal complexities constitute an unsurpassable rupture to the possibili‑ ties of knowing and being, such that – although the quality of preoedipal experiences unquestionably shapes each individual’s passage through the oedipal traumata – the psychological eventualities of infantile life can only be comprehended, so to speak, post‑oedipally. For this reason, developmentalist theories that depict personal history on the unicity of a linear timeline, as well as those that assume the validity of talking about the infant’s psyche without doing so via a discussion of this psyche’s subsequent passage through oedipal complexities, are not psychoanalytic. Oedipal complexities are the 114 Oedipal complexities sine qua non of any psychoanalytic understanding of the human condition, as well as the unique prism through which the meaningfulness of psychic reality can be scientifically known. To retreat away from an understanding of their central significance in the processes of becoming human is to enact a theo‑ retical denial of the inherent deathfulness and castratedness of the human condition. Chapter 6 What are healing practices?

It would be quixotic to suggest that the term psychoanalysis be reserved for those scientific practices of discourse that observe the coordinates discussed in the four preceding chapters. Although I believe this should have been so, and although I believe the radicality of Freud’s revolutionary insights into the human condition would thus have been honored, the suggestion comes far too late. At this point in history, just over a century since Jones incited Freud to form his Secret Committee, sundry therapeutic and theoretical enterprises are passing themselves off as “psychoanalytic.” Many of these are not even psychodynamic, given the tripartite definition of a psychodynamic theory or practice: 1) that it is holistic (addressing all aspects of the individual in his or her context, and not just one reductively defined aspect, such as the prediction of behavior); 2) that it concerns the meaning of events to the subject; and 3) that it is attentive to the interiority of conflict or contradiction that might drive the subject’s psychological activ‑ ities. It is quite bizarre that some theories and clinical practices that call themselves “psychoanalytic” do not even meet this minimal definition of psy‑ chodynamics, and that some non‑psychoanalytic approaches to healing, such as “gestalt psychotherapy” or “integrative ,” perhaps do. For example, intrinsic conflict all but disappears from the allegedly psycho‑ analytic theory of self‑psychology (as does sexuality and the fundamentality of embodied experience). Also, in many versions of therapeutic practice in the variegated grouping of interpersonalists, relational psychologists, intersubjec‑ tivists, and the like, the process of listening to the unconscious is, at the very least, obfuscated by a Buberian enthusiasm for the possibilities of corrective dialogue between “me” and “you,” patient and clinician, undertaken with the assumption of a linear temporality along which the subjects contribute their back‑and‑forth (Buber, 1923; Kramer, 2004). With respect to these latter developments, it might be churlish here to disparage the contributions made by the array of dialogical philosophies that have been articulated from Kierkegaard to the present, and that have been empowered by Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian ontology (e.g., Bergman, 1991; Köchler, 2009). However, the legacy of these ideals of hermeneutic elucidation and 116 What are healing practices? communicatively reparative action has not been felicitous to the task of appre‑ ciating Freud’s revolutionary contribution in comprehending the human con‑ dition (Barratt, 1984, 1993). While such philosophies serve to break us away from our captivation in the ideological maw of objectification, commodifica‑ tion, and the general inhumanity of the instrumentalist and technological hegemony, they lack the dialectical and deconstructive incisiveness required to accommodate the discoveries of psychoanalysis. If we were to write a detailed intellectual history of the psychoanalytic movement as it has unfolded in the past hundred years, four interwoven lines of retreat from Freud’s radicality would have to be specified.

1 The re‑assertion of a unified human subject (integrated or integratable) as author of its own meaningfulness, and the minimization of the notion of the unconscious as being merely descriptively so (preconscious or merely nonconscious), rather than an incessant momentum that renders self‑consciousness as perpetually revealing and concealing something otherwise than it takes itself to mean. 2 The assumption that personal history occurs on a unitary and linear time‑ line, implying that psychic temporality is merely a chronological devel‑ opment from womb to tomb, in which one significant event occurs after another, each building on its predecessor, such that the individual’s memory of his or her development may potentially be reappropriated or reconstructed stretching backwards to the earliest years of consciousness. 3 A derogation of the significance of our sensual embodiment as the fons et origo of our psychic realities. In short, capitulating to the general culture’s fear of the expression of our polysexuality, a Cartesian dualism is tacitly reaffirmed, in which psychological practice listens only to the mind with its preoccupation of controlling the body; attention to the full meaning‑ fulness of the bodymind, the sensuality of our embodied experience, is then slurred over or bypassed. 4 A refusal to recognize the profound significance of the incest taboo in the formation of each individual’s psychic reality, as marked by the way in which oedipal complexities mutilate the subject, creating a temporal and structural rupture that is insurpassable within every one of us. To depre‑ ciate or discount the significance of oedipus and with it the power of the incest taboo in the formation of the human subject implies, as I have shown, a triple failure in understanding the operation of the repression barrier and the repressiveness of consciousness, in understanding that Freud’s discipline is not to be rendered as a linear model of human devel‑ opment, and in understanding that the sensuality of the flesh is indeed the ground and wellspring of each person’s psychic reality.

The specification of these four lines of retreat raises the question whether, or in what sense, psychoanalytic practice is ever “therapeutic.” If one embarks What are healing practices? 117 on a journey of discourse that is radically committed to truthfulness, acknowl‑ edging the four coordinates discovered by Freud’s method of interrogation, then one cannot reasonably expect a practice that conforms to the salvific ide‑ als of an analgesic culture (Kolakowski, 1989), nor can one expect the practice to produce model citizens in an environment that is inherently exploitive, oppressive, and structuralized by violence. In this chapter, I will argue that psychoanalysis is indeed healing, but not in the sense of palliation or the political adjustment of the individual to sociocultural normativity. With respect to the discursive processes involved, I am insistent that psychoanalysis and psychotherapy are not alike. However, with respect to actual clinical prac‑ tice, I do not wish to make too crisp a distinction, because there is much “psychoanalysis” that is not really psychoanalytic, because there are always psychotherapeutic aspects to every psychoanalysis, and because there are some psychotherapists who practice psychoanalytically (as well as some psychody‑ namic therapists whose practices are close to psychoanalytic). Nevertheless, the anarchically deconstructive momentum of psychoanalysis diverges profoundly from the socioculturally constructive goals of psychotherapy. This is a polemi‑ cal and pedagogic distinction that is important to examine so long as it is not taken to revive the acrimony of the “psychoanalysis versus psychotherapy” debate. The distinction is difficult to discuss because both the momentum of psychoanalysis and the ideals of psychotherapy occur in the context of what Freud described in 1915 as a conversation “the talk of which … brooks no audience.” Psychoanalysis, he added in 1933, can only be known to those who have fully participated in its rigors (see MacCabe, 1981). In any event, the gross similarity of appearances notwithstanding, I need to argue that the proc‑ esses of psychoanalytic healing are radically different from those procedures that deliver the narratological ambitions of a therapy that renders the indi‑ vidual more adapted and mature.

Against the ideologies of adaptation and maturation Under the influence of modern science and the remarkable advances of medi‑ cine over the past 300 years, our ideas about what is healing have come under the influence of the three allopathic goals of resuscitation (i.e., keeping the patient alive, irrespective of what it might mean to be alive), restoration of the body to an operational definition of health, and rehabilitation (i.e., to have the patient become functional within the sociocultural, economic, and environ‑ mental nexus). These are intrinsically instrumental and manipulative goals; organs are to be kick‑started when they fail, damaged or necrotic tissue is to be repaired or removed, adversarial action is to be taken against invasive organisms or agents, pain is to be relieved, and so forth. When translated into the proce‑ dures of psychiatric practice, such goals imply an ideology in which the indi‑ vidual’s thinking, feeling and behavioral activities are to be adjusted in 118 What are healing practices? conformity with prevailing norms (Shorter, 1998; Wallace and Gach, 2010). Mending the phenomena of maladjustment is to be accomplished as effica‑ ciously as possible, whether by physical intervention, conversational persuasion, or the administration of psychopharmacological agents (Bracken and Thomas, 2006; Fee, 2000; Foucault, 1961a, 1961b, 1973–1974; Gillett, 2009; Graham, 2010; Porter, 2003; Sedgwick, 1982). Psychiatry becomes an expression of the power of normativity over marginality, despite contemporary efforts to avoid this outcome (e.g., Cohen and Timimi, 2008; Ingleby, 2004; McLaren, 2007; Radden, 2007; Szasz, 1961, 1970), and despite various attempts to articulate the creative benefits of non‑conformity, non‑normativity, and indeed “abnor‑ mality” (e.g., Green, 1972–1986; Gruen, 1992; McDougall, 1978; Milner, 1987; Warner, 1999). If madness is inevitably defined as the transgression of normative standards of cognition, affect, and action, then the therapeutic treatment of such offenses to convention is a corrective discourse. By referring to neurosis‑psychosis and related phenomena as “offenses to convention,” I do not intend to make light of the fact that these involve considerable suffering, internally and externally, on the part of the individuals thus distressed. Suffering from neurosis can cripple people’s lives; suffering from psychosis can entail a lifetime of agony. But what must be emphasized is the way in which the professional definition of any of these modes of “mental illness” and “disorder” necessarily appeals to some communal or collective standard of “health” – a standard that is far from politically arbitrary. Indeed, even a cursory reading of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, or a review of the evolution of its editions (from an inventory of 106 mental disorders in the first edition of 1952, to its more recent classifica‑ tion of 297 disorders), is sufficient to convince one of the extent to which psychiatry develops under the sway of political and “public relations” pressure. The discipline of psychoanalysis, which in many ways began with the effort to deconstruct the oneiric life of more or less “normal” individuals, has always involved an awareness that “health” might involve criteria somewhat askance from the standards of conventionality. However, the definition of health has repeatedly challenged its more thoughtful propopents (e.g., Jahoda, 1959, 1981; Krapf, 1961; Menninger, Mayman, and Pruyser, 1963; Meerloo, 1964). In his classic essay of 1939, Hartmann, having recognized the problem implied by the consistent evidence of psychogenic conflicts in ostensibly “healthy people,” boldly attempted to distinguish “abnormality” from an internal definition of what is to be assessed as “psychopathology.” He admitted that the distinction between mental health and mental illness had come to exert what he called a “latent influence” on the conduct of psy‑ choanalytic practice, but this distinction then seems to revert to an external judgment of what is abnormal and what is not. To a certain extent, Hartmann’s essay is admirably honest in its acknowledgement that the more psychoana‑ lytic practitioners have focused on the functioning of the ego organization, What are healing practices? 119 with its tripartite encounter and compromise formations (between the forces of the id, the superego, and the external world), the more the assessment of “adaptation” and “achievement” has become “the touchstone” of conceptual criteria of mental health (Hartmann, 1960); and, we might add, how psy‑ choanalysis has frequently become merely therapeutic (rather than more deeply healing). The notions of adaptation and achievement are unavoidably steeped in a web of value judgments that are politically and socioculturally contextualized. For example, (1932, 1965) consistently argued that psy‑ choanalytic treatment aims to allow the energies of the id to become more mobile, the superego to become more tolerant, and the ego less burdened by anxiety with its synthetic function restored. However, the operational criteria of concepts such as mobility, tolerance, and so forth, remain problematically tied to the goal of producing individuals who are more adapted to, and more achieving within, the externality of the social world (which is treated as a “given”). As mentioned in Chapter 4, the problem is dramatically illustrated by the conceptual wrestling that has occurred in relation to the classical theory of “drives” and their sublimation – the latter being defined as the conflict‑free usage of the energy that is derived from the drives. Arguably, it is necessary for drives to be sublimated, shorn of their explicitly erotic character, and their energies invested in other pursuits (my examples included stamp collecting, grandiloquent speechmaking, skeet shooting, military training, and gambling in the stock market). However, it is also acknowledged that if the ego organi‑ zation loses its connection with the rawness of the drives (so to speak), then the individual becomes lifeless. For those who would establish firmly objective criteria of mental health, several impossible questions arise: How much subli‑ mation is too much? How much is too little? How much is just right? The idea that such criteria could be formulated medically and scientifically in a way that would be independent of political interests is, of course, phantasma‑ goric; nevertheless, it is an illusion pursued by a number of commentators eager to gain social respectability for their practices. It is not that Nunberg and other commentators have been oblivious to the consequences of this issue. Indeed, the participants in the debate over subli‑ mation have undertaken their labors with much seriousness of purpose. But ascertaining what the “right” amount of sublimation might be, what might be a sufficiently “tolerant” (but not too lax) functioning of the superego, or what would be an ego organization “free enough” from anxiety (in terms of this sort of theorizing, too free would certainly imply an endangerment to self and others), is simply not possible. More precisely, it is possible, but only by invoking standards of individual “adaptation and achievement” that are invariably besotted with conservative ideology (Martín‑Baró, 1974–1989). By “conservative” I am not implying that the history of the psychoanalytic movement has been dominated by right‑wing thinking, for in actuality the majority of practitioners have, like Freud, generally held liberal or leftist 120 What are healing practices? political views. Rather, I mean to emphasize how the ideological appeal to standards of adaptation, achievement, or adjustment, necessarily tends to the maintenance and reproduction of existing ideologies, values, institutions, or traditions, and is strictly limited in its capacity to develop any critical distance from whatever is socioculturally and politically normative. In an effort to extricate the notion of mental health from this impasse, many commentators have resorted to a quasi‑biological theory of individual matura‑ tion. This typically hooks the vicissitudes of the psyche to the growth of ana‑ tomical structures as well as physiological functions (even if the linkage is merely analogical). It has thus been quite appealing to those who would like to see psychoanalysis integrated within medicine (or to some general notion of “modern science”). A developmentalist model not only specifies regular stages of psychological functioning through which an individual must pass in order to achieve maturity (which presumes that the temporality of the psyche is unitary and linear, as was discussed in Chapter 3). It also implies that such a sequence is “natural” and indeed “universal.” This specious claim to universal‑ ity and naturalness is, of course, a conservative or pseudoscientific strategy, by which the sociocultural, historical, and politico‑economic context of the indi‑ vidual’s development is downplayed or even entirely ignored, and the status quo is treated as “given” (Martín‑Baró, 1974–1989). The alleged naturalness of psychological development entails the need for clinical focus on those aspects of the individual’s functioning that are fixated or regressed, and it means that any particular phenomenon may be objectively judged as more or less “infantile,” more or less “mature,” according to what are tenuously held to be established scientific benchmarks. This sort of developmen‑ talist standpoint has dominated the past 100 years of psychoanalysis, with little dissent except perhaps from existentialist, Lacanian, and post‑Lacanian or decon‑ structive vantagepoints – and arguably also from Freud himself as he struggled with his discovery of the temporal heterogeneity of the psyche. It is evident in Klein’s discussion of the emotional maturity entailed by the depressive position (Klein, 1921–1960, 1960), and differently but commandingly encapsulated in Anna Freud’s notion of the ego organizations’s developmental lines (Freud, 1980), as well as in subsequent efforts to formulate stages of ego maturation (e.g., Loevinger, 1976). It is unambiguous in the discussion of object‑relational “maturation” (e.g., Winnicott, 1965b), clearly articulated in Kohut’s notion of the health as the coherence of the self (e.g., Kohut, 1982), and endemic to vari‑ ous efforts to arrive empirically at definitional levels of maturity in interpersonal functioning (e.g., Grey and Davies, 1981; Sullivan, 1953). As I have already indicated, there are at least three problems with develop‑ mentalism in psychoanalysis.

1 It presumes the possibility of seamless, incremental change and linear transformation over a unitary timeline – notwithstanding the hiccups of fixation and regression – and it thus ignores the radical pluritemporality What are healing practices? 121

or diachronic dispersivity of the psyche that Freud illustrates with his notion of Nachträglichkeit. Indeed, to marshall the repetition‑compulsiv‑ ity of our functioning under the descriptive notions of fixation and regression is actually to obliterate the discovery of the dynamically repressive condition of consciousness (the way that consciousness always reveals and conceals meaningfulness other than that which it takes itself to intend). 2 By the same token, developmentalism – perhaps paradoxically – fails to address the significance of oedipal complexities as a structural rupturing and temporal dismemberment of the psyche. As I mentioned earlier, this failure results in a misunderstanding of the formation of the repression barrier, and the self‑blinding involved in the individual’s recognition of what has been desired; that is, it results in psychologies that view devel‑ opment as an uninterrupted, and therefore interpretable, sequencing of events and experiences from infancy (or the womb) up to adulthood. We may legitimately ask: If developmentalism actually reflects the singular temporality of the psyche, how is it that the various descriptions of the child come to be so strikingly divergent across theories? We may note that the Kleinian infant differs from the Winnicottian infant and is quite unlike the Kohutian infant, and so on. 3 In a manner that is strikingly paradoxical, the formulation of developmental models actually begins with a description of the endpoint of development. The individual’s state of progress is comprehended by reference to the mature condition toward which he or she should progress. Thus, develop‑ mentalism operates covertly on a falsifying teleology that understands immaturity in terms of a maturity that is inevitably defined ideologically. Despite the quasi‑biological cast to these seemingly scientific models of psychological development, which is buttressed by a spurious claim to uni‑ versality, such theories revert to adaptation for the criteria of maturation. Supposedly, we know the endpoint of maturity, because the ideal that depicts it is an individual well adapted to the political and sociocultural context in which they have been reared. The unscientific conservatism of these sorts of developmentalism is thus delivered.

Throughout the history of Freud’s discipline, there has been some unease about these ideologies of adaptation and maturation. This unease is notably illustrated by Bálint’s 1936 paper, “The Final Goal of Psychoanalytic Treatment,” in which he announces that one can “confidently describe psy‑ choanalytic treatment as a natural process of development in the patient.” However, he then proceeds valiantly to argue for a distinction between this “natural” endpoint and any “prescribed final state, which, deduced from some philosophical, religious, moral, sociological, or even biological premise, requires that everyone should ‘get well’ according to its particular model.” Although Bálint’s essay seems to me as brilliant as it is inconclusive, he 122 What are healing practices? points to notions of freedom from repetition‑compulsivity, erotic engagement (“orgastic potency”), and the capacity to love, as possible criteria of health emerging from the interiority of psychoanalytic experience (see Bálint, 1950a, 1950b); I will return to these issues shortly. The efforts of Bálint and others notwithstanding, the scientificity of the psychoanalytic movement since Freud has all but bankrupted itself – recur‑ rently – by its collusion with therapeutic ambitions and its consequent affiliation with conservative ideologies of adaptation, which either masquer‑ ade as contextually independent or stake their legitimacy on quasi‑biological models of maturation that revert to the valorization of sociocultural adjust‑ ment. Criticism of these criteria of mental health escalated between the late 1950s and the mid‑1970s, perhaps because of increasing sensitivity to the contextualization of health in terms of class and culture (e.g., Coan, 1977; Hollinghead and Redlich, 1958; Opler, 1959; Triandis et al., 1980). However, although the intensity of the debate may have temporarily subsided (perhaps under the influence of the pharmacological industry), the ideological prob‑ lems of defining health in terms of adaptation and maturation have far from disappeared, and this has – as I will now suggest – exacerbated the confusion between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.

Against the narratological imperative and therapeutic ambitions As I have discussed elsewhere, healing is not a process of manipulation, nor an instrumental act ambitiously directed toward some idealized endpoint. In this sense, genuine healing is not the avoidance of pain, nor the avoidance of death, nor a procedure of political and sociocultural adaptation (Barratt, 2010a). Pain is inherent to living and indeed – like signal anxiety – in many respects it is a beneficial aspect of life itself. Yet the ideologies of contempo‑ rary Western culture – which has rapidly become globalized – value the concealment of suffering, rather than its confrontative address or acceptance. We live in a culture of analgesics and anaesthetics, insisting on the immediate alleviation of pain, rather than an appreciation of its significance and an acceptance of its unavoidable nature (see: Coakley and Shelemay, 2008; Kolakowski, 1989; Morris, 1991; Rey, 1995; Sontag, 2001). This attenuates our potential for genuine healing. Likewise, Western traditions adamantly define death as the opposite of life, a terminus ad quem to be averted for as long as is feasible; whereas it is more profoundly understood to be inherent to the processes of life itself (see Becker, 1998; Blanchot, 1948, 1980; Boothby, 1991; Derrida, 1993; Lingis, 1989; Ragland‑Sullivan, 1994). This will be discussed further in what follows, but for now let it just be said that the heal‑ ing of the psyche cannot occur as a resistance to the inherency of deathfulness within every moment of meaning. Finally, as I have already indicated, healing cannot be defined merely in terms of the individual’s adaptation, achievement What are healing practices? 123 or adjustment within the prevailing sociocultural and political nexus. Adaptation to societal arrangements based on oppression, exploitation, and ecocide surely cannot be considered health, and the revision of an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behavioral activities in alignment with such arrange‑ ments cannot be considered healing. Yet in a sense, any psychotherapy that conducts itself with the ambition of revising the patient’s narratives about self and world almost inevitably commits itself to a vision of healing as the avoidance of pain and death, as well as adaptation to the prevailing societal arrangements. What I have previously defined and discussed as the narratological imper‑ ative refers to the way in which representationality – the semiotic system – is organized in a manner that is identitarian, such that we comprehend the composition of each person’s life as a singular storyline endowed with conti‑ nuity, constancy, and cohesiveness (Barratt, 1993) – despite the truthfulness of psychoanalysis as demonstrating that this is a continuity, constancy, and cohesiveness that psychic reality actually lacks. However, the narratological imperative, which is comparable to the categorical imperative, presents life’s eventualities and experiences to us, treating them as a unity of systematic emplotment. Given the semiotic law and order within which our thinking, feeling, and acting seem to “make sense,” it is virtually impossible not to consider our personal life in terms of a storyline, or as a set of variously inte‑ grated or disintegrating stories, and it is seemingly impossible not to have our conduct governed – that is, constituted and determined – by such stories. In this way, the narratological imperative that compels the construction and reconstruction of stories serves to support our egotism’s illusory sense of itself as substantial, proper, right, true, and effective. Thus, whether oriented to a or to some other vision of the human condition, a therapeutic discourse is one that positions and repositions the subject narra‑ tologically. That is, it constructively revises the individual’s life stories in conformity with criteria of correctness and coherence, or in alignment with some explicit or implicit moral code, and is ultimately directed to the end‑ point of a version of the individual’s thinking, feeling, and acting that is more adaptive than whatever preceded it. For the purposes of the polemical and pedagogic contrast that I argued in Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse and elsewhere, the diverse enterprises of psychotherapy are regulated by the narratological imperative with respect to their direction, purpose, and intention. These enterprises aim to position and adaptively reposition the individual’s subjectivity within a correct and coherent storyline (extending from sometime after conception to sometime before rigor mortis). Typically, they privilege the formulation of insights into the patient’s functioning and they adopt a rationalist standpoint by assuming that this for‑ mulation must occur prior to the insight’s being “worked‑through” (I will discuss this mistake shortly, as well as in Chapter 7). Psychotherapies may variously encourage cathartic self‑expression but they aim toward constructive 124 What are healing practices?

