ORBIT-OnlineRepository ofBirkbeckInstitutionalTheses Enabling Open Access to Birkbeck’s Research Degree output Freud on time and timelessness: the ancient Greek influence https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40071/ Version: Full Version Citation: Noel-Smith, Kelly Ann (2014) Freud on time and timelessness: the ancient Greek influence. [Thesis] (Unpublished) c 2020 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copy- right law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit Guide Contact: email Freud on Time and Timelessness: the Ancient Greek Influence A dissertation presented by Kelly Ann Noel-Smith in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Birkbeck College, University of London January 2014 Declaration I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. …………………………………………………… ………………… 2014 Kelly Ann Noel-Smith © 2014 Kelly Noel-Smith. All rights reserved. 2 Kelly Noel-Smith Freud on Time and Timelessness: the Ancient Greek Influence Abstract This thesis turns on two assumptions: first, that there is a current absence within the psychoanalytic library of a consolidated account of Freud's theories of time and timelessness; second, that there is compelling evidence of an influence by the ancient Greek canon on Freud's metapsychology of time. The thesis is that a detailed examination of this influence will bring additional clarity to our understanding of Freud’s thoughts about time and timelessness and permit the provision of the currently lacking systematic account of this part of his theory. The author brings the three components of the Greek canon most important to Freud - myth, tragedy and philosophy – into dialogue with psychoanalysis to show the importance of their influence on Freud's ideas on temporality. The dialogue permits novel conclusions to be drawn about Freud's theory of temporality generally and Freud's views on how we acquire time in particular. 3 Contents 1. Title page 2. Declaration 3. Abstract 4. Table of Contents 5. Acknowledgments 6. Introduction 7. Literature Review 8. Chapter One: From Chaos to tragedy 9. Chapter Two: Tragedy, guilt and time 10. Chapter Three: “Forscher v Mystiker” 11. Chapter Four: The Riddle of Time 12. Chapter Five: Conclusion 13. Appendices 14. Bibliography 4 Acknowledgments My special thanks to Professor Stephen Frosh and Dr. Laurie Spurling, both of Birkbeck College, London, for being my supervisors. I enjoyed and benefited from our discussions and appreciated, in particular, Stephen’s careful reading and comments on the various drafts of my thesis. I also want to thank Michael Molnar for his help whilst curator of the Freud Museum and for showing me some of the unpublished work of Freud held there. Thank you, too, to Dr Leonard Bruno, for his advice on Freud’s unpublished correspondence with Princess Bonaparte, when he was head of the Manuscript Section at the Library of Congress. 5 INTRODUCTION More often than not, there is no reference to 'Time' in the index of books on psychoanalysis. This evidence of a lack of psychoanalytic writing on time is striking because temporality forms such an important theme of Freud’s work. The timeless unconscious, Nachträglichkeit, the endless repetition compulsion and the processes of consciousness, remembering and working through: all these involve temporality. André Green asked rhetorically: “Was there ever a point in Freud’s work where he was not concerned by the subject of time?” (Green, 2002, p. 9); if there was, it is difficult to find. Psychoanalytic theory is permeated by time; and the practice of psychoanalysis seems shaped by it. It is largely the losses that time brings with it which take us into the consulting room: loss of our youth, our opportunities, our loved ones and our future. At the outset, the parties to a psychotherapeutic alliance make a substantial commitment to spend significant time together; and a condition of whether what happens between them is psychoanalysis is the quantity of time, in terms of number of sessions per week, which they share together. And, within the sessions themselves, the temporal boundaries are usually strictly observed. Hilda Doolittle’s account of her analysis with Freud includes a nice example: “The other day the Professor had reproached me for jerking out my arm and looking at my watch. He had said, 'I keep an eye on the time. I will tell you when the session is over. You need not keep looking at the time, as if you were in a hurry to get away"' (Doolittle, 1971, p. 17). The paradox is this: time and timelessness are fundamental principles of psychoanalysis yet Freud does not present a consolidated theory of temporality. Although temporal themes run throughout Freud's work, his specific references to time are highly qualified, any idea of a theory of time being couched in terms of ‘hints’ (Freud, 1920, p. 28) or ‘suspicions’ (Freud, 1925b, p. 23). Freud seemed reluctant to make his thoughts