In Search of Freedom: An Exploration of the Applicability of Concepts of Freedom for Understanding the Aims and Effects of Psychoanalysis A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of The Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology Adelphi University ___________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________________________________ by John Burke, M.A. January, 2021 2 COMMITTEE PAGE Committee Chairperson: Joseph Newirth, Ph.D. Committee Members: Karen Lombardi, Ph.D. Michael O’Loughlin, Ph.D. Laraine Wallowitz, Ph.D. 3 Acknowledgements Researching and writing this dissertation was a long and challenging process that pushed me to my limits. I would not have completed this project without the support of so many people. To start, I am grateful to Joe Newirth for creating an open atmosphere for learning, for guidance, for encouragement, and for his generosity. You’ve been a great influence Joe and I feel very lucky to have had you as a mentor. I will miss our meetings. I would also like to thank Karen Lombardi whose courses, co-leadership of our research group, critical perspectives, and warmth helped me develop my dissertation and grow as a thinker and person. Thank you to Michael O’Loughlin for conversations about writing that were a source of inspiration, as was your enthusiasm for attending to subjective experience. And thank you to Laraine Wallowitz for participating in my dissertation committee along with Joe, Karen, and Michael. I also extend gratitude to my patients, from whom I am always learning. Finally, I could not have completed this dissertation without friends and family in my corner. Thanks to all the friends whose conversation and faith in me were lifelines, especially Diane Conroy and Chris Reyes. Thanks to Zeynep Sahin for being an invaluable friend and ally at Derner and beyond. And deepest thanks for unwavering support and love to my parents, my siblings, Daniel and Grace, and my brother-in-law, Joel. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5 Introduction: Is Psychoanalysis About Freedom? ………………………………………………. 7 Chapter 1: Freud’s Freedom: The Facilitation of Freedom in Freud’s Treatment of Dora and Rat Man ………………………………………………………………………………………… 17 Chapter 2: Subjectivity as Freedom: The Development of Subjectivity in Winnicott’s Thinking ...……………………………………………………………………………………… 72 Chapter 3: Symbolic Castration and Psychological Freedom: Preliminary Explorations of Lacan’s Model of Psychic Development ……………………………………………………... 146 Chapter 4: Imprisoned in the Imaginary: The Case of the Incels …………………………….. 179 Chapter 5: Castration… and then?: The Further Freedom to be Found Through Possession of the Symbolic ..……………………………………………………………………………… 215 Conclusion: A Multiplicity of Freedoms in Psychoanalysis: Unifying Themes, Open Questions, and Final Thoughts ……………………………………………………………….. 252 5 Abstract The psychoanalytic theory and treatment literature is vast and diverse, containing many different conceptualizations of the aim of treatment that are rarely compared (Lear, 2009). This dissertation hypothesizes that a meta-theme within psychoanalysis is the implicit aim of promoting the experience of psychological freedom, with different psychoanalytic models elaborating different understandings of freedom and its promotion based upon differing perspectives on psychological development and analytic technique, while also being united in privileging agentic subjectivity as a goal of treatment. These claims are developed through review of historically significant texts within the psychoanalytic literature, review of published case studies, discussion of cultural phenomena, and discussion of a psychotherapeutic case conducted by the author. Specifically, the author discusses the writing of Sigmund Freud and his “Dora,” “Rat Man,” and “Little Hans” cases, the writing of Donald Winnicott and Margaret Little’s account of her analysis with Winnicott (1985), the writing of Jacques Lacan, the contemporary phenomenon of “Incels” (alienated men who identify as “involuntary celibates”), and one of his own cases. Through discussion of these materials, it is argued that “freedom from” the interference of intrapsychic conflict is central in Freud’s model of treatment, while the work of Winnicott focuses on development of “freedom to” act as a vital, creative, separate, and secure subject. Finally, the work of Lacan complicates the question of freedom, conceptualizing psychoanalysis as a process by which subjectivity is claimed by the analysand who comes to center on their own desire, while also maintaining that this desire is shaped by the experience of living within a symbolic order that precedes the analysand. The conclusion of this study discusses the relationship between