Freud and Lacan

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

The reason I've put Freud in the title is that he's the necessary starting point in understanding/appreciating Lacan, so in discussing Lacan we have to discuss Freud first and decide whether we appreciate his work or not. If we don't, then there's no point talking about Lacan.

I've been reading a lot of Freud and a bit of Lacan, mostly out of intellectual curiosity. A lot of Freud's concepts actually seem quite applicable to myself and I am understanding him in a historical context - to me, his work marks the conception of the mind in bourgeois society as it was then. Society has changed now, as have social units, such as the crucial family, so psychoanalysis will no doubt have to rethink itself, as it is. To me, this is one of the great tenants of psychoanalysis as a discipline and what distinguishes Lacan himself so profoundly. It seems to easy to call him a charlatan - his work seems to have followed on from Freud in the way that Freud's own work adapted and changed accordingly. I can't speak for its effectiveness but its adaptive nature is admirable. This is what I appreciate about Lacan, too. In a similar way to my appreciation of Althusser's re-reading of Marx. To me, Althusser is more important than any other post-Lenin Marxist, but that's for another thread.

I wonder what others think anyway. I'm currently looking at the subject and how it comes into existence through signification/language. This seems undeniable. The scary thing about works like this is that they challenge the Cartesian notion of individual autonomy, but we kinda know that anyway, don't we? Marx certainly did. A Lacanian, Althusserean Marxism for the 21st century seems like a good idea to me. Zizek just doesn't seem to fit the bill, he seems to lack any kind of real intellectual focus.

[ChrisK]

Freud is a waste of time. His theories are metaphysical and completely untestable. To call him a psychologist is in insult to the field.

Also, the subject and how it comes into existence through signification/language is easily deniable.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Freud is a waste of time. His theories are metaphysical and completely untestable. To call him a psychologist is in insult to the field.

Also, the subject and how it comes into existence through signification/language is easily deniable.
no one's calling him a psychologist.

and explain how it is that you understand yourself as yourself and in relation to others outside of signification.

[L.A.P.]

psychoanalysis is a paradigm

[ChrisK]

and explain how it is that you understand yourself as yourself and in relation to others outside of signification.

First, the burden of proof is on you to prove your point that this is the way in which language creates the self.

Second, there is no metaphysical self to speak of. Discussions of "selves" derives from a misunderstanding of the first-person pronoun.

Third, a further critique of Freud's metaphysics is that his ideas run afoul the private language argument, which means that they do not make sense.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

First, the burden of proof is on you to prove your point that this is the way in which language creates the self.

Second, there is no metaphysical self to speak of. Discussions of "selves" derives from a misunderstanding of the first-person pronoun.

Third, a further critique of Freud's metaphysics is that his ideas run afoul the private language argument, which means that they do not make sense.
Not at all, I'm not claiming that I would be able to exist as "I" without the signifiers that allow me to say this to you. You said that it is deniable that the subject comes into being without signification so you have to show me how you are able to communicate as a subject without those signifiers. You have to prove that you, as a social subject, exist apriori. That's your burden.

If the self is a purely metaphysical phenomenon then how do you explain consciousness? I'd suggest that our conception of selves is metaphysical but that's because we are borrowing from language in order to conceptualize them. The correct word in this context would actually be subjective, hence us being subjects.

[ChrisK]

Not at all, I'm not claiming that I would be able to exist as "I" without the signifiers that allow me to say this to you.

Which you have to prove. The person who makes the initial claim has the burden of proof.


You said that it is deniable that the subject comes into being without signification so you have to show me how you are able to communicate as a subject without those signifiers. You have to prove that you, as a social subject, exist apriori. That's your burden.

I deny that the subject comes into being as a non-sense.


If the self is a purely metaphysical phenomenon then how do you explain consciousness? I'd suggest that our conception of selves is metaphysical but that's because we are borrowing from language in order to conceptualize them. The correct word in this context would actually be subjective, hence us being subjects.

I did not call the self a metaphysical phenomenon, I said that talk of "selves" is a metaphysical non-sense.

I like how you've avoided addressing my direct objection to Freud's running a foul the private language argument.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Which you have to prove. The person who makes the initial claim has the burden of proof.



I deny that the subject comes into being as a non-sense.



I did not call the self a metaphysical phenomenon, I said that talk of "selves" is a metaphysical non-sense.

I like how you've avoided addressing my direct objection to Freud's running a foul the private language argument.
i'm not defending freud though and haven't read on that concept enough to be able to discuss it - i'll read it and get back to you i guess. for now, i'm more interested in you claiming that its deniable that a person's concept of themselves as a social being comes from the signifying process.

the irony is that you're unable to even have this discussion without relying on signifiers. that seems like proof in itself to me.

as for your rejection of subjects coming into being (socially), what do you consider yourself as if not a subject? lets say subjected to the conditions around you and the language that permits you to conceptualize and explain them.

[L.A.P.]

