The Truth About Freud's Technique. Michael Guy Thompson
of discharge through speech are also in a sense indications of reality—but of thought-reality not of external reality” (1966b, 373). Freud was shaken by this discovery and only reluctandy abandoned his seduction theory because of it. Edelson believes that “Freud’s despair and even antipathy were not simply a rejection of the sexual context of psychical reality. . . . His anguish is that of the utilitarian rationalist who, wishing the cause of psychopathology to be ‘out there,’ is confronted by the obdurately nonrational and subjective” (4). Later, in his Introductory Lectures, Freud lamented the problems this discovery presented in terms reminiscent of a man who has learned that his wife was unfaithful, as though his patients had been “lying” to him. Edelson observes that, in Freud’s Lectures, “the psychoanalyst is perplexed by the ‘low valuation of reality, the neglect of the distinction between it and phantasy,’ and is ‘tempted to feel offended at the patient’s having taken up . . . time with invented stories’” (5).
Freud’s foreboding at the implications of this discovery is understandable. In fact, he never abandoned the search for confirmation of his theories in empirical, scientific terms. Even when his discoveries were taking him further and further away from such confirmation—indeed, these discoveries comprise psychoanalysis—Freud continued to couch his discoveries in “scientific” garb. He was afraid that his patients would refuse to accept his interpretations of their phantasy and imaginative life unless they were told their experiences were real:
It will be a long time before he can take in our proposal that we should equate phantasy and reality and not bother to begin with whether the childhood experiences under examination are the one or the other. . . . It remains a fact that the patient has created these phantasies for himself and this fact is of scarcely less importance than if he had really experienced what the phantasies contain. (1963, 367–68; emphasis added)
Freud assumed that his patients would feel insulted if he told them what they thought was real was only phantasy. They, Freud believed, wanted—like Freud himself—the truth. All human beings, including neurotics, want to be taken seriously and resent being told their experiences and recollections are merely products of their imagination. They feel—and want—these phantasies to be true. Freud knew these phantasies seemed real to the person having them. He even says they are real—in a way. But how could these phantasies be real if they aren’t, unless they’re experienced as such by the person who has them? In T:otem and Taboo, Freud added that
what lie behind the sense of guilt of neurotics are always psychical realities and never factual ones. What characterizes neurotics is that they prefer psychical to factual reality and react just as seriously to thoughts as normal people do to realities. (1958i, 159; emphasis in original)
Freud’s depiction of psychical reality isn’t the sort of factual reality or material reality that is supported by empirical science. Freud even defines this so-called reality in terms of phantasy and hallucination. In what sense can one describe these phantasies as realities when they aren’t actually real? Freud sometimes uses the term reality metaphorically. He thought that phantasies might be real in the same way that reality may be—but often isn’t—“real.” In other words, Freud recognized that phantasies, though not literally correct depictions of the past, convey meaning. And this meaning tells us more about our patients’ histories than might otherwise be learned. By interpreting phantasies and their symptoms, Freud was able to obtain what was truly meant by them. His use of the term psychical reality, which was opposed to external reality, actually juxtaposed a truthful (psychical) reality with a literal (external) one. This isn’t to say that literal—or external—reality is false, but it was Freud’s genius to see that the truth about one’s history—and, by extension, one’s existence—can be obtained linguistically by interpreting phantasies and symptoms as disguised messages. The recognition that these phantasies were also messages suggested there was something truthful about them that the patient couldn’t simply say. Freud’s insight that these phantasies were in some way real was a truth he discovered about the nature of phantasy.
Herbert Marcuse, in a famous study of Freud from a philosophical perspective, discussed the link between Freud’s conception of phantasy and the latent truths—if correctly understood—they potentially disclose:
As a fundamental, independent mental process, phantasy has a truth value of its own—namely, the surmounting of the antagonistic human reality. Imagination envisions the reconciliation of the individual with the whole, of desire with realization, of happiness with reason. While this harmony has been removed into Utopia by the established reality principle, phantasy insists that it must and can become real, that behind the illusion lies knowledge. (1955, 220)
In other words, phantasy serves a purpose: It reveals the intentional structure of the individual’s deepest longings and aspirations. But Freud lacked a conception of “intentionality”—though he talked about intentions and meanings all the time—which would have explained how his patients were able to convey in disguised and indirect ways truths they “knew” but couldn’t bring themselves to admit. In other words, his neurotic patients unconsciously intended their symptoms and phantasies, they weren’t simply “caused” by their unconscious. Freud apparently suspected the existence of an unconscious form of subjectivity that was capable of intending symptoms when he invoked the term counter-will, early in his development. In a philosophical study of psychoanalysis, Stanley Leavy notes Freud’s difficulty in grappling with the notion of an “unconscious subject”:
One of Freud’s earliest ways of presenting the idea of unconscious motivation was as “counter-will” (Gegenwille), a word that is worth keeping in mind whenever we say “the unconscious.” Will, so rich in philosophical overtones, has been played down by psychoanalysis. Being a verb as well as a noun, the word will always implies a subject. When I do something that I claim I didn’t want to do . . . it does no good to plead that blind, impersonal, unconscious forces “did” the act: they are me. (1988, 8)
Leavy’s use of the term will does not, of course, refer to the conventional usage of conscious will, any more than Freud’s expression counterwill. Will refers to an “intentional act” and alludes to prereflective, or unconscious, sources of motivation and behavior. Freud first used the term counter-will in 1892 in his “Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism” (Freud: 1966a). He used it to depict an idea that the patient was unaware of while awake, but became manifest under hypnosis. He continued to use the term here and there in a variety of contexts for some twenty more years. Quoting from Leavy:
This concept helped Freud to come to an understanding of hysterical attacks. In “The Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena” [1962] (Standard Edition, vol. 3, 32), he said that a patient’s “fear that she might make a noise turned into actually making one—an instance of ‘hysterical counter-will.’” Freud turned to counter-will in his 1901 [1960] Psychopathology of Everyday Life (Standard Edition, vol. 6, 158n) to explain the mistakes and delays that often occur in making payments; elsewhere in the same work, Freud attributes many kinds of errors and omissions to the same origin. (12n.)
And later, in a paper on love and sexual impotence, Freud turned to the concept of counter-will again. “He [the patient] now becomes aware that it is some feature of the sexual object which gives rise to the inhibition of his male potency, and sometimes he reports that he has a feeling of an obstacle inside him, the sensation of a counter-will which successfully interferes with his conscious intention” (1957d, 179).
Leavy adds that the term seems to disappear thereafter. “Probably the generalization fell apart into concepts like resistance, repression, unconscious conflict, and ultimately, drive. But the gain in specificity was accompanied by the loss of the implication of a personal ‘will’” (1988, 12n.). In other words, as Freud pursued his aim of establishing the empirical “causes” of symptoms, the notion of the unconscious as a subtle agent, anonymous ego, or counter-will, receded into the background. This tendency to depersonalize the unconscious into impersonal drives, forces, and instincts has not met with universal acceptance, even within psychoanalytic circles. The term instinct, or drive, was scarcely used before 1905, though