Sigmund Freud

This is a rudimentary paper written to claim my connection that the American and the erstwhile Indian modes of psychoanalysis are more authentic modes vis-à-vis the French mode. Some of the claims I make in this paper have been already published in Prabuddha Bharata and some are forthcoming. For instance, I have written on Ritalin which is pertinent to this discussion yet I have avoided mentioning this since my contention regarding Ritalin is pending publication in Prabuddha Bharata. Addition : 2020, (...) my comments on the efficacy of Ritalin have been published last year in Prabuddha Bharata. (shrink)

Freud introduces his dualistic theory of the life and death drives in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Much of that essay is devoted to the justification of the death drive, while little is said in defense of the introduction of “life drives” and “Eros,” which he claims are simply an extension of his libido theory from the psychological into the biological realm. In this essay, I argue that Eros is, on the contrary, fundamentally incompatible with Freud’s metapsychology. I first show that (...) Freud’s theory of society permits the production and preservation of social bonds only through the restraint of sexual aims rather than, as the theory of Eros would require, through the satisfaction of sexual drives. I then demonstrate that Eros is incompatible with three key elements of Freud’s metapsychology: the theories of the drives, the pleasure principle, and the principle of constancy. Finally, I argue that the death drive is indistinguishable from the early and late theories of the principle of constancy. Consequently, it is the death drive, and not Eros, that is merely an extension of the original libido theory. Because Eros is incompatible with the very foundations of Freud’s metapsychology, his drive theory can only consistently be interpreted as a monism of the death drive. (shrink)

Freud’s discussion of uncanny [unheimlich] experiences focuses on their peculiar ambivalence. On his view, the uncanny is a paradoxical feeling of both familiarity and alienation. While Freud’s analysis of this paradoxical feeling does succeed in explaining it away, it does little to explain it. One might expect a psychoanalytical demystification of the real experience that is hidden behind the superstitious overtones of uncanny experiences. Instead, the uncanny is attributed rather anti- climactically to the combination of a previous superstition (maintained unconsciously) (...) and an entirely coincidental verification of that superstition. The implication is that there is no uncanny per se. There is no distinctive category of experience, the unique character of which tends to cause or encourage superstitious beliefs; rather, such beliefs are prerequisite to having the experience. In other words, the experience suits the belief, and not vice-versa. The uncanny is the fantasized verification of a repressed fantasy. It involves a breakdown of the reality principle and the projection of beliefs into the external world, rather than a peculiarity of feeling that can be linked intrinsically to a specific category of experience. I do not intend to reject this analysis in its entirety. The basic structure, repression and return, is sound. However, Freud’s analysis of the uncanny, which resolves uncanny ambivalence into the separate categories of consciousness and unconsciousness, merely reinstates the problematical opposition of das heimliche and das unheimliche, familiar and unfamiliar, within the mind rather than in the external world. The coincidence of the two feelings in uncanny experience cannot be explained without an intervening stage between repression and return. I will suggest that Freud’s characterization of uncanniness as the return, in superstition, of the repressed is a misplacement of the experience of uncanniness. The aesthetical feeling is the cause of, but not identical to, the projected superstitions and ideas which surround it. An explanation of the feeling of uncanniness must fall not on the side of the repressed, but on the side of consciousness. The import of my position is that the feeling of uncanniness refers, in a manner of speaking, to something “real,” rather than merely to infantile ideas projected upon the external world. Freud’s explanation makes the unconscious a kind of scapegoat to be blamed for imposing fundamentally irrational beliefs into our interpretation of present experience, in that way preserving a model of the conscious ego as autonomous, fundamentally attuned to reality and ultimately independent of the unconscious. I will argue, on the contrary, that the experience of the uncanny is not merely a falling back into irrational or infantile beliefs, but an experience of a deep disunity in personhood that rightly causes us to question our everyday confidence in the unity, independence, and rationality of our conscious sense of self. The ambivalence of the feeling has its source in an irresolvable ambivalence that can exist in consciousness, and not simply in an analytically resolvable psychical ambivalence between consciousness and the unconscious. (shrink)

Brief description of Freud's life and work, emphasising the role of fictive belief and experience (phantasy) in his account of mental disorder.