*sigh* its been so long since I've thought about any of my Continental/post-structuralist hobbyist stuff. But man it's like the Wittgensteinian zombie of Rosa is back to haunt the forums.

when the two currents collide, its incommensurable nonsense. The two discourses are at different wavelengths and "nonsense" becomes everyone's favorite word

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

*sigh* its been so long since I've thought about any of my Continental/post-structuralist hobbyist stuff. But man it's like the Wittgensteinian zombie of Rosa is back to haunt the forums.

when the two currents collide, its incommensurable nonsense. The two discourses are at different wavelengths and "nonsense" becomes everyone's favorite word
i can't stand it, foucault sums it up for me here:

I like discussions, and when I am asked questions, I try to answer them. It’s true that I don’t like to get involved in polemics. If I open a book and see that the author is accusing an adversary of “infantile leftism” I shut it again right away. That’s not my way of doing things; I don’t belong to the world of people who do things that way. I insist on this difference as something essential: a whole morality is at stake, the one that concerns the search for truth and the relation to the other. In the serious play of questions and answers, in the work of reciprocal elucidation, the rights of each person are in some sense immanent in the discussion. They depend only on the dialogue situation. The person asking the questions is merely exercising the right that has been given him: to remain unconvinced, to perceive a contradiction, to require more information, to emphasize different postulates, to point out faulty reasoning, and so on. As for the person answering the questions, he too exercises a right that does not go beyond the discussion itself; by the logic of his own discourse, he is tied to what he has said earlier, and by the acceptance of dialogue he is tied to the questioning of other. Questions and answers depend on a game—a game that is at once pleasant and difficult—in which each of the two partners takes pains to use only the rights given him by the other and by the accepted form of dialogue.
The polemicist , on the other hand, proceeds encased in privileges that he possesses in advance and will never agree to question. On principle, he possesses rights authorizing him to wage war and making that struggle a just undertaking; the person he confronts is not a partner in search for the truth but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is harmful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat. For him, then the game consists not of recognizing this person as a subject having the right to speak but of abolishing him as interlocutor, from any possible dialogue; and his final objective will be not to come as close as possible to a difficult truth but to bring about the triumph of the just cause he has been manifestly upholding from the beginning. The polemicist relies on a legitimacy that his adversary is by definition denied.
Perhaps, someday, a long history will have to be written of polemics, polemics as a parasitic figure on discussion and an obstacle to the search for the truth. Very schematically, it seems to me that today we can recognize the presence in polemics of three models: the religious model, the judiciary model, and the political model. As in heresiology, polemics sets itself the task of determining the intangible point of dogma, the fundamental and necessary principle that the adversary has neglected, ignored or transgressed; and it denounces this negligence as a moral failing; at the root of the error, it finds passion, desire, interest, a whole series of weaknesses and inadmissible attachments that establish it as culpable. As in judiciary practice, polemics allows for no possibility of an equal discussion: it examines a case; it isn’t dealing with an interlocutor, it is processing a suspect; it collects the proofs of his guilt, designates the infraction he has committed, and pronounces the verdict and sentences him. In any case, what we have here is not on the order of a shared investigation; the polemicist tells the truth in the form of his judgment and by virtue of the authority he has conferred on himself. But it is the political model that is the most powerful today. Polemics defines alliances, recruits partisans, unites interests or opinions, represents a party; it establishes the other as an enemy, an upholder of opposed interests against which one must fight until the moment this enemy is defeated and either surrenders or disappears.
Of course, the reactivation, in polemics, of these political, judiciary, or religious practices is nothing more than theater. One gesticulates: anathemas, excommunications, condemnations, battles, victories, and defeats are no more than ways of speaking, after all. And yet, in the order of discourse, they are also ways of acting which are not without consequence. There are the sterilizing effects. Has anyone ever seen a new idea come out of a polemic? And how could it be otherwise, given that here the interlocutors are incited not to advance, not to take more and more risks in what they say, but to fall back continually on the rights that they claim, on their legitimacy, which they must defend, and on the affirmation of their innocence? There is something even more serious here: in this comedy, one mimics war, battles, annihilations, or unconditional surrenders, putting forward as much of one’s killer instinct as possible. But it is really dangerous to make anyone believe that he can gain access to the truth by such paths and thus to validate, even if in a merely symbolic form, the real political practices that could be warranted by it. Let us imagine, for a moment, that a magic wand is waved and one of the two adversaries in a polemic is given the ability to exercise all the power he likes over the other. One doesn’t even have to imagine it: one has only to look at what happened during the debate in the USSR over linguistics or genetics not long ago. Were these merely aberrant deviations from what was supposed to be the correct discussion? Not at all—they were the real consequences of a polemic attitude whose effects ordinarily remain suspended.
It is a question, then, of thinking about the relations of these different experiences to politics, which doesn’t mean that one will seek in politics the main constituent of these experiences or the solution that will definitively settle their fate. The problems that experiences like these pose to politics have to be elaborated. But it is also necessary to determine what “posing a problem” to politics really means. Richard Rorty points out that in these analyses I do not appeal to any “we”—to any of those “wes” whose consensus, whose values, whose traditions constitute the framework for a thought and define the conditions in which it can be validated. But the problem is, precisely, to decide if it is actually suitable to place oneself within a “we” in order to assert the principles one recognizes and the values one accepts; or if it is not, rather, necessary to make the future formation of a “we” possible by elaborating the question. Because it seems to me that “we” must not be previous to the question; it can only be the result—and the necessary temporary result—of the question as it is posed in the new terms in which one formulates it.

