Freudian modalities of disbelief

Abstract

This article can be characterized as a ‘rediscovery’ of a notion of psychoanalysis that had disappeared or had been confused by later operations. The authors explore a Freudian notion that has been unjustly misunderstood, especially because of the multiple ways in which ‘Unglaube’ – disbelief – has been translated. We shall establish the archaeology of this term in Freud by extracting its three significant modes. Firstly, paranoiac disbelief designates an unconscious process of the rejection of belief in the subject's first encounter with a sexual reality that is always traumatic. Secondly, the obsessional neurotic's disbelief, which we shall call ‘incredulity’, is a secondary, less radical refusal of belief, one that is different from its paranoiac counterpart. Finally, we shall envision a third – dialectical – type of disbelief, which Freud called ‘act of disbelief’ and which will enable us to approach the fundamental epistemic and ethical stakes for psychoanalysis.

Freudianische Modalitäten des Unglaubens

Man kann diesen Beitrag als eine “Wiederentdeckung” eines psychoanalytischen Begriffs charakterisieren, der zwischenzeitlich verschwand oder seine klare Bedeutung durch spätere Verwendungsweisen einbüßte. Die Autoren untersuchen einen Freudschen Begriff, nämlich „Unglaube”, der vor allem infolge seiner unterschiedlichen Übersetzungen missverstanden wurde. Wir decken auf, wie Freud den Begriff ursprünglich verwendete, indem wir drei maßgebliche Bedeutungen extrahieren. Erstens bezeichnet der paranoische Unglaube einen unbewussten Prozess, in dem sich das Subjekt weigert, an seine erste und naturgemäß traumatische Begegnung mit einer sexuellen Realität zu glauben. Die zweite Form des Unglaubens ist der des Zwangsneurotikers, den wir als „Ungläubigkeit” bezeichnen, eine sekundäre, weniger radikale Verweigerung, die es von ihrem paranoischen Pendant zu unterscheiden gilt. Und schließlich erläutern wir einen dritten – dialektischen – Typus des Unglaubens, den Freud als „Akt des Unglaubens” bezeichnete und der es uns ermöglicht, die fundamentalen epistemischen und ethischen Anliegen der Psychoanalyse zu untersuchen.

Modalidades freudianas de la desconfianza/suspicacia

Este artículo puede caracterizarse como el ‘redescubrimiento’ de una noción del psicoanálisis que había desaparecido o había sido confundida con otras operaciones. Los autores exploran una noción freudiana que ha sido injustamente incomprendida, especialmente por los diferentes modos en los que ‘Unglaube’ –desconfianza/suspicacia – ha sido traducida. Trazaremos la arqueología de este término en Freud extrayendo sus tres modos más significativos. En primer lugar, la desconfianza/suspicacia paranoica designa un proceso inconsciente de rechazo de una creencia en el primer encuentro del sujeto con la realidad, siempre traumática, de la sexualidad. En Segundo lugar, la desconfianza/suspicacia del neurótico obsesivo, que podemos llamar ‘incredulidad’, es un modo secundario, menos radical, de rechazo de la creencia, diferente de su contraparte paranoica. Por ultimo, consideramos un tercer tipo de desconfianza – dialéctica – que Freud llama ‘acto de desconfianza’ y que nos permitirá abordar un problema epistemológico y ético fundamental.

Modalités freudiennes de l'incroyance

Cet article s'inscrit dans la perspective d'une « redécouverte » d'une notion de la psychanalyse qui avait disparu ou qui avait été brouillée par les apports ultérieurs. Il s'agit d'une notion freudienne injustement méconnue, notamment du fait des multiples traductions auxquelles elle a donné lieu: l’« Unglaube », c'est‐à‐dire l'incroyance. Il est ici question d'en établir l'archéologie chez Freud pour en extraire trois modalités significatives. Premièrement l'incroyance paranoïaque qui désigne un processus inconscient de rejet de la croyance en la première rencontre du sujet avec la réalité sexuelle toujours traumatique. Deuxièmement l'incroyance du névrosé obsessionnel, que nous nommerons « incrédulité », et qui caractérise un refus de croyance secondaire moins radical et différent de son homologue paranoïaque. Enfin nous envisagerons un troisième type d'incroyance, dialectique cette fois, que Freud a nommé « acte d'incroyance » et qui permet d'aborder sous un jour nouveau des enjeux épistémique et éthique fondamentaux pour la psychanalyse.