This article aims to compare notions of progress and evolution in the social theories of Freud and Spencer. It argues 1) that the two authors had similarly complex theories that contained mixed elements of positivism and teleology; 2) In its positivist elements, both authors made use of unified natural laws and, in its teleological aspect, they made use of notions of final cause in that progress and the evolution of civilization was understood as a linear path of progressive development with (...) an aim, 3) that that aim was both ethno- as well as - in Freud?s case in particular? self-centric and, finally, 4) that such understanding of natural law led to ethical commitments to the individual. (shrink)

Is the expression “unconscious phenomena” a contradiction in terms? Do psychoanalytic discoveries compel phenomenology to adapt its methods in treating inapparent phenomena? What role does the body play in the manifestation of such phenomena? In this paper, I approach these questions (1) from within the clinical context of a post-traumatic somatization and (2) by spelling out the implications of Heidegger’s critique of Freudian psychoanalysis in the Zollikon Seminars. Drawing new critical attention to Freud’s earliest theories and methods, developed in the (...) context of the investigation into hysteria, I argue that some of his fundamental insights may be read as following basic phenomenological intuitions. Following Heidegger’s reconfiguration of the field of phenomenology, the inapparent (“that which does not show itself as itself”) may be seen as taking center stage as the exhaustive model for phenomena as such. Placing particular emphasis on a set of Heidegger’s critical notions – “semblance” [Schein],” “understanding”, “motive” [Beweggrund] and “bodying-forth” [Leiben] — I argue that somatization could be conceptualized phenomenologically as a “bodying-forth” [Leiben] of an incapacity to understand or be understood, and that a similar mis-understanding may also befall practitioners who struggle to witness trauma, thus becoming the clinician’s own symptom. (shrink)

Empowerment is a prominent ideal in health promotion. However, the exact meaning of this ideal is often not made explicit. In this paper, we outline an account of empowerment grounded in the human capacity to adapt and adjust to environmental and societal norms without being completely determined by those norms. Our account reveals a tension at the heart of empowerment between (a) the ability of self-governance and (b) the need to adapt and adjust to environmental and societal norms. We address (...) this tension by drawing from the work of Freud, Canguilhem, and Lacan. First, we clarify through a discussion of Freud’s notion of sublimation that it is difficult to assess empowerment independent of any social valuations, but also that it is no less problematic to make it dependent on social valuations alone. Second, we draw from the work of Canguilhem to show how empowerment can be understood in terms of the individual’s capacity to tolerate the aggressions of a multiplicity of environments. Third, using Lacan, we show how empowerment requires incorporation of social and symbolic norms, without necessarily rendering ourselves a mere product of these norms. Finally, we demonstrate how the views of these authors can complement one another, resulting in a more sophisticated understanding of empowerment. (shrink)

Central to the philosophical practice is the application of philosophers' work by philosophical practitioners to inspire, educate, and guide their clients. For example, in Logic-Based Therapy (LBT), a philosophical practice methodology developed by Elliot Cohen, philosophical practitioners help their clients to find an uplifting philosophy that promotes a guiding virtue that acts as an antidote to unrealistic and often self-defeating conclusions derived from irrational premises. In this essay, I will explore the existential ethics of Simone de Beauvoir, a French existentialist (...) philosopher, and writer. I present the argument that Beauvoir’s existential ethics, more specifically her articulation of ambiguity, can act as an uplifting philosophy, as per LBT methodology, which could be of value to philosophical practitioners to inspire, educate and guide their counselees for confronting problems of living. I will present my discussion of Beauvoir’s existential ethics in the context of ideological obsession and ideology addiction, which is often supported by the reasoning that underlies the cardinal fallacy of existential perfectionism. I will argue that Beauvoir’s existential ethics could serve as a prophylactic for ideological obsession and ideology addiction. I will also suggest that LBT may be particularly suited when addressing the self-defeating, unrealistic conclusions derived from irrational premises in practical reasoning that may fuel ideological obsession because it could provide a methodology to address irrational beliefs in a way that could mitigate the fragmentation anxiety that may arise when relinquishing maladaptive self-object organizations. (shrink)