[ChrisK]

i'm not defending freud though and haven't read on that concept enough to be able to discuss it - i'll read it and get back to you i guess.

I'm pushing that issue because you said:


The reason I've put Freud in the title is that he's the necessary starting point in understanding/appreciating Lacan, so in discussing Lacan we have to discuss Freud first and decide whether we appreciate his work or not. If we don't, then there's no point talking about Lacan.

Hence, if we can knock Freud down, we can knock Lacan down. Here is an overview of the Private Language Argument (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/). It relates to Freud's use of the notion of the unconsciousness.


for now, i'm more interested in you claiming that its deniable that a person's concept of themselves as a social being comes from the signifying process.

the irony is that you're unable to even have this discussion without relying on signifiers. that seems like proof in itself to me.

First, you have not proven that their is such a thing as a signifying process.

Second, I am claiming that the very argument that a "persons concept of themselves" makes sense. I am claiming that it is a non-sense derived from a misunderstanding of the first-person pronoun.


as for your rejection of subjects coming into being (socially), what do you consider yourself as if not a subject? lets say subjected to the conditions around you and the language that permits you to conceptualize and explain them.

I think your confusion is stemming from the difference between a person and a "self".

[ChrisK]

*sigh* its been so long since I've thought about any of my Continental/post-structuralist hobbyist stuff. But man it's like the Wittgensteinian zombie of Rosa is back to haunt the forums.

A specter is haunting RevLeft - the specter of Rosa! (Cue menacing music!)


when the two currents collide, its incommensurable nonsense. The two discourses are at different wavelengths and "nonsense" becomes everyone's favorite word

They are not incommensurable. The difference is that a Wittgesteinian critique argues that all philosophical language is non-sense. Continental philosophers then continue to do philosophy the same way and do not respond to the critique. Analytic philosophers aren't much better, but at least they try to respond.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

I'm pushing that issue because you said:



Hence, if we can knock Freud down, we can knock Lacan down. Here is an overview of the Private Language Argument (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/). It relates to Freud's use of the notion of the unconsciousness.



First, you have not proven that their is such a thing as a signifying process.

Second, I am claiming that the very argument that a "persons concept of themselves" makes sense. I am claiming that it is a non-sense derived from a misunderstanding of the first-person pronoun.



I think your confusion is stemming from the difference between a person and a "self".
I'll read it.

as for the signifying process, language is a signifying process. the proof is in the pudding. what is language to you if not a system for signification?

i'm not confused, i am using the term "subject" here, which you are ignoring and pussyfooting around. lets say subject, not "self". my question has always been how you can explain yourself as a social subject outside of language. and i also asked if you consider yourself a subject or not, or if not, what you would "call" yourself in the context of this discussion.

you'll have to provide some kind of point here otherwise we'll get nowhere. if this is the case then maybe we should leave room for people interested in exploring freud and lacan as opposed to this usual analytical pedantry which seems to just call everything nonsense without any reasoning

[ChrisK]

as for the signifying process, language is a signifying process. the proof is in the pudding. what is language to you if not a system for signification?

The problem here is that not all words are signs that represent things. Further, not all sentences describes things either. "Fuck you" doesn't seem to signify at all.

Language is a means of communication and not representation or signification.


i'm not confused, i am using the term "subject" here, which you are ignoring and pussyfooting around. lets say subject, not "self". my question has always been how you can explain yourself as a social subject outside of language. and i also asked if you consider yourself a subject or not, or if not, what you would "call" yourself in the context of this discussion.

Within a material context. Language is highly useful for the communication of thoughts. So if by "explain yourself as a social subject" to mean in discourse I would say by saying "I am a social subject". If by "explain yourself as a social subject" to mean the creation of a subject, they I would refer you to my objection above.


you'll have to provide some kind of point here otherwise we'll get nowhere. if this is the case then maybe we should leave room for people interested in exploring freud and lacan as opposed to this usual analytical pedantry which seems to just call everything nonsense without any reasoning

If you want my full reasoning then ask for it. I'll be happy to give the full argument about the first person pronoun. It will just have to wait until I am done at work.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

The problem here is that not all words are signs that represent things. Further, not all sentences describes things either. "Fuck you" doesn't seem to signify at all.

Language is a means of communication and not representation or signification.



