Existential Psychoanalysis and Freudian Psychoanalysis

In this chapter, I will address two questions: What was Sartre’s contribution to psychology and to what extent was Sartre’s psychology influenced by Heidegger’s thought? I will concentrate on Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis as outlined in Being and Nothingness (Sartre, 1956). After some preliminaries, I give an account of Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis and then, in the third section of the chapter, review the intellectual encounter between Heidegger and Sartre, especially as it bears on the early Sartre’s alternative to the several incarnations of empirical psychoanalysis, which began with Freud.

The Humanistic Psychologist, 1999

This article explores the contributions which a shift from Freudian to Sartrean metatheory might make to contemporary psychoanalysis. Beginning with a brief history of Sartre's deeply ambivalent relationship to traditional psychoanalysis, the article moves forward to reinterpret ego psychology and object relations theory from a Sartrean perspective and to point out ways in which a Sartrean reinterpretation could lead to more effective practice. A case is made for the importance of distinguishing between "neurotic anxiety" based on the "return of the repressed" and "existential anxiety" based on angst over one's freedom and inability to be a solid self at moments of deep level change in therapy. The importance of reciprocity in the client-therapist relationship is emphasized. Downloaded by [University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries] at 12:16 26 May 2015

2016

The article discusses rationalistic and existential approaches to the problem of existence. The comparison of Sartre's pre-reflective cogito and Descartes' reflective cogito makes it possible to define how Sartre’s thought moves from the thing to consciousness and from consciousness to the thing. At the same time, in Being and Nothingness Sartre does not only define the existence of the thing in its passivity—which in many respects corresponds to Descartes' philosophy, but also as an open orientation towards consciousness, the latter concept not being fully developed by him. This statement may be regarded as a hidden component of Sartre’s key thesis about the role of the Other in the verification of our existence. The most important factor in understanding this is the concept of the look. Detailed analysis of Sartre’s theses in Being and Nothingness enables us to demonstrate that the concept of the look makes it possible to consider the identity of being-in-itself and be...

In New Perspectives on Sartre, ed. Adrian Mirvish and Adrain van den Hoven, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010

The European Legacy, 2016

Sartre’s early works on phenomenology reveal the complexity of his relationship to Husserl. Deeply indebted to phenomenology’s method as well as its substance, Sartre nonetheless confronted Husserl’s transcendental turn from Ideas onward. Although numerous studies have focused on Sartre’s points of contention with Husserl, drawing attention to his departure from Husserlian phenomenology, scholars have rarely examined the way in which Sartre engaged and responded to the early Husserl, particularly to his discussions of intentionality, consciousness, and self in Logical Investigations. This essay focuses on Sartre’s critical response to Logical Investigations, arguing that Husserl’s understanding of these three notions shapes and informs Sartre’s own approach to them in The Transcendence of the Ego (1936-37), “Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology” (1939), and Being and Nothingness (1943). By carefully reading Sartre side by side with Husserl, this essay articulates the ways in which Sartre allowed himself to think along with, and not against, Husserl.

Penultimate Draft. To appear in Matthew Eshleman, Christophe Perrin and Constance Mui eds., The Sartrean Mind (New York: Routledge)

This paper examines the ideas of consciousness, intentionality and pre-reflective awareness as they feature in Sartre's Being and Nothingness. Consciousness is nothingness in the sense that no intentional object of awareness can ever be part of consciousness. Intentional directedness towards an object is a form of revealing activity in which an object is presented as being a certain way. This activity is underwritten by a mastery of the relations between environmental and bodily contingencies and the resulting consequences for appearance of the intentional object. Pre-reflective awareness is built in to intentional directedness towards the world in virtue of the fact that many, perhaps all, of the contingencies that underwrite such directedness are ones in which the conscious subject is implicated. All three of these ideas are offered both as interpretations Sartre’s view, and also as claims in their own right which, I suspect, stand a very good chance of being true.

The American Historical Review, 1977

Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 2007

The Psychoanalytic Review, 2003

The term "existentialism" is so ambiguous that it has essentially become a meaningless word: it is associated with a number of disparate philosophical doctrines, social-political movements, and artistic sensibilities, that it becomes slippery to pin down its core philosophical tenets to such a degree that an undertaking of this kind would be no less rendered moot. We may nevertheless say that existentialism is a form of phenomenological philosophy that relies on certain reflective methods of studying human consciousness instantiated in the individual, society, and culture, which emerged as a popular general movement characteristic of 20 century European thought represented th across many disciplines including literature, the humanities, and the social sciences. Sartre is often heralded the father of existentialism, but surely philosophical preoccupation with the question and meaning of human existence dates back to antiquity. In philosophy there is often a distinction made between the nature of "being," a broad ontological category, and that of "existence," what we generally confine to the study of human subjectivity. From the Platonic notion of the soul to mediaeval Aristotelian theology, to modern materialism and transcendental idealism, there has always been a primary fascination with the longings and mysteries of human experience. Sartre (1943) formally inaugurated the existential movement with its first principle in his magnum opus Being and Nothingness when he stated that "existence precedes essence." What he

Choice Reviews Online, 1992