(re)formulations of the individual’s cognition, affect, and conduct (Lebow, 2008); they thus endorse the propriety and substantiality of our egotism’s illu‑ sory establishment. In short, they aim for a correctively coherent treatment of the subject via procedures of self‑affirmation, self‑situation, self‑substantiation, self‑report, self‑portraiture, and so forth. These procedures are all framed within adaptively consensual – rationalistic – standards of what is, or should be, the individual’s reality. When allegedly oriented to psychoanalytic theorizing, psychotherapies valorize the acquisition, assimilation, and accommodation of “insights” – pertaining to the person’s developmental lineage, and to the cur‑ rent conduct of his or her relationships with self and world – even while acknowledging that somehow these insights must, subsequent to their formu‑ lation, be “worked‑through.” Herein lies the issue of my contention. The acquisition, assimilation, and accommodation of improved, insightful stories about self and world may be therapeutic, but there is a profound sense in which it falls short of healing, in that it is not responsive to the discoveries that Freud articulated. This is because the formulations and constructions constituted by the narratologi‑ cal imperative are an edifice of meaning that builds over the corporeality and polytemporality of repressed experience. In this way, the imperative creates an illusion of unity and semiotic meaningfulness that forecloses the psychic reality of rupture, dispersal, and insurpassable dismemberment. Insightful stories may well serve the ambitions of psychotherapy, but the individual’s therapeutic adaptations fostered by the adoption of better nar‑ ratives about his or her life are the accretions of semiotic stases that typi‑ cally obstruct the further revealing–concealing momentum of the otherwise that is repressed. Therapy necessarily prioritizes construction over the per‑ petually deconstructive momentum of free‑associative interrogation – a momentum that frees the subject from falsifying certainties – and thus therapy ultimately misses the kinesis that shows the truthfulness of self‑consciousness as an incessant revealing and concealing of something otherwise than it takes itself to mean.

Truthfulness as the heart of psychoanalytic healing There is a profound sense in which the arrival at insightful formulations about one’s self and world is a resistance to the ongoing deconstructive momentum of free‑associative discourse. It is, if you will, our archetypal fear of freedom (Fromm, 1942). To dwell in the creation of stories – even if they claim to be insightful interpretations of what is and what has been, diligently inferred from the available evidence of one’s thoughts, feelings, actions, and memories – is effectively to stall the mobilizing potential of the free‑ associative method. It thus arrests, at least temporarily, the dynamic between the repressiveness of consciousness and the insistent otherwise that is repressed as its kinesis. What Freud’s method discloses is an exuberant What are healing practices? 125 remainder of meaningfulness that does not conform to the law and order of semiotic construction or representationality (Adorno, 1951; Bataille, 1954, 1957, 1961; Lingis, 1983; Lyotard, 1974; Marcuse, 1955, 1964). Not only does this imply that whenever self‑consciousness fixes itself in a narrative formulation, it merely fosters its illusions of substantiality and mastery (which comprise our egotism’s delusion that, through its narratological ambi‑ tions, it might totalize itself in a final formulation that is proper, right, true, and effective). It also implies that self‑consciousness has, so to speak, lost touch with the brio of life itself, alienating itself from the lively “voice” of cor‑ poreal temporalities whose meaningfulness has been repressed. Psychoanalytic healing, unlike the ambitions of therapy, precisely entails an unlocking of the alienated structures of self‑narration. Freud’s four coordinates imply that self‑consciousness can never totalize itself; indeed, free‑associative method elucidates the “I” of subjectivity as a trick of the representational system. The subject is made to seem secure and substantive by its compulsively repeated establishment as an apparent iden‑ tity along pathways of enunciation and exchange; to our metaphysical horror, it proves itself to be, on interrogation, a “black hole” (Kolakowski, 1988). If our egotism can never totalize itself – despite the grandeur of its illusions to the contrary – and can never gain mastery over its own experiential embodi‑ ment, then the passage of healing the human psyche necessarily involves the kinetic confrontation of self‑consciousness with the castratedness and death‑ fulness of its constitution. This is my terminology for matters that are at the heart of all that psychoanalysis has to teach us about the human condition, and they may be understood as follows. The castratedness of every human subject: As mentioned previously, Freud insisted that the “castration complex” has “the profoundest significance in the formation of character” – that is, the personality of both men and women. There are three “levels” of meaning to this statement, of which the third is both most significant and has been the most overlooked by subse‑ quent commentators. First, as was discussed in Chapter 5, the “complex” implies that our experiences of our self are always forged in the crucible of long forgotten fantasies of mutilation and consequent jealous or envious longings for whatever we lack – penis, breasts, womb, and so forth. Second, it becomes the prototype and generic referent for a farrago of unconscious fantasies about actual or imagined bodily defect and deficiency, helpless‑ ness, retribution, subjugation, and so forth, all of which are connected with the individual’s various “encounters” with the incest taboo. Third, the “complex” designates the irreparable insufficiency or inadequacy of the “I” that can never be aligned with the position of the phallus so as to be the author of its own meaningfulness, and thus can never achieve mastery over its own life’s contingencies. The castratedness of the human subject is thus the insurpassable result of its constitution within a phallocentric system of representationality. 126 What are healing practices?

The deathfulness of every human subject: Questions about the inherency of loss in the formation of psychic reality, as well as about death, permeate Freud’s writings both directly and indirectly, from his earliest theorizing on the pri‑ macy of repetition (which was discussed in Chapter 2), through his 1920 writing on the Todestriebe (“death instincts”), to his 1937 speculations on the interminability of psychoanalysis. He wavers somewhat on the significance of death for our self‑consciousness. As late as 1926, he suggests that our egotism can only comprehend death by analogy to its own fantasies of bodily mutila‑ tion (for which it compensates with a wealth of beliefs about “lives” before birth, after death, and so forth). However, in the 1920 essay, the subject is constituted through the lack inherent in its own absencing, which thus inti‑ mates the priority of absences over presences, of repetition over origination, and the formation of the “I” as inherently empty and “death‑bound” (see Derrida, 1967a, 1967b, 1980, 1993, 1998, 2000; Lear, 2000; Lingis, 1989; Piven, 2004; Taylor, 2007; Wyschogrod, 1985). The death‑bound constitution of the “I” of consciousness, the inherent deathfulness of its presencing, is why, in his 1980 essay, Maurice Blanchot wrote “I die before being born” (see Derrida, 2000; Lingis, 1989). The same wisdom is articulated with lucidity in Buddhist teachings; for example, Tsongkhapa, who died in 1419, wrote “unborn emptiness … is both the center itself and the central path … emptiness is the track on which the cen‑ tered person moves” (Hopkins, 2008). In a sense, this is the abyss of human egotism, the ultimate emptiness of “I” that impels the frantic effort to secure “me” by the repeated establishment of representations of self, other, and affect or action. In these representations – that is, in the semiotic construction and reconstruction of psychic reality – the subject is always displaced or deferred from itself, such that the segueing and sequencing between these edifices both reveals and conceals otherwise corporeal temporalities that their repeti‑ tive formulations have repressed within themselves (Barratt, 1988, 1990, 1993, 1995, 1999, 2004a, 2004b, 2009). Our terror of this abyss is precisely what motivates the narratological imperative or repetition‑compulsivity of the representational world that we inhabit; these are the manifestation of our egotism’s ambition to stay, or ward off, the realization of its own death‑ fulness, the inherent emptiness of its multifarious constructions (see Blanchot, 1948, 1980, 1994; Deleuze, 1968; Derrida, 1967a, 1967b, 1980, 1993, 2000; Lingis, 1989). Given the insurpassable castratedness and deathfulness of the human con‑ dition, healing is gifted to us as the subject of our discourse shifts from a frozen condition of alienation to a vibrant condition in which this subject is interestingly estranged from itself. This distinction between the subject’s alienation in the products of its thinking, and the subject’s lively estrange‑ ment in the processes that mobilize its self‑consciousness – between stasis and kinesis – is essential to understand the gift of psychoanalytic healing, its truthfulness as the critique of ideologies. What are healing practices? 127

The method of free‑associative interrogation, as the key to Freud’s four‑ fold discovery, allows the subject to fall into the flow of its authentic being‑in‑the‑world, by freeing it from the stases constituted by the repetitive configurations, permutations, and transformations of representationality. Such a process serves to re‑engage the “I” of self‑consciousness with its own castrat‑ edness and deathfulness, and is thus a healing practice that frees the subject from its fixed and frozen formulation within the repetition‑compulsivity of the narratological imperative. Free‑associative discourse is inherently healing in that it mobilizes the subject’s libidinality or life’s energies in a way that appreciates the holistic connectivity of the human bodymind with the expres‑ siveness of free‑associative discourse (Barratt, 1993, 2010a). No “voice” within our embodied experience is to be prioritized over another; no longer are “the said” and “the sayable” to be privileged over the unthought known, the usay‑ able, and the unthinkable (see Bollas, 1987, 1989, 1992; Budnick and Iser, 1989; Carruth, 1996; Lecercle, 1985; Levinas, 1947, 1974; Tyler, 1987). In a somewhat different terminology, one might say that the free‑associative method takes subjects “out of their heads” and into the fullness of their embodied experience, thus bestowing a renewed sense of awareness as presence and freedom (see Anderson, 2008; Barratt, 2010a; Johnson, 1983; Levine 2010); and this is akin to what some practitioners of meditation call “aware‑ ness without thought” (e.g., Osho, 1996, 1997). From alienation to estrangement: Contrary to some of our fondest beliefs in the human potential, or in the inebriated assessment that heaven might be just around the corner, there is no possibility that the human subject can arrive at a fully formulated cognitive captivation of his or her desire – no possibility that we can ever be completely “in touch with ourselves.” At best, the products of our thinking offer us intimations; to borrow the Buddhist analogy, they are like a finger pointing to the moon, which never accesses the moon itself (Suzuki, 1930). The human subject is never going to become an integrated unit or harmonious whole, because the polysexual and pluritemporal condi‑ tions of our repressed desire cannot be captivated by the narratological imperative, can never be finally formulated by the repetition‑compulsivity of representationality, which is the outcome of the profoundly necessary taboo against incest. What heals is not an arrival at some mythically final, harmoni‑ ous, or concordant state of being, which are pivotal notions in the grandiose ambitions and falsifying ideologies to which our egotism clings. Rather, the truthfulness of healing is a mobilization of the subject from a static condition of alienation to the vivacious kinesis of its dynamic estrangement with an accompanying shift from the formulations of consciousness to the processes of awareness. We will return to these issues later, but let it be immediately stated that I have developed these terms from the writings of Karl Marx (1844; Marx and Engels, 1845–1846), even while I make a distinction between alienation and estrangement in a manner that diverges from his considerations. 128 What are healing practices?

In short, the truthfulness of psychoanalytic healing is a movement of the subject from its alienation in the products of reflective consciousness to an awareness of its own self‑estrangement. It is, as I will later suggest, a healing of the heart, a spiritual– existential praxis that accords with an ideological critique of the sociocultural structures that conditioned our existence as the frozen alienated states of repetition‑compulsivity. As I have already indicated, the four coordinates of psychoanalysis demon‑ strate that the fantasy of arriving at a unified human subject as internally harmonious, integrated, and whole is just that – an ideal or fantasy that can only perpetuate ideologically the machinery of alienation. Contrary to our egotism’s illusions of mastery or potential mastery, the human condition is insurpassably fractured by the repression barrier that is the manifestation of the incest taboo. The pluritemporality of embodied experience is only repres‑ sively disclosed to self‑consciousness by way of its disguised expression in the streaming of thoughts and feelings. The repressed is always “in” but never “of” the constructions and reconstructions of representationality. It is insepa‑ rably revealed–concealed in the movement of self‑consciousness from one thought or feeling to the next. As has been discussed, the four coordinates of psychoanalytic discipline show us how, in relation to the representations that are the fabric of our psychic realities, desire is always alienated or estranged. It is alienated within the representational immobility of repetition‑compulsivity, the positions and repositions that are the edifices of identitarian discourse. But, when these constructions and reconstructions are interrogated free‑ associatively, discourse is remobilized and desire is now merely estranged within self‑consciousness as the subject comes to “know” itself as otherwise than it has taken itself to be. This remobilization, the shift from the frozenness of “making sense” to the deconstructive vivacity of a flow that is transmutative and truthful, is the process of healing through psychoanalytic discourse; it frees the subject from the grip of repetition‑compulsivity. It is healing to embrace the truthfulness of our being‑in‑the‑world, which implies an ongoing accession to the reality of our castratedness and deathful‑ ness. This is healing in terms of awareness, presence, and freedom (Barratt, 1993, 2010a). The free‑associative method imbues the subject with a different sort of awareness from that of reflective self‑consciousness. This is not so much a secondary consciousness that observes, calculates, and formulates, but a con‑ sciousness that declines such formulation in the interests of further awareness. It is thus a process of listening as the “compassionate witness” to whatever is flowing within the bodymind, rather than a procedure of watching and infer‑ ring on the part of what has been called the “self‑observing ego” (this distinc‑ tion will be discussed in the next chapter). It is more of a welcoming awareness of the diffuse messages of embodied experience, than it is a syn‑ thetic policing of the ratiocinative flow of what we consider to be in our “mind.” This is an awareness of the presencing of impulses that are never fully presented (in the sense of being represented or representable) but are always What are healing practices? 129 with us in the absencing constituted by semiotic construction and reconstruc‑ tion. Free‑associative discourse is thus a freeing from repetition‑compulsivity, from which one can never be fully free. It is remarkable, perhaps even shocking, how little the notion of freedom has been examined in the psychoanalytic literature promulgated since Freud. Yet a specific sort of freedom, moksha in the terminology of spiritual libera‑ tion (Fischer‑Schreiber, Ehrhard, Friedrichs, and Diener, 1989), is surely what psychoanalytic healing involves, as has been frequently intimated yet rarely directly discussed. Robert Wälder (1936), for example, broaches the topic, being careful to state that the issue is not the philosophical conundrum of “free‑will versus determinism,” but rather a certain sort of freedom that the workplay of psy‑ choanalysis instigates – an ongoing but always partial release from what Freud, in his Introductory Lectures, called the subject’s “curtailment of free‑ dom.” Interestingly, Wälder starts by drawing on Georg Simmel’s philo‑ sophical notes of 1918 to suggest that freedom requires the subject’s embrace of mortality. But his essay then becomes somewhat preoccupied with the conflictive relationship between the superego and the “instincts,” as well as the dangers to a rationalist vision of freedom that are, in his view, implicated by these drives in their relation to “reality.” Here the superego is held to be the progenitor of the subject’s freedom and, in line with the concurrent work of Sterba (1934) and others, the prescription is for the ego organization to be strengthened and its self‑observing functions advanced. Wälder sidesteps the possible interest of a distinction between an intellectual and an experiential attitude toward life – which is better addressed by Winnicott (1971), and strikingly his paper never mentions the issue of repetition as a central constraint or curtailment of freedom and spontaneity. Freedom as the “unwinding of the repetition factor” is discussed by Vilma Kovács (1931) and cursorily mentioned in Bálint’s 1936 paper, but otherwise seems to be given scant attention in the literature. Spontaneity has been well discussed by John Klauber (1987) and others, especially as it bears on the issue of the transference neurosis or psychosis as a major patina of repeti‑ tion‑compulsivity that fulminates in the course of psychoanalytic treatment (which will be discussed in the next chapter). Kennedy (1993) provides an erudite and perhaps the most extensive psychoanalytic discussion of freedom in the English literature, but remarkably he cites neither of the two 1936 papers (Wälder’s and Bálint’s) that seem pertinent to the topic. Rather, Kennedy’s emphasis is on freedom in relationships, and he provides an impor‑ tant discussion of the issues of transference – yet it is a discussion that, very curiously, scarcely mentions the motor of transferential phenomena in repetition‑compulsivity. Freud’s free‑associative method is inherently healing, for rather than reposi‑ tioning the subject within the prison of an intractable attachment to its judg‑ mental productivities and capabilities, it deconstructs this attachment. Such a 130 What are healing practices? process brings renewed vitality to the subject, giving him or her a lively sense of openness to what Bálint called “new beginnings” in awareness, presence, and freedom. While psychoanalysis cannot undo the repetition‑compulsivity of our ego organization, it loosens it, renewing the engagement of self‑ consciousness with what is otherwise. The method undoes what Marcuse (1955) termed “surplus repression,” the gratuitous excesses of repetition‑ compulsivity that keep humanity chained to its ideologies of constriction, restriction, and hatefulness. Chapter 7 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment

Both as a scientific inquiry into the human condition and as a journey of discourse that is healing for the individual, the uniqueness of psychoanalytic discipline has become obfuscated over the past century. The distinctions between this discipline and the contemporary assortment of psychotherapies (including those that call themselves psychoanalytic) have been obscured. The preceding chapters have attempted to restore the distinctiveness of a science of healing that is attentive to the four coordinates that delineate what Freud discovered about our humanity. Since those chapters were focused on complex theoretical matters, it seems warranted to turn now to some of the concrete practicalities of psychoanalytic process, and offer some personal notes sketching the conduct of this discipline under the aegis of these coordinates. There is – I am convinced – no “one right way” to practice psychoanalysis in the light of the four coordinates, but there are undoubtedly many wrong ways. “Wrong” in the sense that the practice tracks one or more of the four lines of retreat from psychoanalytic discipline that I listed at the beginning of Chapter 6. In this chapter, I will try to point diplomatically to some of what I consider to be those mistakes, in the hope that my discussion will provoke renewed dialogue between diverging viewpoints. These are merely one practi‑ tioner’s notes, which may thus be helpful, but should not under any circum‑ stances be read as a recipe for practice. Indeed, it must be emphasized that psychoanalysis cannot be practiced formulaically, for in an important sense (and despite the fact that Freud used the term), there is no technique to psycho‑ analytic practice. The notion of technique implies a manipulative procedure founded on instrumentalist or goal‑oriented reasoning (in the Greek sense techne-); employing a technique in any field of endeavor implies an authoritarian ontology of domination, in which the technician performs an operation on his or her object, using his or her expertise to achieve a specified endpoint. Although Freud himself toyed with analogies to the psychoanalytic clinician as surgeon (offering this analogy no less than four times between 1912 and 1919) and even in 1917 to psychoanalytic treatment as akin to procedure of dental extraction, such analogizing is profoundly mistaken, for neither manip‑ ulation nor authoritarianism has a role in psychoanalytic practice. 132 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment

Rather, psychoanalysis is an egalitarian, albeit lopsided, partnership of the patient and the psychoanalyst mutually engaged in a poetic–scientific craft (in the Greek sense of poe-sis), for which free‑associative discourse is the sine qua non. If this discourse is not foolishly discounted or demoted as merely a “data gathering” phase that contributes to the grand formulation of interpretive insights, then it is properly understood as the path that engages the subject’s being‑in‑the‑world in a more poetically estranged relation with itself; this is the key to its healing trajectory. Such a healing partnership is not, of course, available to anyone; so I will begin by considering what makes a psychoana‑ lytic patient and what makes a psychoanalytic practitioner.

The patient and the ailment The person entering psychoanalysis is a patient, not an “analysand” and cer‑ tainly not a client. As has been discussed elsewhere (Barratt, 2010a; Coltart, 1992), the term comes, via Old French, from the present participle of the Latin root, patı-, meaning “suffer.” The patient is one who comes to psychoa‑ nalysis because he or she knows suffering. Perhaps the contemporary resist‑ ance to the use of the term, patient, is understandable, because it has a medical denotation that is unfortunate. As Freud knew (and stated quite firmly in his 1926 critique of Brill’s plan to restrict psychoanalytic training to those with an allopathic qualification), psychoanalysis is not a medical discipline. The psychoanalytic patient is not supine on the couch awaiting the technical ministrations of a physician. Nevertheless, he or she is indeed a patient, because what brings the individual to the couch is a matter of suffer‑ ing. He or she is someone who knows his or her own suffering and seeks to heal it with the facilitative support of the psychoanalyst. Such an individual is certainly not a “client,” dependent on the other’s entrepreneurial services; that is, a customer who, at least in the etymlogy of the term, clie-ns, is unable to act autonomously (Ayto, 2001). Nor is this individual an “analysand,” which seems to be a term concocted in 1917 specifically for the psychoana‑ lytic patient, presumably to counter the idea that only abnormal individuals would embark on such treatment. But this individual is suffering, and knows it; indeed, an impressive sign of his or her potential for personal liberation from such suffering is that he or she seeks to embark on the “lucid lunacy” of psychoanalytic treatment. No one would enter psychoanalytic treatment were if not for the suffering caused by a personal ailment. Although the notion of an “ailment” may have a slightly eighteenth century flavor, it is especially useful here, and it is well worth reviving (see Bálint, 1957; Diedrich, 2007; Main, 1989). The ailment is not a symptom or syndrome, nor is it equivalent to a pathogenic phenom‑ enon or “disease entity” in the sense of a medically diagnosable condition. Rather, it is an affliction, an awareness of adversity that causes suffering from within. In short, the ailment is the bodymind’s call for healing, signifying a Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 133

blockage in the lifeforce; that is, an awareness of the suffering caused by repetition‑compulsivity. In my view, there are five interrelated characteristics that indicate a patient’s readiness for psychoanalysis. The first is this awareness of the ailment. This does not imply that the individual understands his or her ailment, or can articulate it representation‑ ally, but it does mean that he or she recognizes that his or her suffering is, at least to some extent, internally generated rather than externally determined. One does not enter psychoanalysis because a mudslide wrecked one’s domi‑ cile, but perhaps one does if there is recognition of an internally generated inability to pick oneself up and begin rebuilding (or an incapacity to know that “home” is really a matter of the heart). The second criterion of readiness for psychoanalysis is the prospective patient’s willingness to form an alliance with the psychoanalyst around the workplay of listening to oneself (that is, to the bodymind as it speaks itself free‑associatively). More accurately, this is the workplay of opening, express‑ ing, listening . . . opening, expressing, listening . . . and so forth. Of course, this willingness will be ensconced in resistances to this very process, but it needs to be evident nevertheless. Some clinicians have referred to this as evi‑ dence of the functioning of the “self‑observing ego.” The problem with this conceptualization of such an ego function is that it traps the patient in a perpetual mode of self‑alienation, and idealization of this function usually has the result of equating the patient’s “therapeutic progress” with his or her identification with the clinician. As I will suggest, this is a mistake, and one for which Sterba’s paper, “The Fate of the Ego in Analytic Therapy,” has been rightly criticized (Mitchell, 1995). Coming from the Buddhist, as well as Taoist and Sufi, traditions, the notion of “compassionate witness” seems far more helpful in understanding the distinctiveness of an authentically psycho‑ analytic process (interestingly, Sufi writings equate this “function” with the “Beloved”). The witness is not in an alienated, objectifying relationship with its own being‑in‑the‑world; that is, it does not treat the latter as the object of its dispassionate scrutiny, observing and inferring itself as something “other” in macabre acts of hyper‑rational and scientistic calculation. Rather, the witness, while somewhat estranged from its own being‑in‑the‑world, does not pretend to self‑objectify, but remains passionately and – most importantly – compassionately engaged with that which is witnessed in acts that can only be described as Love (Barratt, 2004b, 2009a). This is a radical distinction between the judgmentalism by which our egotism sustains itself and the spiritual discernment that is called “Love.” It is a distinction that addresses why free‑associative discourse is healing, and why the ego organiza‑ tion’s objectification of itself is not (even while the latter may be therapeuti‑ cally effective). In a psychoanalytic process, the patient has both to allow free‑associative expression and to listen to what is expressed with both care and caring. In this sense, to embark on the psychoanalytic journey, the pro‑ spective patient has to have a readiness for compassionate witnessing. 134 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment

