The Truth About Freud's Technique. Michael Guy Thompson
interested in philosophy. I don’t blame them. Most of what passes for philosophy today is so alienated it’s of practical use to no one. Freud felt the same way about philosophers in his day. Yet, there are philosophers who are the exception. Freud knew some and was influenced by them. Had Heidegger been older, perhaps their paths might have crossed. As it was, they didn’t. I think, however, that the risk is worth taking because Heidegger’s thinking is so compatible with Freud’s that I’m surprised this book wasn’t written much earlier, by someone else. You will have to judge for yourselves if I am right and whether including this section (Part Two) is helpful. If not, disregard it. The rest stands on its own.
I am primarily concerned with Freud’s work from the time he analyzed Dora (1900) to the completion of his technical papers on psychoanalysis (1915). A section is devoted to each of these events and a third explores Freud’s treatment of the Rat Man. My aim is to show how his analysis of these two patients—a hysteric and an obsessional—is entirely consistent with the recommendations he explicated in his technical papers, written subsequent to their respective analyses. I include another section—Part One—devoted to examining some of Freud’s references to the nature of reality throughout his writings, the principal thesis of this work. Freud’s views about truth and reality are intertwined, and sometimes only hazily distinguished. Yet, his thoughts on the matter pervade the technique he had crystallized, once and for all, when the technical papers were completed. Finally, I include in Part Six a discussion of Freud’s paper on termination, published in 1937, to show its fidelity—at this advanced age—to the papers he had written more than twenty years earlier.
I hope the final result is a Freud who, despite the enormous diversity of his output and the ambiguous nature of his conclusions, was consistent to the end. This is a Freud we have systematically rejected and are in danger of losing. Though some would claim that he is merely a historical figure, I believe that Freud’s contribution to analysis is more radical now than ever before. His ideas are no less controversial today than they were in 1900, and for the same reasons. If I have succeeded in encouraging anyone to take a second look at Freud before dismissing him, to really look at him for himself despite the bias against him, then my purpose in writing this book will have been achieved.
Over the last two years I have discussed portions of this book with a number of colleagues and friends. Although I cannot list them all, I would like to thank in particular my colleagues in London, Dr. John Heaton, Mr. Chris Oakley, and Dr. Steven Gans; and, in the United States, Dr. Robert Westfall, Dr. Murray Bilmes, Prof. Wilfried Ver Eecke, Dr. Julius Heuscher, Dr. Randall Weingarten, Prof. Walter Menrath, and Dr. Kirk Schneider. I especially want to thank Dr. Stanley Leavy, who contributed many invaluable suggestions; and Dr. Otto Allen Will, Jr., for whose encouragement and support I am eternally grateful. Both have had a profound impact on my thinking. Of course, none of the people who helped me are accountable for the ideas expressed here for which I, alone, am responsible.
THE TRUTH ABOUT FREUD’S TECHNIQUE
I THE TRUE AND THE REAL IN FREUD
Despite Freud’s insistence about his relationship with truth, confessed at an old age on reflection of his life, nowhere in his writings about psychoanalysis is the concept of truth discussed. It isn’t even a basic term in his theory. When Freud admitted his “single motive was the love of truth” and that during his whole life he only “endeavored to uncover truths,” was he talking about his personal relationship with truth, or his professional one? If the search for truth encompassed the entirety of his life, why is its nature neglected in his analytic theories? Why did Freud never talk about truth, as such? The nature of truth is a philosophical question. It isn’t now nor has it ever been a medical or psychological problem. Freud refused to couch psychoanalysis in specifically philosophical terms. Even ethics and epistemology, so central to psychoanalytic aims, were systematically avoided. He condemned philosophers, almost all of whom generally dismissed his work. Instead, Freud identified with science as it was then understood (and even now). Science, in and of itself, isn’t concerned with the question of truth, a speculative meditation concerning one’s experience. The nature of truth is far more encompassing than what we are able to “observe” about it. It is profoundly personal. Instead, science is concerned with—grant me this generalization—reality, a reality however, which, when defined by scientific method, is strictly measurable and observable. Yet, Freud rejected this definition of reality. The object of his explorations—the mind—isn’t measurable or observable. It can only be known according to a person’s capacity for thinking. The scientific method—in the social as well as the hard sciences—investigates behavior and the laws in nature that are presumed to govern it. Psychoanalysis is concerned with the mind. Though our minds aren’t specifically observable, it is possible to become aware of our thoughts through consciousness. Psychoanalysis also aspires to gain access to a so-called unconscious mind, a form of thought that is not only unobservable but is even inaccessible to consciousness.
Freud’s insistence on reporting his findings in scientific terms was one of history’s supreme juggling acts, one that has left everyone (scientists and psychoanalysts alike) dissatisfied, spawning endless arguments about whether or not psychoanalysis is a science and, if so, what kind of science it might be if it doesn’t (and we know it doesn’t) meet its traditional standards. Recall the apparent discrepancy between Freud’s statement about truth, on the one hand, and its absence in his “scientific” papers on the other. In fact, Freud’s writings reveal a relentless effort to explore the nature of reality, including his remarkable conception of a so-called psychical reality. Even phantasy enjoyed the status of reality in Freud’s depiction of it. The manner in which Freud explored the nature of reality shows varied meanings in multiple contexts—only occasionally explicidy acknowledged—many of which bear little, if any, resemblance to science. In spite of Freud’s insistence on making his new science appear scientific, he never compromised his avowed endeavor of searching for truth—not fact.
When Freud proposed that psychoanalysis deserved to be accepted as a science, the science that he specifically favored was psychology, one of the most dubious branches of science. The psychological school of behaviorism is probably the only one that has succeeded in gaining at least some amount of credence from the scientific community. Psychology as a whole, because it is increasingly influenced by behaviorism, claims for itself a capacity to engage in scientific research and the ability to interpret the data from its “findings” into general “laws” of behavior. Yet, what relevance can such an endeavor possibly have for a method of investigation—psychoanalysis—that is only minimally concerned with behavior?
Freud’s principal concern throughout his writings revolved around the problem of determining what was real in the world and in oneself, and distinguishing what was real from what, unbeknownst to us, wasn’t. This is a philosophical proposition and not, strictly speaking, psychological. This question only becomes psychological when it begins to concern the ways in which self-deception may occasion states of confusion that we bring on ourselves in order to avoid a reality we don’t wish to accept. Yet, the degree of anguish that prompts us to deceive ourselves in the first place isn’t strictly psychological either. Aristotle examined these questions in his book on ethics. There he explored the nature of pleasure, happiness, misery, deception, and honesty—all major themes in Freud’s work.
Historically, questions concerning the nature of reality have always been associated with metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that seeks to determine what is real in the world and in the universe. Metaphysics looks at the nature of a “thing,” whether it actually exists, whether it’s tangible or consists of matter. If it lacks those qualities we’re probably imagining it. It becomes an “idea.” It isn’t real. But the reality or realness of something can’t always be equated with its actuality. One of the questions that has always preoccupied metaphysics is the scope and nature of the universe. Another is the existence of God. Proofs of God’s existence have been offered, but none of them has ever been based on His actuality. These “proofs,” however elegant, never led to any certainty that He exists, though many believe that He does. Consequently, certainty has never been an essential criterion for determining whether something is real (Leavy 1990).
Questions