II-Psychoanalytic Theory: A Historical Reconstruction

Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 2012

In this paper I sketch a reconstruction of the basic psychoanalytic conception of the mind in terms of two historical resources: the conception of the subject developed in post-Kantian idealism, and Spinoza's laws of the affects in Part Three of the Ethics. The former, I suggest, supplies the conceptual basis for the psychoanalytic notion of the unconscious, problem, however, is that psychoanalysis is not consistently Kantian, either, and that its ambiguity cannot be resolved in either the one direction or the other. This should not, I have urged, be made an objection to psychoanalysis. But if correct, it means that psychoanalysis does not offer a philosophically safe home for Kant's 'I ought' to the extent that Longuenesse supposes.

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2020

upon the implicit epistemological position in Klein and Winnicott, and the more explicit one advanced by Bion. Finally, we explore the psychoanalytic attitude towards the possibility of knowledge.

History of the Human Sciences, 2009

Freud (and later commentators) have failed to explain how the origins of psychoanalytical theory began with a positivist investment without recognizing a dual epistemological commitment: simply, Freud engaged positivism because he believed it generally equated with empiricism, which he valued, and he rejected ‘philosophy’, and, more specifically, Kantianism, because of the associated transcendental qualities of its epistemology. But this simple dismissal belies a deep investment in Kant’s formulation of human reason, in which rationality escapes natural cause and thereby bestows humans with cognitive and moral autonomy. Freud also segregated human rationality: he divided the mind between (1) an unconscious grounded in the biological and thus subject to its own laws, and (2) a faculty of autonomous reason, lodged in consciousness and free of natural forces to become the repository of interpretation and free will. Psychoanalysis thus rests upon a basic Kantian construction, whereby re...

Pro Edu, 2019

The psychic is not homogeneous, uniforms, undifferentiated, linear, but it is present in various forms. It has a great functional and existential differentiation and uniformity. It manifests itself in the form of conscious psyche, subconscious and unconscious. The relationship between them, their harmony or conflict, determines the originality of human nature. The unconscious as a form of the psyche constitutes the most controversial level of organization of psychical life. It is stated that psychology stopped placing the notion of conscience in the center of its theoretical and practical preoccupations, making place for the unconscious. The unconscious is not only whatever became automatism, but also what I suppress. Freud explains suppression by a conflict between Superego (which represents the childhood interdictions which became interiorized) and Id, the natural pulsations which we were taught in childhood to blame. Freud urges us, through this, to regain the conscience of what is unconscious. The Superego is a necessary stage in the forming of moral conscience, but it should not be mistaken for the moral conscience itself. The genuine moral conscience does not reduce itself to the Superego. A psychological explanation of the origin of the Superego does not replace the foundation of the moral conscience. Psychoanalysis cannot account for values.

Psychoanalytic writing rarely features on university ethics curricula, so the idea that psychoanalysis has a place in the history of ethics may be a surprise. The aim of the paper is to show that it should not be. The strategy is to sketch in outline an enduring line of inquiry in the history of ethics, namely the Platonic-Aristotelian investigation of the relationship between human nature, human excellence and the human good, and to suggest that psychoanalysis exemplifies it too. But since the suggestion, once made, seems not only true but obviously true, the paper spends some time exploring why the place of psychoanalysis in the history of ethics has so often been overlooked, before developing the outline more fully and offering detailed reasons as to why psychoanalysis fits it. One consequence is that Freudian and (in a sense explained) 'relational' variants of psychoanalysis continue the Platonic-Aristotelian line of inquiry in interestingly different ways. * Edward Harcourt is University Lecturer in Philosophy at Oxford University and a Fellow of Keble College. He has published a number of articles on subjects including the moral emotions, neo-Aristotelianism and child development, the ethical dimensions of psychoanalysis, meta-ethics, Nietzsche's ethics, literature and philosophy, and Wittgenstein.

Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences, 2013

Psychoanalytic theory has great explanatory scope. Hypotheses about psychological mechanisms such as identification and projection, and about the unconscious working of motives, provide explanations for many aspects of development from infancy through adulthood; for symptoms and structures of motivational conflict in mental disorders including schizophrenia, depression and mania; and for the role of unconscious motivation and mental conflict in war and other forms of group conflict. (For italicized terms see Laplanche and Pointalis in the recommended reading below). These hypotheses, in turn, are based upon clinical evidence, that is, the actions, utterances, thoughts, feelings, etc. that emerge during psychoanalysis, in the particular clinical settings devised by Freud and his successors. Accordingly, philosophical discussions of psychoanalysis have frequently focused on two topics: (i) how well psychoanalytic theories can be regarded as evidentially supported by the clinical data they are initially framed to explain, and (ii) how far particularly psychoanalytic conceptions of unconscious mental states and processes should be regarded as viable. The first of these will be the main topic of this entry, and the second will be briefly considered at the close.

Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2007

This article discusses the question of the basis of changes in psychoanalytic concepts, theory, and treatment. Illustrative examples discussed include the "widening scope" of the use of "parameters" in psychoanalytic treatment; the rejection of the "Enlightenment Vision" and the concomitant de-emphasis on the role of insight; the concept of "narrative truth"; and the "totalistic" reconceptualization of the meaning of countertransferase. I then discuss the relationship between research and clinical practice and argue that if it is to grow, psychoanalysis must be open to and attempt to integrate findings from other related disciplines.

Psychoanalytic theory has great explanatory scope. Hypotheses about psychological mechanisms such as identification and projection, and about the unconscious working of motives, provide explanations for many aspects of development from infancy through adulthood; for symptoms and structures of motivational conflict in mental disorders including schizophrenia, depression and mania; and for the role of unconscious motivation and mental conflict in war and other forms of group conflict. (For italicized terms see Laplanche and Pointalis in the recommended reading below).

This text is a selected bibliography of works related to psychoanalytic ethics, theories of action, questions about values and commitments. The works cited come from across the psychoanalytic spectrum and also include texts from post-Lacanian scholarship. Each work cited is accompanied by at least one extensive quote from it.

2017

For more than a hundred years now, the dominant view amongst scholars has been that Kant's philosophy has nothing to do with psychology, or, at the very least, that psychology is inessential to Kant's philosophical project. In the early reception of Kant's work, however, psychology played a central role. Philosophers such as Carl Christian Erhard Schmid, Jakob Friedrich Fries, and Friedrich Eduard Beneke all maintained that Kant's philosophy could only be justified on the basis of a psychological account of cognition. This doctoral thesis shows that this tradition should be interpreted as a reasonable response to the problems that these early Kantians encountered in Kant's philosophy and that, though it is now mostly forgotten, this tradition formed an important part of the philosophical landscape in Germany around 1800.