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The Myth of Psychoanalysis: Wittgenstein Contra Freud By Steve Hoenisch Last updated on Feb. 21, 2006 Copyright 1996-2006 www.Criticism.Com Table of Contents 1 "A Way of Speaking" 2 Ambiguity and Ambivalence 3 The Myth of the Scientific Solution 4 Sudden Shifts in Character 5 Implications of the Shift 6 The Cure: Persuasion 7 A Manner of Talking 8 Is There Science Behind the Good Talk? 9 The "Disciple of Freud" 10 Wittgensteinian Psychoanalysis 11 The Necessity of Mythology: Desire 12 The Unconscious 13 A Solution Emerges 14 A Brief Case Study: The Meaning of Dreams 15 The Delusion of Science and Meaning as Use 16 Conclusion 17 Notes 18 Related Essays 1 "A Way of Speaking""Myth," Roland Barthes writes in Mythologies, "is a type
of speech."1 It is a language, a system of communication, he says,
making explicit the connection between speech and myth. Ludwig
Wittgenstein, despite the similarities between his view of
language and that of Ferdinand de Saussure,2 the Swiss linguist
from whom Barthes borrowed the foundations of his semiological
theory, never quite
made the connection so directly but
continually bumped up against it in his remarks on
psychoanalysis: Wittgenstein repeatedly said that psychoanalysis
is a "way of thinking,"3 "a way of speaking,"4 and "a powerful
mythology."5 The connection between psychoanalysis and language was readily perceived by Jacques Lacan, influenced like Barthes by structuralism. For Lacan, the methodological aspects of psychoanalysis
are directly mediated by language: "The technique [of psychoanalysis] cannot be comprehended, nor therefore correctly applied, if the underlying concepts are misconstrued. It is our task to demonstrate that these concepts assume their full sense only when oriented in the domain of Language, only when ordered in relation to the function of the Word."6 Lacan also thought
that the psychoanalyst must be an expert in the manner of
speaking of the patient, in the use of words to convey emotional
states: The psychoanalyst's understanding of emotional ills
coincides with his knowledge of language. Lacan believed that the
professional mediocrity he perceived as undermining
psychoanalysis "could be corrected by a proper return to that
area of knowledge in which the analyst ought to be past master:
the study of the functions of the Word."7
Jacques Derrida, a poststructuralist like
Lacan, elevates
the
study of the words used in psychoanalysis to the understanding of
a perspective. The psychoanalyst must understand what the patient
is saying, the patient's perspective. Derrida writes: "When one
attempts, in a general way, to pass from an
obvious to a latent
language, one must first be rigorously sure of the obvious
meaning. The analyst, for example, must first speak the same
language as the patient."8
The relation between psychoanalysis and language, then, has
not
gone without the attention of prominent philosophers. Thus it
comes as no surprise that Wittgenstein, one of the preeminent
philosophers of language, had something to say about the
intersection of language and psychoanalysis. Such excepts as
those quoted above bring to the fore some particularly
significant issues that Wittgenstein touched on in his remarks on
Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis: In question is the nature of
the relationship between language and psychoanalysis; at stake is
the scientific status of psychoanalysis, the kind of knowledge
derived from its procedures, and -- most important for my
purposes here -- the results of its application to the patient's
problems.
2 Ambiguity and Ambivalence
In his remarks on Freud, there is both ambiguity and ambivalence
in Wittgenstein's views. The ambivalence
stems from
Wittgenstein's admiration of Freud combined with his staunch
condemnation of psychoanalytic theory. This ambivalence perhaps
underscores the tension Wittgenstein felt between his own loyalty
to science and his intuition that only mythologies -- that is,
invented manners of speaking -- dissolve problems lying beyond
the scope of scientific analysis.