Modalita' freudiane di scetticismo

Si potrebbe guardare al presente articolo come alla ‘riscoperta’ di un concetto psicoanalitico scomparso o confuso da successive riconcettualizzazioni. Gli autori esplorano un'idea freudiana ingiustamente fraintesa, specialmente a causa dei molti modi diversi in cui la parola ‘Unglaube’ – scetticismo – è stata tradotta. Il significato di questo termine in Freud verrà ricostruito archeologicamente a partire dall'individuazione dei suoi tre usi principali. In primo luogo, con il termine di scetticismo paranoide viene indicato un processo inconscio per il quale il soggetto, nel suo primo incontro (invariabilmente traumatico) con la realtà sessuale, si ‘rifiuta di credere’. C'è poi lo scetticismo del nevrotico ossessivo, che chiameremo qui ‘incredulità’: si tratta di un rifiuto secondario e meno radicale di ‘credere’, diverso dal corrispondente rifiuto di marca paranoide. Sarà infine individuato un terzo tipo (dialettico) di scetticismo, chiamato da Freud ‘atto di scetticismo: quest'ultima categoria permetterà agli autori di accostarsi a quanto di più fondamentale è in gioco per la psicoanalisi a livello tanto epistemico quanto etico.

Key words:

• disbelief
• incredulity
• paranoia
• obsessional neurosis
• psychoanalytic treatment
• ethics

1. Translated by John Holland.

1. Translated by John Holland.

Notes

1. Translated by John Holland.

2. Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was a French philosopher who held the History of Systems of Thought chair at the Collège de France. A critic of norms and of the principles of power, especially in repressive institutions (mental institutions and prisons), his work as a whole is based on what he defined in a book of the same title as an ‘archeology of knowledge.’ He was the author of many notable books, articles and presentations such as The History of Madness in the Classical Age (1964), The Order of Things [Les Mots et les Choses] (1966), The History of Sexuality (1976–84), etc.

3. Having first rallied his followers around the idea of a “return to Descartes” (Lacan, 2002[1946], p. 133), Lacan, as of 1953, characterized his approach as a “return to Freud” (Lacan, 2002[1953], p. 249).

4. It is useful to specify that, like the term ‘Name ’, the word ‘Unglaube ’ is inflected with –(e)n unless it is in the nominative, and is inflected with ‐(e)ns in the genitive; therefore the forms, ‘Unglauben’ and ‘Unglaubens’, which we can find in the original text, do not constitute another word. For this reason, the term appears in the Grimm Brothers' (1961) German dictionary with the inflection in parentheses: Unglaube(n). In what follows, we shall use this word in the nominative: Unglaube.

5. At various moments in his writing, Freud uses different terms to describe the quality of ‘rejection’ as applied to Glaube or ‘belief’. He uses both Versagung (translated by “withholding” [Freud, 1896a, p. 226]) and sometimes Ablehnung [refusal, reprobation]. We shall see that the exact nature of this ‘rejection’ is quite significant, for it will permit us to distinguish among a variety of modalities of ‘disbelief’.

6. Freud himself explicitly invites us to hear the negation in its full resonance when he classifies Heine's expression “Mein Unglaubensgenosse Spinoza [my fellow‐unbeliever Spinoza]” as a joke due to the use of the privative prefix ‘un‐’ (Freud, 1905, p. 77).

7. Freud cites this expression twice (see Freud, 1905, p. 77; 1927, p. 50).

8. We recall that this orientation is the basis upon which psychoanalysis is distinguished from other psychological theories.

9. He uses this term to designate his first theory of neurosis.

10. The Standard Edition translates this expression as “surplus of sexuality” (Freud, 1896b, p. 230).

11. For a discussion of the choice made in the Standard Edition to translate the German term ‘Vorwurf’ exclusively as ‘self‐reproach’ (i.e. ‘Selbstvorwurf’), a choice which is not followed in French translations, see footnote 2, p. 220 (Freud, 1896a).

12. ‘Unerträglich’ is translated as ‘incompatible’ in the Standard Edition, although its literal meaning is ‘unbearable’. A note in the Standard Edition indicates that ‘unerträglich’ is rendered in this way because of a possible misprint in the German text. Instead of ‘unerträglich’, we should read ‘unverträglich’. In further support of this reading (which is not discussed in the French translations), we note that Freud himself translated the term into French as “inconciliable”, that is, “incompatible” (see Freud, 1894, footnote 4, p. 51).