aggression and the experience of freedom and the importance of representation of experience in the development of reflective agency, concepts the author sees 6 to be emergent from the literature reviewed, as well as discussion of limitations of this study and areas for future investigation, in particular the need for interrogation of this dissertation’s intrapsychic conceptions of freedom in relation to collectively-oriented, socially-mediated forms of oppression such as racism, patriarchy, regimes of heteronormativity, colonialism, material impoverishment, and political repression. Keywords: psychoanalysis, freedom, subjectivity, agency, Freud, Winnicott, Lacan, reflection, object usage, creative living, Incel, imaginary register, symbolic castration, dialectization, desire 7 INTRODUCTION Is Psychoanalysis About Freedom? Patients enter psychotherapy seeking a variety of results: symptom relief, more satisfying relationships, support in a lonely world, and the list goes on. When considered in detail, each patient seeks something unique and what is sought from treatment evolves for the patient as time in psychotherapy progresses. In the more structured, symptom-focused treatments, both psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral, this evolution in understanding of what is desired from treatment may remain implicit due to emphasis on diagnostic categories taking precedence over attention to the patient’s shifting self-understanding and emerging awareness of previously unknown fears and desires through treatment. Instead, the goals specified at the outset are reached, and the treatment ends. But even in these seemingly straightforward cases, when the overwhelming aspect of life that brought the patient into therapy is relieved, the patient may leave with a new retrospective understanding of the goal of their treatment. Looking back on their experience may show that psychotherapy achieved an end different from the wish for symptom relief that brought them into treatment. For example, a patient may enter treatment citing lack of energy and isolation. If her or his vitality increases after treatment, what is the best description of the course of psychotherapy? It can be said to have addressed the presenting symptoms, but by addressing presenting symptoms, does the patient not thus move into a new position in which he must then consider how he will live going forward? Did the treatment “resolve the depression” or did it bring him or her into a position to find his own questions about how to live? Likewise, another patient may enter treatment speaking of frustrations in social relationships and overwhelming anxieties. Whatever intervention and process of change model the therapist applies, the patient comes to 8 feel less fear, leading to a new question: again, how do I prefer to live now that the thing that left me feeling I could not live is lessened? What are the implications of these observations regarding the nature of psychotherapy? I hypothesize that psychoanalysis (or psychoanalytic psychotherapy) in fact contains an implicit goal, which is an orientation toward the promotion of human freedom, and the dissertation that follows will investigate this claim. The question of psychoanalysis’s underlying orientation and the possibility that the development of human freedom is the organizing principle in treatment has generally remained unaddressed, with one exception, which is Jonathan Lear’s concept of analysis as a process for promoting freedom and discussion of the aspects of freedom emphasized by different psychoanalytic schools (2009). Lear begins by introducing the concept of “final cause” to the discussion of the psychoanalytic treatment. Regarding the definition of “final cause,” he writes, “it is that towards which all the activities are aiming: it is what they are for, what they are aiming to promote” (p. 1308). Lear reasons that the choices made by the psychotherapist depend on what aim (i.e. what final cause) they conceptualize treatment to seek. He states his understanding of the importance of “final cause” most clearly when he writes (2009): Philosophical inquiry lies at the heart of psychoanalytic technique. Even in the minutest here-and-now moment of a psychoanalytic session, how can we evaluate it properly if we have only the vaguest sense of what we are aiming for – or why we are aiming for that and not something else?... [Clinical practitioners] cannot really understand their own clinical activity if they lack understanding of what it is they are trying to bring about – or why it is worthwhile to do so (p. 1315). 9 Furthermore, Lear proposes that freedom is the aim of psychotherapy. My own interest in the topic arose prior to reading Lear’s article, but his comments regarding