Encountering and speaking to the unconscious

ABSTRACT

This paper tries to answer the question: what is it about the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis that makes it fundamental? The paper argues that the fundamental rule is fundamental to psychoanalysis because it is fundamental to human being that we are animals who think and speak and understand ourselves in logos – that is, in a special form of responsibility-bearing language. We learn how we bear these responsibilities by learning how to take a Sabbath-like rest from them. The fundamental rule is fundamental because in its very structure it probes deeply into and thus reveals and thus gives practical access to the beings we are.

L'auteur pose la question : qu'est-ce qui rend la règle fondamentale de la psychanalyse fondamentale ? L'auteur soutient que cette règle fondamentale de la psychanalyse l'est précisément parce qu'il nous est fondamental comme êtres humains d'être des animaux pensants, parlants et s'appréhendant eux-mêmes par le logos – c'est-à-dire dans une forme de langage particulièrement surchargée de responsabilité. Nous apprenons comment supporter cette responsabilité en en prenant repos comme par le Sabbat. La règle fondamentale de la psychanalyse l'est ainsi précisément parce que, de par sa structure même, elle sonde profondément les êtres que nous sommes pour y donner accès direct et pour les révéler.

Dieser Beitrag versucht die folgende Frage zu beantworten: Was verleiht der Grundregel der Psychoanalyse ihre grundlegende Bedeutung? Der Beitrag argumentiert, dass die Grundregel für die Psychoanalyse deshalb grundlegend ist, weil es ein grundlegendes Merkmal des Menschen ist, dass wir Tiere sind, die in Logos denken, sprechen und sich verstehen – das heißt, in einer besonderen Form der Sprache, die Verantwortung mit sich bringt. Wir lernen, diese Verantwortungen zu tragen, indem wir lernen, wie wir regelmäßige Auszeiten von ihnen nehmen. Die Grundregel ist deshalb grundlegend, weil sie so strukturiert ist, dass sie uns als Wesen gründlich erforscht, uns dadurch zeigt und einen gut anwendbaren Zugang zu uns ermöglicht.

Questo articolo prova a rispondere alla seguente domanda: qual’è l’aspetto della regola fondamentale della psicoanalisi che la rende così fondamentale? E la risposta a cui perviene è che la regola fondamentale è fondamentale perché un aspetto fondante del nostro essere umani sta nel fatto di essere animali che pensano e parlano e si capiscono attraverso il logos – ossia, attraverso una forma speciale di linguaggio investita di responsabilità. Impariamo come ci si può far carico di queste responsabilità imparando come ci si può prendere da esse un momento di sollievo, come accade nel giorno del Sabbath. La regola fondamentale è fondamentale perché per la sua stessa struttura sonda, e quindi rivela e offre accesso diretto al nostro essere più profondo.

Este artículo intenta responder la pregunta: ¿qué es lo que hay en la regla fundamental del psicoanálisis que la hace fundamental? Se argumenta que la regla fundamental es fundamental al psicoanálisis porque es fundamental para los seres humanos que seamos animales que pensamos y hablamos y nos comprendemos en logos, es decir, en una forma especial de lenguaje cargado de responsabilidad. Aprendemos cómo asumir estas responsabilidades aprendiendo cómo tomar un descanso de ellas, como el Sabbath. La regla fundamental es fundamental porque indaga profundamente en su misma estructura y así revela y da acceso práctico a los seres que somos.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dana Birksted-Breen, Lucy LaFarge, Gabriel Lear, Lawrence Levenson and Kay Long for comments on a previous draft. I am especially grateful to Edna O'Shaughnessy for extended discussions over the years of these psychoanalytic ideas.

Notes

1 There is no evidence of an audience in Euthyphro though the conversation does take place in public space; but audiences are common in the Socratic dialogues.

2 I am here concerned with apperceptive self-consciousness in Kant’s sense: a mode of self-conscious awareness that is not an object of reflection; i.e. as distinguished from reflective self-consciousness (see Kant 1998, 245–252; standardly referred to as B129–142).

3 In this essay I shall use a clinical moment I have presented elsewhere (Lear 2017b, 39–41) but I shall develop it and put it to different use.

4 It is beyond the scope of this essay to go into detail, but over time I came to think that Mr B’s resentment that I (and others) had got away with it helped protect him from a more envious worry that we had earned our success. I do not think this worry was a well-formulated thought or a repressed idea. It is rather that the established framework of resentment allowed a diffuse envy never to have to crystallize.