The third characteristic of the patient’s readiness for psychoanalysis follows from this. It is the individual’s capacity to be aware of, and to regulate or moderate, his or her feelings, as well as the ability to express them in a non‑ violent manner. This is often taken to imply the patient’s ability to experience “regressive” affect, even while continuing to function more or less realistically and reasonably safely in the world outside the consulting room. A prospective patient who seems likely to regress into gross substance abuse, suicide, homi‑ cide, or other dangerous enactments, is probably going to need some sort of preparatory consultation before embarking on psychoanalysis. Because the psychoanalytic movement emerged, to a significant degree, out of the fundamentally different discipline of psychology‑psychiatry, it has become a prevalent procedure for the clinician to assess the quality of the individual’s relationships (“attachments” or “object relations”) before offering psychoanalysis. This has always been a standard clinical practice in psychol‑ ogy‑psychiatry. However, in the psychoanalytic context, it is far from clear to me what impact this actually has on the disposition. There are prospective patients with very impaired capacities for social relations, who nevertheless engage creatively in psychoanalysis; there are also individuals whose relation‑ ships appear to exemplify whatever passes culturally for normality, who none‑ theless fail to manage the engagement involved in a psychoanalytic process. Similarly, although psychologists and psychiatrists are typically preoccupied with formulating a diagnostic category by which to label the patient, this formulation is of almost no interest to me in considering these five factors by which readiness for psychoanalysis is assessed. What I think is crucially at issue is whether the prospective patient is able to maintain a certain sort of integrity in his or her relationships; this is the fourth of the five criteria of an individual’s readiness for psychoanalysis. I use this notion of integrity deliberately because it conveys both the ability to maintain a modicum of what might be called “realisticness” while engaging with other human beings, and a certain sort of basic “ethicality” while so doing. The former quality bears on the prospective patient’s ability to know (at least on some level) that, whatever the vicissitudes of “transference” (which I will discuss shortly), the engagement with the psychoanalyst is for psychoanalytic treatment, and that alone. The latter issue of ethicality is more difficult to define and warrants much further discussion, especially because I am not necessarily thinking of this as some sort of “superego function” (which is traditionally how such ideas have been discussed). Ethicality is not the same as morality, or the seemly observance of whatever are the extant codes of conventional conduct. Ethical integrity does, however, imply that the indi‑ vidual is not pervasively committed to remorseless abuse of, and an entirely exploitive or deceptive stance toward, the relational “other.” Psychoanalysis is not for individuals who warrant their designation as “psychopaths” – those apparently blind to any empathy, who are emotionless and wholly egocentric (Cleckley, 1941). “Integrity” in the prospective patient’s relationships means Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 135 that the individual is able to both experience love as well as hate in the engagement with the psychoanalyst, and to entertain the possibility that every experience may not simply be the way it seems; that is, to love and hate passionately but also to be the compassionate witness to these experiences. In the conduct of relationships, what is called “intelligence” may, of course, assist the patient in the psychoanalytic engagement (although equally an intellectual approach to life is likely to hinder the patient’s ability to engage in this process). For example, patients whose “cognitive style” is too concrete inevitably have difficulty tolerating the possibility that “every experience may not simply be the way it seems” and are thus liable to become overly attached to their narratives; this bears perhaps on the importance of an abstractive type of intelligence. There are patients who seem, manifestly, not to have a fantasy life (or to have one that is minimally available to conscious‑ ness), and who therefore insist that their wishes must either be repudiated or enacted; these individuals have a similar difficulty tolerating the abstinence involved in undergoing a psychoanalytic treatment. The fifth and final characteristic of an individual’s readiness to embark on the psychoanalytic journey is the capacity to function as a guardian of the treatment. By this, I mean not only the ability to pay the reasonable fees that are expected and required by the psychoanalyst for his or her livelihood; I also mean a readiness to protect the psychoanalytic practice from intrusion and interference by all third parties (such as family members, corporate entities, government agents, and so on). Obviously, the psychoanalyst also has respon‑ sibility for this guardianship, by ensuring that an absolutely one‑on‑one engagement is secured and maintained. However, frequently there are cir‑ cumstances in which only the patient can act for the protection of the privacy and confidentiality of the treatment relationship. In short, if the individual is not sufficiently motivated to serve as a steward of the treatment, then he or she is not ready to become a patient in psychoanalysis. It is not that the patient who seeks psychoanalysis but is not ready for its rigors is to be rejected by the practitioner. Rather, the latter is obliged to work with those who do not meet these five criteria to facilitate their personal growth by other modalities.

The psychoanalyst and the psychoanalytic attitude What makes a psychoanalyst? It is preposterous to imagine that the mere fact of graduating from a recognized Training Institute transforms an individual into a psychoanalyst; yet the spectacle of clinicians without training declaring themselves to be psychoanalysts is even more grotesque. The movement has already witnessed the disastrous experiment undertaken by some Lacanian associations, in which candidates in training were simply permitted to license themselves whenever they imagined they were ready to practice as psycho­ analysts (Oliner, 1977; Turkle, 1992). Although the process of becoming a 136 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment psychoanalyst is an intensely personal matter, clearly some sort of accountabil‑ ity is necessary. Moreover, for reasons I will elaborate, the process requires an encounter with the extrinsic authority of an “other.” This is typically mani‑ fested by a procedure in which the candidate becomes licensed only when his or her Training Analyst or Institute deems him or her ready to practice, both in terms of personal qualities and in terms of professional qualifications. However, such an encounter is also inherently problematic. In Chapter 1, I mentioned the challenges of “filiation” and the oedipalization of disciplin‑ ary transmission (Castel, 1976; Granoff, 2001a; Roustang, 1975), which have seriously warped the history of the psychoanalytic movement. Authority too easily begets authoritarianism, despite the fact that the latter should have no place in psychoanalytic training and practice. Given the fractiousness of the organizational politics that seem regularly to characterize this discipline, the problematic role of the Training Analyst as patriarch is particularly egre‑ gious. Over the years, there has been some significant discussion of this issue, yet it continues to seem insoluble (e.g., Bernfeld, 1962; Kernberg, 2010; Meisels and Shapiro, 1990; Wallerstein, 1991). To become a psychoanalyst, one needs to undergo a personal psychoanalysis with a more experienced prac‑ titioner (usually one who is officially designated as a Training Analyst). The oedipal dynamics involved in this mode of disciplinary transmission (both the candidate’s motivations to identify with, to disidentify with, or to coun‑ ter‑identify with the Training Analyst, and the latter’s unresolved narcissistic investment in relation to these processes occurring within the trainee) have scarred the scientific development of Freud’s discipline. However, it remains indisputably true that a rigorous course of such training is necessary, but not sufficient, for the authentic formation of a psychoanalyst. The formal course of training to become a psychoanalyst involves three components. The first and foremost is the personal psychoanalysis; every psy‑ choanalyst begins as a patient and, as I will shortly suggest, continues as a patient even after the completion of this “training analysis.” The second is an exacting course of study of the discipline’s literature, and the third is under‑ taking psychoanalytic treatment of patients in supervisory consultation with a more experienced practitioner. Unarguably, the necessary wellspring of this odyssey is the personal psychoanalysis, and this must be understood in terms of the psychoanalyst’s ongoing commitment to subjecting himself or herself to the psychoanalytic process. Although dressed as a professional specialty, psychoanalysis is more aptly understood as a vocation, a sacred calling. Before all other considerations, the psychoanalyst must situate himself or herself as a patient, engaged in a lifelong healing process of self‑interrogation and self‑deconstruction. Initially this involves undertaking at least one full course of psychoanalytic treatment with an experienced practitioner. It then shifts into a lifetime of what has been called “self‑analysis” (the notion of a psychoanalyst who is “fully analyzed” is a self‑serving myth that has disastrous consequences). In an important sense, Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 137 the notion of self‑analysis is a misnomer, for the psychoanalytic process always requires an “other” – that is, an interlocutor – and it will shortly become clear why this is so. Given that there were no psychoanalysts to analyze him, it is often proclaimed that Freud initiated his discipline simply by a heroic process of self‑analysis (e.g., Jones, 1953–1957). However, if one examines his biogra‑ phy carefully, it is evident that he always had an interlocutor – literally or figuratively – for his labors of inquiry into the intimations of his own uncon‑ scious processes. There was his relationship with Breuer, his correspondence with Fleiss, his friendship with Jung, and his varied interactions with peers and students. These encounters had to stand, uneasily, in lieu of a personal psychoanalyst, since Freud himself was the head of the disciplinary lineage. But their significance is that, as heroic as indeed he may have been, in no sense did Freud accomplish a purely “self‑analysis,” for he needed the presence of varied opportunities to make psychoanalytic use of an “other.” This point is important, because the formation of a psychoanalyst begins with a personal psychoanalytic treatment and eventually shifts into a lifetime of these processes of “self‑analysis,” with the latter always including the psy‑ choanalytic use of “others” – whether in the form of collegial consultations, reading materials, or every moment of social encounter – which are some‑ times called “thirdness” or “relations of the third kind” (see Bion, 1962, 1963, 1965; Blanchot, 1969, 2002; Lebovici and Diatkine, 1954). It is not only a matter of professional responsibility and accountability that necessi‑ tates the psychoanalyst’s use of others. As I will now suggest, the significance of this is that the primary answer to the question of what makes a psycho‑ analyst involves the willingness of the practitioner to allow himself or herself to become unraveled. That is, the sacred calling to become a psychoanalyst requires an ongoing radical commitment to the self‑interrogation and self‑deconstruction of one’s own narcissism – a continual willingness to put one’s egotism at risk emotionally. In certain respects, the psychoanalyst’s labors bear comparison to those of physician, whore, and shaman. The physician model, although seemingly dignified, is in some ways the most problematic, as it has over the years pro‑ moted a medicalized model of healing (that is, an authoritarian attitude of an expertise that is both technical and, unavoidably, moralizing). Very much like the whore, who lends a particular aspect of his or her bodymind as a service, the psychoanalyst lends what is merely a different aspect, and does so in a dif‑ ferent manner (one that does not violate the incest taboo, except on the level of unconscious phantasy), for he or she engages emotionally – indeed passion‑ ately – and thoughtfully in the service of the patient’s healing. There is no disrespect intended by this analogy, nor is it a comparison that, in my view, warrants any sense of dishonor (Barratt, 2005). Most interestingly, however, the psychoanalyst operates in the cultural locus traditionally assigned to the shaman. Lévi‑Strauss (1958) and others have argued as much, although this argument presumes psychoanalysis to be therapeutic, which I believe is partly 138 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment mistaken as shown in my critique of Lévi‑Strauss’ essay on a Cuna shamanic ritual (Barratt, 1993). Nevertheless, to understand what makes a psychoana‑ lyst, it is useful to note what makes a shaman (see Barratt, 2010a; Dubois, 2009; Eliade, 1951; Francfort and Hamayon, 2001; Pratt, 2007; Webb, 2008; Znamenski, 2004). Traditionally, the shaman is a psychopomp, a mediator between conscious and unconscious realms, as well as a maieutic guide for lost souls. Although often esteemed for their spiritual, therapeutic, or healing powers, shamans are oddities within their culture. Frequently fluid in their gender and sexual orientation, as individuals they live in a space apart from the cultural mainstream of normativity. Their skill is precisely an ability to enter into other realities, often by themselves going into reveries, and then to com‑ municate the meaningfulness of that which is invisible. It is notable that to become a shaman is a vocational calling that usually requires the trainee to undergo a period of utter madness or illness, in which he or she suffers to the brink of death; a senior shaman then heals the trainee and initiates him or her into the vocation. This then has some striking similarities with the path of the psychoanalyst, who graduates to his or her locus as healer only after undertak‑ ing what might be described as the “walkabout” of a training analysis. As I shall argue, within the cultural and psychological arena of everday life, a psychoanalyst is someone for whom everything is strange but nothing is alien. This cultural and psychological locus is required for his or her poetic–scientific skill in listening to the voicings of whatever is otherwise than that which is manifest (see Nancy, 2002; Reik, 1948). Together with the psychoanalyst’s capacity for compassion, this is the essence of the psychoanalyst’s ability to listen and to intervene upon the patient’s resistances to healing. It bears on what has, in a somewhat more pedestrian manner, been called the “psychoana‑ lytic attitude” (e.g., Schafer, 1983). The psychoanalyst’s intent is to facilitate the patient’s readiness to let go the obstructions to free‑associative discourse; that is, to facilitate his or her potential for release from repetition‑compulsivity. Sitting quietly and with equanimity as a presence in the life of the supine patient, who is both free‑associating and resisting free‑association, the psycho‑ analyst is passionately yet contemplatively engaged in a lopsided, although egalitarian, partnership. This requires him or her to labor within himself or herself to develop an ability to be abstinent throughout the psychoanalytic relationship. Christopher Bollas (1989, 1992) has called the psychoanalyst’s engagement with the patient “meditative,” which points to the ethical tone of the psychoanalyst’s activity, but which I believe confuses meditation and con‑ templation as distinguished in many spiritual traditions (e.g., Merton, 1959/1968, 1962). Irrespective of this issue, the psychoanalyst’s abstinence has five interrelated and overlapping aspects, which are as follows. The first mode of the psychoanalyst’s abstinence is that of non‑judgmen‑ talism. That nothing is alien to the psychoanalyst implies that he or she can, empathically, find and tolerate within himself or herself any and every thought or wish that the patient may express. I mean this quite literally. If Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 139 there is anything within the realm of human behavior that the psychoanalyst cannot imagine himself or herself to be capable of doing, then further labors of self‑interrogation are warranted. Obviously, this does not mean that the psychoanalyst would, for example, actually engage in torture and child abuse, or that he or she would actually get whipped by a dominatrix, eat fecal mat‑ ter from the sidewalk, or commit a bestial act. What I mean is that he or she must be capable of understanding how such impulses arise as well as of imag‑ ining and understanding such proclivities within himself or herself (which does not imply that the psychoanalyst identifies with the patient). In short, whatever is in the human repertoire cannot be alien to the psychoanalyst, who must therefore be capable of locating everything in this realm within himself or herself (and doing so with what has sometimes been called “neutrality”). The second mode in which the psychoanalyst is abstinent is in the sense that he or she is committed to non‑reactivity in relation to his or her own anxiety, as well as propensities for fear and anger. Emphatically, this does not imply an emotional non‑responsiveness to the patient. The psychoanalyst is a passionate figure, experiencing a full range of emotions toward the patient, the most important of which is a love that is uncontaminated by narcisstic gratifications (a matter I will discuss below). In the session, the psychoanalyst will also experience, at different times, anxiety, fear, and anger – and he or she will interrogate these emotions in order to use them in the service of the patient’s deeper psychoanalytic engagement. This implies that he or she will neither act on the basis of these feelings nor react to suppress them. In this regard, the psychoanalyst is like the figure of the “spiritual warrior” who smiles at his or her own discomfort, even while in full awareness of it (Trungpa, 1978, 1981/1993). In a colloquial sense, non‑reactivity requires the psychoanalyst’s internal processing by which he or she “gets out of the way” of the patient (which I will mention again shortly). To labor well as a psychoanalyst is to tolerate the anxiety of uncertainty; that is, to assimilate and understand his or her inner anxieties, rather than to react against them or to act to alleviate them (Kurtz, 1989). The strangeness of what‑ ever is unfamiliar and unknown to the psychoanalyst will likely generate such anxiety, at least in some minor measure. Embarking on a psychoanalytic treat‑ ment implies that both the practitioner and the patient will, in slightly differ‑ ent ways, be journeying into the unfamiliar and unknown. However, it is also the case that the psychoanalytic process renders to the otherwiseness of the unconscious all that is familiar and feels known. That is, psychoanalysis makes strange all that initially seems ordinary, because the process necessarily calls profoundly into question the familiar and the known. On the patient’s side, he or she is disabused of the idea that any particular topic can be omitted from psychoanalytic scrutiny. For example, the patient who says “we can discuss everything except the politically sensitive aspects of my employment,” or “I am ready to consider changing anything in my life except my marriage,” has not yet fully entered psychoanalysis. On the practitioner’s side, he or she has to 140 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment challenge internally any moment of certainty about the meaning of what the patient expresses; that is, the psychoanalyst has not merely to allow, but to facilitate actively, an inner process in which his or her convictions are constantly called into question. This process is at the service of the other, the patient, because if the psychoanalyst does not do this, empathic listening deteriorates into various counter‑identifications (the practitioner imagines he or she under‑ stands something because it seems similar to some occurrence within his or her own life’s experiences). The psychoanalyst is someone with a pervasive curiosity, someone for whom everything is strange. To be a psychoanalyst is to allow one’s own world to be shaken up, such that even the ground on which the psycho‑ analyst is inclined to establish his or her sense of self – even matters that make him or her feel “at home” – must be confronted questioningly, deconstructively, in every session. The practitioner thus lives with a sense of strangeness that can readily become a source of anxiety, to which he or she must not react. Another aspect of this non‑reactivity involves the psychoanalyst’s receipt of the patient’s hostility (or, for that matter, the patient’s amorous overtures). The patient’s attacks on the practitioner’s being‑in‑the‑world are expectable (but often arrive in a manner that cannot be anticipated). We owe much to Kleinian commentators for the extent to which they have helped focus and explicate such matters. In receiving the patient’s anger or aggressivity, it obviously does not facilitate the patient’s healing if the psychoanalyst coun‑ ter‑attacks. Indeed, there is a self‑sacrifical aspect and profound vulnerability in the psychoanalyst’s labors. Like a mythic figure, it is as if he or she takes the “poison” of the other (poison that was intended for another) into himself or herself, so as to neutralize it. Not reacting against it (including not react‑ ing by proffering sadistically tinged interpretations of the patient’s behavior), it is as if the psychoanalyst absorbs and metabolizes the patient’s attacks such that they become harmless, and he or she thus creates an opening for the patient to reorient himself or herself to his or her own aggressivity. The third and fourth modes of the psychoanalyst’s abstinence concern his or her non‑seducibility and non‑gratification. The former is the practitioner’s non‑reactivity to the erotic current that inevitably flows reciprocally in every transference relationship; the latter is, less specifically, the psychoanalyst’s refusal of narcissistic gratifications from the patient’s “positive” transference (that is, the patient’s affection, admiration, and so forth). If the treatment is to be successful, the psychoanalyst will love the patient (and occasionally hate the patient as well). But whatever its sensual or sexual dimension and however erotically attractive the practitioner finds the patient, the manifest expression of this love will consistently and strictly be a matter of metta- (in Pali, maitrı- in Sanskrit), chesed (Hebrew), or agápe- (in classical Greek). That is, the psychoanalyst’s sexual feelings may be present, but must never be indulged or expressed manifestly. This is not just an issue of professionalism. Its crucial importance can be understood in terms of the incest taboo and the oedipal situation (with the lifelong challenge of its “resolution,” for every one Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 141 of us). We know that it is disadvantageous for the wellbeing of young children if their caretakers, both male and female, do not have sensual–sexual feelings toward them; however, we also know that it is disastrous if the caretakers express these feelings manifestly and thus violate the fundamental taboo. In parallel, the psychoanalyst will invariably experience erotic feelings for the patient but must – for the sake of the patient’s psychoanalytic treatment – rigorously abstain from their expression. Moreover, like the child in the oedipal situation, the patient needs to feel entirely free to attempt to seduce the psychoanalyst as persistently and insistently as he or she wishes, and then to experience consistently the kindly and non‑judgmental refusal of these seduc‑ tive advances. In short, the psychoanalyst will almost certainly experience sensual–sexual feelings toward the patient, but must be absolutely non‑seducible. The patient must be entirely secure in his or her freedom to express forbidden feelings and wishes, but the practitioner must not react to them in a manner that ignores the law against incest. In short, the prohibition against sensual or sexual engagement between the patient and the psychoanalyst is as dire as that between child and caretaker. Thus, any equivocation or deviation in relation to this crucial dimension of abstinence – before, during, or after the treatment – will inevitably wreck the entire psychoanalysis. There have been so‑called “psychoanalysts” who have seduced or been seduced by their patients; in view of what I have said about the significance of the incest taboo in the formation of the psyche, it seems clear that such clinicians have fundamentally misunder‑ stand the sacred nature of the psychoanalytic relationship, have enacted their characterological problems at the expense of the patient, and cannot ever again be said to be healers. If the principle of non‑seducible abstinence is absolute, it must be said that the more general principle of non‑gratification is complex. Although not seduced into a sensual or sexual relationship, the psychoanalyst needs to be a consistent “good friend” to the patient; by which I mean that he or she practices a sort of intimate “soul force” (nonviolent truthfulness and “lov‑ ing‑kindness”, as in Sanskrit terms such as satya-graha and ahimsa-). The love inherent in this sort of friendship has been extensively discussed in almost every spiritual tradition (e.g., Trungpa, 1981/1993), as well as investigated by contemporary science (e.g., Fehr, Sprecher, and Underwood, 2008). Having the experience of a “good friend,” the patient will undoubtedly go through periods in which he or she may feel intense (and, in a certain sense, genuine) affection or admiration for the practitioner. These are the manifesta‑ tions of so‑called “positive transference” and it is very important, yet virtually impossible, that the psychoanalyst not be gratified narcissistically by these positive transferential phenomena. In short, they may be quite understand‑ ably gratifying to the practitioner’s narcissism, but it is essential that the practitioner labor to deconstruct such gratifications within himself or herself. In terms of the patient’s affection, it is essential that the psychoanalyst fully accepts the patient’s “love” but also, in a crucial sense, does not take it to heart. 142 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment

To the extent to which the practitioner is gratified by the feeling of being loved by the patient, the psychoanalytic process is liable to be stalled. The patient’s love for the psychoanalyst is both genuine and iatrogenic; it is, after all, what is called “transference” (Arundale and Bellman, 2011; Esman, 1990; Little, 1981; Macalpine, 1950; Racker, 1968; Zetzel, 1956). Ultimately, the force of the transference neurosis or transference psychosis must exhaust itself – and I will shortly mention again this aspect of the psychoanalytic trajectory. In terms of the patient’s admiration or idealization of the personality and the professional skills of the practitioner, perhaps one of the most alluring positions that the practitioner can adopt is that of the expert. This is perhaps the easiest trap into which a psychoanalyst can slide, especially because he or she indeed has some sort of expertise not only at listening compassionately with the so‑called “third ear” (Reik, 1948), but also at intervening to address the patient’s resistances to free‑associative discourse. Yet these unusual skills can easily escalate into the practitioner’s construction of an almost irresistible fantasy that he or she knows how to manage the patient’s life better than the patient does (and an admiring patient will often foster this fantasy in his or her psychoanalyst). This is a trap liable to derail the psychoanalytic process, and I will return to this point shortly. Being gratified by the patient’s affection or admiration obviously com‑ prises an intrusion of the psychoanalyst’s narcissism into the trajectory of the treatment process. As I have discussed previously, the main limiting factor, in relation to the success of any psychoanalytic treatment, is the psychoana‑ lyst’s narcissism (Barratt, 1984, 1993). To the extent the practitioner is able to hold his or her narcissistic gratifications in abeyance (to “bracket them out,” in the language of phenomenology), the treatment has fuller potential for success. To the extent the practitioner is gratified by the patient’s affection and admiration, the potential for success will be constrained or curtailed. This point is crucial, and arguably this is the most challenging dimension of the daily task of becoming a psychoanalyst and of implementing the work‑ play of being in psychoanalysis as the clinical practitioner. This brings us to the fifth and final mode of the psychoanalyst’s abstinence, which is the practitioner’s non‑ambition. The psychoanalyst must abstain from having goals for the patient’s life and even, in a qualified sense, for the treatment itself. I have already indicated, in the previous chapter, how the practitioner’s subscription to an ideal of “mental health” is problematic, and that the only aim of the psychoanalyst is to free the patient of repetition‑ compulsivity (a freeing the patient both desires and necessarily resists). Thus, recommendations and advice‑giving have no authentic role in the psychoana‑ lytic relationship even if, directly or indirectly, they always occur to some extent. This issue obviously connects with that of the dangers constituted by the psychoanalyst’s narcissistic investments, and the risks involved in the prac‑ titioner feeling like some sort of expert who knows better than his or her patients how they should conduct their lives. Any sense that the psychoanalyst Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 143 has of being superior to the patient is liable to limit the treatment, and per‑ haps even to derail it. It is the easiest of fallacies to observe the deleterious consequences of someone else’s repetition‑compulsivity and to formulate a critical opinion, such as, “Why don’t they stop doing that to themselves?” (or “If only they would...”); these sort of sneaky narcissistic fantasies amount to the practioner’s belief that, “If only the patient would do as I would do were I in his or her situation, he or she would be so much better off!” Such hubris requires immediate self‑interrogation on the part of the psychoanalyst, since it always constitutes a mistake – in an important theoretical sense, the patient is always doing what is, in the context of his or her psychic reality, both the very best and the only possible thing they can do. The error of what has been called “therapeutic ambition” (against which Freud cautioned practitioners), in which the practitioner has ambitions as to what the patient should achieve in the course of his or her treatment, is a dangerous aspect of the practitioner’s narcissism interfering with the psychoanalytic process. As indicated previ‑ ously, the only authentic intent of the psychoanalyst’s participation in the psychoanalytic process is the facilitation of a discourse that frees the patient from repetition‑compulsivity. So what gratifications are there in being a psychoanalyst and to what values does the psychoanalyst subscribe? The legitimate gratifications are threefold. First, the practitioner needs a livelihood, and cannot treat a patient without the payment of a fee that supports that livelihood. Second, despite the neces‑ sity of remaining abstinent, in the five ways discussed above, the psychoana‑ lyst nevertheless receives the gratifications of knowing that he or she is a sort of “spiritual warrior,” committed to the project of freeing the patient from the suffering engendered by the ailment. Third, the psychoanalyst needs to enjoy the patient, welcoming him or her holistically (with as few conditions as are realistically necessary) even when the latter’s discourse renders the practitioner acutely uncomfortable; by “enjoy,” I mean, quite profoundly, that the psycho‑ analyst must be able to find the joy that is inherent in the patient’s life, as well as to find the joy that arises from his or her relationship with the patient. There are values to which the practitioner adheres that support this enjoy‑ ment of the psychoanalytic workplay with the patient, and elsewhere I have discussed these in terms of the spiritual dimensions of compassion, apprecia‑ tion, and grace (e.g., Barratt, 2004b, 2009a). Psychoanalysis is indeed both a sacred and a sacrificial vocation, an “impossible profession” as Freud desig‑ nated it (Malcolm, 1982). To succeed in a lifetime’s devotion to this calling, without succumbing to what is now fashionably called “compassion fatigue,” requires the psychoanalyst to be someone who thoroughly enjoys his or her life, both inside and outside the consulting room. He or she must be able to enjoy – to find the joy in – life’s vicissitudes, including its inevitable pain and loss. The prerequisites of this “attitude,” accomplished through personal psy‑ choanalysis, are tripartite. First, he or she must be at home in his or her embodied experience, which implies a love of the sensuality and sexuality of 144 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment the self. Second, he or she must accept and be fearlessly ready for the inevita‑ bility of death. Third, he or she must be tirelessly ready and willing to be a formidable foe to his or her own narcissism (that is, to accept as fully as is feasible, and indeed to surrender to, the foundational inadequacy and insuf‑ ficiency of his or her own egotism). Finding nothing alien and everything strange, the psychoanalyst is thus someone who embraces his or her own cas‑ tratedness and deathfulness, yet enjoys life, enjoys his or her own embodied experience, and enjoys the connection with his or her patient. He or she is a warrior for freedom, who surrenders to principles beyond his or her own ­egotism and is committed to intervene against the suffering caused by rep‑ etition‑compulsivity. Such intervention requires not only a sensitivity to the voicings of that which is otherwise than the edifices of “making sense,” it also requires an awareness of the way in which human experience is richly embod‑ ied, inherently castrated, and deathful in every moment of its instantiation.

On the course of the psychoanalytic journey For descriptive purposes, the psychoanalytic odyssey may be divided into three plus one phases. The “plus one” comprises the prefatory procedures – the interaction that the patient and practitioner have before the treatment actually begins. The discursive qualities of the psychoanalytic process typi‑ cally seem to fall into an initial phase, a so‑called “middle” phase, and a terminating phase (although, as will be seen, this is not equivalent to a begin‑ ning, a middle, and an end, as represented in the theorizing of modern narratology). I will briefly offer some notes on each of these in turn.

The prefatory procedures It is well known that complex processes occur in the patient well in advance of any manifest connection with the practitioner, and especially as soon as the decision to contact a psychoanalyst and enter treatment is entertained. In the literature, these are sometimes discussed as “pre‑,” fantasies about what the treatment is going to be like, what the person of the psychoanalyst is going to be like, and so forth. There are also, always, what might be called “pre‑resistances.” This is because, as Freud discussed in 1912, as much as patients know they are suffering, and as much as they may want psychoana‑ lytic treatment, they also want to continue suffering and not to enter the rigors of psychoanalytic treatment – the potential for freedom is always a source of fearful resistance (Castelnuovo‑Tedesco, 1986; Fromm, 1942). In any case, once the patient has contacted the practitioner, there has to be a schedule of meetings for discussion prior to the formal beginning of the psychoanalysis. These are often called the “evaluation,” and it seems proper to make it clear to the prospective patient that he or she is as much assessing the suitability of the practitioner as the latter is assessing whether the individual Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 145

meets the five criteria of suitability for psychoanalysis that I discussed earlier in this chapter. Especially because there is a negotiative aspect to these prefa‑ tory meetings (fees, scheduling, and other matters may have to be agreed), these exploratory discussions need to be explicitly separated from the begin‑ ning of treatment, and their purpose explained as such. This ensures that expectations are clear, at least on a conscious level. I make a practice of sched‑ uling at least two, and preferably never more than three, prefatory appoint‑ ments of an hour’s duration. Two meetings are necessary because the initial encounter can involve distortions of self‑presentation that become apparent in a second meeting; more than two meetings should be avoided because the distinction between “evaluation” and treatment becomes blurred and confused as a transferential relationship develops. In these exploratory discussions, I usually invite prospective patients to tell me as much or as little about themselves as they feel comfortable disclosing, and I warmly encourage them to ask as many questions as they wish. This sets the stage for an egalitarian relationship in which patients come to know that the treatment belongs to them, and that they are under no obligation to con‑ form to whatever they imagine to be my wishes. I never evade such questions and usually respond to them with scrupulous honesty, although sometimes I do refuse to offer a full answer. When I refuse it is either because postpone‑ ment of an answer (and subsequent psychoanalytic exposition of the signifi‑ cance of the question) would be in the patients’ better interest and I tell them so, or because I feel unable to disclose the answer for personal reasons and, when this is the case, I forthrightly say so. During these prefatory discussions, I never worry about how much patients choose to tell me and I am never concerned with getting a history, let alone making some sort of “diagnosis.” Rather, I am interested in the manner in which patients convey whatever information they choose to offer me. Patients need to know that they are entering psychoanalysis of their own free will. So it seems imperative that the practitioner make every effort not to be construed as coaxing or cajoling the patient into treatment (or away from it). Persuasion never has a role in the psychoanalyst’s functioning. In the con‑ text of these prefatory meetings, encounters that commence seductively rarely function well as long-term relationships, and this is most true of psycho‑ analysis. Although the transmission of information or recommendations is unavoidable in these meetings, care needs to be exercised as to how the nature of the treatment is explained to prospective patients. Analogies to other enterprises do not help the patient, who needs at least some depiction of the conditions of the experience of being in psychoanalysis. Finally, if the newly formed partnership is to embark on psychoanalysis, then these prefatory meetings have to conclude with fastidiously clear understandings about mat‑ ters such as: the amount and mode of conveyance of the fee; the regular sched‑ uling of 50‑minute sessions at three, four, five, or six per week; the obligation to pay for the practitioner’s time if the patient misses appointments; how 146 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment much annual vacation the psychoanalyst schedules and when it is likely to be for the period of the next year or two; the necessary arrangements for the exclusion of third parties; and so forth. It is pointless to make the patient sign a contract, as some clinicians do; indeed, all explicit talk of contracts and agreements usually comprises an obstruction to the initiation of a psychoana‑ lytic process. Nevertheless, the patient needs to emerge from the prefatory meetings with a clear idea as to the practical arrangements for the process on which he or she is to embark.

The necessity of the initial phase There is an initial phase of treatment that lasts far longer than novice practi‑ tioners typically anticipate, and there is a grave danger that the novice will imagine that the processes necessary in this phase can somehow be accelerated or attenuated. It is a common phenomenon that, in the earliest sessions of the treatment, or even in the prefatory meetings, the patient will disclose – in one way or another – much of the deepest dynamics that contribute to his or her suffering. Frequently the practitioner will believe – correctly or incor‑ rectly – that he or she quickly knows much about the reasons for the patient’s suffering, as well as what must be accomplished to effect some relief. However, such knowledge – if that is what it is – must be set aside, and may or may not prove useful to the practitioner during the middle phase of the treatment. Premature interpretations, including content‑oriented interpreta‑ tions of the initial resistances, achieve nothing and often arrest the deeper development of a genuinely psychoanalytic process. Before discussing what I believe has to be achieved in this initial phase, the presentation of the “fundamental rule,” and some considerations regarding the use of the couch warrant our attention. Sometime during the first session or first week of sessions with the patient on the couch, the psychoanalyst will usually say something about the so‑called “fundamental rule.” This has been the case ever since Freud discov‑ ered free‑associative method to be the sine qua non of psychoanalytic process. In the early years of the discipline, practitioners would instruct patients: “You must say everything that comes to mind without censorship.” However, since the patient cannot possibly follow such an injunction, this sets him or her up for an experience of failure; moreover, the tone of the instruction is distinctly authoritarian and this needs to be avoided. Modifying the instruction to say “You should try to say everything…” scarcely alleviates the problem. Also, we now understand an essential axiom of any successful psychoanalysis, namely that it is as important to understand the censor as it is to understand what is censored. Consequently, although the rule remains fundamental, contemporary practi‑ tioners now usually say something more nuanced to their patients (and expect to have to voice it more than once). I typically say something like this to my patients: Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 147

It is helpful if you try to say aloud everything that comes to mind, even if it seems irrelevant, even if it seems rude or is about me, and even if it is the sort of thing that you would never say in ordinary conversation. However, I know it is very difficult to say everything that comes to mind and, if you find yourself unwilling to say something that occurs to you, then perhaps what is most important is that we talk together about why certain things might be difficult to say aloud to me.

Of course, for many (but far from all) patients, the use of the couch with the invisibility of the psychoanalyst makes the openness of saying things that are usually omitted from ordinary conversation somewhat easier. The use of the couch is profoundly important (and in my opinion should not be used in psychotherapy). It is possible to engage in a psychoanalytic process without its aid, but in psychoanalysis I tell those patients who ask that there are three reasons for its use.

1 It is easier for the patient to listen to whatever comes to mind (or, more precisely, whatever arises in his or her “bodymind”) if he or she is not distracted by monitoring my behavior, especially my facial or postural expressions and variations. 2 It is easier for the patient to listen to internal sensations, thoughts, and feelings, if he or she is physically as comfortable and relaxed as possible, which usually means lying down rather than seated upright. However, this is not always the case (for example, with some patients with spinal problems) and I have conducted the treatment of some patients seated upright but with their back towards me. 3 It is easier for me, as the psychoanalyst, to listen to the patient if I do not have to worry about distracting him or her with my facial expressions, with adjusting my seated position, scratching, yawning, and so forth.

In addition to these three ostensible reasons, there are, of course, some additional advantages to the patient’s prone position on the couch – I will mention three reasons which often go unacknowledged in the literature.

4 It facilitates a different orientation to the subtle energy systems of the body (Barratt, 2010a). If this seems implausible, consider the converse situation – the fact that teachers of yogic meditation invariably require students to keep their spinal column vertically straight and never advocate meditating in a prone position (Johnson, 1996). 5 Given our ontogenetic history, lying down in a relaxed manner usually facilitates access to early feelings, including preverbal promptings, lis‑ tening to which is essential for the success of the psychoanalytic process (again, more accurately, we need to describe this as opening, expressing, listening…opening, expressing, listening … and so on). This is also why material 148 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment

that is designated “regressive” is more likely to surface with the use of the couch, as indeed has been discussed extensively in the literature (e.g., Gill 1984; Klauber, 1976; Winnicott, 1955; Wolf, 1995). 6 ‘Using the couch also signals whose suffering is being attended to, and whose is not. As Vassi (1984) and others have discussed, horizontality connotes and promotes intimacy. Psychoanalysis is an intensely intimate relationship, although the expression of intimacies is mostly unidirec‑ tional, and indicative of this is the arrangement in which the patient is supine while the psychoanalyst is seated upright. Critics of psychoanaly‑ sis, including no less than Jean-Paul Sartre, have suggested that this reflects a shabby motivation on the part of the psychoanalyst, namely to establish a differential of authority and power. Moreover, since such an authoritarian assertion of power can easily have sexual connotations, feminist commentators in particular have also understandably criticized the prone positioning of the patient. Sadly, I think these criticisms are often valid, especially for those ill‑trained “psychoanalysts” who wish to hide themselves behind their role or who enjoy their misuse of an ill‑begotten authority. However, there is a more benign and profound aspect to this issue, which is that the prone position indicates whose suf‑ fering is, so to speak, “center stage.” This is important because, since the success of any psychoanalytic treatment is mainly limited by the extent to which the psychoanalyst’s narcissism is held in abeyance, a physical arrangement that can and should reflect the psychoanalyst’s responsibil‑ ity for narcissistic abstinence may actually facilitate the deepening of a genuinely psychoanalytic process.

In this initial phase, the psychoanalyst has five responsibilities that serve to facilitate the patient’s movement into an authentic – “middle phase” – psychoanalytic process. These are, in a certain sense, educative. The psycho‑ analyst’s tasks are as follows.

1 It is the psychoanalyst’s responsibility to establish and maintain a sustain‑ able setting and structure for the treatment – to set the “analytic frame” or establish the so‑called “holding” or “facilitating environment” (Donnet, 2005; Stone, 1977). This means that the conventions that contextualize the process must be secured, including but not limited to: (a) the setting of appointment times as well as the scrupulous punctuality, consistency and reliability of the psychoanalyst; (b) the protection of session times against any sort of interruption or intrusion, and we might note here that Winnicott (1955) suggested that psychoanalysis cannot take place in the physical space of a corridor; and (c) the payment of fees in a regular and diligently monitored manner; and so forth. Quite typically, the patient will need to test the resilience and durability of the psychoanalytic frame, often by enactments against the times of appointments, the timely and Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 149

correct payment of fees, and so forth. It is essential that the psychoanalyst articulate explicitly the reasons why the “frame” of the treatment is being held firm. There is no purpose whatsoever in the practitioner attempting to forbid the patient’s enactments, either in the initial phase or later on – and this is why I indicated earlier that “contracts and agreements” accepted by the patient prior to treatment are useless or worse. The only way to address acting‑out (or “acting‑in”) is either by interpreting its adaptive advantage to the patient (for example, of adaptively ensuring that the treatment’s frame is indeed secure by embarking on an experimental attempt to dis‑ mantle or damage it), or by interpreting the patient’s difficulty in tolerat‑ ing and modulating whatever affect is triggered by the initiation of a psychoanalytic process. Indeed, with regard to the former, it will be noted that, in this specific sense, the patient’s acting‑out against the treatment is to be welcomed by the psychoanalyst as an opportunity to establish explicitly the safety and reliability of the treatment’s “frame.” The psycho‑ analyst’s attempt to prohibit, in an authoritarian manner, any enactment (including those that are life‑threatening) will only produce a situation in which the relevant dynamics “go underground” – so to speak – where they become far more difficult to address interpretively. 2 It is the psychoanalyst’s responsibility to help the patient build and explicitly experience a resilient and durable “working alliance” or, as I like to term it, a “workplaying” alliance. In large measure, this means that the patient has to be supported in feeling that it is acceptable and desirable to be able to talk with the psychoanalyst, in the here‑and‑now, about his or her experience of the personhood of, and the relationship with, the psychoanalyst. This sort of talk is usually not acceptable in ordinary conversation outside the consulting room, and it is an educative task (that must be singularly shouldered by the psychoanalyst) to help the patient know that it is not only permitted, but profoundly impor‑ tant, that such an open relationship be developed. This is the major component facilitating an alliance in which the patient experiences the three distinctive aspects of the psychoanalytic relationship – as has been well discussed by Adam Limentani (1986, 1989) and several others. First, the patient must feel – so to speak, in his or her bones – a sense of freedom that anything can be said in the psycho‑ analytic session including, perhaps most of all, those thoughts that are unspeakable in any other context. Second, the patient must also come to feel and trust the intimacy of the psychoanalytic relationship, including the fact that even the most ordinarily unspeakable feelings may surface toward the person of the psychoanalyst. Third, the patient must know, and often test out, the safety or protectiveness of the psychoanalytic rela‑ tionship that, perhaps most of all, means knowing that the psychoanalyst will not judge – will neither condone nor condemn – and indeed will not 150 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment

react to whatever tender, vulnerable, or outright dangerous thought or feeling the patient expresses. 3 It is the psychoanalyst’s responsibility interpretively to guide the patient toward necessary improvements in his or her ability to tolerate affects, to regulate or modulate these emotions, and to express or articulate their feelings verbally as far as it is possible for them to do so. This is often called one central aspect of the “containing” function of the treatment relationship (Steiner, 1994), which is perhaps another way of referring to the functions of the ego organization by which the patient regulates his or her emotional life – affect tolerance, affect modulation, affect verbal‑ ization, and so forth. 4 During the initial phase, it is the psychoanalyst’s responsibility to avoid diligently and strenuously any substantive interpretation of childhood relationships and events, or of the genetic roots of the psychoanalytic relationship (the “transference”). By “substantive,” I mean any interpre‑ tation that addresses the content of such relationships and events in a way that suggests that either the patient or the psychoanalyst consciously understand what that content is or was. In short, the principle here is: No content‑oriented or substantive interpretations during the initial phase (even if the psychoanalyst is bursting to feel helpful, even if the psychoanalyst is convinced that he or she knows “what’s what,” and even if the patient begs for such interpretive closure). It is to be remembered that premature interpretations only serve to arrest the deepening of the discourse into a psychoanalytic process (tardy interpretation is also a problem, but in a different manner). Causal genetic interpretations made in the initial phase are a clear sign of the practitioner’s resistance to the psychoanalytic process. This may seem an overly stringent principle. However, as indicated by the topics covered in Chapters 2 and 3, anything that is discussed about childhood during the initial phase is likely to be found later to have some sort of status as a “screen memory,” and everything that is dynamically relevant is likely to be surfacing in a way that is re‑enactively repeated rather than remembered or meaningfully recollected. Arriving at formu‑ lations that seem like interpretive conclusions is perhaps one of the great‑ est dangers of the initial phase of psychoanalysis, for it actually serves to preempt the deepening process and the dynamic aliveness of what needs to occur in the middle‑phase. 5 That said, in the initial phase it is the psychoanalyst’s responsibility to demonstrate interpretively to the patient how there are three arenas to his or her preoccupations, as well as the way in which these three always reflect and refract each other. This has been well discussed by Hanna Segal (1977, 1969–2006) and others. The three arenas are: (a) what occurs experientially within the context of relationships in the patient’s current life outside the session; (b) what has occurred experientially in Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 151

the patient’s past life; and (c) what is occurring experientially in the cur‑ rent relationship with the psychoanalyst. Given what I just argued about the dangers of premature interpretation, especially of the past, how these three arenas are addressed (and shown to be mirrors of each other) has to be accomplished with caution. In the initial phase of the treatment, we almost invariably find that the patient has greater facility and focus in speaking about one or perhaps two of these arenas, tending to omit at least one and sometimes two of them. For example, it is common to have a patient who for a year or more seems only interested in speaking about problems in a marriage or in the work‑ place, neither childhood relationships nor the relationship with the psycho‑ analyst ever seeming to come to his or her mind. Conversely, we occasionally have patients who speak at length about childhood, leaving us entirely ignorant of anything currently happening in their marriage or their work‑ life. Without being overly directive, it becomes the psychoanalyst’s task to invite attention to whichever of the arenas is being overlooked and to show how helpful it can be to understand the interplay of these three arenas – that is, the way they invariably reflect and refract each other. This is a necessary step toward entering into the so‑called “middle phase.”

Principles of the psychoanalyst’s interventions in the middle phase If the workplay of the initial phase is undertaken well (and it very rarely takes less than a year of full treatment), the patient seems naturally to move into a “middle phase,” in which free‑associative discourse opens in a way that ena‑ bles both patient and psychoanalyst to listen together to the surfacing of unconscious phantasies. If one follows the implications of the four coordinates, one arrives at what is perhaps, in the current context of the diversity of the psychoanalytic move‑ ment, an idiosyncratic view of the role of the psychoanalyst’s interventions in this phase. Obviously, this role is neither merely to support the patient’s cathar‑ tic propensities, nor to formulate the patient’s conflicts narratologically – although both are inevitable aspects of this phase, and both are the major components of much psychotherapy that calls itself “psychoanalytic.” Contrary to any psychotherapeutic procedure, the vital role of the psychoanalyst’s inter‑ ventions is to facilitate this process of the patient’s working‑through as he or she opens and listens, listens and opens, opens and listens, and so forth. This prioritization of free‑associative discourse, and the emphasis on the psychoana‑ lyst’s role in facilitating the patient’s release from his or her resistances to it, is the distinctive healing process that is psychoanalysis. Contemporary commentators from other schools of “psychoanalysis” will notice here – and undoubtedly take exception to the fact – that I have reversed the customary way in which the psychoanalytic process is described. 152 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment

Typically, the literature (including some of Freud’s own writing) will suggest that first the interpreted insight arises and is formulated, then comes its working‑through (or workplaying‑through). I have become convinced that workplaying‑through commences, and insights or interpretations are second‑ ary to these processes – the role of insights or interpretations being to prompt the processes of further workplaying‑through or sometimes as a summation of such processes that have already transpired (like benchmarking a segment of a journey already undertaken). In terms of our account of the scientific method guided by the four coordinates, the crucial point here is that all too often, insights and interpretations have the effect of closing down the patient’s free‑associative discourse, thus actually arresting the vitality of workplaying‑through processes. This point is a facet of the anti‑narratological understanding of the effectiveness of psychoanalytic process that we are dis‑ cussing (Barratt, 1984, 1993). It rests on a slight but significant rereading of Freud’s metapsychology, which will be mentioned again later, and which focuses on how it is freeing from repetition that mobilizes our energies (rather than the arrival at better patterns of repetition‑compulsivity). In this context, there are five principles that I understand to guide the psychoanalyst’s inter‑ ventions during the middle phase.