Within a material context. Language is highly useful for the communication of thoughts. So if by "explain yourself as a social subject" to mean in discourse I would say by saying "I am a social subject". If by "explain yourself as a social subject" to mean the creation of a subject, they I would refer you to my objection above.



If you want my full reasoning then ask for it. I'll be happy to give the full argument about the first person pronoun. It will just have to wait until I am done at work.
signifier =/= signified.

can't be bothered to elaborate at the moment. let's talk when ur done at work and i'm done sleeping ha

[1789]

I like the Jungian idea of 'collective unconscious'. Never got much out of Freud myself.

[ChrisK]

signifier =/= signified.

My apologies, I assumed you were accepting Saussure's theory of the sign. What does a signifier represent in your view? I ask so that we can better discuss the issues.


can't be bothered to elaborate at the moment. let's talk when ur done at work and i'm done sleeping ha

Sleep sounds nice, I think I'll do some of that too.

[L.A.P.]

My apologies, I assumed you were accepting Saussure's theory of the sign. What does a signifier represent in your view? I ask so that we can better discuss the issues.

how is singnifier =/=signified not in line with Saussure's theory of sign? Signifiers, as a rule in structural linguistics, always have a completely arbitrary and differential relationship to what they signify.

[ChrisK]

how is singnifier =/=signified not in line with Saussure's theory of sign? Signifiers, as a rule in structural linguistics, always have a completely arbitrary and differential relationship to what they signify.

In the context of my objection, Saussure's theory of the sign fails to account for words that do not have a signified.

[L.A.P.]

you should clarify what you mean by this.

are you talking about words that don't designate objects? cause that's not what is meant by 'signified', a signified is the concept attached to the symbol identifying it. Since almost every word in a language has some meaning (concept), it therefore signifies something. The word "the" may not designate a specific object, but it does signify a concept of 'presence'.

this is a really weak criticism anyways. Its not like structuralists, especially Lacan, didn't recognize things such as "signifier without a signified" and "phatic expressions". In fact, universal-truths being nothing but empty signifiers is a common trope in structuralism.

[ChrisK]

you should clarify what you mean by this.

are you talking about words that don't designate objects? cause that's not what is meant by 'signified', a signified is the concept attached to the symbol identifying it. Since almost every word in a language has some meaning (concept), it therefore signifies something. The word "the" may not designate a specific object, but it does signify a concept of 'presence'.

In "What the fuck" does "the" really signify the concept of presence? Does "fuck" have a presence?

Also, you have basically said I can translate "the" as "presence" which means that I can translate "The cat" as "The presence of a cat", which has an extra "the" which translates as "The presence of a presence of a cat" and so on, which makes not sense.

Further, if you treat signs as all signifying concepts, then all words are now to be considered as naming something. This would mean that all sentences are just lists of names. But that should mean that any list of names ought to make sense. But this is not the case, which means that there must be different parts of speech that do not name things or concepts.


this is a really weak criticism anyways. Its not like structuralists, especially Lacan, didn't recognize things such as "signifier without a signified" and "phatic expressions". In fact, universal-truths being nothing but empty signifiers is a common trope in structuralism.

Its been a while since I have read Lacan. Could you point me towards where I can read up more on this issue?

[argeiphontes]

I like the Jungian idea of 'collective unconscious'. Never got much out of Freud myself.

Jung FTW!

[Cheese Guevara]

"Freud's insights into the nature of consciousness are in keeping with the most advanced contemporary neuroscience." - Antonio Damasio (biologist)

Even the cutting edge philosophers (Metzinger) in the field of neuroscience are Freudian. Freudianism, especially the mature versions of Lacan, Marcuse, Zizek etc, offers a very powerful tool for understanding the psychic drives, desires and behaviour of people. Marxism offers a great framework for reading history and social movements. Lacanian philosophy does the same for desire, socio-biological drives and human psychology.

[Light of Lenin]

Freudianism is one of the main ruling class ideologies in the imperialist West. It is a pseudo-scientific narrative that purports to explain human behavior and thought. What it actually does is reinforce bourgeois society.

As such, it is naturally also a profoundly anti-woman ideology.

To quote from Phil Brown's Toward a Marxist Psychology:



Freud's mystified biology formed the basis for his theory of male supremacy. The authoritarian father of the "primal horde" who keeps all the women for himself and is eventually killed by his sons is the basic father in Freud's view. The tragedy of this primal experience leads to the development of civilization to protect the family and the state from further patricide. With this as his historical background, Freud launches a full-scale attack on women, whom he holds responsible for the tragedy.

Psychoanalysis's antiwoman attitudes started at an earlier time, however, when Freud and Breuer published Studies on Hysteria in 1885. The book is full of studies of women who were clearly victims of sexually repressed family life. Freud holds the women themselves responsible, basing their "conversion" symptoms (what are commonly called psychosomatic symptoms) on sexual fears rooted in childhood trauma. Though Freud saw the reality of the problem, he blamed women for it and demanded they adjust to it. Essentially, the petit bourgeois and bourgeois woman was to be passive and obedient to her husband.