13. This is reminiscent of Schreber's subjective position towards Dr Flechsig.

14. Note that in the period between his 1896 efforts and the publication of the Schreber case in 1911, Freud attempted to ascribe ‘belief’ to the processes of perception and representation. In two 1907 letters to Jung, he takes the additional step of bringing in the concept of libido (Freud, 1974, letter 20F, 14 April 1907, pp. 32–5 and letter 23F, 21 April 1907, pp. 40–3). However, he does not refer to ‘disbelief’ because it is not an issue of the rejection of belief.

15. ‘die innerlich unterdrückte Empfindung’

16. ‘nach außen projiziert’

17. ‘das innerlich Aufgehobene’

18. ‘von außen wiederkehrt’

19. Lacan would elaborate this singular topology of rejection in psychosis in his third seminar, The Psychoses. This enabled him, the following year, to forge the concept of the ‘foreclosure of the Name‐of‐the‐Father’ in his article, On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis, published in the Ecrits. This concept designates the process on which psychotic logic is based. Because a full development of this concept is beyond the scope of this paper, we will just note here that the legal term that Lacan chose in order to designate the specificity of rejection in psychosis, ‘foreclosure,’ implies the idea of a closed space. This is reminiscent of Freud's intuition of the existence in psychosis of a radical exterior that is closed to the subject, an exterior from which a representation returns to the subject as foreign, ‘from without,’ such as in the hallucination. It is because this hallucination is foreclosed (and not only projected) for the subject that it appears fundamentally enigmatic to him or her.

20. This adjective comes from the field of optics and designates a curved, non‐spherical surface. Whereas a spherical space distinguishes an interior space from the exterior, inside and outside are continuous in a complex and non‐empirical psychic space (in itself, irreducible to the psychoses). It is, in this sense, aspherical and involves the subversion of spatial opposition. Aspherical space concerns those topological figures whose surface is ‘unilateral’, such as the Möbius strip.

21. Jean‐Pierre Falret (1794–1870) was a French alienist who occupied an essential place in the history of classical French psychiatry and seems to have been the first person to use the expression ‘madness of doubts’. His son, Jules Falret (1824–1902), who was also an alienist, officially used the expression during a discussion of the Société Médico‐Psychologique in Paris in 1866, in reference to his father. It seems, nevertheless, that the expression was handed down to posterity in 1875 by the work of the French psychiatrist, Henri Legrand du Saulle (1830–1886).

22. While Lacan proposed that this French term be translated as ‘the Otherness’, his English translators have generally preferred ‘the Other’ (Lacan, 1966–67, 25 January 1967 Session).

23. This skill has intrigued logicians such as Turing (1950) and analytic philosophers (see treatments of the theme of self‐deception).

24. See ‘Act of Disbelief and Transference’ below.

25. We make use here of Harrisons's hypothesis that, for Freud, derealization is accompanied by depersonalization.

26. We would like to emphasize that Freud had originally planned to entitle this letter not ‘A disturbance of memory [Eine Erinnerungsstörung] on the Acropolis’, but rather ‘Unglaube auf der Akropolis’ (Vermorel and Vermorel, 1993).

27. In his correspondence, Freud addresses Fliess as a man of science who ensures that there is a matching scientific guarantee for the truths about the unconscious he discovers. Moreover, Freud did not hesitate to address Fliess as the recipient of his transference: “[&] I cannot do without you as the representative [Repräsentant] of the Other [Andere],” he writes in a letter on 21 September 1899 (Freud, 1985, p. 374). In this perspective, Fliess represented the ‘subject‐supposed‐to‐know’ for Freud. The ‘subject‐supposed‐to‐know’ (Lacan, 1981[1964]) is Lacan's concept for that which gives logical consistency to the phenomenon of the transference. As regards the crucial role of Freud's transference to Fliess in the origin of psychoanalysis, please see Porge's (1994) excellent work, Vol d'idées? [Theft of Ideas?].

28. The sort of subtractive logic that is characteristic of psychoanalytic treatment was already noticed by Freud, who opposed it to the additive dynamic of psychotherapies based on suggestion (Freud, 1910a).

29. Heine referred to himself as a ‘declared disciple’ of Spinoza (Vermorel, 2009).

30. This formula from the Ethics means ‘God or Nature’; ‘sive’ indicates that the two terms are equivalent.