Principle one: Listening psychoanalytically Any human communication is not merely a signal (operating in the way that all, or perhaps almost all, other species communicate). Rather, it is always polysemous and can thus be heard on multiple levels: factual, interpersonal, and thematic. For example, if I say “There is an apple on the table,” it can be heard factually (even if, in fact, it is incorrect either because I am in error or because I am lying). It can be heard interpersonally as a request, demand, or other mode of wishfulness towards my audience, even if this audience is merely “in my mind” (I mention the apple, because I want something to eat, because I want to share the apple, because I want my friend to give me per‑ mission to eat the apple, because I want to steal the apple, and so on). It can also be heard thematically (I am hungry, I am lacking, I am empty, I am jealous or envious, there is no good nourishment within me, and so on). And, of course, there can be multiple meanings within any of these levels, as well as multiple ways in which meanings can be contradictorily constituted, one obscuring another, and so forth. In the terminology discussed in my 1993 book, these dynamics of repression generate the life of the bodymind as contradictorily polysemous. In effect, the psychoanalyst listens to the patient’s discourse on all these levels with five interlinked questions in mind:

1 What is coming up here (factually, interpersonally, thematically)? 2 Why is it coming up? Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 153

3 Why is it coming up now? 4 Who is talking? 5 To whom is he or she talking?

To listen in this manner implies that the cognitive and affective processes of the practitioner do not so much dissect the meaningfulness of any particular item that comes to the patient, so much as listen to the surfacing of censored thoughts and feelings in the patient’s stream of consciousness or “train of thoughts.” The unconscious emerges – so to speak – not in the particularities of discourse so much as in the sequencing, segueing, and rupturing of the free‑associative movement from one item to the next. By suggesting that these questions guide psychoanalytic listening, I am not implying that there are ever definitive answers to such questions. Nor am I implying that the psychoanalyst has an objectifying attitude toward the patient’s verbal and nonverbal expressiveness. The model of the computa‑ tional practitioner who gathers data observationally and then figures out its organizational significance logico‑analytically is one that has bedeviled American , and one that I have critiqued in several publica‑ tions (e.g., Barratt, 1994, 1995). It should also be noted here that the models of the practitioner who somehow empties himself or herself in order to occupy the symbolic locus of the “dead Father” (as in the Lacanian model), or in order to become a “resonant,” metabolic container (as a sort of ultimate maternal figure, depicted in early versions of Kleinian writing on psychoana‑ lytic method) are also as seductive as they are problematic. Rather, we need to activate the model of the passionately engaged psychoanalyst, who listens deconstructively, in a process that is not merely epistemological, but that comes inherently from the beingness of the practitioner’s personhood. This is the existential and experiential essence of “listening with the third ear,” which is an actively passive, or passively active, mode of listening with “evenly distributed,” suspended, or hovering attention, that requires the psychoanalyst’s rigor in the deconstruction of his or her own judgmental egotism.

Principle two: The priority of process As I have already indicated, practitioners too often get excited by the zealous possibility of providing a narratological interpretation of the content of the patient’s discourse. This is perhaps the most common error of the entire procedure and one that seems to be endorsed by certain models of proper “technique” (see Blum, 1979; Kris, 1956c; Rangell, 1981). This excitability, and the mistakes it engenders, are aspects of the psychoanalyst’s narcissism, which is (as I have indicated in several ways) the perpetual obstacle or limit to the psychoanalytic process. Narratological interpretations may comfort the patient’s egotism and accumulate to the psychoanalyst’s narcissistic sense of 154 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment his or her own cleverness, but more often than not they effectively preempt the patient’s workplaying‑through processes. In engaging and implementing the responsibility to rein in his or her temptation to offer clever, content‑ oriented interpretations, the psychoanalyst is always advised to ask himself or herself repeatedly the question: “If it evident to me, why has the patient not already arrived at this understanding of his or her dynamics himself or her‑ self?” This is a key question, which I recommend to practitioners, because if one asks oneself this conscientiously, one is invariably directed back to the process of the discourse, and the rule in psychoanalysis is that process is always to be listened to, and if necessary addressed, before content. This rule focuses the tenet that patients need to come to understand their own censorious processes – their resistances, both interpersonal and intrapsy‑ chic – and not merely to begin relinquishing this censoring, or to have what‑ ever has been censored interpreted to them by the clinical practitioner. One way to understand how to implement this tenet is as follows. The psycho‑ analyst needs to comment – that is, interpret or intervene – on the processes of resistance, both interpersonal resisting and intrapsychic resisting, before those of transference content, and the processes of transference before any‑ thing to do with history. There are three implications of this.

1 The practitioner never repeats an interpretation that concerns transference or history because, in whatever way the patient has misheard or ignored a content‑oriented interpretation, the priority is to return to the “resis‑ tance” to the interpretation and not to the interpretation itself. 2 If the patient seems to be trying to draw the psychoanalyst into the temptation to interpret such content, then the admonition to question why the patient has not made the interpretation himself or herself becomes all the more salient; the practitioner should never fall into the trap of saying things on behalf of the patient. 3 The authentic curative power of the psychoanalytic process lies not in the interpretation itself but in the interpretation of the patient’s resistance to the previous interpretation. This last point cannot be overemphasized.

What we call “resistance” is obviously crucial here, although it is an egre‑ giously pejorative term and one that we should reword or erase from our professional vocabulary. Freud gave us the term Widerstand and taught us that theoretically there are five kinds or resistance. However, for practical purposes, most practitioners can proceed effectively with three notions:

1 Resistance is any cognitive, affective, or conative position that adaptively constrains or curtails the patient’s ability both to open and listen to his or her own discourse and to share it aloud with the psychoanalyst. 2 Resistances may be intrapsychic (“I know I am experiencing this, but I do not want to express it even to myself”) or interpersonal (“I know Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 155

I am experiencing this but I do not want to express it aloud to my psychoanalyst”). 3 The ability of the psychoanalyst to address resistances for their adaptive significance within the context of the patient’s psychic reality (and thus to hold his or her own “counter‑resistances” and “counter‑transferences” in abeyance) is the critical factor for the success of any psychoanalytic treatment.

This is really one of the most basic principles of psychoanalytic method and the most precious gift we offer our patients. It issues into the next three principles.

Principle three: Understanding optimal outcome This is a very important guide to interpretation, and out of it come several additional “rules.” In clinical parlance, it is often described as understanding the “adaptive advantage” of whatever the patient says or does. This can be confusing because “adaptive advantage” in this context refers to the way in which any particular act is always the optimal outcome of the various con‑ flicts and contradictions operative within the patient’s psychic reality, and it does not refer to the adaptation or maladaptation of the act in relation to the sociocultural and natural environments. Thus, an adaptive act within the patient’s psychic reality may well be highly maladapted in relation to its contemporary context. I will illustrate this with a dramatic example. In the days when I used to attempt to teach psychodynamic principles to resident physicians training in psychiatry, I used to offer them the most gruesome clinical vignette that was currently available (not difficult when practicing in the inner city of Detroit). For example:

A man was brought into the hospital last night; he had come home from work, found his wife in bed with his best friend, taken his shotgun from the closet, shot them both, then run out into the street, taking off all his clothing and dancing about naked, shouting “fuck them, fuck them, fuck them,” whereupon he had been willingly arrested by the police, and had been brought to the hospital’s psychiatric facilities for involuntary admission.

As you might expect, many trainees inwardly roll their eyes at such a tragic saga, declare how “maladjusted” this man must be, and speculate extravagantly about the man’s so‑called “pathology.” So I would then ask them to consider the man’s state of mind at the time of taking the gun out of the closet, and invite them to hypothesize how shooting the two in bed, running into the streets, and getting arrested, might be the very best possible thing this man could do in the context of his psychic reality. This is the crucial shift to thinking in terms of psychic reality, and it is a core method of clinical thinking that distinguishes the psychoanalyst from 156 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment most psychologists. Healing never occurs when we condemn parts of ourselves or hear them being condemned by so‑called “mental health professionals” (or, for that matter, by the judiciary, by teachers, or by religious authorities). Healing occurs both when we come to understand that whatever our thoughts, our feel‑ ings, and our actions (and however much they have caused us to suffer, or got us into trouble), they were the only and optimal possible outcome of whatever we were experiencing at the time, and also when we come to understand that these thoughts, feelings and actions may not be the only and optimal possible option henceforth. In a different terminology, healing occurs with the free‑associative awareness that what we are doing belongs elsewhere, that it was indeed optimal but perhaps in a different time and place (the past‑futures that we inhabit, and that are the truthfulness of our being‑in‑the‑world). This is the gift of freedom from repetition‑compulsivity that psychoanalysis offers. The principle of understanding optimal outcome implies that the psycho‑ analytic approach to mental life repudiates the notion of psycho‑pathology. Although many phenomena may be socioculturally maladjusted, there is an essential sense in which there is no such thing as “mental illness.” One way of theorizing this is that the patient’s representational organization always constructs the best possible compromise as it encounters the three conflicting forces with which it has to deal (the internal force of the drives, the force of external factors, and the internalized force of the “superego” or “ego‑ideal”). Since this is indeed the case, the judgment of “illness” is always from the standpoint of sociocultural normativity. In this regard, I believe that there is much to admire in the writings of the “anti‑psychiatry” movement (e.g., Basaglia, 1968; Cooper, 1967; Jacoby, 1975; Kotowicz, 1997; Laing, 1960). Given this standpoint (which in my view is the really valuable contribution of the past 80 years of structural–functional or ego–psychological theorizing), there are at least three guidelines to improve psychoanalytic interpretation or intervention.

1 The psychoanalyst’s comments need to be, so to speak, “on the side of the ego organization,” which means that they address the optimal outcome or the “adaptive advantage” in the context of the patient’s psychic reality of all the phenomena (thoughts, feelings, actions) presented by the patient’s material, regardless of the suffering or maladjustment they engender. Thus the psychoanalyst actively interprets resistances not by opposing them, but rather by showing how necessary (and thence unnecessary) they seem to be to the patient for his or her wellbeing and equanimity. 2 As indicated in our discussion of the qualities of the psychoanalytic atti‑ tude, the psychoanalyst’s interventions are scrupulous and, in the best possible sense, neutral. That is to say, psychoanalysis is not about judging whether the patient is functioning well by prevailing sociocultural stan‑ dards; nor is it about judging whether what the patient does is moral or immoral. It is also not about judging whether the patient’s drive Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 157

propensities are being over‑ or under‑indulged; nor is it about judging whether the patient’s actions are “mature” or “immature” according to some preconceived developmental schema. The psychoanalyst does not stand on the side of some endpoint of “healthy development.” He or she does not stand on the side of “reality,” because this could only mean his or her construction of “reality” (which would thus place him or her in an authoritarian position as a self‑proclaimed expert on what “reality” is). Nor does the psychoanalyst stand on the side of the so‑called “superego” (or the “ego‑ideal,” for that matter), because psychoanalysts are not priests, professional philosophers, or policemen. The psychoanalyst does not stand on the side of the so‑called drives (which would revert to stand‑ ing for or against the superego). Rather, if the psychoanalyst takes “sides” at all, he or she stands for the compassionate and graceful appreciation of whatever the patient’s ego organization has achieved for itself. 3 While not aggrandizing the patient as “hero,” there is always a sense in which the patient is indeed the survivor of tragedy. Interpretations have to acknowledge this motif, which inheres to the entire sociocultural loca‑ tion of the psychoanalytic Weltanschaung (as will be mentioned again in the next chapter). And yet, interventions must not fall into the trap either of disempowering the patient as victim, or of pretending that his‑ tory can ever be redone. In relation to this latter point, it might be noted that talk of “re‑parenting” (or of the practitioner’s providing a “corrective emotional experience” as Franz Alexander suggested) is as fatuous as it is seductive, and results in a sort of “re‑entrapment” of the patient within the strangulations of repetition‑compulsivity. Since tragically the patient is both/and yet neither/nor victim and hero, it is advisable for the psy‑ choanalyst to be mindful of the simple fact that being a psychoanalytic patient is both the most narcissistically gratifying experience (even one’s most ardent lover will never listen to you as well as your psychoanalyst should) and perhaps the most narcissistically devastating experience that he or she will ever encounter (for it eventually lays bare our every foible).

Principle four: The importance of timing and languaging In psychoanalysis, the processes of workplaying‑through proceed slowly and, as I have mentioned, any ambition to speed them up comprises an egregious error that inevitably aborts the curative power of the treatment. The timing and languaging of the psychoanalyst’s intervention are crucial aspects of the practitioner’s craft. When I consider these aspects, I often think about prin‑ ciples that come from my adopted tradition of spiritual practice; namely, that one should strive to approach every circumstance in life with compassion, appreciation, and grace (as mentioned in the previous chapter). In the context of psychoanalytic intervention, I have five “rules” pertaining to the timing and languaging of the psychoanalyst’s approach to the patient. 158 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment

1 The timing and languaging of interventions needs to be geared consis‑ tently to the locus of the patient’s anxiety and affect (which implies that the psychoanalyst’s anxiety and affect are lesser considerations). An inter‑ pretation that does not resonate with, so to speak, the “ego organiza‑ tion’s” current point of maximum struggle with the handling of conflict will almost certainly not contribute to the patient’s capacity to open and listen, listen and open, open and listen; indeed, it will be, subtly or not so subtly, detrimental. 2 In terms of the practitioner’s inner functioning, the timing and languag‑ ing of interventions needs to be impromptu. That is, characterized by the psychoanalyst’s attunement to the patient, by his or her emotional engagement, and by his or her capacity for a certain sort of spontaneity (e.g., Klauber, 1987). This emphatically does not mean that “anything goes,” but rather that the psychoanalyst’s interventions should indeed be alive and lively. If I labor over the formulation of my interventions, I am usually well advised to take this as a signal that I am not sufficiently immersed in the patient’s material. If I find myself wanting to intervene rather than to listen further, I am usually advised to take this as a signal that I am again not adequately immersed in the patient’s material. And if I find myself making interpretations in a way that is temporally or linguistically routinized (for example, making a practice of offering a summative commentary at the end of each session), I am definitely advised to take this as a signal that I am not properly immersed in the patient’s material. However, I again want to emphasize that this princi‑ ple is not license for “wild analysis” or the idea that “anything that comes into the practitioner’s head” or that “resonates” with the practitioner, must be useful to communicate to the patient. This is far from the case. Indeed, it is indicative of serious irresponsibility, if not outright malice, on the part of the clinician. 3 If these two “rules” are followed, at least three additional guidelines, and probably more, become evident. The first is that the psychoanalyst’s interventions should never be longer than three sentences. This is because if one intervenes where the anxiety and the affect are most salient – as indeed one should – then the patient will not be able to assimilate any‑ thing more than that. Second, the psychoanalyst should never repeat an intervention, even if asked to do so by the patient. This is because again, if one interprets where the anxiety and the affect are most salient, and if the intervention is then not heard by the patient, it becomes more impor‑ tant to address the resistance than to attempt to override it (again, it is more important to understand the operation of the censor than to reach prematurely for the content of whatever has been censored). The third guideline is that the psychoanalyst should never justify his or her inter‑ ventions to the patient. By “justify,” I mean that the psychoanalyst should not explain how he or she arrived at whatever interpretation is Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 159

being offered. Justification is for collegial consultation, for supervision, and for other modes of psychoanalytic learning. It does not benefit the patient, nor does it contribute to the deepening of a psychoanalytic pro‑ cess. Psychoanalysis is not about the patient coming to understand the functioning of the psychoanalyst’s mind; it is about the patient coming to open and listen to the flow and functioning of his or her own body‑ mind, and it is about the psychoanalyst facilitating these processes. Here I take issue with the ideas of Sterba and others (see Mitchell, 1995). For example, it has been suggested that the efficacy of psychoana‑ lytic treatment lies in the patient’s coming to identify with the practitio‑ ner’s ego‑ideal (e.g., Sachs, 1925), superego (e.g., Alexander, 1925; Strachey, 1934), or self‑observing ego (e.g., Sterba, 1934, 1944). However, while such identifications may be therapeutic, I would insist that psycho‑ analytic healing is not achieved by the patient coming to identify with any aspect of the psychoanalyst’s functioning (just as the clinician’s capacity for empathy should not be a matter of his or her identification with the patient). Indeed, however flattering such identifications may be to the practitioner’s narcissism, they serve only to limit or curtail the deepening of the patient’s psychoanalytic process. Identifications are positions of self‑alienation and, if this were to be how healing occurs (that is, by the formation of new identifications), there would be far quicker ways to achieve it than psychoanalytic treatment. The formation of new identifications is not – perhaps with some limited exceptions – a psychoanalytic process. One exception might be as follows. It is often warranted for the psychoanalyst to ask questions; while it is true that a patient will initially respond to such questions from the standpoint of the censor, questions can serve to facilitate the patient’s curiosity about his or her own processes of censorship. In a sense, calling things into question is at the heart of the effectiveness of the psychoanalytic process in healing the interior relatedness of the patient’s functioning; and it in this sense that the patient may be said to be adopting the psychoanalyst’s attitude that life is a matter for enjoyment and curiosity, whatever its vicissitudes. 4 If a deepening and intensifying psychoanalytic process of the patient’s workplaying‑through is to occur, then the timing and languaging of the psychoanalyst’s interpretations have to reflect a certain sort of sensi‑ tivity to the issue of appropriate “derivative depth” as indicated by the patient’s moment‑to‑moment expression of his or her anxieties and affects. This is an area in which the psychoanalyst’s craftiness becomes evident (I mean “craftiness” in the non‑pejorative sense of the word). For example, if the patient’s “ego organization” is, so to speak, reflectively conscious of “feeling annoyed” about a certain topic, then the psychoana‑ lyst’s intervention needs to be worded in terms of annoyance, and not of “feeling hostile” or “enraged.” Conversely, if the patient is feeling mur‑ derously enraged, then talk of “feeling miffed” is going to obstruct the 160 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment

healing process. Novice practitioners are sometimes dangerously slap‑ dash about this sensitive issue. In the terminology of classical psycho‑ analysis, this is the issue of interpretation at the appropriate level of the “drive derivative.” To address the patient at a drive derivative level too far from the rawness of the drive will usually communicate to the patient the practitioner’s failure to appreciate the patient’s actual experience; additionally it will often lead the patient to conclude that the psycho‑ analyst himself or herself is fearful of the drive and unable to hear its reality. Conversely, to address the patient at a level closer to the raw drive will usually not only communicate to the patient the psychoanalyst’s empathic failure, but will often frighten the patient who consequently experiences the psychoanalyst as actually stimulating and provoking the drive in a manner that is unwarranted. 5 The concern that interventions be pitched at the appropriate drive deriva‑ tive level – with the concomitant issue as to whether the patient is going to experience the psychoanalyst as afraid of the drive or as wantonly pro‑ voking it – dovetails with my fifth and final point about the timing and languaging of the psychoanalyst’s interventions. This concerns the psy‑ choanalyst’s craftiness in assessing how the patient is going to hear an interpretation in the context of the currently prevailing transferences. Recall my earlier remark about how the psychoanalyst not only listens with questions such as What is emerging? Why it is emerging? Why it is emerging now? and Who is talking? (that is, with whom is the patient iden‑ tifying in talking the way he or she is), but also listens with the question To whom is the patient talking? After all, in terms of the power of uncon‑ scious phantasies, the patient is rarely talking to the person that the psy‑ choanalyst takes himself or herself to be. Rather, the patient is always talking to, or talking with, various dramatis personae constituted by the entire historicity of his or her life experiences. So if a particular transfer‑ ence prevails at the moment the psychoanalyst offers an interpretation, the intervention will be heard as coming from that transferential figure. Let us briefly take the example of a female patient who had an abusive Mother as well as a Father who exhorted the child not to speak of the Mother’s cruel behaviors. The patient is currently in a predominantly benign paternal transference with me, and in the session she is struggling with beginning to recollect some of the painful experiences she had at the hands of her Mother. Let us now suppose I empathize with her struggle around not wishing to remember these unpleasant events of her child‑ hood, and I address her resistance by saying something like, “Perhaps you feel it would be easier if you could forget these events.” From the stand‑ point of the patient’s ego organization, this comment may be a flawless formulation of the resistive side of her struggle, and indeed she may even feel movingly relieved by the way I correctly summarize a major aspect of her feelings about the internal conflict. However, from the standpoint Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 161

of the current transference, my comment is a disaster; because the patient hears me as if I am in reality the Father who colludes with his wife’s cru‑ elty by telling the patient that she should keep silent about the abusive treatment she has suffered at her Mother’s hands. It can be seen from this brief example how the practitioner’s awareness of the transference posi‑ tion from which the patient is going to hear his or her words can make a critical difference to the effectiveness of the psychoanalyst’s intervention.

Principle five: Getting the psychoanalyst’s “self” out‑of‑the‑way! Everything presented thus far has implied the essentiality of this last princi‑ ple. It is, of course, the reason that becoming a psychoanalyst requires under‑ going at least one full course of personal psychoanalysis and a lifetime of ongoing self‑interrogation. And it is the reason being a psychoanalyst is a calling, not a career, and that to be a “good enough” practitioner of this craft demands a lifelong dedication to these processes of personal workplay. In the terminology of several spiritual traditions, there is no such thing as an “ego‑ less” practitioner, or, in a slightly different terminology, a practitioner whose “egotism” is entirely in abeyance (wholly “bracketed out,” to use the jargon of Husserlian phenomenology). Sadly, there are some deluded practitioners who treat themselves as if they are “fully analyzed,” or who secretly maintain similar self‑congratulatory beliefs about their superiority. Such beliefs pro‑ foundly limit or even endanger their capacity to practice psychoanalytically (even when they appear to be professionally successful in this field). This is because it is always the patient who suffers the practitioner’s narcissism and often in ways that are quite recondite. Perhaps one of the most important tenets of psychoanalytic practice is to interpret or intervene with this aphorism always in mind. To reiterate, the psychoanalyst’s narcissism constitutes the perpetual obsta‑ cle or limit to the success of the patient’s psychoanalytic process. The psycho‑ analyst is not a passionless computational figure, who observes data, logically infers their significance, and then delivers authoritative pronunciamentos designed to goad the patient into an insightful mode of self‑alienation. Nor is the psychoanalyst a figure who is emptied, emotionally disengaged, and relentlessly opaque, into or toward whom the patient pours his or her pro‑ jected narratives in order to have them interpreted back (the ultimately con‑ taining Mother, or the symbolic locus of the dead Father). Nor is the psychoanalyst some sort of interpersonal or intersubjective partner, who coaches the patient into better ways of conducting his or her relational life. As practitioners we endanger our patients whenever we believe that our persona does not influence the course of the treatment – that is, if we believe ourselves to be objective, neutral, emptied, “fully analyzed,” or whatever. We also gravely endanger the treatment whenever we believe that its course depends on the “adaptation” and “maturation” of our individual persona (and 162 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment that our personality should thus shape the treatment). This is the idea that the practice is not a scientific method (in the broad usage of the notion of science, Wissenshaft); rather, a process in which the patient can aspire to achieve the practitioner’s level of “adaptive maturity,” but certainly not go beyond it, let alone go his or her own way. This is the emulative model of treatment, the notion that the practitioner teaches a version of the “facts of life” and makes himself or herself available for identificatory attachments, coaching the patient into improved self‑ and object‑relations. While this may be an apt description of what occurs in most psychotherapies, it is not psychoanalysis. Rather, in psychoanalysis, it is imperative that the practitioner engage in a perpetual process of self‑interrogation or what might be called a deconstruc‑ tive internal dialogue, and it is imperative that the practioner also be passionately engaged with the patient – in the manner I described earlier. This final principle of the psychoanalyst’s “self” getting out of the patient’s way revolves around the epistemic and emotive “attitude” of the practitioner. It is directly or indirectly discussed in all the literature on the uses, misuses, and abuses of “counter‑transference” (Arundale and Bellman, 2011; Esman, 1990; Little, 1981; Macalpine, 1950; Racker, 1968; Zetzel, 1956). I am employing this term not in the narrow sense as referring to the emotional reactions of the psychoanalyst to the patient’s transference phantasies, but in the more inclusive sense as referring to the totality of the psychoanalyst’s personal feelings and opinions as they arise within the psychoanalytic rela‑ tionship (that is, not only reactions engendered by the patient, but all the other aspects of the practitioner’s personality). As I have discussed, the psy‑ choanalyst is passionately engaged, as one who listens and self‑interrogates deconstructively, which implies that the treatment proceeds from a willing‑ ness to put his or her egotism at risk. It also implies that interpretations or interventions are made with an attitude that might be characterized as the practitioner’s willingness to prioritize his or her own dialectical self‑interro‑ gation. This is an attitude in which the psychoanalyst desires nothing for or of the patient, apart from the payment of the fee, and indeed has no ambition regarding what the process should or should not achieve. Interventions thus arise not only as epistemological events – that is, out of a serious effort to understand whatever is occurring – but also inherently from the beingness of the psychoanalyst’s personhood, a being‑in‑the‑world that is undergoing perpetual deconstructive questioning.