The active and passive human traits of men and women were theorized more fully in The Interpretation of Dreams, in which Freud characterized the feminine personality as passive, male-seeking, baby-suckling. Dream symbolism contained the feminine role in the unconscious: "All elongated objects, sticks, tree trunks, umbrellas, all sharp and elongated weapons, knives, daggers, and spikes represent the male member. . . . Small boxes, chests, cupboards, and ovens correspond to the female organ; also cavities, ships, and all kinds of vessels."

This was all to prove female passivity and desire for penis-vagina sexuality (which Freud considered the only acceptable mode of sexual behavior). Since Freud saw dreams as wish-fulfillment, he interpreted women's dreams as nearly always seeking male penetration or other male aggressive sexuality. Interpreting a woman's dream of putting a candle into a holder, the candle breaking as she does this, Freud speaks of the candle as "an object which excites the female genitals" and the breaking of it as representing the woman's frigidity due to masturbation. Similar is the view that a woman dreaming of a man masturbating is a vicarious act of his penetration of her. Women's dream symbolism, for Freud, was always to be interpreted in a negative way: "When a person of the female sex dreams of falling, this almost always has a sexual significance; she become a fallen woman." Also, due to female weakness, a woman's dream of carrying a man is an infantile fantasy because that is an inappropriate role reversal.

The Oedipus complex is first mentioned substantially in Interpretation of Dreams, but is more fully developed five years later. Integral to this is the myth of penis envy--Freud's fantasy was that little girls, upon finding that boys have penises, feel themselves castrated and blame the mother for this. Further, the major part of the female psyche is determined by this penis loss and subsequent penis envy. The female will continue to search all her life for a surrogate penis: "The desire after all to obtain the penis for which she so much longs may even contribute to the motives that impel a grown-up woman to come to analysis; and what she quite reasonably expects to get from analysis, such as the capacity to pursue an intellectual career, can often be recognized as a sublimated modification of this repressed wish."

The attempted syncretism of the bourgeois ideology of Freudianism with Marxism is a favorite project of social-chauvinists and opportunists. Origins of the Family is not compatible with Civilization and Its Discontents. One is based on the scientific study of Native American society by the Euro-Settler businessman Lewis H. Morgan. The other is founded on bizarre narratives Freud dreamed up, like his Oedipal drama of sons killing their father to acquire females.

[Cheese Guevara]

“What Freud produces is nothing less than a materialist theory of the making of the human subject." - Terry Eagleton (author of "Why Marx Was Right")

"As such, it is naturally also a profoundly anti-woman ideology."

No it's not. People often want Freudianism to be "anti woman" so they can justify their already held dismissals of Freud.

Were some aspects of Freud's early writing sexist and a bad reflection of then contemporary sexism? Yes. Is Freudianism sexist? No. It's like dismissing Schopenhauerism because Schopenhauer hated women or evolution because Darwin wrestled with Christianity.

Modern Freudianism is not the cheesy image people have of Freudianism. It has been shaped by hundreds of subsequent philosophers, in the same way Darwinian theories have been shaped by hundreds of subsequent biologists. The Oedipal Complex of modern Freudianism, for example, especially as elaborated upon by people like Lacan, has nothing to do with the stereotypical view of "sons killing daddies", but about how desire, drives and power operate under social systems.

Today, you continually have the leading thinkers in neuroscience and biology (Thomas Naval, Alva Noe etc), proving Freud right, whether it be in their studies of the brain, the lymphatic system, or their mapping of how the body deals with repression, repetition, avoidance, depression, guilt, the libido, its drives, the ego etc.

__________

By Prof Linda Belau:

"This negative appropriation of Freud is especially ironic since the American feminist’s mis-recognition of his thought is largely the result of Anna Freud’s ego psychology and the misreading of Freud that has come to America from that avenue. However, the very fact that Anna was the one of Freud’s several children with whom he chose to work and share his analytic vision would seem to give the lie to the idea that Freud was just a male chauvinist pig who thought women were intellectually and socially inferior to men. Freud’s enthusiastic support of Anna’s development and success as a psychoanalyst in her own right would, rather, indicate his belief in woman’s equality, especially where her intellectual and professional capacities are concerned.

Nonetheless, Freud gets bad press with many feminist thinkers, especially in America, as he is accused of dismissing women as hysterical and full of penis envy. Beyond that, however, many of his critics simply refuse to read his work and even boldly attribute ideas to Freud that do, indeed, make him sound like a terrible chauvinist, even though these ideas are far from true. Think of the critics’ insistence on “Freud’s Electra complex” that parallels the Oedipus complex. Of course, Freud never adopted or theorized such an idea. In fact, it is mentioned only twice in the entire corpus of his work, and both times negatively. And, while Freud’s critics engage much of the clinical terminology he introduced as if these ideas were simply to be taken at face value without a history specific to Freud’s thought, there does seem, paradoxically enough, a persistent refusal on their part to seriously engage Freud’s work. Of course, this is nothing new. Over fifty years ago Lionel Trilling bemoaned this same refusal. Remarking the cultural backlash that Freud’s ideas have provoked, Trilling points out that they remain entirely unthought even though these same ideas are in constant circulation among us."