The ambiguity lies in Wittgenstein's praising of Freud's
theory
while repeatedly condemning it as unscientific, an ambiguity that
has led at least one scholar astray: Grahame Lock concludes, as
quoted by Jacques Bouveresse in Wittgenstein Reads Freud,
that
"Wittgenstein is the `disciple' of Freud who seems to do nothing
but raise objections to his master."9 Even though Wittgenstein
indeed raises objections to Freud, many of them are
leveled
against Freud's view of his own theory, not against the
explanatory power of the theory itself. For Wittgenstein,
psychoanalysis is based in myth, not science. But this position
must not be taken as merely a criticism of Freud, as Lock has
done. Although it is an attack on Freud's view that his theory is
a science, it is also a glorification of its inventiveness in
going beyond a scientific theory to explain the scientifically
unexplainable. Wittgenstein believed Freud "had something to
say."10 Freud, Wittgenstein would have said, "invented a line of
thinking."11 And it is a view of Freud's psychoanalysis that
bodes with Wittgenstein's view of his own developed philosophical
method, leaving Wittgenstein to see himself as a disciple of
Freud, even though he did not believe he had himself invented a
new line of thinking.
Yet such a position -- that Wittgenstein believed
psychoanalysis
to be based in myth, not science -- has theoretical consequences
that go beyond the motivations for a disciple raising objections
to his master. The first is how psychoanalysis, if it is a myth,
can solve psychological problems. The second is the status of a
Wittgensteinian form of psychoanalysis if it, too, is based in
myth.
Wittgensteinian psychoanalysis can, in fact, be seen as
based in
two separate but connected myths. The first is the general myth
of all psychoanalysis, of all theories without experimental
backing and successful predictive power. The second is
Wittgenstein's own myth, "the manner of speaking" of his mature
philosophical method, a form of linguistic analysis which in
broad terms consists in the use of the language game and the
primitive state as well as an attention to context, a connection
to life, and the evaluation of specific cases without
generalizing from them.
3 The Myth of the Scientific Solution
My central thesis is that if, as Wittgenstein says, Freudian
psychoanalysis is based in myth, its application to actual
psychological problems does not, indeed cannot, resolve them.
Instead, all it can do is clarify them or present them in a
different light. Implicit in my argument is that this is how
Wittgenstein thought of the results of psychoanalysis, much like
he thought of the application of his philosophical technique to
philosophical problems, especially those of metaphysics, ethics,
and aesthetics. As such, Wittgenstein is also subverting a larger
myth: that the insights gained in psychoanalysis lead to the
scientific resolution of psychological problems.
One of Wittgenstein's remarks about psychoanalysis, made in
1938,
explicitly confirms that he saw the results of psychoanalysis not
as a resolution of psychological problems, but as merely a way of
changing the way they are seen, thereby dissolving them through
clarification:
"In a way, having oneself psychoanalyzed is like
eating from the tree of knowledge. Knowledge
acquired sets us (new) ethical problems; but
contributes nothing to their solution."12
Although Bouveresse cites this passage, he, I believe,
misses the
significance of it. As Bouveresse invokes Brian McGuinness's view
that an essential feature of Wittgenstein's attitude in life,
philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics was "an extreme restraint and
reserve that were utterly opposed to all forms of exhibitionism
and explain his deliberate renunciation of theory in
philosophy,"13 he uses the quotation in an attempt to sum up
Wittgenstein's attitude (a renunciation of theory) that stretched
toward psychoanalysis. Yet, I believe, the context in which
Bouveresse uses the remark leads him to belittle its import and
neglect its substance: that psychoanalysis does not and cannot
resolve problems but only alters the way they are seen, perhaps
clarifying them in the process. The substance of the remark is
more intimately connected to Wittgenstein's position on the role
of philosophy in relation to age-old metaphysical problems than
to his attitude toward psychoanalysis: Philosophy,
Wittgenstein
believed, can alter the way metaphysical problems are seen by
putting them in sharper relief, but cannot solve them. For one
thing, the metaphysical problems may be unsolvable. For another,
they may not be problems at all, but only appear, through the
haze of language, as problems.
4 Sudden Shifts in Character
The same can be said about psychological problems. Wittgenstein
begins the remark extracted above with a hedge, "in a way,"
alluding to other possible notions of what psychoanalysis can do.