The terminating phase When the treatment relationship is scheduled to terminate is the point at which the patient and the psychoanalyst agree that the psychoanalytic part‑ nership is ready to be superceded by the patient’s ongoing engagement with self‑analytic listening, and when the resistive forces of transference have subsided into the consonant presence of greater equanimity. Notes on psychoanalytic treatment 163

In any discussion of psychoanalysis, one rightly hesitates to think in terms of typicality. However, we have seen that in the intitial phase, the psycho‑ analyst’s role involves addressing resistances, but is also to some degree educa‑ tive. In the so‑called middle phase, the psychoanalyst comes to have a double role. The active role is focused on addressing the patient’s resistances to expressing himself or herself free‑associatively, as well as resistances to open‑ ing and listening to his or her own trajectory of free‑asociative discourse. The psychoanalyst’s passive role is to be the amenably present recipient of what‑ ever transferential attachments the patient experiences. In many respects, the passive role of the psychoanalyst makes the successful implementation of the active task of addressing the patient’s resistances exceedingly more challeng‑ ing. This was illustrated by the brief clinical example, offered in the previous section, of addressing a resistance (“perhaps you feel it would be easier if you could forget these events”) in a manner that is formally correct, but woefully ignorant of the transference paradigm in which it is heard as a Father exhort‑ ing the patient to remain silent about abuses she has suffered. The challenge of addressing resistances effectively with an awareness of how the patient is going to experience the intervention in terms of present and future transfer‑ ences is considerable – and herein lies much of the skill of the practitioner. If the treatment does not stall, what usually occurs in the so‑called middle phase is the effusion of various manifestations of “transference‑neurosis” and transference‑psychosis” (e.g., Abend and Shaw, 1991; Hoffer, 1956; Little, 1981; Loewald, 1971; Reed, 1994; Wallerstein, 1967). In practical terms, what this means is that the patient’s life (in work, in love, and in play) outside the consulting room typically becomes easier, just as his or her experiences in the consulting room become increasingly awful. The notion of the transfer‑ ence‑neurosis and transference‑psychosis implies a gathering together of transference reactions and the direction of their intentionality toward the person of the psychoanalyst. Thus, in the middle phase, the patient’s suffering typically comes to be focused in the experience of the treatment relationship, an eventuality that is both painful and beneficial. Gradually, however, it is as if the force of the various manifestations of transference‑neurosis and transference‑psychosis exhausts itself. It is as if, for both parties, a certain sort of “boredom” comes to permeate the workplay of psychoanalytic listening. This is not the boredom of defensiveness, which usually serves as a cover for anxiety, anger, or the frustration of hidden long‑ ings. Rather, it is the joyful equanimity of the compassionate witness – the boredom that Giacomo Leopardi (1817–1837) described as being “the desire for happiness left in its pure state.” Moreover, as the grip of the transfer‑ ence‑neurosis and transference‑psychosis is loosened, the patient comes to accept the futility of such longings, becoming perhaps sadder and wiser through this surrender to this present. This is a sort of partial release from the subject’s imprisonment in repetition‑compulsivity, and concomitantly the patient begins to embrace the castratedness and deathfulness of his or her 164 Notes on psychoanalytic treatment subjectivity. Although sadder and wiser, he or she arrives at a newly found freedom to enjoy life because (as crisply expressed in the humanistic aphorism made famous by Lorenzo de’ Medici, quoted by both Freud in 1924 and by Sterba 50 years later) “he who wants to be joyous should be so, for there is no certainty about tomorrow” (see Unger, 2008). Living with the aleatory processes of uncertainty, and with the necessity of forever opening, expressing, and listening to the voice of what is otherwise within us, comprises the healing wisdom that psychoanalysis offers us. Typically, as the patient and the psychoanalyst together come to the realiza‑ tion that this is where the psychoanalytic process has arrived, a date to termi‑ nate the treatment relationship will be set. In my experience, it is usually advisable to set this date six months to a year in advance. What commonly occurs is that, as soon as the date is agreed, there is a resurgence of the patient’s transference experiences, including those that seemed to have been workplayed‑through exhaustively. However, this revivification lacks the vigor of the former manifestation of these transferences and, perhaps with some grieving, they quickly subside and the patient resumes the quietly joy‑ ful equanimity that brings the psychoanalytic relationship to its conclusion. At the time of termination, the patient may or may not be a model citizen, adapted to the sociocultural environment; rather, as will be discussed in the next chapter, there is a spiritual and politically-critical momentum to psy‑ choanalytic inquiry that will often impact the life of the patient after the conclusion of the treatment relationship. What is clear is that, even as the patient may passionately grieve, and yet feel serenely positive, about the loss of the relationship with the psychoanalyst, he or she will approach the con‑ cluding session with equanimity – now knowing and being freer to love, to work, and to play. Perhaps it scarcely needs to be stated that this is the equa‑ nimity of the compassionate witness who joyfully experiences all that life offers, passionately and ethically engaged with the processes of living, yet disinterested in outcome. Chapter 8 Ideology-critique and spiritual–existential praxis

Many have claimed that the discipline of psychoanalysis is heir to the Socratic injunction, Know Thyself! This is both true and untrue, for the method of free‑associative discourse and the exposition of the human condition that arises from it challenge us to reconsider both what we mean by knowledge and whatever we mean by the subject’s selfhood, the individual’s being‑in‑the‑world. From one standpoint, it was obviously a monumental mistake to imagine that a new mode of science, this radical science of healing, could or should be pro‑ tected by a Secret Committee, even if such a cabal were constituted by some of the discipline’s most distinguished pioneers. It has been a momentous error in that it has reverberated throughout the history of the discipline, often disastrously (Bergmann, 1997; Limentani, 1996; Loewenberg and Thompson, 2011). From another standpoint, psychoanalysis was, and is, not just another ordinary science, but rather an enigmatic and extraordinary science that war‑ rants special considerations (Kuhn, 1962). To understand the radical heart of psychoanalysis has always required a reconfrontation with fundamental ques‑ tions about the human condition – the character of its subjectivity, the trajec‑ tory of truthfulness, and the systems of meaning within which we conduct our lives, including the cultural and political nexus. The Socratic heritage took a quantum leap, as if into the abyss and surely into an unknown and unknowable future, with the Freudian exposition of the repressed unconscious. This exposition indicts self‑consciousness (by which we mean the capability of consciousness to reflect on its own contents and operations so as to generate representations of its own representational proce‑ dures). The method of psychoanalysis shows us that human self‑consciousness is structured such that it can never become transparent to itself, for it is inces‑ santly engaged in a repudiation of the desires that animate it. In this sense, the repressed unconscious that Freud in 1900 declared the truthfulness of our psychic reality (das eigentlich reale Psychische), our being‑in‑the‑world and our soul, forever remains unknown and ultimately unknowable to the edifices of representation. With this critical exposition of the unsurpassable fissure that marks the human condition, the method of free‑associative discourse wrecks the metaphysics of unilinear time, as fondly assumed by the traditions of 166 Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis western philosophy, returns us to the sensual and anarchic fundamentality of our embodied experience, and compels us to embrace the inherent castrated‑ ness and deathfulness of our subjectivity. However courageously and wholeheartedly it has been undertaken (even unto the logic of the Socratic suicide), the ambition of self‑knowledge has always been associated with the acquisition and formulation of insights, and thus has all too readily and recurrently devolved into a diligent exploration of that which is possibly knowable. All too easily such an exploration devolves into what Freud, from 1895 onwards, called a “working over” of the suppressed – contrasting this with the working‑through involved in the “reappropriation” of the repressed (Barratt, 1984). It devolves into what hermeneutists, from August Boeckh to Hans‑Georg Gadamer, have called “a knowing of the known” – the transformation of “preunderstandings” into the understood (Mueller‑Vollmer, 1998). It is the limitation of insight that it perpetuates the mechanisms of repression. Thus, it is noteworthy that, in 1910, when writing a critique of “wild” psychoanalysis, Freud suggested that arrival at insights is as useful as “a distribution of menu cards in a time of famine.” In stating this, he surely illuminates the significant limitations of this mode of knowing (“knowing about,” as Bion would later call it). In a paradoxical manner, he thus articulates an insight into the ineffectiveness – or at least the limited effective‑ ness – of insightfulness. In stating this, Freud is definitely not suggesting that psychoanalytic wis‑ dom comes through “feeding” the patient with a “corrective emotional experi‑ ence” or via the theatrics of “reparenting” as some would have it, even if this is always an element of what indeed occurs in every psychoanalytic treatment (Alexander, 1946). In my opinion, Adam Phillips may not quite have captured what Freud meant, when he is quoted as saying that “psychoanalysis cannot enable the patient to know what he wants, but only to risk finding out” (Connolly and Martlew, 1999), although risk is certainly involved when one embarks on free‑associative discourse. Rather, I believe Freud was pointing to the issue discussed previously; namely it is an error to assume that first comes the insightful interpretation, then its assimilation or “working‑through.” Rather, the deeply dynamic and changeful processes of workplaying‑through occur (one might say, transmutively rather than transformatively) and insights or interpretations are secondary to these processes, perhaps serving merely as benchmarks along paths already travelled. Parenthetically, this is why Ferenczi said that patients are cured when they are able to engage with themselves free‑associatively, and Lacan argued that the patient is not cured by remembering but remembers because of being cured (Phillips, 1995). Psychoanalysis is thus sometimes characterized as a sort of “practical poetics.” Its discourse has greater similarity with the way in which the writings of a poet such as Étienne Mallarmé draw us into fresh horizons of improbable possibility, than with the way in which the labors of a philosopher such as Wittgenstein lead us toward cogency and coherence (see Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis 167

Bowie, 2008; Kristeva, 1974; Mallarmé, 1897; Rancière, 1996; Wittgenstein, 1921, 1933–1935, 1945–1949). Some psychoanalysts, including myself, have similarly emphasized the character of psychoanalytic discourse as an infinite engagement with questioning (e.g., Bollas, 2008), an unceasing jour‑ ney that is negatively dialectical or deconstructive (Barratt, 1984, 1993) – an aware engagement with the embodied pluritemporality and polysexuality of our psychic reality that never reaches the completeness of a conclusion. With hindsight, we can now add that Freud, in equating insights with the ineffectiveness of menu cards (which are, at best, the promise of nourishment that is to come), was certainly pointing to the way in which the idealization of insights, as the representable edifices of logic and rhetoric, comes to alien‑ ate us repressively from a more spiritual and existential awareness of our embodied experience as estranged beings‑in‑the‑world (or at the very least, their formulation does nothing to disrupt the perpetuation of this alienation). One might say here – echoing Marx – that the power of psychoanalysis does not rest with the arrival of new insights, but with an ongoing exposition of the way in which prior formulations obstructed the expressiveness of our human spirit; this directionality is inherently changeful. In his 1937 essays, Freud alludes to the structural equivalence of a symp‑ tom and an insight – although he did not articulate it in this manner, he thus points to the foundation of our egotism as symptomatic of our suffering. Although somewhat tangential to his main argument in these essays, this is a crucial illumination, because there is a sense in which insights are as repe‑ tition‑compulsive as the formations of the ailment that they supposedly replace, even if they comprise more adaptive or mature formulations by prevailing ideological criteria. This is surely why insights are so valued in the forms of psychotherapy derived from psychoanalytic theorizing. Insights are stases of formulated understanding that perpetuate our alienation from the awareness of our desirous embodiment, whereas the workplaying of free‑ associative discourse against, through, and beyond these formulations is a kinesis that liberates the self‑conscious subject into an estranged awareness of the promptings of embodied desire. As I have argued extensively, against the mainstream of psychotherapeutic endeavors, the distinctiveness of psychoana‑ lytic discourse is the way in which the free‑associative method disrupts repe‑ tition‑compulsivity and thus loosens the grip of its governance over the subject’s being‑in‑the‑world. In this respect, one might venture that self‑knowledge as insight always remains “ontological” (in a modified Heideggerian sense). It may facilitate a transformation from one epistemological position about our being to another, from one insight to another (and this is certainly not to imply that this is entirely unimportant or without significant consequence). But this mode of self‑knowledge neither touches nor radically changes – transmutively – the ontic “beingness of our being.” To express this in another manner, a treatment that idealizes the arrival at insights alters the contents of self‑consciousness 168 Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis

(its being as ens) but not the repressive significance of its structuration (its being as esse). Although I am pirating this terminology for purposes of point‑ ing to the radicality of psychoanalytic discourse, this is a distinction between the epistemological issues of ontology and our grounding in the “ontic” (Barratt, 1983, 1984). Consider this as if it is equivalent to the radical dis‑ tinction between a psychotherapeutic exploration of the actual and possible contents of self‑consciousness and an exposition of the repressiveness of all such contents – that is, an exposing, unseating, unsettling, or even dismantling of the falsifying prerogatives of self‑consciousness as incessantly concealing and revealing what is otherwise than the law and order of the formation of its contents. As has been discussed in previous chapters, the processes of psycho‑ analysis are a deconstructive workplay. The free‑associative method subverts the prerogatives of the narratological imperative and the privileging of insights – whereas psychotherapy, governed by goals of adaptation and matu‑ ration, necessarily gives priority to the re‑formation and reformation of the edifices of representation. This consideration brings us toward an apprecia‑ tion of the radicality of Freud’s discovery of the free‑associative method in terms of its interlinked political and spiritual‑existential dimensions.

Psychoanalysis as ideology‑critique The most cryptic, but nevertheless the most vitally significant, answer to the question – What is Psychoanalysis? – may now be rendered. Psychoanalysis is the discipline that demonstrates the impact of the incest taboo on the forma‑ tion of the human psyche, and it is the method of healing that loosens the human subject’s imprisonment in repetition‑compulsivity. Freud’s germinal discovery is of an interrogative discourse that traverses the ubiquitous fractur‑ ing of the human psyche. This fracturing is an irreparable fault or fissure in which the conscious and socioculturally designated representationality of “I‑ness” is contradictorily engaged with the brio of its own repressed desires. The engagement is incessant because there is, in the words of Freud’s 1912 description, “a barrier separating them” (sie trennenden Schranke). This implies that such contradictoriness is inherent to the human condition and can never be surpassed. Indeed, as Freud writes in the same essay, this is “the most significant result of psychoanalytic investigation of psychic life” (das bedeu‑ tungsvollste Resultat der psychoanalytischen Durchforschung des Seelenlebens). As I have discussed, this repression barrier is the inscription of the incest taboo in the formation of the psyche. Its interrogation cannot remove the repressive feature of self‑consciousness because this barrier, fault, or fissure, is foundational. Yet the expository movement of free‑associative discourse, dis‑ covered by Freud, shifts the subject out of its frozen alienation in repeti‑ tion‑compulsivity and remobilizes the “I” into a vivacious, yet still estranged, re‑engagement with the brio of desire. As indicated earlier, psychoanalytic discourse is not an arrival at fixed understandings, but rather a changeful Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis 169 exposition of the way in which prior understandings have kept us alienated from the desirous heart of our embodied experience – a loosening of our attachment to “fixation points” that are repetition‑compulsive. The character of this freeing from our imprisonment in repetition‑compul‑ sivity has profound and far‑reaching implications for the possibilities of our liberation from the structures of domination and subjugation, with the atten‑ dant anguish of all the exploitation, abuse, and violence that occurs within our species, including its seemingly inherent proclivities toward homicide, femicide, infanticide, genocide, and ecocide. As Aristotle argued, humans are political animals and the question to be confronted here is how a loosening of repetition‑compulsivity might be associated with freedom from all these sources of political anguish. In this articulation, the prospect of the subject’s loosening from repetition‑compulsivity, as contrasted with any mistaken proposal that there could be a subject detached from the repetitiousness of representationality (that is, a subject unestablished by the processes of repeti‑ tion) is critical. This is because liberation, on both individual spiritual and communal political levels, cannot be grounded on freedom from repeti‑ tion‑compulsivity, but rather the cultivation of a remobilization as the pro‑ cesses of “repetition with a difference” (Deleuze, 1968; Laruelle, 1986). In this sense, psychoanalysis makes a unique contribution to our understanding of freedom, because it demonstrates the inherent limit to freedom and thus empowers the struggle toward those freedoms that are our authentic human potential (Salecl, 1994). There is no human psyche without the repression‑barrier, and thus no self‑consciousness without the inherent contradictoriness with which the bodymind is structured. As the “law of laws,” the incest taboo is absolutely necessary (even if there is some cultural latitude in its performative interpre‑ tation). However, acknowledgement of these inevitabilities and necessities should not be taken to imply that the prisonhouse of repetition‑compulsion cannot have its windows flung open, that there is no such thing as “surplus repression,” that self‑consciousness has to remain in a frozen state of alien‑ ation, or that observant mindfulness of the “law of laws” implies that we should kowtow to the structures of oppression; quite the contrary. That there has to be a repression barrier does not constitute a rationalization as to why so much gets to be repressed. Rather, psychoanalytic experience comprises an indictment of this surplus repression, exhibiting its dangers to the human spirit. This discipline does not justify the mechanisms by which this surplus repression sustains the ideologies of oppression, abuse, and exploitation, on the interpersonal or social plane. On the contrary, psycho‑ analysis offers us new ways of considering how the “law of laws” as an absolute necessity need not entail our obedient conformity to all its extensions or extrapolations. Indeed, psychoanalysis, as an ethical discipline, subverts the psychological mechanisms by which we routinely endorse all the moraliz‑ ing codes of conduct, value systems, rules, and regulations that embed our 170 Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis sociocultural existence. Indeed, mindful awareness of the significance of the incest taboo in our lives opens us to a margin of free thinking, as the critical locus of a subjectivity that is somehow estranged from all that is, yet that knows nothing to be alien. This then points again to the power of psy‑ choanalytic method as the implicit – and derivatively explicit – critique of ideology. The notion of ideology as the “science of ideas” contextualizes the mission of psychoanalysis as the critical science of the operations of thinking, feeling, and acting that divert us from awareness of our desire in the embodiment of our expe‑ rience. The notion emerges from the European Age of Reason, about a century prior to Freud’s discoveries, with Destutt de Tracy’s five-volume Elémens d’Idéologie (1816–1817), which was notably influenced by Étienne Condillac’s 1756 essay on John Locke’s1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding (see Eagleton, 2007; Mannheim, 1929–1936). However, even earlier than this, in about 1553, Étienne de La Boétie had questioned why people voluntarily subjugate themselves to ser‑ vitude and thus by their obedience perpetuate the structures of domination – questions about ideological functioning that psychoanalytic commentators are still in the process of addressing today. Ideologies are sets of ideas as well as values or attitudes that circumscribe and condition the possibilities of new ideas. Ideologies thus determine nor‑ mative thinking processes, adhering to the foundations of representationality and thus to the very mechanisms by which our ideas are generated, struc‑ tured, and expressed. For the purposes of this essay, every sociocultural, political, and economic formation is characterized by ideology, or more pre‑ cisely by a set of ideologies. Thus, the notion of ideology may aptly be defined as the system of thinking, feeling, and acting by which the dominant forms of social organization are produced and reproduced (see Adorno, 1951, 1965– 1966, 1966; Althusser, 1971; Gramsci, 1926–1934; Horkheimer and Adorno, 1944; Lukács, 1919–1923; Marcuse, 1964; Marx, 1844; Marx and Engels, 1845–1846). In this sense, a set of ideologies, amounting to what might be termed – loosely following Michel Foucault (1966, 1969) – an episteme or masterdiscourse, inevitably determines the sociocultural reality in which we live. Reality is ideologically steeped, in the sense that external realities, as encountered representationally by the ego organization and as phantasmagorically internalized as the so‑called superego and ego‑ideal, are ideologically infused, and inextricably so. Contrary to the perspectives of those psychoanalysts who have broached this topic (e.g., Baranger, 1958; Barnett, 1973; Drake, 1955; Hanly, 1993), there is no stepping out of some sort of ideological web. It is not that some ego organi‑ zations are ideologues, whereas others manage a value‑free appreciation of real‑ ity (Barratt, 1985, 1988a, 1988b, 1990). Ideology is not something the ego organization has, but might reason its way to an exit; not something that is an addendum to its functioning that might somehow be relinquished. Rather, ideologies constitute the ego organization’s contents, as well as conditioning Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis 171 and constraining the structuration and codification of these contents. It is thus not a veil over reality that can be pierced by some sort of “neutralized” phal‑ lic‑rationality (especially since we know that the phallic modality is inherently virile, vanquishing, and vindictive, committed to the ideology of domination/ subjugation with knowledge being treated as a matter of conquest, prediction, and control). Many psychoanalytic commentators depict themselves as anti‑ ideological rationalists, espousing liberal and humanistic ideals against dogma and authoritarianism; yet, whatever the merits of their reflective prudence and deliberative open‑mindedness, the claim to escape the nets of ideology is untenable and even contextually unsustainable. By the inherent rules and regulations of representationality, even the most insightful, or insight‑generating, mode of discourse conveys ideology by the very act of establishing its “truths.” The challenge of truthfulness is thus not to establish new “truths,” as positionalities within the realm of possible dis‑ course. This is the limitation of knowledge as the establishment of certain‑ ties, the formulation of “knowing about” constructions or insights, that are inevitably what Enrique Dussel (1977) called perfected or prototypical “acts of the ontological aristocratic oppressor.” Rather, the challenge of knowing and being in psychoanalysis is to deconstruct the ways in which one’s own presuppositions about self and world actually serve to replicate extant struc‑ tures of oppression, domination, and exploitation. The free‑associative method is, in a sense, the relentless pursuit of uncertainties and indeterminacies that subverts the ideological impositions of representationality, even while not escaping the permeations of ideology. Psychoanalysis, as a processive commit‑ ment to the priority of free‑associative interrogation (that is, of ceaselessly expressing, listening, and opening, so as further to express, listen, and open) comprises in vivo an ethical, experiential, and erotic critique of ideology. Another way to appreciate this is again to consider how psychoanalysis is a commitment to unknowing what appears to be known, rather than to arrive at new positions of apparent knowledge (see Adams, 1995; Barratt, 1990, 1993; Kurtz, 1989). Its method moves against the stagnancy of what are sometimes clinically called “fixation points” (e.g., Yorke and Kennedy, 1987). Although the latter are often conceptualized in terms of a prescriptive developmental scheme, in an important sense these are sociocultural fixation points inculcated within each of us in terms of gender roles and sexual orien‑ tation, as well as pervasive patterns of domination and subordination in what might be called “self‑self” and “self‑other” internalized relations. Concretely, these are the ideological configurations in which we are all imprisoned. It is not that the free‑associative method erases these configurations to mobilize the subject into an unbridled and unregulated state of being‑in‑the‑world. Rather, the method loosens the grip of what are patterns of repetition‑ compulsivity and thus finds the ethicality of the bodymind – an ethicality that is different from the impositions of moral codes and that inheres to the erotics of embodied experience. Against the moralizing and conformist 172 Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis ideologies of adaptation and maturation, psychoanalysis proceeds anarchically and deconstructively, thus undoing – ethically, experientially, and erotically – the ailments that are sustained by surplus repression. The dynamics of surplus repression on the plane of individuality are intri‑ cately associated with sociocultural structures of oppression. We may consider the latter in terms of the way in which the human condition is characterized by the oppression and exploitive abuse – exploitation that masquerades as if it were merely a system of egalitarian exchange – of one individual against another, and one grouping against another, as well as by an unrelenting appetite both for genocidal violence and for behaviors that will almost certainly terminate the species ecocidally. These are ideologically structuralized characteristics of the world in which we live, and they are also individual impulses with which every one of us is neurotically and characterologically tainted. They are reflected both by the individual’s ailment and by what Frantz Fanon (1952, 1961) called the “objective suffering” inculcated by oppressive sociocultural formations, the mediations of which have been so well explored by Albert Memmi (e.g., 1957, 1959, 2004) and others, including those who have variously examined the internalization of domination (Butler, 2005; Watkins and Shulman, 2008). Surplus repression is closely associated with the roots of our hostilities and the motif of domination, which support ideologically the reproduction of extant sociocultural and political conditions. Toward these conditions, it is healing to treat nothing as alien, yet to be estranged from all of it. Psychoanalysis is often criticized for being confined to the couch; this is the unfair complaint that it has engaged only in treating the “wealthy well.” There is usually a hidden supposition in this complaint, namely that the wealthy do not suffer. Against this erroneous platitude, we might recall Dussel’s 1977 argument that “members of the dominant bourgeois class are themselves victims of capital, and the overcoming of capitalism will free them from the slavery exercised over the truly human level of their existence.” By offering this quotation from Dussel’s brilliant work, I do not mean to justify the restrictive availability of psychoanalytic treatment that has charac‑ terized the past 100 years of elitist practice; for if the world were as it should be, psychoanalysis would be available equally to all whose suffering it might relieve. It is true, however, that if psychoanalytic treatment is undertaken authentically, it should untie the affluent from the grip of their ideological commitments, and hence contribute to an alleviation of their role in the perpetuation of oppression. The issue facing every psychological clinician is as follows: To what extent does our practice actually free our patients? Or does it merely make them more comfortably – analgesically – enslaved within the metaphysical assumptions and quotidian ideological forces of their social, cultural, and political environ‑ ment? A genuinely psychoanalytic treatment – and here I am again invoking the contrast with psychotherapy – breaks the patient’s discourse out of ideological recitation. Indeed, it ethically subverts and exposes even the most Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis 173 diligently explored, exhaustively thoughtful, rationally exquisite, and morally responsible discourses of recitation for what they are, namely renovated modes of repression. If we review the history of the psychoanalytic movement to this date, it cannot be said that the discipline has succeeded well in elucidating the mediations between the individual’s surplus repression and the structuralized oppressiveness of the world we inhabit – although there is a valiant lineage of theorists who have focused on this critical endeavor. Despite his conservative tendencies, Freud clearly saw the radicality of the method he inaugurated. Writing in 1910 on the future prospects of his newly discovered discipline, Freud described a situation in which a group of affluent citizens attend a picnic in the country, where the implicit rule is that, if you need to urinate, you announce that you are going to wander away from the group in order to “pick some flowers” (the custom is sexist in that it presumes that “the ladies” require this affectation, whereas “the men” might not). Freud then asks us to imagine an individual distributing a printed notice or flyer to the picnickers that says, “if you need to pee or shit, just say you are going to stroll off to gather flowers” (I have contemporized the language of Freud’s description). Freud refers to this individual as a “mischievous” or even “malicious” person (ein Boshafter), and we may question whether perhaps his conservatism is evident in his use of this descriptor. Clearly, the demystifica‑ tory flyer blows open the pretentious hypocrisy that is politically necessary to sustain the hubristic sense of superiority that perpetuates the ruling class. This is the cherished notion that the oppressors are high‑and‑mighty over others, not only because of their allegedly greater morality and cleverness, but fundamentally because they live at greater distance from their animal nature. The mechanisms by which one can “live at a greater distance from” are ideo‑ logical. The flyer’s distribution thus blows open the ideology inherent in a sociocultural code that positions them as “more cultured” than those ordinary people – the peasants and the proletariat who piss and shit. In telling us this story, Freud anticipates, perhaps with unwarranted optimism, that the lib‑ eratory consequence of the demystificatory act will be that thereafter “the ladies will admit their natural needs without shame and none of the men will object.” Perhaps Freud would have been more realistic if he had predicted that the iconoclastic critic would be brutally ostracized, severely punished, or even lynched, and that a new discourse of superiority, maintaining the social group’s alienation from its bodily impulses, would promptly be developed. However, questions regarding the consequences of demystificatory discourse are not, at this juncture, what is at issue. At the very least, Freud recognizes that the positioning of the psychoanalyst is, implicitly or explicitly, that of a critic of the prevailing ideology. The discipline offers the world, as Freud would come to phrase it some eight years later, “revolutionary and uncom‑ fortable advances” (die revolutionären Vorstöße der unbequemen Psychoanalyse). Both in the 1910 essay on the future prospects of his discipline and also in correspondence with Putnam the previous December, Freud indicated that 174 Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis individual treatment must somehow lead to a confrontation with the com‑ munal disorder. As he later formulated it, in his 1921 essay on the function‑ ing of groups, individual and social psychology are inseparable. However, by 1911 as European politics became more fractious, Freud – at what he later referred to as “the peak” of his clinical career – nevertheless seems to have started becoming increasingly pessimistic about the potential of psychoana‑ lytic wisdom to effect sociocultural change. That year he wrote to Binswanger, “if we accomplish so little therapeutically, we at least learn why it is impos‑ sible to accomplish more,” and 25 years later, just three years before his death, he wrote despairingly to Arnold Zweig that truth is not only unobtainable but that, in any event, “mankind does not deserve it.” Whether or not he endorsed revolutionary change (and clearly in the last 25 years of his life he became more conservative in his general outlook) and whatever the vacilla‑ tions in his assessment of the future of our species, Freud was consistently clear in his understanding that, as he phrased it in his 1915 lectures, the psychoanalytic method of interrogation opens for us “a critical new direction in the world and in science” (eine entscheidende Neuorientierung in Welt und Wissenschaft). In this sense, he knew full well the potential of his discipline for radical sociocultural change. One hundred years after the Secret Committee, we are still far from real‑ izing this potential. We have yet to understand how to take psychoanalytic wisdom from the couch into the streets – so to speak – or even to comprehend the necessity of doing so (Alschuler, 2006; Samuels, 1993, 2001). Yet the truthfulness of Norman O. Brown’s words in 1959 still confronts us: “Once we recognize that talk from the couch is still an activity in culture” it becomes evident that there might be nothing for psychoanalysis to psycho‑ analyze except the sociocultural projections of the prevailing ideologies, “and thus psychoanalysis fulfills itself when it becomes historical and cultural analysis.” Even on the level of de‑ideologizing the individual, such a mission still remains largely unfulfilled. It will remain unfulfilled if the practitioners of Freud’s discipline continue to hold to therapeutic ambitions, because such ambitions of adaptation and maturation treat “reality” as a “given,” rather than as constructed communally by its participants. Hence, the implementa‑ tion of such ambitions reproduces the ideology of the status quo, rather than exposing the damage that such ideology does to the human spirit. The ambi‑ tions of therapy invariably promote the “received consciousness” of the dominant order, whereas psychoanalysis – if practiced under the aegis of the four coordinates – would initiate what Paulo Freire dubbed concientización, the awakening of critical consciousness (e.g., Freire, 1971, 1978). The ideology of individualism and therapeutic ambition is the first of three main ways in which it is evident that Freud’s successors cling to their role as perpetuators of dominant ideologies. The second is that of scientistic mim‑ icry. Through the twentieth century, psychoanalysts were egregiously preoc‑ cupied with a misconceived debate over the scientificity of their discipline, Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis 175

