Abstract

Psychoanalysis declares itself an anti-philosophy. For Freud and Lacan and their followers, philosophy does not take into account the role of the unconscious, and depends on the self-certainty of conscious thought. These are false assertions. Aristotle, the Peripatetics, Plato and Plotinus all acknowledged the role of unconscious thought: knowledge of which we are unaware (Meno 80d, Phaedo 68b–d), intellectual activity that we do no apprehend in conscious thought (Enn. IV.3.30), thoughts that we do not consciously grasp (V.1.12), or thoughts prior to conscious awareness in perception (V.1.12). Psychoanalysis, like phenomenology, is based on discursive reason (dianoia) and perceived phenomena, and neglects the role of noetic thought, thought not connected to sense perception. For Lacan, influenced by structural linguistics, the signifier must precede the signified, as the perception must precede the idea. Freud and Husserl abandoned the teachings of their professor Brentano. According to Brentano in The Psychology of Aristotle, it is only when the activity of the active intellect (of Averroes) ‘has made the images intelligible in unconscious thought’ that the material intellect ‘receives from the images the concepts of sensible things’ (1977: 10). For Plotinus, it is only when the activities of intellect are shared with perception that ‘conscious awareness takes place’ (Enn. V.1.2). Freud saw the images of the unconscious becoming conscious through language (An Outline of Psycho-Analysis), while Lacan saw the language of the unconscious becoming conscious through images (Écrits). Neither presented a complete picture of how the mind works. Psychoanalysis needs to reclaim the philosophical unconscious in order to present a complete picture of the mind.