on time public. In 1914, for example, having seen from the proofs of the Jahrbuch contributions that Tausk intended to make reference to a comment made by Freud at a meeting of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society about 6 time and space, Freud had the comment withdrawn (Freud, 1914d)1. Later in the same year, Freud wrote to Ferenczi: "[S]omething […] is in process which shouldn't be talked about yet. […] I only want to reveal to you that, on paths that have been trodden for a long time, I have finally found the solution to the riddle of time and space" (Freud, 1914e, pp. 29 – 30). Freud wrote in similar terms to Abraham on the same day (Freud, 1914f, p. 30) but neither letter goes on to reveal the riddle's solution. Ernest Jones claims that the solution lies in the distinction Freud draws between temporality and spatiality being exclusive qualities of consciousness and unconscious processes respectively (Jones, 1955, p. 196) but I believe that Freud had found a solution both more subtle and more bold. By 1920, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud was claiming that an “exhaustive treatment” of Kant’s philosophy of time and space was necessary in the light of Freud’s psychoanalytic findings (Freud, 1920, p. 28) but this treatment never really follows (although, as I discuss in Chapter Four, Freud does rework some of Kant’s philosophy). And, in one of Freud’s last published letters to Marie Bonaparte, whilst he generously praises her paper, ‘Time and the Unconscious’ (Bonaparte 1940), Freud lets her know that she lacked any grounds to write about his ideas on time because he had not divulged them: “Your comments on “time and space” have come off better than mine would have - although so far as time is concerned I hadn't fully informed you of my ideas. Nor anyone else" (Freud, 1938f, p. 455). As I discuss in the literature review which follows, the lack of a systematic account of Freud's theory of time has not been remedied by the secondary literature. In 1989, Andrea Sabbadini was able to say that: “In recent years, several authors have published their views on various aspects of time in psychoanalysis, but with the exception of Arlow (1984), and Hartocollis, no one has explored these themes systematically or offered original perspectives about their significance” (Sabbadini, 1989, p. 305). And André Green, in his 2002 work, Time in Psychoanalysis: some contradictory aspects, wrote: “I have often pointed out that contemporary psychoanalysis has come up with many ingenious solutions for the problems raised by the notion of space, but barely any with regard to that of time” (Green, 2002, p. 4). 1 The periodical Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen (Annals of Psychoanalytic and Psychopathological Research) was first published in 1909 by Deuticke. Freud and Bleuler were its initial editors, working in collaboration with Jung. Jung and Bleuler resigned in 1914, leaving Freud as managing director with Abraham and Hitschmann as editors. 7 More recently, Green wrote: "It is striking that the problem of time has been the source of far fewer discussions than themes relating to space. It would seem that this theme has been avoided" (Green, 2009, p. 1). In the lack of a consolidated account by Freud of his theory of time and the absence in secondary literature of its remedy, fundamental questions of psychoanalytic theory are difficult to answer fully. How, for example, should Freud's famous definition of the unconscious being timeless be understood? For Freud’s definition seems to require a negative reading of what constitutes 'time' so that what is timeless needs to be understood in terms of what time is not. How, too, should we understand our development of an abstract notion of time from an initial state of timelessness? And how do Freud’s notions of temporality operate within the context of his two topographies which provide different perspectives of the psychical apparatus and account for different regions of unconscious life? To answer these questions, I felt drawn to establish a systematic account of Freud’s theory of time, to provide the "exhaustive" treatment of the subject Freud suggested was necessary back in 1920. To do so, I decided not only to pull together the temporal themes running through Freud's published works and correspondence but also to put what I found into the context of a particularly strong influence on Freud: that of the ancient Greeks. This was for several reasons: first, because the strength of the influence is undoubted; second, because the three principal components of the Greek canon of most relevance to Freud – myth, tragedy and philosophy – powerfully represent different ways of making meaning of temporal issues; and, third, because I see a clear reflection in Freud’s thoughts on time and timelessness of the Presocratic approach which blends myth and reason, speculation and empiricism.