The way of authenticity and the quest for personal integrity1

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Fourteenth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education, Pasadena, California, November 7, 2003, and at the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology, San Francisco, California, December 11, 2004.

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A shorter version of this paper appeared in ‘Fort Da’ Vol. 10, No. 2, Fall 2004.

Abstract

The author reviews the respective conceptions of authenticity proposed by the existentialist philosophers, Fredrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, each of whom situate it in the inherent difficulty of resisting the herd instinct in one's interpersonal relationships, then sets out to show how, despite the absence of authenticity as a technical term in the psychoanalytic lexicon, the technical principles of psychoanalysis enumerated by Freud are compatible with the views of both Nietzsche and Heidegger. The author then gives examples of other psychoanalytic authors who similarly embrace the spirit of authentic relating in their conception of the clinical situation, including the work of D. W. Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, and Jacques Lacan. The author concludes that in the psychoanalytic context the imposition and experience of suffering are invaluable components of authenticity and therapeutic change.

Keywords:

• Existentialism
• psychoanalysis
• Frederich Nietzsche
• Martin Heidegger
• Sigmund Freud
• therapeutic change

Notes

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Fourteenth Annual Interdisciplinary Conference of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education, Pasadena, California, November 7, 2003, and at the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology, San Francisco, California, December 11, 2004.

A shorter version of this paper appeared in ‘Fort Da’ Vol. 10, No. 2, Fall 2004.