[..]

"Despite the pejorative connotations that the term has taken on over the years, the theory of hysteria is not an insult toward women, but rather, developed in response to Freud's regard for and respect of women. After all, Freud should be considered one of the first western male feminist thinkers with the approach that he ultimately took toward women in his clinic and in the practice of psychoanalysis. As Paul Verhaeghe points out in Does the Woman Exist? From Freud's Hysteric to Lacan’s Feminine, Freud was one of the first medical practitioners to actually listen to women’s discourse. The psychoanalysis that emerged from his analysis of hysteria is not a silencing of women but rather a recognition of the significance of woman’s language.

According to Verhaeghe’s account, Freud began his career as “a neurologist without a job,” a talented young Jewish doctor who had difficulty finding patients in anti-Semitic Vienna in the latter half of the nineteenth century. “Benevolent older colleagues referred patients to him,” Verhaeghe tells us, and “for them it was a unique chance to rid themselves of hysterical, meaning bothersome, clients” (7). These ‘benevolent colleagues” were, in fact, the ones who discredited woman’s speech, not Freud, who took his female patients at their word. "While others had already observed there was a traumatic aetiology to hysteria,” Verhaeghe explains, “Freud would be the first to listen to this trauma and to interpret it as having an effect on the psyche and hence on the soma” (8-9). This, of course, would give birth to the talking cure and Freud’s revolutionary new practice of psychoanalysis, revolutionary both because of its unique philosophic-scientific approach and because of the credibility it bestowed on his female patients and their symptoms. Friend to woman and her psychic woes, Freud became the champion of the feminine oppressed."

____________

"Freudianism is one of the main ruling class ideologies in the imperialist West."

Freudianism was deemed "a Jewish heresy" up until the 1950s. It was hardly a "tool of the ruling class and Imperialist West". Jungianism, meanwhile, was being used by the Nazis to justify their thoughts on racial superiority.

[Light of Lenin]

Freudianism is for capitalism what drapetomania was for American slavery. It serves as a control mechanism.



ORIGINS AND PURPOSES OF FREUDIANISM

Freudianism is a major intellectual current and actual practice of United States society today. More than simply another school of psychology, psychoanalysis plays a special role in social control which transcends even its major disciples. Freud was the father of modern psychology, even if he was not the first psychiatrist. With his insight into the needs of bourgeois society, Freud represented the bourgeois response to ongoing social conditions. His view of people, history, anthropology, sexuality, and social change mirrored the realities of his time. Freud's role was, however, not to liberate but to aid in the creation of a world view that fit the needs of growing capitalism.

Freudianism became part of the imperialist ideological superstructure as a way to control people, particularly women. Freud and psychoanalysis had been recognized as a complete fraud by his contempories, most notably Karl Kraus.




Psychoanalysis is the disease of
emancipated Jews; the religious ones
are satisfied with diabetes.

Psychoanalysis is the occupation of
lewd and lascivious rationalists who
attribute everything in the world, except
what they themselves do, to repressed
sexuality.

The old science denied the sexuality of
adults. The new one claims that the
infant feels lust during defecation. The
old view was better: it could at least be
contradicted by the parties concerned.

The difference between the old and the
new doctrines of mad-doctoring is this:
whereas the former blamed the deviant,
the latter praises the inferior.

Psychoanalysis is that mental illness
for which it regards itself as therapy.
Most people are sick. But only the
psychoanalysts regard this as something
to be proud of.

Psychoanalysts’ children do not fare
well. In infancy, the son must admit to
experiencing erotic feelings while
defecating. Later, he must tell his father
what goes through his mind when, on
the way to school, he sees a horse
defecating. He is lucky indeed if he
reaches the age when he can confess to
dreaming that he raped his mother.

Psychoanalysis is like the poor man’s
explanation of wealth. Because he lacks
it, the others must have gained it by
force or fraud. Anyway, they merely
possess it; only the psychoanalyst
understands it.

I understand that psychoanalysis is a
big hit in the United States. It figures:
the Americans love everything they
haven’t got, especially antiques and the
soul.

God made man out of dust. The
analyst reduces him to it.

My unconscious knows more about the
consciousness of the psychologist than
his consciousness knows about my
unconscious.

To Freud belongs the credit for
abolishing Anarchy and creating a
Constitution in the Dream State.
Nevertheless, things are just as bad
there as they are here.

If you have been robbed, do not
complain either to the policeman or to
the psychologist: the policeman is not
interested; and the psychologist is
interested only in proving that you are
not the victim but the thief.

Modern psychologists have greatly
enlarged the frontiers or
irresponsibility: they needed more
space in this territory.

