135 BOOK REVIEWS Roger Frie, Subjectivity And
BOOK REVIEWS
Roger Frie, Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Modern Phil- osophy and Psychoanalysis: A Study of Sartre, Binswanger, Lacan, and Habermas, New York & London: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1997, 227 pp. (includes index), $22.95 (paper).
Review by: M. Guy Thompson, Free Association Clinic, San Francisco
The question as to the nature-and even existence-of subjectivity has bedeviled mankind since the dawn of civilization and occupied the attention of philosophers for millennia. Indeed, the birth of philosophy in Ancient Greece occasioned the movement away from a religious bias, which deferred the notion of an autonomous self to the unfathomable designs of the gods, toward a more rationalist view that conceived of a human subject with a perspective that was uniquely his own-and which accounted for his behavior. The his- tory of Western philosophy can even be read as a concerted en- deavor to understand what subjectivity entails, finally manifesting a separate discipline-psychology-whose aim is to explore its char- acteristics in greater depth. Yet, the more we endeavor to answer this bottomless riddle, the more remote a convincing explanation seems. After more than two millennia in search of an answer, we are just as much in the dark as ever. That hasn't stopped us from trying. Indeed, the twentieth-century could be characterized as the "century of the ego." Two of its most influential intellectual movemerlts, psychoanalysis and phenomenol- ogy, have revolutionized the way we typically think about subjectiv- ity and its implications for everyday life. Given their common goals, it is disappointing that little in the way of a concerted collaboration has emerged between these two disciplines. Philosophy of any kind is anathema to psychoanalytic practitioners and just as often phi- ,losophers have had little to say about the insights that are produced by psychoanalysts. It is in this context that Roger Frie's recent book has set about to explore the nature of subjectivity in light of the contributions of both philosophers and psychoanalysts.
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Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Modern Philosophy and Psychoanalysis is an excellent and clearly-written summary of a group of twentieth- century psychoanalysts and philosophers that one wouldn't ordinarily bring together: Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Binswanger, Jacques Lacan, Jurgen Habermas, and-even though they aren't included in his sub- title-Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger. Indeed, the inclusion of Binswanger in this stew of otherwise visionary thinkers is the joker in the deck, and a somewhat curious addition. On the one hand it is a pity that Binswanger is rarely mentioned these days and it is refreshing that this important analyst, who tried to bridge the wide chasm between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, is finally included in the conversation. On the other hand, it is curious that he would be included in this particular work because his stature as a thinker pales next to the other subjects of Mr. Frie's thoughtful study. I shall have more to say about this later. The book is divided into five sections: the first compares the con- tributions of Sartre and Binswanger and their relationships to Freud; the second explores Sartre's contribution more fully and his debt to Hegel; the third examines Binswanger and his relation to Heidegger; the fourth returns to Sartre and Binswanger and explores their re- spective views on language and communication; and the fifth and final sections add a review of Lacan's and Habermas's contributions to the nature of subjectivity and especially their respective views about language.' As one can see from the way the book is organized, its original inspiration must have been to study Sartre and Binswanger since it is they who occupy four of the five chapters that comprise this study. The book suffers from the inclusion of this last bit be- cause it digresses from the earlier chapters at a time when one would want to bring them together; but it also benefits because Lacan es- pecially has contributed so much to this topic that it would have been negligent to omit him entirely. In hindsight, however, Mr. Frie might have been better off organizing the material differently, per- haps dropping Habermas entirely and weaving Lacan's contribution into the other four sections, or perhaps devoting a chapter to Lacan, Sartre, and Freud. This, I admit, borders on nit-picking as the result of this book is rewarding indeed and provides a thoughtful, insightful, and some- times brilliant perspective on this incredibly important subject. Frie reviews some of the basic theories concerning the nature of subjec- tivity that philosophers and psychoanalysts have argued over, center- ing on the question: is there, indeed a human "subject" that is