Experiential self‐understanding

Translations of summary

The notion of insight is at one and the same time central to psychoanalysis and to the self‐understanding that is part of everyday life. Through clinical material and critical engagement with contemporary philosophical work on self‐knowledge, this paper clarifies one crucial aspect of this key notion. Self‐understanding of the sort we have in mind, while of course involving cognitive elements, is not sufficiently accounted for by cognition about one's affects, motivations, or other aspects of the psyche, nor by the simple conjunction of such cognition with felt affect, motivational urges, etc. Nor is it best modelled in terms of internal self‐observation. Rather, it is the product of an ongoing process of the unfolding articulation of one's psychic life. The notion of experience is important here in three ways. First, lived experience is that out of which the self‐understanding arises. Second, this self‐understanding is a development and articulation of these aspects of our inner lives; it is a part of that same lived perspective. And third, this understanding in turn shapes one's experience of one's inner world: as it is attained, one's experience of oneself thereby changes. Central here is the emphasis upon a developing process involving the ability to speak from one's subjective perspective while experiencing one's subjective perspective as the perspective that it is.

Compréhension de soi expérientielle

L'insight est une notion qui occupe une position centrale à la fois en psychanalyse et dans la compréhension de soi qui fait partie de la vie de tous les jours. Prenant appui sur du matériel clinique et une connaissance critique des travaux dans le champ de la philosophie contemporaine sur la compréhension de soi, l'auteur de cet article clarifie l'un des aspects cruciaux de cette notion clé. La compréhension de soi à laquelle il se réfère, bien qu'incluant des éléments cognitifs, va au‐delà d'une définition basée sur la cognition des affects, des motivations ou autres aspects du psychisme de l'individu, ou encore de la simple conjonction entre cette cognition et l'éprouvé d'affects, la motivation des désirs, etc. De même, le modèle de l'auto‐observation interne s'avère lui aussi insuffisant. La compréhension de soi apparaît bien plutôt comme le produit d'un processus continu où se déploie l'articulation de la vie psychique de l'individu. La notion d'expérience est ici essentielle pour trois raisons. Premièrement, l'expérience vécue est le point de surgissement de la compréhension de soi. Deuxièmement, cette compréhension de soi correspond au développement et à l'articulation des éléments de notre vie intérieure ; elle fait partie de la même perspective vécue. Et troisièmement, cette compréhension forge à son tour l'expérience de notre monde interne : l'accès à cette compréhension modifie donc l'expérience de soi. Le point essentiel que l'auteur cherche à souligner ici a trait à un processus de développement impliquant la capacité de parler à partir d'une perspective subjective tout en faisant l'expérience de cette perspective subjective en tant que telle.

Erfahrungsgestütztes selbstverständnis

Der Begriff der Einsicht ist für die Psychoanalyse und zugleich auch für das Selbstverständnis, das Teil unseres Alltagslebens ist, von zentraler Bedeutung. Auf der Grundlage von klinischem Material und der kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit zeitgenössischen philosophischen Arbeiten über die Selbsterkenntnis klärt der vorliegende Beitrag einen maßgeblichen Aspekt dieses zentralen Begriffs. Ein Selbstverständnis der Art, wie es uns vorschwebt, hängt natürlich mit kognitiven Elementen zusammen, wird aber weder durch Erkenntnisse über die eigenen Affekte, Motive oder andere Aspekte der Psyche noch durch die einfache Verbindung solcher Erkenntnis mit gefühlten Affekten, Strebungen usw. hinreichend erklärt. Auch das Konzept der inneren Selbstbeobachtung wird ihm nicht vollständig gerecht. Selbstverständnis ist vielmehr das Ergebnis eines laufenden Prozesses, in dem sich das eigene psychische Leben nach und nach artikuliert. Der Begriff der Erfahrung ist hier auf dreierlei Weise wichtig. Erstens ist gelebte Erfahrung dasjenige, woraus das Selbstverständnis hervorgeht. Zweitens ist dieses Selbstverständnis eine Entwicklung und Artikulation dieser Aspekte unseres inneren Lebens; es ist ein Teil ebendieser gelebten Perspektive. Und drittens übt dieses Verständnis wiederum Einfluss darauf aus, wie wir unsere eigene innere Welt erleben: gewonnenes Selbstverständnis verändert das Selbsterleben. Zentral ist hier die Betonung eines sich entwickelnden Prozesses, der von der Fähigkeit getragen wird, vom eigenen subjektiven Standpunkt aus zu sprechen und gleichzeitig die eigene subjektive Perspektive als diejenige, die sie ist, zu erleben.