The allusion, of course, raises the question that there could be
another way. One possibility, addressed by Wittgenstein in a
separate comment made in 1946, is that psychological problems are
not problems at all, just shifts in character: "Madness need not
be regarded as an illness. Why shouldn't it be seen as a sudden
-- more or less sudden -- change of character."14
Wittgenstein obviously meant this as a local suggestion: It
is
made on the micro-psychological level of the individual and the
therapist's perception of the individual's character. Yet
Wittgenstein's micro-psychoanalytic suggestion falls under a
powerful macro-psychoanalytic argument made some twenty-five
years later: Michel
Foucault, in Madness
and
Civilization: A
History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, advances the theory
that madness is the result of a change in character in the
Western world's manner of thinking: That of the enlightenment
and, more specifically, the Cartesian order. For Foucault,
madness is not a scientifically defined state of mind but rather
a constructed way of seeing and categorizing a state of mind. For
Foucault, psychoanalysis -- indeed, the entire category of
madness and all its subcategories -- is the result of a more or
less sudden change in human character on the global level. And
Foucault's macro-level analysis would, a fortiori, include
Wittgenstein's micro-level suggestion, a position that
Wittgenstein would perhaps even endorse. In the remark, the word
"less" is italicized, showing that Wittgenstein believed the
change need not, in fact, be all that sudden, which further
supports my interpretation of Wittgenstein's remark and its
connection to Foucault's macro-psychoanalytic thesis.
Moreover, in Wittgenstein's remark the words "seen as"
suggest
that Wittgenstein may have been thinking that mental illness is
not necessarily a reality of its own, as modern-day "scientific"
psychoanalysis would have us believe, but the result merely of a
way of viewing a person in a certain manner. Psychoanalysis,
then, becomes not just a manner of speaking, but also a
manner of
seeing, a way of arbitrarily segmenting personality
attributes.
Yet these characterizations of mental illness as (in
Wittgenstein's view) a sudden change in character of an
individual and (in Foucault's view) as a sudden change in
character of the human condition, point, with consistency, to
another feature of Wittgenstein's thought on Freud: That he
considered Freud's theory a myth, not a science.
5 Implications of the Shift
Wittgenstein's alternative perception of mental illness as a
sudden change in character shifts the nature of mental illness
away from the necessity of a scientific explanation: A change of
character may be motivated or not, may be caused or not, and so
forth. It may just happen, and it need not necessarily be
explained, especially by a single, all-embracing theory such as
Freud's. In fact, it is this kind of explanation -- the kind
stemming from a propensity toward essentialism -- to which
Wittgenstein objects: "the truth is that there is no one
reason."15 This "whole way of thinking," for Wittgenstein, "wants
combatting."16
But Wittgenstein's objection, I want to argue, goes even
deeper
than arguing against a single explanation in favor of choosing
from a multiplicity of them depending on the case in question.
There may not be a scientific explanation for a particular mental
illness at all; the illness may not even be amendable to such an
explanation. Freud's rhetorical question, "Do you want to say,
gentlemen, that changes in mental phenomena are guided by
chance?," draws the following response from Wittgenstein:
"Whereas to me the fact that there aren't actually any such laws
seems important."17
If I am correct in my interpretation here, it lends credence
to
my thesis. If there is no one reason for any particular recurring
psychological phenomenon, then psychoanalysis cannot impart a
cure based on a scientifically inspired insight. At best, it can
only put forth a possible reason, an invented cause, and persuade
the patient to believe it.
6 The Cure: Persuasion
Psychotherapy may in fact produce a cure, but it stems not from
insight, as Freud would probably argue in general terms, but from
"persuasion," as Wittgenstein puts it in his argument
against
Freud's view.
The psychoanalyst's art, then, lies in finding, based on
available information obtained from the patient and through
transference, the most persuasive argument for the patient to see
his problems in a different light -- to be persuaded to see the
world and his relation to it differently. In this change of
perspective, brought about by argument, not insight, lies the
cure. Or, to put it another way, the cure lies not in the insight
but in being persuaded that the insight is right.