instead of recognizing the character of psychoanalytic discourse as an enig‑ matic and extraordinary science – one that is “negative” in its dialectical and deconstructive trajectory. I have argued that a prime example of this scientis‑ tic mimicry is an attachment to biological models (“developmentalisms”) that describe particular sequences of human development and then claim their “naturalness” and their universality. This installs the specious appear‑ ance of a “science” that peddles a decontextualized and ahistorical image of the challenges involved in being human. Against this program, psychoanalysis actually discloses the ideological underpinnings of positivist paradigms in supporting the status quo by endorsing the apparent “given‑ness” of con‑ structed sociocultural realities. Contrary to the assumptions of such paradigms, psychoanalysis shows concretely the way in which not everything that is can be designated representationally, not everything that fuels our being‑in‑the‑ world can be empirically proven, and not everything that animates our life’s journey is rationally discussable. Thus, psychoanalysis proclaims a “new ori‑ entation in the world and in science” that is antipositivist in its existential implications – for its discourse awakens us to a post‑rational spirituality that is unthinkable to ordinary science. The third way in which Freud’s successors have deformed his discipline by positioning themselves as perpetuators of dominant ideologies involves their attachment to hedonistic and homeostatic models of human functioning as governed by a “mind” that is alienated from the vivacious awareness of our erotic and experiential embodiment. These models are, of course, the images of human nature concordant with capitalist social formations, in their mer‑ cantile, industrial, and advanced or globalized manifestations. Against such images, psychoanalytic methods – as now opposed to the discourses of psy‑ chotherapy – demonstrate that healing comes not through repetition, but through our potential for a limited release from repetition‑compulsivity. Healing is thus not a salve for the status quo, either individually or communally; rather, it awakens us to an awareness of the connections between individual suffering and the globalized structures of oppression. The mission of psychoanalysis as ideology‑critique continues to face us. Three areas are urgent. The first is the critique of the ideologies of domina‑ tion, in which much important work has already been accomplished (see Schroyer, 1975; Sloan, 1995; Watkins and Shulman, 2008). The second con‑ cerns the ideologies of exchange‑exploitation, and the positioning of the individual within economies structured to ensure that the wealthy become wealthier, and the poor ever more destitute (see Bennett, 2011; Borneman, 1973; Carr and Sloan, 2003). The third concerns critique of the way in which ideologies sever us from the enrichment of our experiential embodiment, which in turn implies that issues of sexual freedom must be addressed (see Barratt, 2005, 2010a, in press). As mentioned in Chapter 1, it has been said that, if we are not constantly recreating Freud’s discipline, we are letting it die. Although psychoanalysis 176 Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis is one of the great discourses of human liberation, the potential of its praxis and of the wisdom thus generated to be applied to the challenges of ideo‑ logical critique have yet to be realized – but for this to occur, the discipline has to be rescued from the machinations of so many of Freud’s successors.

Psychoanalysis as spiritual–existential praxis Throughout this essay, I have emphasized how, following the implications of the four coordinates of Freud’s discoveries, psychoanalysis must be under‑ stood as an interrogation of the repressiveness of self‑consciousness. In previ‑ ous writings, I focused on this interrogation in terms of its negatively dialectical (Barratt, 1984) and deconstructive empowerment (Barratt, 1993). Alongside the functioning of psychoanalysis as an ideology‑critique, I have here described the labors of the psychoanalyst as fruitfully comparable to those of a physician (so long as we understand that the remedies for suffering that the psychoanalyst facilitates differ from those claimed by the expertise of the allopathic technician). I have also compared them to those of a whore (so long as we understand that the alleviation of suffering he or she offers differs from that of a sex worker in the strictest physical abstinence necessitated by the observance of the incest taboo as it surfaces in the psychoanalytic transfer‑ ence); and those of a shaman (so long as we understand that the healing engendered by the psychoanalytic process is not simply a ritual of accommo‑ dation to prevailing sociocultural standards). There is a sense in which all such labors are positive. They are modalities of remedy, alleviation, and accommodation to whatever is – to whatever “seems to be the case,” which is “reality” as it presents itself normatively or consensually to us. However, the profound and far‑reaching implications of free‑associative discourse transport the human spirit behind, beneath, and beyond such positivity. It is therefore necessary to conclude this essay with a discussion of the way in which the unique negativity of psychoanalytic discourse embodies an existential journey of the spirit that honors the embodied desirousness that Freud found to be the heart of our being‑in‑the‑world, and that is radically different from what‑ ever might be taken as a nihilistic attitude – politically, spiritually, and existentially (Cunningham, 2002; Rosen, 1999). Given that the grip of repetition‑compulsivity over the individual can only be loosened and never relinquished, I have argued that the healing proffered by psychoanalytic treatment exposes the ex‑centricity of the subject, releasing it from a frozen state of alienation and revitalizing it into the kinesis of estrange‑ ment. Even while the locus of this estrangement reconnects the thinking, feel‑ ing, and acting subject with the brio of the desire of its embodied experience, this exposition cannot abrade or erase the subject’s ongoing dislocation, displacement, or deferral from itself. This implies that the subject either remains locked in its edifices of representational meaning, wherein it is frozenly alienated from the desire of its embodied experience, or is free‑associatively Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis 177 mobilized in a vivacious, yet forever estranged, relation with the brio of its desire. Estrangement is, arguably, an anomic condition (Durkheim, 1893, 1897; Guyau, 1886), yet radically different from some sort of deleterious condi‑ tion of torpidity. This is because the very momentum of free‑associative dis‑ course ensures an articulation with the desire of embodied experience, which – although never completed – ensures the liveliness of the subject’s life, through the embrace of its castratedness and deathfulness. In a sense, this vital‑ ity of estranged kinesis is the irremediable motif of “common unhappiness” as Freud called it as early as 1893, in which the possibility of authentic joyfulness depends on the subject’s embrace of his or her own inadequacy, insufficiency, and mortality. These are the characteristics of the flesh as its desirousness both animates and then concurrently sloughs off the constructions of representa‑ tional meaningfulness – interpretations and insights. Self‑consciousness, as Freud demonstrates, is forever in a motionality that both reveals and conceals something otherwise than itself, namely the desirousness of the flesh as our embodied experience. This is the motionality of Heraclitus, also discussed by William James (1890) as the “stream of thought” (although, arguably, James missed the full significance of our experiential embodiment). The exposing momentum of the free‑associative method, unsettling the subject into a renewed relation with something that is other than, and greater than, itself, may be understood as both spiritual and existential. Embracing one’s inherent castratedness and deathfulness is far from a salve or unction. It is nevertheless the most healing and revitalized momentum of “lived experience” to which the subject can aspire. In this context, Freud’s discipline of interrogating the subject not only identifies him, along with Marx and Nietzsche, as one of the triumvirate of the “school of suspicion” (Barratt, 1976), who undertook a methodical decision to treat self‑consciousness for its falsifying characteristics. They follow what Hegel called the “pathway of doubt,” summarized by Ernst Bloch’s (1938–1947) aphorism “that which is cannot be true,” which now operates like a proleptic injunction that initi‑ ates the patient’s surrender to free‑associative discourse. As I have shown previously, Freud’s method demonstrates, quite specifically, what Theodor Adorno called “the seriousness of unswerving negation” (Adorno, 1966; Barratt, 1984; Green, 1993). In addition to the school of suspicion, psycho‑ analytic method places Freud alongside Kierkegaard as the progenitor of a unique mode of existential praxis that is not phenomenological (see Dreyfus and Wrathall, 2009; Izenberg, 1976; Kaufmann, 1956, 1976; Ruitenbeek, 1962; Tillich, 1952). Taking as its moment of embarkation the frozenness of self‑consciousness in repetition‑compulsivity (and thus embroiled in a certain sort of absurdity), the method of free‑associative discourse not only engages the oppressiveness of the world in which the subject is formed, which is the dimension of psy‑ choanalysis as ideology‑critique. It also comprises a kinetic articulation of the embodied and desirous meaningfulness of the subject’s exposition, thus 178 Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis emancipating this subjectivity from the immobilized parole vide of its forma‑ tion – the “empty chatter,” as Kierkegaard called it – by which our ego orga‑ nization appears to make sense of itself. Through psychoanalytic discourse, the subject re‑engages both with its own inherent castratedness (its inability to claim authority and authorship over its own constructed meanings) and with its own inherent deathfulness (the emptiness of its identitarian asser‑ tions, the “black hole” of egotism). Herein is the existential key to its method. Psychoanalysis is not the imposition of developmental prescriptions, moralizing ideals of maturity and sociocultural conformity, or similar theo‑ retical precepts on the individual. Rather, it is an ethical and erotic elucida‑ tion and exposition of living experience, and the subject’s liberation from the frozenness of alienation into the estranged yet joyful vivacity of its desire as awareness, presence, and – a certain sort of qualified – freedom. Psychoanalytic treatment, as the arc of free‑associative discourse, is undoubtedly an existential journey, honoring awareness, presence, and free‑ dom by re‑aligning the subject with the erotic ethicality of our embodiment. One hesitates to describe this workplay as “spiritual,” because this term is almost inextricably tied to all sorts of occult beliefs (previous lives, afterlives, supernatural forces), necromantic and tasseographic practices, dubious preoc‑ cupations (extrasensory perception, psychic abilities, paranormal phenom‑ ena), and outright baloney. I do not use the term “spiritual” in any of these ways. Moreover, even as a practicing meditator, who has learned much from several spiritual lineages, I am adamantly aligned with Freud’s critical analy‑ ses, written between 1927 and 1939 – as well as the Marxist critique – of organized religion as a fictionalization of ideals that is invariably appropri‑ ated by oppressive ideological interests. Freud clearly warns us against faith in a paternal deity, as well as against any overvaluation of mystical or “oceanic” feelings that might be associated with early maternal enmeshment. Although the Secret Committee may have been constituted as if his science were a matter of faith, and although the international organization that Freud founded may at times have acted like the worst kind of religious order, psychoanalysis is no religion. Yet, its practice is spiritual. Spirituality, as I use this term, concerns the presence and awareness of our connectedness to a power greater than our egotistic pretensions – that is, to the associative connectedness of all that is. In this sense, we may speak of the human spirit and understand spirituality of the locus of its momentum against the forces of alienation and oppression (Dussell, 1977). We may con‑ sider this issue by asking the question: What guides the trajectory of psycho‑ analytic discourse? We know that logico‑philosophical discourse is guided by certain ideals of cogency and correspondence; normal or ordinary science by mathematized ideals of observable evidence, inference, control as predictivity and certitude. We know that the rhetorical structures of everyday discourse are also guided by rules, regulations, codes, standards of conduct, and moral‑ izing ideals. In the clinical context of psychotherapy, there are models as to Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis 179

how the patient should, ideally, function (for example, the patient should attain the depressive position, be able to engage in certain sorts of stable and gratifying relationships, maintain a coherent self structure, achieve criteria of emotional maturity and reality‑testing, and so forth). Psychoanalysis is not guided by such discursive ideals, neither those of ordinary science nor those of the ideologies of maturation and sociocultural adjustment. Rather, there is a profound sense in which the trajectory of psychoanalytic discourse is guided by the persistence and insistence of disowned desire on the movement of self‑consciousness – that is, by the animation of the repressed unconscious. Psychoanalysis is, after all, the undoing of surplus repression. However, as I have argued, the repressed unconscious is not a spatialized repository of ideas and wishes held in exile. Rather, it is inscribed as the pluri‑ temporality and polysexuality of our embodied experience. In this sense, the trajectory of psychoanalytic discourse – as an ongoing ethical process of express‑ ing, listening, and opening – is guided by the voicings of our erotic embodi‑ ment. These “voicings” are the power greater than our egotistic pretensions to which the spirituality of psychoanalytic method answers. There is a sense in which Jung (1938, 1957a, 1957b, 1964) was correct in asserting that the sacred does not reveal itself to the deliberations of self‑consciousness, but is known only through the unconscious. However, as is well known, Jung then endowed the unconscious with a medley of deified archetypes (Frey‑Rohn, 1974; Samuels, 1985). He thus turns his analytical discipline into religion, in the sense that religious practice is always a returning or re‑binding (re‑ligious, from ligare meaning “to bind”) of the self to the metaphysically divine. By contrast, the spirituality of psychoanalysis is a‑ligious (and, much like some interpretations of Buddhism, a‑theistic). Its practice deconstructs the edifices of self‑consciousness – including the constructions of belief – that stand in the way of the embodied experience of presence, awareness, and freedom. In this sense, the free‑associative method – as the ongoing ethical process of expressing, listening, and opening to the promptings of our experiential embodiment – comprises a sort of natural spirituality, because the libidinal energies of desire are that compassionate lifeforce that connects us with the universe. The unbinding of the subject in the course of psychoanalysis is an ethical momentum in a special sense. The ethical way in which the triune movement of opening, expressing, and listening (and then opening, expressing, and listening) to the desirous promptings of our erotic embodiment is radically different from that sort of ethicality typically conveyed by the available literature on “psychoanalytic ethics,” which regularly confuses this topic with the moral and moralizing codes adhered to by clinical practitioners (see Etchegoyen, 1991; Forrester, 2000; Kesel, 2009; Lear, 2000; Raphael‑Leff. 2000; Wallwork, 1991). By contrast, I am suggesting here that the ethicality of psychoanalysis concerns awareness of, and alignment with, the experiential truthfulness of our embodiment, and the sense of presence and freedom in relation to this truthfulness that is delivered by the process of loosening our 180 Ideology-critique and spiritual praxis egotism from the grip of repetition‑compulsivity. Herein lies the moksha – the spiritual liberation – offered by the praxis of free‑associative discourse.

“Should I become…?” For what can we hope? Both in the revolutionary phase and in the later pessimistic phases of his career, Freud consistently offered – both explicitly and implicitly – an answer to this question in terms of love and work. To this formula, we now make an addition: To love, to work, and to play. Both from the angle of ideology‑critique (which addresses for us questions such as What am I? and Where am I?) and from that of spiritual‑praxis (which addresses the erotic and experiential question, Who am I?), these terms need to be unpacked. “To love” need not imply the bondages of attachment, but certainly implies our human capacity to respond to powers greater than our egotism. “To work” need not entail the drudgery of alienated labor to satisfy one’s needs within an exploitive economy, but might be understood foremost as the process of making oneself through changing one’s reality. “To play” is not a matter of participation in games, but a surrendering to the whimsically poetizing creativity of the human spirit. Loving, working, and playing are the triune dimensions of what we may become. In 1933, Freud offered a snappy aphorism as to the directionality of psychoanalyst discourse: Wo Es war, soll Ich werden (literally, “where it was, should I become”). This should is perhaps the only authentic prescription in the discourse of his discipline. Strachey translated this aphorism badly and several commentators, including Lacan, have contemplated its significance and offered alternative translations. I will finish this essay by following his example, and offering my rendition:

From out of that place, that frozen position in which I am alienated from the desirousness of my embodied experience, locked in the structures of repetition‑compulsivity, and unable to participate in the communal liberation of the human spirit, should I become…?