L'esperienza di comprendere se stessi

La nozione di insight è imprescindibilmente centrale alla psicoanalisi come pure alla conoscenza di sé che fa parte della vita quotidiana. Attraverso del materiale clinico e un dialogo critico con alcuni scritti di filosofia contemporanea sulla conoscenza di sé, questo lavoro chiarisce un aspetto cruciale di questo concetto chiave. Il tipo di conoscenza di sé che abbiamo in mente, sebbene naturalmente implichi elementi cognitivi, non è, tuttavia, sufficientemente spiegata dalla cognizione dei propri affetti, motivazioni, o di altri aspetti della psiche e neppure dalla semplice congiunzione di questa conoscenza con gli affetti che si provano, le pulsioni che ci motivano, ecc. E neppure il modello più adatto a comprendere questa conoscenza è quello dell'auto‐osservazione. Si tratta, piuttosto, del prodotto del continuo processo di sviluppo dell'articolazione della vita psichica. Qui la nozione di esperienza è importante in tre modi. Primo, l'esperienza vissuta è ciò da cui deriva la comprensione di sé. Secondo, questa auto‐consapevolezza è lo sviluppo e l'articolazione di questi aspetti della nostra vita interiore, è una parte della stessa prospettiva di vita vissuta. E terzo, questa comprensione, a sua volta, informa l'esperienza del proprio mondo interno: una volta raggiunta, la propria esperienza di sé conseguentemente cambia. E' qui di fondamentale importanza l'enfasi sul processo evolutivo che implica la capacità di parlare dalla propria prospettiva soggettiva mentre si vive la propria prospettiva soggettiva per quello che è.

Auto‐comprensión vivencial

La noción de insight es central tanto para el psicoanálisis, como para la auto‐comprensión que forma parte de la vida cotidiana. A través de material clínico y de un diálogo crítico con la literatura filosófica contemporánea sobre auto‐conocimiento, este trabajo aclara un aspecto crucial de ese concepto clave. Si bien, por supuesto, la auto‐comprensión del tipo de la que tenemos en mente abarca elementos cognitivos, no puede explicarse totalmente por la cognición de los propios afectos, motivaciones u otros aspectos de la psiquis, ni tampoco mediante la simple conjunción de dicha cognición y los afectos, impulsos motivacionales, etc. percibidos por el o la paciente. Tampoco es la auto‐observación la mejor manera de ejemplificarlo. Antes bien, es el producto de un proceso continuo y progresivo de articulación de la propia vida psíquica. La noción de experiencia es importante aquí en tres sentidos: la vivencia es aquello de lo que emerge la auto‐comprensión, esta auto‐comprensión es un efecto y una articulación de esos aspectos de nuestra vida interior, es decir, forma parte de esa misma perspectiva vivida, y esta comprensión, a su vez, determina nuestra experiencia del propio mundo interno. Al ser adquirida, cambia la experiencia de uno mismo. Es fundamental aquí el énfasis en un proceso en evolución que involucra la capacidad de hablar desde la propia perspectiva subjetiva, a la vez que se experimenta dicha perspectiva precisamente como subjetiva.

Key words:

• insight
• self knowledge
• psychic change

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the members of the London Philosophy and Psychoanalysis Group for helpful discussion of this material. Adam Leite's research relating to this paper was supported by a New Directions Fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for which he would like to express his gratitude. He would also like to thank the members of the University of London Psychoanalysis Unit for support during the fellowship period.

Notes

1. The difference at issue here can be seen by considering an example from Wollheim (1993, p. 107) in his response to Grunbäum's critique of psychoanalysis. Wollheim asks us to imagine that a man after leaving his session talks with someone else (perhaps a relative) and learns of a forgotten or unknown aspect of his past. In the following session he recounts this episode to his analyst. Can we say he has recovered a memory? Clearly he now knows the fact and can repeat it in the session. But this is not the kind of self‐knowledge that is psychoanalytically cogent. The same point holds if we imagine the patient simply believing a reconstruction offered by the analyst.