Psychology is the most powerful
religion: it turns doubt into bliss. As
weakness engenders not humility but
arrogance, this new doctrine enjoys
great earthly success and lords over all
other creeds and cults.

The shrine at which the artist worships
is now defiled by dirty boots. They
belong to the psychologist.

Psychopathologists now concern
themselves with poets who arrive for
their check-up after they are dead. It
serves the poets right. they should have
raised mankind to a level where there
could have been no psychopathologists.

Nerve doctors who pathologize genius
should have their heads bashed in with
the collected works of the genius. And
those humanists who decry the
vivisection of guinea pigs while
applauding the subjection of works of
arts to psychologizing deserve the same
treatment.

The [psychoanalytic] verdict of
Goethe’s masturbation leaves one with
a profound feeling of emptiness: one
realizes, with a sense of desperation,
that even if everyone masturbated, still
no Sorcerer’s Apprentice would
necessarily be created.

The ultimate aim of psychoanalysis is
to attribute art to mental weakness, and
then trace the weakness back to the
point where, according to analytic
dogma, it originated—namely, the
lavatory

If mankind, with all its repulsive
faults, is an organism, then the
psychoanalyst is its excrement.
Psychoanalysis is an occupation in who
very name “psyche” and “anus” are
united.

Despite its deceptive terminology,
psychoanalysis is not a science but a
religion—the faith of a generation
incapable of any other.

I possess the happy combination of a
great talent for psychology with an
even greater talent for seeing through it.

The psychiatrist unfailingly
recognizes the madman by his excited
behavior on being incarcerated.
The difference between mad-doctors
and other madmen is roughly the same
as that between convex and concave
folly.

[Cheese Guevara]

"Freudianism is for capitalism what drapetomania was for American slavery. It serves as a control mechanism."

The truth is the complete opposite. You realize it was Marxists who saved Freudianism? Freudianism was fading, then people like Marcuse, Lacan, Zizek, Althusser, Weber and Reich dug it up and transformed it. It was Marxists who spread Freudnism (and anarchists like Paul Goodman), it is Marxists who are the leading Freudians today and if you go into any univesity, it is through the lens of Freudo-Marxism that many academics work .

Give an example of Freudianism being used as a "control mechanism". Freudianism's stance on "female hysteria" explicitly critiques patriarchy and the control mechanisms of the church and state. Yes, pre-war Freud could be patriarchal in its treatment of women, but nobody else at the time was seriously treating female desire. For Freud, woman had desires (sexual or otherwise), women were not just passive objects upon which male desire's are enscribed, a daring thing to say in the late 1800s. His writings on female repression were even more daring; men and patriarchal structures suppress female subjectivity and female desire, leading to psychological contradictions which provoke neuroses. This is all commonly accepted wisdom now, and a far cry from the "Freud hates women" label that gets hurled against him. (heck, he was one of the first to say women can have orgasms, which makes him a proto feminist in many aspects)

You say "Freud represented the bourgeois response to ongoing social conditions". That's like saying Darwin "represented the bourgeois response to social conditions" so should be "ignored". But the opposite is true. It is precisely because Freud had use, was correct to begin investigating human psychology, that Marxists quickly appropriated him, radicalized him and enfolded his findings into issues of economics and history. All psycho-socio-economics starts with Freud.

"Freud and psychoanalysis had been recognized as a complete fraud by his contempories, most notably Karl Kraus."

Why quote Kraus? Kraus ridiculed Marx and most other Jews with followings. And of course modern science proves Kraus wrong and Freud right anyway; everything is libidinal or sublimated libidinal drives, even capitalism. The rest of what Kraus writes is the usual caricature of Freud (everything is sex!), and isn't privy to how Freudianism developed after Freud's death.

You can tell Freud was onto something just by looking at how the anti Marxist, Christian right wingers attack him:

"Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of reality infects virtually every area of our culture!"

Ironically, in a poll of Oxford atheists, Marxists and positive elimitavists five or so years ago, most self-described themselves as "spiritual", whilst the believers/creationists polled did not.
____

"Until the advent of psychoanalysis and its doctrine of the anal character of money, the profoundest insights into the nature of the money complex had to be expressed through the medium of myth-in modern time the myth of the Devil. The Devil, we said in our chapter on Luther, is the lineal descendant of the Trickster in primitive mythologies; the evolution of the Trickster, through such intermediary figures as the classical Hermes, into the Christian Devil reflects the history of anality." --N. O. Brown (FreudoMarxist)

[Broviet Union]

Wow, that Kraus quote was reactionary. Hopefully we can do better than that.

[Doctor Hilarius]

I am currently reading Saussure and Lacan, I perused Freud because you have to if you want to read Lacan.

His theories seem fascinating and perhaps useful, however, whether they are "accurate" or not is a different story.

A big part of why I am reading it is because

1) I want to read Saul Newman
2) I want to know what Guattari and Deleuze were trying to dethrone in Anti-Oedipus

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

i can't stand it, foucault sums it up for me here:

Where is this from?