This essay addresses the notion of self-deception as articulated by Sigmund Freud and Jean-Paul Sartre. More specifically, I will critically assess Sartre’s notion of ‘bad faith’ (mauvaise foi) as a critique of Freud’s depth-psychological account of self-deception. Sartre’s main objection to Freud’s account of self-deception rests on his argument that for self-deception to occur there needs to be a conscious awareness of the coexistence of mutually incompatible beliefs, and that Freud had obscured this fact by splitting the self and with (...) a mixture of jargon. In conclusion, I suggest a speculative and tentative hypothesis for self-deception that suggests an alternative to Freud and Sartre’s account of self-deception, one that views the self or self-system as having a disposition for self-deception when understood as having the capacity for fluid working self-states that are ‘expandable’ and ‘contractable’ that differ in self-complexity. (shrink)

Argues that modernism can be seen as a therapeutic project for transforming human experience, and draws from Freudian psychoanalysis, Virginia Woolf's criticism and fiction, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology.

Resumen: Este artículo consiste en un comentario del ensayo Ser justo con Freud: La historia de la locura en la era del psicoanálisis de Derrida con el objeto de rastrear lo que no puede ser reapropiado por la presuposición del marco del debate entre Derrida y Foucault. Al analizar la pregunta “¿quién anuncia el no-recurso?”, exploraré la forma en que la escritura de Derrida es afectada por la necesidad e imposibilidad de no reprimir la sinrazón. Argumentaré que Derrida compulsivamente escribe (...) los efectos de dicha resistencia a no reprimir la sinrazón a través de la repetición de la búsqueda Foucaultiana de un más allá de la razón. Esta “compulsión de repetición’ no solamente reabre una y otra vez el debate, sino que desencadena el retorno de la sinrazón en la forma de un desarreglo de los principios de identidad y tiempo lineal, desestabilizando todo forma de autoría sobre la historia de la locura en general y cada una de sus críticas. Este artículo se aproxima a los intercambios entre Derrida y Foucault deconstruyendo la premisa de la posibilidad de un debate sobre la historia de la locura. (shrink)

An investigation of Benjamin’s conception of the subject as fractured via a reading of Benjamin’s use of Freud, this book engages Benjamin’s writing on sovereignty and myth in the Baroque and analyzes these themes in the context of Benjamin’s writing on the 19th century.

Sigmund Freud’s biologism has historically come with a negative valence, seeming to consign us to passive determination by irrational drives. While the nonhuman turn has recently highlighted the underacknowledged creativity of animal life, this re-evaluation of biology has hardly implicated Freud. I contend that Maurice Merleau-Ponty reveals a nascent ‘other Freud’ able to inform the nonhuman turn, one that sees the human animal as the basis of the free and relational psychoanalytic subject. I follow Merleau-Ponty in reading Freud as engaged (...) with the question of how a shared, intersubjective world is possible. Both thinkers realized that it is in the domain of life, not cognition, that we verify this seemingly human relational potential. Elaborating the Merleau-Pontian Freud, I argue for a psychoanalytic subject that necessitates nonhuman life as its ecstatic unmooring towards the Other and reality. Ecological thinking is not an obstacle to the relationality prized by psychoanalysis, but a necessity. (shrink)

O inconsciente foi a maior contribuição freudiana e passou por reformulações. Da primeira até a segunda tópica, Freud teorizou a respeito de um Eu inconsciente e nada soberano. Nos interessa nesse artigo mostrar como Freud estabelece uma crítica às teorias consciencialistas e qual o caminho percorrido para encontrar um outro caráter para o Eu. Para tanto, mobilizaremos sua teoria do desejo, sendo esta a principal responsável pelo funcionamento do psiquismo. Suporemos que o inconsciente freudiano introduz para a humanidade um modo (...) de lidar com as faltas que, além de não extirpáveis, nos descentram a todo momento. (shrink)

Ya desde sus primeras publicaciones, la pregunta por la constitución histórica del sujeto se presenta como un eje central en la filosofía del argentino León Rozitchner (1924-2011). El presente artículo analiza el modo en que Rozitchner, a partir de esta problemática, realiza un camino que va desde la fenomenología hacia el psicoanálisis, dando así lugar a una lectura filosófico-política de Freud. En la primera parte, recomponemos las continuidades y rupturas teóricas que lo conducen de Merleau-Ponty hacia Freud. Una vez realizado (...) esto, analizamos el modo en que, a partir de su lectura de Freud, Rozitchner advierte la existencia de dos distancias (una interna, otra externa) en la constitución histórica del sujeto. A modo de conclusión, señalamos la relevancia teórica y política de la filosofía de Rozitchner y algunos de los logros y límites de su lectura de Freud. (shrink)

Discussions around the meaning and validity of Freud’s notion of Todestrieb, as it was introduced in the essay from 1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle, later...