Only free‑associative discourse can transport the subject along the pathway of this liberatory directionality, but surrendering to the freedom that this dis‑ course offers places our egotism at risk. It is a matter of personal risk, of dar‑ ing. Perhaps always penultimately, the wisdom of psychoanalysis challenges each one of us, individually and existentially, to respond to the question raised by radical and visionary poets throughout the ages: Does the universe of my “I” dare profoundly to disturb itself, politically and spiritually? References

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A- and B-series of time 50 authoritarianism 7, 136 abnormality, and psychopathology 118–19 authority 136 Abraham, Karl 74–5 autobiography 57 abstinence 138–9 automatisms 18–19 accountability 136 awareness 128; estranged 167 achievement 119 active role 163 Bálint, M. 121–2, 129, 130 adaptation 117–22, 123 Barcelona Congress of the International adaptive advantage 155 Psychoanalytic Association 87 Adler, Alfred 3 Barnaby, as entity 40–1 affective processing, as preconscious 17 being-in-the-world 128 affirmation, of self 41 belatedness 58–60 after-effect 58–60 Besetzen 68 afterwardness 58–9 Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud) 1 aggression 140 binary oppositions 98–9 ailments 132–5 Binswanger, Ludwig 4 alienation 33, 126, 127–8, 138–9, 176 birth trauma 58–9 alliance 133, 149 blindness 91 allopathic psychiatry 32 Blink (Gladwell) 17 amnesia 54 Bloch, Ernst 177 anality 74–5 body/mind dichotomy 26 analysands 132 body-scanning 76–7 analytic epistemology 32–3 bodymind 66, 68, 77 analytic frame, establishment and Bollas, Christopher 138 maintenance 148–9 Bose, Girindrasekhar 13–14 anger 140; repression and expression 28–30 boundary, of repressed unconscious 17 anti-vitalism 66 Brill, Abraham 3 anticipation 55–6 British psychoanalysts, middle group 37–8 anxiety 139 Buddhism, influence of 13, 14 aphasia 35 aporias of recollection 54–61 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro 49 attachments 101 Cartesian dualism 65, 66, 73 attribution, and existence 24 Cartesian–Kantian model 31–2 Auden, W. H. 4 castratedness 91, 111, 125, 163–4, 166, Augustine of Hippo 43 177, 178 214 Index castration anxiety 97 das Vorbild 46 castration complex 106 death, conceptualizing 42 cathexis 68 death instincts 1–2 chain of thought 9, 71 deathfulness 126, 163–4, 166, 177, 178 children: curiosity 101; sense of self 101; defense mechanisms 31, 82, 97–8 sensuality of 92–3 defensive repression, and primal Clark University lectures 1 repression 20–4 clients 132 deferred effect 58–60 clitoris 79–80 denial 17–18, 27, 36 cognitive philosophy, and science 18–20 derivative depth 159 cognitive processing, as preconscious 17 Derrida, Jacques 104 common unhappiness 177 Descartes, Réné 15, 26 communal disorder 174 descriptive unconscious, and repressed compassionate witness 128–9, 133, 135, 163 unconscious 35–8 compulsive repetitiousness 50–4 desire: and being 69; and existence 24 concealment, and revelation 30–1 determinative significance 61 condemnation 156 determinism 59 conduct, of practitioners 6 developmentalism 45, 60–1, 63–4, 85, configurations, ideological 171–2 112–14, 120, 120–1, 175 confirmation, of self 41 diachronic heterogeneity 50, 62 conflict-free sphere 33, 85; of ego die Kette von Gedanken 9 organization 33 différance 53, 65 Confucianism 14 disavowal 27 consciousness: governance of 50–4; discipleship 4 immediate contents 16; origins 22, 23; disciplinary core 8 philosophies of 14–15 disciplinary influences 6–7 conservative ideologies 119–20 disclosure, early 146 contemporaries, of Freud 13 discourse, unpaid bill example 28–30, 29, continental philosophy 15 44, 70–1 contradictoriness 168 disembodiment 86 coordinates 9–10; first coordinate 31; second dissociative unconscious 27 coordinate 61–2; third coordinate 83; distortion, of memories 56–7, 60 fourth coordinate 111–12; see also oedipal dogmatism 7–8 complexities; pluritemporal structuring; double role 163 repetition-compulsivity; repression; dream, life as 49 sensual embodiment dreams, timeframes of 44–5 Copernicus, Nicolai 4 drives, sublimation of 119 cornerstones, of psychoanalysis 9 Durkheim, Émile 94 corporeality 66 Dussel, Enrique 171, 172 cosmological time 50–1 dyadic structures, of infant 99–100 couch, use of 147–8 dyads, third term of 99, 104 courage 24 dynamically repressed unconscious 11–12; cultural influences, on sexual and temporality of consciousness 26–31 intercourse 46–7 curiosity 140 early disclosure 146 cyclical time 53 Eastern traditions 13 Edelman, Gerald 22 Daoism 14 ego cogito 14–15, 26 Darwin, Charles 4 ego-ideal 110 Index 215 ego organization: conflict-free sphere of 33, Fichte, Johann 12 85; defensive splits 27; partitioning fiction, stranger within thee 12–13 of 37 filiation 7, 136 ego psychological model 32–3, 62–3 first coordinate 31 ego-psychology 2, 62–3, 67 fixation points 171 egotism: amnesia 54; as symptom of fixed action pattern 96 suffering 167 foolishness 8 Einstein, Albert 51 fourth coordinate 111–12 elitism 172 fracturing, of psyche 168 Ellis, Havelock 94 free-association 8–9, 10; augmentation embodied experience: being at home in 76–7; emancipation 177–8; as healing 143–4; fear of 84; sensuality 67; see also 126–7; ontic quality of 75–6; as pursuit libidinality; sexuality of uncertainties 171; role of 36–7 empathic listening 140 freedom 129, 149–50, 169 empirical research 18–20 Freud, Anna 32, 120 emptiness 126 Freud, Sigmund: Clark University lectures 1; energies 66, 68 defining discipline 9–10, 11; as discoverer enjoyment 143 of unconscious 11–12; education and Entwurf (Freud) 66 training 13; effect of contemporary episteme 170 ideology 79–80; on Gradiva 48–50; epistemology, analytic 32–3 influence of medical training 66; inner equanimity 163, 164 circle 3–4; mistakes 11–12; style of erotic embodiment, voicings of 179 presentation 89; theoretical shift 1, 2–3 erotics: retreat from 84; see also sexuality friendship 141 estranged awareness 167 Fromm, Erich 45 estrangement 33, 126, 127–8, 139–40, 176 fundamental heterochrony 50, 62 ethicality 134, 169–70, 179–80 fundamental rule 146–7 evaluation 144–5 future, anticipation of 55–6 exclusion 103 experience: influence on memory 47–8; genders 100–1 vicissitudes of 43 genitality 107–8 experimental psychology 16 German idealism 15 expertise 142 getting out of the way 161–2 exploitation 172 Gladwell, Malcolm 17 governance: of consciousness 50–4; by fabrication 58 repetition-compulsivity 52 facilitating environment, establishment and gradations of access 18 maintenance 148–9 gradations of clarity 17–18 Fairbairn, W. R. D. 37, 85 Gradiva (Jensen) 48–50 faith, psychoanalysis as 3–4 Green, A. 35, 50, 85 fantasies, orality and anality 74–5 Green, André 8 fantasy: influence of 56; interaction with Grundpfeiler 9; repression 14 sensuality 67; temporality of 43; of guardianship 135 unified human subject 128;see also guidance 150 phantasy fear of freedom 124 happiness, and sexual expression fee payment 145 65, 66–7 feelings, awareness and regulation of 134 harmoniousness 15 feminism 105–6 Hartmann, Eduard von 13 216 Index

Hartmann, Heinz 32, 85, 118–19 of 94–7; genetic element 96–7; hate 135, 140 impact of 98; and language 98; and having a life 40–2 repression barrier 98; sociological and healing: as distinct from therapy 124; free- anthropological literature 95; see also association as 126–7; ideas of 117–18; oedipal complexities nature of 122–3, 176; psychoanalysis individualism 174 as 116–17; of recollection 39–40; and infant: dyadic structures 99–100; truthfulness 124–30 language 100; see also primal scenes health: nature of 123; as political infants, images of 113 118–19 initial phase 146–51 Hegel, Georg 12, 177 inner circle, Freud 3–4 Heidegger, Martin 105 insight 166, 167–8 Helmholtz, Hermann von 66 instincts 96 hierarchies, of representation 104 integrity 134–5 Hinduism, Freud’s interest 13 intelligence 135 historicality: and historicity 48–50; Intensitäten 68 of mental organization 42–5; and intentionality, of libido 70 phenomenological time 51 interaction, fantasy and sensuality 67 historicity: and cosmological time 51; interlocutors 137 and historicality 48–50; of mental International Psychoanalytic organization 45 Association 3 history, life as 42–8 interpersonalists 38 holism 68 Interpretation of Dreams (Freud) 13, 45 hope 180 interpretations, premature 146, 150 Horkheimer, Max 9 intersubjectivism 38 hostility 140 interventions, length of 158 hubris 143 intimacy 148, 149–50 human condition, contradictoriness 168 intolerance, to other viewpoints 7–8 humanity, narcissism of 4 investissement 68 Humpty Dumpty 105 Jensen, Wilhelm 48–50 I: emptiness 51, 126; remobilization 168; Jones, Ernest 3 as trick 125 journey of the spirit 176 identifications 101; with practitioner 159 Jung, C.G. 3, 13, 57, 58, 179 identity: construction of 40; fragility of 41 justification 158–9 ideography 45–6 ideological configurations 171–2 Kabbalism, Freud’s interest 13 ideologies: adaptation and maturation keeping the faith 3 117–22; conservative 119–20; effects Kennedy, Roger 86, 129 of competition 3; nature and functions Kierkegaard, Søren 12, 53, 177, 178 170–1; perpetuation 174–5 Klauber, John 129 ideology, as science of ideas 170–1 Klein, Melanie 5, 120 ideology-critique, psychoanalysis Kleinian perspectives 36, 63, 113; as 168–76 on the body 86; paranoid-schizoid imagination, influence of 56 condition 41; viewed as deviations 5 in-fighting 5–6 knowing 171 incest, and self-mutilation 96 Kohut, H. 86, 113, 120 incest taboo 82, 92–8, 111, 140, 169–70; Kohutian self-psychology 36, 37 cultural variability 95; explanations Kolakowski, Leszek 51 Index 217

Kovács, Vilma 129 meaning, acquisition of 69 Kristeva, Julia 51 meaningfulness 59, 124–5 memories: distortion of 56–7; recollection La vida es sueño (Calderón de la Barca) 49 of 47–8; screen memory 57; veracity Lacan, Jacques 34–5, 60, 70, 105 39–40 Lacanian perspectives: on the body 86; and mental life, spatial depiction of 24–6 Cartesian perspective 67; on maturation mental organization, historicality and 120; as mistaken path 64; viewed as historicity 43 deviations 5 mental representations, concentration Lacanian psychoanalysis, influence of 35 on 35–6 language 19; and experience of now 51; and mentalization 67 incest taboo 98; infant 100; as mode of mentors, as parental figures 7 being 34–5 Metaphysical Horror (Kolakowski) 51 languaging and timing 157–61 method, as identity of psychoanalysis 2, learning, about psychoanalysis 6–7 8–9 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 137–8 middle phase: attitude of practitioner 161–2; liberation 169 listening psychoanalytically 152–3; libidinal zones 73 principles 151–62; priority of process libidinality 68–73, 79, 82, 103–4 153–5; psychoanalyst’s self 161–2; timing libido 69–70; revision of concept 84 and languaging 157–61; understanding life: defining 40; as dream 49; optimal outcome 155–7 having 40–2; as repetitious 53; mistaken paths: Cartesian–Kantian model as storyline 41–2 31–3; developmentalism 63–4, 112–14; life experiences, basic features 74 see also separate heading; ego-psychology linguistics, structural 34–5 62–3; Kleinian perspectives 63; see also listening psychoanalytically 152–3 separate heading; Lacanian perspectives 64; livelihood 143 see also separate heading; libidinality logical empiricist metascience 32 84–7; object-relations theories 63; see also logocentrism 104–5 separate heading; oedipal complexities looking 91 112–14; see also separate heading; love 133, 135, 140, 141–2, 180 repressed vs. descriptive unconscious 35–8; lying 56 structural-functional model 63; see also separate heading; structuralism 34–5 madness, as transgression of norms 118 mistakes, Freud’s 11–12 Maine, Henry 94 mobilization 177 male/female differentiation, and model 46 triangulation 98–100 Money, John 47 Marcuse, Herbert 130 motionality 177 Martin-Baro, I. 120 mythologizing 57 Marx, Karl 127, 177 masculinism 105–6 Nachträglichkeit 58–60, 112 Maslow, Abraham 74 narcissism: of humanity 4; of master discourse 170 practitioner 142, 143, 153–4, 161 maturation 84–5, 117–22; quasi-biological narrative constructions, of theory 120 consciousness 30–1 maturity 80 narratological imperative 24, 123–4 McLennan, John 93–4 negation 17–18 McTaggart, John 50 neo-Kleinian perspectives 36 Me-Other 99–100 neo-Platonists 12 218 Index neuropsychoanalysis 22 patriarchal authority 97 neuroscience 16, 22 patriarchy 105, 136 neurosis 118 payment of fees 145 neurotic conflicts, and sexuality 66–7 penis, confusion with phallus 106–7 Newton, Isaac 50–1 perception 19 Nietzsche, Friedrich 12, 14, 53, 66, 105, 177 personal history 10 non-ambition 142–3 personal identity, construction of 40 non-gratification 140, 141–2 personal psychoanalysis, as training 6 non-judgmentalism 138–9, 149–50, 156–7 personality development 101 non-reactivity 139–40, 150 perversion 80–1, 84 non-seducibility 140–1 phallic modality 171 nonconscious phenomena 18–20 phallic positionalities 103–8 North America, attitudes to sexuality 78 phallocentrism 67, 104–5 now, experience of 51 phantasy 37; see also fantasy Nunberg, Hermann 119 phenomenological time 51 phenomenology, problems of 36–7 object of inquiry, as cause of disagreement 6 philosophies of consciousness 14–15 object-relations 1 Philosophy of the Unconscious (Hartmann) 13 object-relations theories 36, 37–8, 63; view Philosophy of Will and Representation of maturation 120 (Schopenhauer) 12 objective suffering 172 philosophy, subtle energies 71 oedipal complexities 10; competing physician model 137, 176 scenarios 109–10; Freud’s discovery of Piaget, Jean 45, 99 88–9; literary precursor 89–92; modes of Plato 12 passage 108–11; of psychoanalysis 140; see play 180 also incest taboo pluritemporal structuring 30–1, 53–4, Oedipus, The King (Sophocles) 89–92, 96 62, 127 open-mindedness, discouraging of 6 poetics 166–7 operations 74 politics, of health 118–19 oppressors 173 polymorphous perversity 80–1 optimal outcome, understanding 155–7 polysexuality 79–83, 102, 127 oral tradition 6 positioning 147–8 orality 74–5 positive rationality 71 Other 34, 64 possession 106–7 other 70 post-Freudian ideas of unconscious 15–24 others, in self-analysis 137 practical arrangements 145–6 practice, right ways and wrong ways 131 pain 122 practitioners, conduct of 6 paneroticism 81 pre-Freudian ideas of unconscious 12–15 paranoid-schizoid condition 41 pre-resistances 144 parental figures, mentors as 7 pre-transferences 144 partnership 132, 138 preconscious contents 16–17, 26 passion 139 prefatory procedures 144–6 passive role 163 premature interpretations 146 past-futures 50 primal repetitiousness 40 past, influence of 39–40, 55 primal repression, and defensive pathway of doubt 177 repression 20–4 patients 132; as survivors 157 primal scenes, and triadic relations 100–3 Index 219 primary caretaker 46, 92–3 psychology of repression 14, 23, 26–7 Primitive Marriage (McLennan) 93–4 psychopathology, and abnormality principal constituents 31 118–19 process, priority of 153–5 psychosexual stages 84–5 projective identification 27 psychosis 44, 118 protectiveness 149–50 psychotherapies, aims of treatment 123–4 prototype 15, 20, 46, 63, 71 pseudologia fantastica 56 questions, psychoanalytic listening 152–3 psyche: empirical research 18–20; fracturing of 168 radicalism 165 psychiatry: allopathic 32; as normative 118 Raglan, Lord (Richard Fitzroy Somerset) 95 psychic life, and sensual energies 73–5 Rank, O. 58–9, 113 psychic reality 42–8; as ideographic 45–6; Rapaport, David 32 scope of 43 “Rapport de Rome” (Lacan) 60 Psychic Reality and Psychological Knowing re-creation 8, 175–6 (Barratt) 32, 34, 36 readiness, for psychoanalysis 133–5 psychoanalysis: aims of treatment 119; realisticness 134 Freud’s definition 9–10; as ideology- reality, and ideology 170 critique 168–76; method as identity 2; recognition 16 nature of 178; as not developmental recollection: aporias of 54–61; as healing 60–1; readiness for 133–5; retreat from 39–40; influence of experience 47–8 Freud 116; as spiritual-existential reenactments 54 praxis 176–80; uniqueness 131; regressions 54–5 unrealized potential 174–5; use of Reich, Wilhelm 67, 108 label 5; use of term 115 relational psychology 38 Psychoanalysis and the Postmodern Impulse religion 179 (Barratt) 43, 73 “Remembering, Repeating and Working psychoanalysts: as critics of ideology 173; Through” (Freud) 54 cultural and psychological locus 138; remembrance, and repetition 39–40 double role 163; gratifications of role remobilization 128, 168 143; qualities of 135–44; responsibilities repetition: and origination 23, 40; and 148–9; training 136–7; values 143 remembrance 39–40 psychoanalyst’s self, getting out of the repetition-compulsivity 50–4, 61–2, 63–4, way 161–2 169, 176 psychoanalytic attitude 138 repetitiousness, of life 53 psychoanalytic frame, establishment and repositioning 123 maintenance 148–9 representational processes 19 psychoanalytic journey: initial phase representations 21; as hierarchical 146–51; middle phase 151–62; prefatory 104; meaningfulness 69; prior 45; procedures 144–6; terminating phase repositioning 25–6; tagging 43–4; 162–4 timeframes 43 psychoanalytic training, nature of 6–7 repressed unconscious 15–16, 165–6; psychobiography 42–3 boundary of 17; and descriptive psychodynamics, definition 115 unconscious 35–8; nature of 179; and psychological phenomena, nonconscious suppressed preconscious 16–18 18–19 repression 15; as defensive 16; defensive and psychology: empirical research 18–20; primal 20–4; defensive processes 20–1; experimental 16 psychology of 14 220 Index repression barrier 35, 37, 128, 168–9; and sensual embodiment 10; listening to 75–7; incest taboo 98 philosophical debate 65–8 repressiveness of consciousness 30–1 sensual energies, and psychic life 73–5 resistance 89, 144, 154–5, 163 sensuality: of children 92–3; interaction with responsibilities, of psychoanalysts 148–9 fantasy 67; and sexuality 79 retrievability 16 sexism 106 retrospective fantasizing 57 sexual expression, suffering and return of the repressed 25–6, 52, 111; in happiness 65, 66–7 disguised form 36–7; and suppressed Sexual Health and Erotic Freedom (Barratt) ideation 35 82–3 revelation, and concealment 30–1 sexual intercourse: child’s perception of revision 58–60 102–3; cultural influences on 46–7 Ricoeur, Paul 50 sexual radicalism 78, 79 risk 166 sexuality 77–9; ideas of maturity 80; and romanticism 12 neurotic conflicts 66–7; phallic 106–7; Rubin, Gayle 80 polysexuality 79–83; prephallic 106; regulation of 84; and sensuality 79 safety 149–50 shamanic model 137–8, 176 Santayana, George 39 social Darwinism 94–5 Sartre, Jean-Paul 36 Solms, Mark 68 scenarios, competing 109 somatic experience 74 scheduling 145 Sophocles 89–92 Schelling, Friedrich 12, 15, 65 spatial depiction, of mental life 24–6 school of suspicion 177 Spencer, Herbert 94 Schopenhauer, Arthur 12, 14, 53 spiritual warriors 143 science: and cognitive philosophy 18–20; spirituality 178 positive rationality 71; subtle splitting 27 energies 71–2 spontaneity 129 scientificity 122 storyline, life as 41–2 scientistic mimicry 174–5 Strachey, James 68–9 screen memory 57 strangeness 139–40 scripting 81 stranger within thee 12–13 second coordinate 61–2 stream of thought 177 Secret Committee 3–5, 165 structural-functional model 2, 32, 63, 67 self: affirmation and confirmation 41; structural linguistics 34–5 as entity 40–1 structuralism 34–5 self-analysis 136–7 subjectivity, use of term 43 self-blinding 91 sublimation 84; of drives 119 self-consciousness 15; origins 40; subtle energies 66, 68; Freud’s structure 165 understanding of 72–3; in science 71–2; self-estrangment 127 in Western philosophy 71; in wisdom self-knowledge 166 traditions 71 self-mutilation, and incest 96 subversion 169–70 self-observing ego 133 suffering: attitudes to 122; as reason self-pleasuring 80 for treatment 132–3; and sexual self-psychology 36, 37 expression 65, 66–7 sensitivity, timing and languaging superego 110–11, 129 159–60 superiority, sense of 143 Index 221 suppressed ideation, and return of the transference-psychosis 163 repressed 35 transitional space 49 suppressed preconscious, and repressed transmission, of discipline 136 unconscious 16–18 treatment 178 suppression 15; volitional and triadic relations 108–10; and primal automatic 17 scenes 100–3 surplus repression 130, 172 triangulation 98–100 symptoms, of suffering 167 Triebe 68 truth, protection of 3–4 Taoism 14 truthfulness: challenge of 171; and technique 131 healing 124–30 temporal displacement 38 temporalities, multiple 30–1 unawareness, of time 50 temporality: of life experiences 74; of mental uncertainty 139, 164 representations 43 unconscious: as descriptive 36; notion terminating phase 162–4 of discovery 11; post-Freudian ideas The Ego and the Id (Freud) 15 of 15–24; pre-Freudian ideas of 12–15; The Emergence of Somatic Psychology and repressed 15–16; as timeless 53 Bodymind Therapy (Barratt) 68 unconscious phantasy 37 “The Final Goal of Psychoanalytic unconscious psychological phenomena Treatment” (Bálint) 121–2 18–19 theoretical developments 1–2 unhappiness, common 177 therapeutic ambition 122–4, 143, 174 unified human subject, fantasy of 128 therapy, as distinct from healing 124 unknowing 171 third coordinate 83 unsettlement 4 third term, of dyads 99 thirdness 137 value judgments 119 three arenas 150–1 values 143 time: as cyclical 53; two tiers of 50–1; veracity, of memory 39–40 unawareness of 50 vertical unconscious 27–8 time of the mind 31 voicings, of erotic embodiment 179 time tagging 43 timeframes: of dreams 44–5; of mental Wälder, Robert 129 representations 43 Weinberg, Stephen 72 timeless otherwise 50 Westermarck, Edvard 94 timelessness, of unconscious 53 whore model 137, 176 timing and languaging 157–61 Winnicott, D. W. 85, 99, 129 Todestriebe 1–2 wisdom traditions: preservation 3–4; subtle topographic model 24–5, 25 energies 71 trace of the other 70 “Wolf Man” (Freud) 22–3 train of thought 9 word presentations, and thing training: nature of 6–7; oedipal dynamics presentations 35 of 136; process of 136–7 work 180 Training Analysts: relationship with 136; working alliance 149 role of 7 transference 44–5, 142 Zajonc, Robert 17 transference-neurosis 163 Zurückphantasie 57, 58