[markchan]

Any excellent books to be recommended?
I am recently trying Reading Freud: Psychoanalysis as Cultural Theory
but found it hard to follow.
I want some good introductions, not too demanding but not too basic neither as I understand most of the basic things of psychoanalysis and structuralism

[BolshevikBabe]

Basic Freud by Michael Kahn is a good intro to psychoanalysis, as is Freud's own introductory lectures.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Where is this from?

foucault.info/foucault/interview.html ‎

[Haldane]

Psychoanalysis is pseudoscientific unempirical bullshit, as is analytical psychology. If you want a scientific explanation of human behavior and society, sociobiology is the field to go with. J.B.S. Haldane, W.D. Hamilton, E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Robert L. Trivers have come up with comprehensive theories that Freud never could, and they're actually based on scientific evidence. And yes, the Freudian idea of penis envy is sexist, and Freud's "theory" that vaginal orgasms were "more pure" than clitoral orgasms was pretty damaging to many women.

[Killborn]

I was looking for this topic.

Could someone help me with "the real"? Could someone also tell me if I should ignore whoever Zizek is?

[Red Igloos]

I like Freud a lot. I don't have much experience with Lacan. I appreciate Freud, because he wasn't a biological reductionist like too much of today's "psychology." There's also a great deal of interesting Freudo-Marxism out there, and it's interesting reading Freud's thoughts on Marx, and Trotsky's on Freud.

I'm also trying to figure out when "metaphysical" became an insult or deficiency.

[Luís Henrique]

Psychoanalysis is pseudoscientific unempirical bullshit, as is analytical psychology.

If you say so, then it must be true...


If you want a scientific explanation of human behavior and society, sociobiology is the field to go with. J.B.S. Haldane, W.D. Hamilton, E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Robert L. Trivers have come up with comprehensive theories that Freud never could, and they're actually based on scientific evidence.

Of these I only know Dawkins - and he is certainly no sociobiologist.

What would be the comprehensive theories advanced by Haldane, Hamilton, Wilson, or Trivers, and how - if they indeed constitute "sociobiology" - are they based on "scientific evidence"? (What, indeed, is "scientific evidence", and how do we see that something is based on "scientific evidence", insteand of on unscientific evidence, or unscientific lack of evidence?)

Luís Henrique

[ralfy]

Reminds me of Foucault's "Nietzsche, Freud, Marx".

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Psychoanalysis is pseudoscientific unempirical bullshit, as is analytical psychology. If you want a scientific explanation of human behavior and society, sociobiology is the field to go with. J.B.S. Haldane, W.D. Hamilton, E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Robert L. Trivers have come up with comprehensive theories that Freud never could, and they're actually based on scientific evidence. And yes, the Freudian idea of penis envy is sexist, and Freud's "theory" that vaginal orgasms were "more pure" than clitoral orgasms was pretty damaging to many women.
Freud is certainly deserving of criticism regarding his social treatment of the sexes in psychoanalysis, but penis envy is not entirely irrelevant, and can only be properly understood alongside its male counterpart, "castration anxiety". Both of these concepts refer to what Freud describes as the reaction that takes place between boys and girls when they see the differences between their genitalia, and are forced to come to terms with the nature of their gender identity.

But it is not simply gender identity that is realized here--it is also anxiety and fear as to why boys and girls are so different, which gave rise to the terms he used above. At the time, it was a major breakthrough in charting out the stages of psychosexual development for children and (for Freud) ascertain the process by which sexuality is arrested and pigeonholed into either homosexuality or heterosexuality, as opposed to the "normal" current being bisexuality.

Of course, given that psychoanalysis was vulnerable to Freud's class outlook, his insight is limited. For instance, we know now that gender is not simply biological, and anxiety and fear are not inevitable in the process of realizing one's gender identity. Yet I believe it is precisely because of Freud's insight that we are able to accord primacy of the life-experiences of the child (and of people) in order to not only understand neuroses, but transcend them.

[Haldane]

Dawkins isn't a sociobiologist? He wrote the Selfish Gene, which is one of the most important books ever written on the subject.
Kin selection would probably be the most important, especially in regards to the origins of altruism, as well as reciprocal altruism, but Trivers's theory of self-deception is also pretty interesting and relates to a lot of political issues.
Biological reductionism is necessary to understand the mind because, like it or not, the brain is a fully material organ. Scientific evidence is something that can be observed, tested, and is falsifiable. Psychoanalysis is not falsifiable.
I can't post links yet, but Trivers has written a pretty interesting paper on his theory and Karl Popper wrote a good paper on falsifiability in science.

[wehbolno]

I've read an introductory guide to Lacan and I was wondering.
If Lacan is right with the idea of desire being generated by the absence/presence of the mother in infancy, and this lack/castration being desire's cause, then the route it takes is abitrary? How does this sit with the communist notion of the primary antagonism, that which is NOT abitrary? I don't know if I have either Lacan or marxism correctly here but I'm going to ask anyway.