Freud was interested in the problem of memory from the time of his very early works. The processes taking place in memory, imaging, remembering and forgetting images focused his attention and were one of the pillars of shaping his conception of the unconscious and mind as “the storehouse of total memory,” which in one of his works he compared to “the Eternal City of Rome”, which accumulate images-memories gathered throughout life. Shifts, changes, deformations, strong emotional components determine the specificity of (...) many processes of remembering and forgetting, a specific “coding” of information in the form of visual, acoustic and other images. Nowadays, there are indications of Freud’s views in various dimensions of scientific research on memory and the consciousness of the importance of these approaches in our culture and its discovery of the role of autobiographical memory. (shrink)

Diderot escreve, na Enciclopédia, um longo verbete, “Tear de meias”, no qual compara o tear a um raciocínio cuja conclusão seria o têxtil. Ele retoma esta comparação na Refutação de Helvétius: ali, é o próprio Leibniz que se torna uma máquina de reflexão, similar ao “tear de meias”. A opção materialista do homem máquina retoma uma tradição que assimila o texto ao tecido. Encontramos a mesma imagem no Fausto de Goethe, que é citado por Freud em A interpretação dos sonhos, (...) e na novela de Henry James O motivo no tapete. A invenção é sempre cruzamento, tecelagem e mestiçagem, numa interação entre criação técnica e representação da atividade intelectual. O sistema de programação dos teares foi posteriormente adaptado às primeiras máquinas analíticas, ancestrais de nossos computadores atuais. A Enciclopédia teorizou esta interação, reabilitando os teares e concebendo o pensamento como um trabalho. (shrink)

This essay addresses the notion of self-deception as articulated by Sigmund Freud and Jean-Paul Sartre. More specifically, it provides an analysis of Sartre’s critique of Freud’s depth-psychological account of self-deception. I critically examine his theory of bad faith as an account of self-deception. Sartre’s main objection to the depthpsychological explanation of Freud’s account of self-deception rests on his argument that for self-deception to occur there needs to be conscious awareness of the coexistence of mutually incompatible beliefs, and that Freud had (...) obscured this fact by splitting the self and with a mixture of jargon. (shrink)

This essay addresses the notion of self-deception as articulated by Sigmund Freud and Jean-Paul Sartre. More specifically, it provides an analysis of Sartre’s critique of Freud’s depth-psychological account of self-deception. I critically examine his theory of bad faith as an account of self-deception. Sartre’s main objection to the depth-psychological explanation of Freud’s account of self-deception rests on his argument that for self-deception to occur there needs to be conscious awareness of the coexistence of mutually incompatible beliefs, and that Freud had (...) obscured this fact by splitting the self and with a mixture of jargon. (shrink)

This essay addresses the notion of self-deception as articulated by Sigmund Freud and Jean-Paul Sartre. More specifically, it provides an analysis of Sartre’s critique of Freud’s depth-psychological account of self-deception. I critically examine his theory of bad faith as an account of self-deception. Sartre’s main objection to the depth-psychological explanation of Freud’s account of self-deception rests on his argument that for self-deception to occur there needs to be conscious awareness of the coexistence of mutually incompatible beliefs, and that Freud had (...) obscured this fact by splitting the self and with a mixture of jargon. (shrink)

Ever since the 1960s, media and communication studies have abounded in heated debates concerning the psychological and social effects of fictional media violence. Massive empirical research has first tried to tie film violence to cultivating either fear or aggressive tendencies among its viewership, while later research has focused on other media as well (television, video games). The present paper does not aim to settle the factual question of whether or not medial experiences indeed engender real emotional dispositions. Instead, it brings (...) into play the resources of genetic phenomenology in order to ask how the formation of such dispositions would be generally possible. Thus, it aims to further the discussion by overtly employing the framework of Husserl’s later genetic phenomenology to the field of emotional experience. By posing questions with regard to how fictional emotional experiences contribute to the formation of apperceptions and to the specificities of emotional sedimentation, it also points out some shortcomings in Husserl’s account by drawing from Freud’s dynamic theory of drives and emotions. (shrink)