2. We are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for the first two references.

3. Klein writes:

For many years – and this is up to a point still true today – transference was understood in terms of direct references to the analyst in the patient's material. My conception of transference as rooted in the earliest stages of development and in deep layers of the unconscious is much wider and entails a technique by which from the whole material presented the unconscious elements of the transference are deduced. For instance, reports of patients about their everyday life, relations, and activities not only give an insight into the functioning of the ego, but also reveal – if we explore their unconscious content – the defences against the anxieties stirred up in the transference situation. For the patient is bound to deal with conflicts and anxieties re‐experienced towards the analyst by the same methods he used in the past. That is to say, he turns away from the analyst as he attempted to turn away from his primal objects; he tries to split the relation to him, keeping him either as a good or as a bad figure; he deflects some of the feelings and attitudes experienced towards the analyst on to other people in his current life, and this is part of ‘acting out’ (1952, p. 436).

4. In psychoanalysis, the work of Bion (1962) is preeminent in this regard. The philosophical literature takes its starting point from the roughly contemporaneous work of J.L. Austin (1962).

5. See the discussion by Pick and Rustin (2008).

6. Rosenfeld (1971) discusses related issues when he considers the important technical implications of the distinction between projective identification used as a vehicle for evacuation of intolerable mental contents and different situations where the primary motive is not evacuation, but communication not only through meaning but through action. Steiner (1994) has developed this theme.

7. This issue is explored in detail in relation to psychoanalysis in particular in Bell (2009).

8. “This double aspect of human life, corresponds to the twin threads of causality and signification which are intertwined in reconstruction, the one thread representing man's natural history and the other his reflectiveness” (Friedmann, 1983, p. 191).

9. The work of Betty Joseph has been the major influence here (see, for example, Joseph, 1981, 1983, 1985). Although attention to these kinds of phenomenological distinctions has been typical of the Kleinian approach since its inception, this kind of thinking is now part of the psychoanalytic mainstream (see Busch, 2010).

10. The acquisition of genuine self‐understanding is often destabilizing in various ways. What is important about Mr T's case, however, is that his acquisition of some degree of self‐understanding on Friday was not simply destabilizing, but was also lost through a process of resistance in such a way that he was no longer in touch with the relevant states of mind.

11. Nothing of course is total: it is also true that in this identification he is holding onto something valuable, but it is not this aspect that is the focus of our discussion here.

12. This process is manifested in the telling of the dream. In that sense it is a self‐representing dream (Hobson, 1985). For the telling of the dream could have been an authentic expression of a dilemma of life but, in the very telling, the expressiveness is projected into the dream, evacuated from his mind as he goes back up the hill.^,

13. It could also be the case that this advertising of his ‘grandiosity’ served the function of pulling an audience away from seeing his real capacity to engage with others, something that was a familiar movement in this analysis.

14. For more on the notion of ‘correctness’ in relation to self‐understanding, see below.

15. This material has been used in a different context, namely discussing projective identification (see Bell, 2001). We are grateful to Dr Neil Morgan for allowing use of this material.

16. We make no claim that such experiences on the part of the analyst are always necessary, only that they were in fact pivotal in this case.

17. Interpretative work is of course always partial but over time one may hope to establish a full interpretation which “will involve interpreting the patients feelings, anxieties and defences, taking into account the stimulus in the present and the re living of the past. It will include the role played by his internal objects and the interplay of phantasy and reality” (Segal, 1962, p. 212).

18. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for emphasizing this point. It is well captured by Britton's conception of triangular space necessary for self‐observation and thought (Britton, 1989). Those working within the Kleinian tradition would capture this development by talking of movement towards the depressive position. In a more schizoid mode of being, a patient's knowledge of his self may be more akin to what we have described as mere possession of facts.