The following article presents an analysis of the conflict that occurs between philosophy and psychoanalysis in both the works of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan; This conflict is conveyed from the alienated condition of the subject that arises from the thesis of the unconscious. The subject deconstructs himself as consciousness and reveals the impossibility of him in the very act in which he presents himself through his saying. In this way, language configures the Freudo-Lacanian idea of the unconscious in the (...) form of an act of performative iteration, not so much at the level of consultation, but as the founding cogito of philosophical and scientific reflection. (shrink)

This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to religion and psychology, including a compelling denouement that reveals new narratives about longstanding rumours in the early history of the psychoanalytic movement. This volume demonstrates that the first generation of psychoanalysts succeeded in writing themselves into the history of religious thought and sacralizing the origins of psychoanalysis.

No topic has caused more discussion in recent philosophy and political theory than sovereignty. From late Foucault to Agamben, and from Guantanamo Bay to the 'war on terror,' the issue of the extent and the nature of the sovereign has given theoretical debates their currency and urgency. New thinking on sovereignty has always imagined the styles of human selfhood that each regime involves. Each denomination of sovereignty requires a specific mode of subjectivity to explain its meaning and facilitate its operation. (...) The aim of this book is to help outline Jacques Derrida's thinking on sovereignty - a theme which increasingly attracted Derrida towards the end of his career - in its relationship to subjectivity. It investigates the late work Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, as not only Derrida's fullest statement of his thinking on sovereignty, but also as the destination of his career-long interest in questions of politics and self-identity. The book argues that in Derrida's thinking of the relationship between sovereignty and subjectivity - and the related themes of unconditionality and ipseity - we can detect the outline of Bataille's adaptation of Freud. Freud completed his 'metapsychology,' by defining the 'economic' nature of subjectivity. In Bataille's hands, this economic theory became a key to the nature of inter-relationship in general, specifically the complex and shifting relationship between subjectivity and power. In playing with Bataille's legacy, Derrida connects not only with the irrepressibly outrageous thinking of philosophy's most self-consciously transgressive thinker, but with the early twentieth century scientific revolution through which 'energy' became ontology. As with so many of the forebears who influenced him, Derrida echoes and adapts Bataille's thinking while radically de-literalising it. The results are crucial for understanding Derrida's views on power, subjectivity and representation, as well as all of the other key themes in late Derrida: hospitality, justice, otherness and the gift. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to open a new horizon in the field of civilization studies by examining the concept of painless civilization from the perspective of the philosophy of biological evolution. Since the space is limited, the priority will be given to the clarification of an overall structure. Modern civilization has created systems that seek “comfort and pleasure” and eliminate “pain and suffering” and has spread them to every corner of our society. It is progressing like a great wave (...) in many developed countries. I have called a civilization advancing in this direction a “painless civilization.” At first glance, the elimination of pain and suffering seems like a good thing. Of course, it is considered good if unbearable suffering (such as the pain of terminal cancer) that we encounter in our lives can be avoided through technology. This is not the problem. The problem is that modern civilization is moving in a direction where various forms of suffering that we might experience in the future are going to be erased from our lives, one after another, through preventive technologies (preventive elimination of pain). ... (shrink)

The problem of the relationship between consciousness and unconsciousness has proved to be not only a neuralgic point in the interdisciplinary debates throughout the 20th century, but one which maintains its notable place in the present day. Taking the long and complex history of the encounters between Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis and Edmund Husserl's mature phenomenology as a theoretical background, the present paper offers a novel approach towards the consciousness/unconsciousness problem, situated within the peculiar sphere shaped by the dialogue between Freudian (...) and Husserlian notions. What we offer is a preliminary sketch for an analytics of affectability that opens a path toward reexamining some key psychoanalytical concepts such as unconscious, repression and memory which can be a valuable contribution to the development of phenomenological conceptualizations of different forms of traumatic experience. (shrink)