19. For this to happen a change often has to take place not only within the analysand, but within the analyst as well.

20. Acquisition of this function has deep developmental roots in pre‐verbal infant life. However, to the extent that the pre‐verbal infant comes to something like experiential self‐understanding, this is a primitive, more archaic developmental attainment. It forms the basis for what the adult can achieve, and various archaic patterns in this regard will affect and shape the adult's achievements, but richer linguistic and conceptual capacities enable far greater sophistication. In Freud's paper ‘On negation’ (1925) he describes the earliest form of agreement and disagreement as swallowing and spitting out. The capacities developed later in life continue to be coloured by these early experiences and patterns; the experience of self‐understanding thus inevitably involves both psychic and bodily elements.

21. The feeling of conviction is of course worse than useless if this is conviction of something that is untrue.

22. Here we have been importantly influenced by Britton's (1989) suggestive formulation in terms of a capacity to “observe oneself whilst being oneself”, though as will be discussed below the relevant notion of ‘observing’ has to be handled with great care. Britton (1989) links the development of this capacity to the concept of the depressive position. Indeed, the move towards experiential self‐understanding may take the form of a move to the depressive position, and understanding lost a move back to the paranoid‐schizoid position.

In her paper ‘Towards the experiencing of psychic pain’, Joseph makes a distinction “between ‘knowing about’ and ‘becoming’ ” (1981, p. 95), which is very closely related to the distinction on which we are focusing.

23. See, for instance, Dilthey's (2010a,b), key texts in his development of a notion of lived experience and its relation to understanding (as distinct from mere causal explanation) of persons and the meaning of their actions and interactions. To properly trace the many relations between our view and those of these writers would require a much longer discussion and is a task for another occasion.

24. This paragraph articulates and summarizes a central lesson to be learned from reflection on Richard Moran's important discussion in Authority and estrangement (2001, ch. 1.4).

25. As Joyce and Stoker (2000) comment, “We argue that even in a session where many of the interpretations are vehemently defended against, the conflict that evoked the defence becomes more conscious and the child's internal representations of the analyst and of the parents change” (pp. 1145–6).

26. It is true that in experiencing the motivation to debase herself as the motivation that it is, she would also experience it as a motivation with some reason in its favour, because it is part of experiencing the world through an evaluative, desiring, and motivationally rich perspective that one's responses are presented in one's experience as if there are reasons in favour of them, even if one can't identify what those reasons might be. (This point shows up in contemporary philosophical talk of emotions as involving an ‘evaluative presentation’ of the items they are about or in response to.) This is part of what can exert pressure towards a rationalizing response when formerly unconscious states become conscious: when a motivational orientation comes into consciousness, it brings with it a disposition both to consciously judge in accordance with it and, in order to evade dissonance, to give up opposing evaluative judgments (rather than face severe dissonance). None of this means, however, that the analysand's distinctively first‐personal relationship to her perspective on the world is forged through her rational endorsement of it or commitment to it.

27. This view has its roots historically in Wittgenstein's suggestive remark that “the verbal expression of pain replaces crying and does not describe it” (2001, section 244).

28. The theory is not helped if we add that the person has to be able to self‐ascribe the desire sincerely, since both the initial self‐ascription and the evasive follow‐ups could have been perfectly sincere. The problem in such cases is not that the person is insincere, but rather that the momentary expression of the desire is caught up in larger defensive processes.

29. This is, again, what Britton (1989) attempts to capture with his evocative phrase “observing oneself whilst being oneself”.

30. This understanding is particularly suggested by O'Shaughnessy (1983).

31. The metaphor of ‘psychic distance’ is, of course, precisely that: a metaphor. What it aims to capture is the difference between a position of complete immersion in one's subjective perspective such that it fails to show up for one as one's perspective at all (as in what Fonagy et al. (2004) call ‘psychic equivalence mode’) and, on the other hand, a position in which one simultaneously occupies one's subjective perspective and recognizes it as such, where the two are related via one's ability to give voice to one's perspective. What the latter position makes possible (and is precluded in the former position) is the ability to think about one's perspective as one's perspective, to consider whether it is apt, and to have such reflections make a real difference in one's ongoing psychic functioning. The metaphor of ‘distance’ may not be the only way to capture this difference, but it does reflect a crucial aspect of the phenomenology of the shift. (We are grateful to an anonymous referee for raising this issue.)