What, though, allows the patient to be persuaded that the
insight
is correct? Bouveresse responds to this question from
Wittgenstein's corner: "The success of the psychoanalytic
explanations would be inexplicable if these explanations did not
have a particular `charm'."18 The success of the argument, so to
speak, is in turn due more to the charm of the insight than the
insight itself. Wittgenstein explains: "If you are led by
psycho-analysis to say that really you thought so and so, or that
really
your motive was so and so, this is not a matter of discovery, but
of persuasion."19 Thus, for Wittgenstein, it is not an insight at
all that leads to the cure, but being persuaded to adopt a
particular point of view. "In a different way," Wittgenstein
says, "you could have been persuaded of something different. Of
course, if psychoanalysis cures your stammer, it cures it, and
that is an achievement. One thinks of certain results of
psychoanalysis as a discovery Freud made, as apart from something
persuaded to you by a psychoanalyst, and I wish to say this is
not the case."20
But just what is persuaded to the patient by the therapist?
What
form, in other words, does the insight take? Bouveresse supplies
an answer: "Wittgenstein himself thinks that the psychoanalyst is
primarily in search of a `good' story that will produce the
desired therapeutic effect once it is accepted by the patient,
and yet neither the patient's assent nor therapeutic success in
itself proves that this story is true or even should be
true."21
7 A Manner of Talking
As Peter Gay points out in his biographical introduction to the
Standard Edition of Freud's works, Freud discovered in his
treatment of Anna O., the founding patient of psychoanalysis,
that symptoms could be talked away.22 But the discovery that talk
could alleviate symptoms does necessarily entail either that the
psychological problem has been cured or that the problem's true
cause has been uncovered.
In fact, the strength of Wittgenstein's position only
rematerializes in the context of
Freud's limited observation that
problems can be talked away: It shows that, at its very
foundation, from its earliest days onward, psychoanalysis has
been a "way of speaking." To the patient it becomes, by
extension, a metaphor, a manner of talking: The problems are not
so much resolved as talked away.
The two primary modes outlined above that yield the "cure"
-- a
persuasive argument and a good story -- rest in turn on their own
nature: one is rhetoric, the other narration. Both are ways of
speaking. That settled, the question then becomes whether there
is any scientific basis for either the argument or the story, for
the good talk.
8 Is There Science Behind the Good Talk?
Even though Freud would certainly balk at the suggestion that the
force of his theory's ability to dissolve a patient's problems
lies in its persuasive perspective and rhetoric, he nevertheless
alludes to the possibility of the role of persuasion. In revising
his theory of dreams, he writes that
"We have to transform the manifest dream into the
latent one, and to explain how, in the dreamer's
mind, the latter has become the former. The first
portion is a practicall task, for which
dream-interpretation is responsible; it calls for a
technique. The second portion is a theoretical
task, whose business it is to explain the
hypothetical dream-work; and it can only be a
theory."23
With reference to the last part of this remark, I would like to
suggest that a theory, when taken in isolation and without
supporting empirical data obtained from experiment and proven
predictive power, can only be a persuasive device, a dogma, a
conjecture that Willard van Orman Quine might call a "dogma of
empiricism" when it is placed under the larger heading of
science. Yet, when seemingly right, such a theory can have a
persuasive allure. This is how Wittgenstein saw Freudian
analysis: It "provides explanations which many people are
inclined to accept."24 Why? Because "it has the attraction of
which mythological explanations have, explanations which say this
is all a repetition of something that has happened before."25
Behind the good talk lies not only a myth, but a particularly
seductive one.
The mythological basis for the theory begins to emerge when
a
sample of the rhetoric in Freud's writing is analyzed. In at
least one case, Freud's language, though characterized on the
surface by appeals to science, may have been calculated to be
persuasive without scientific support. Despite the scientific
metaphors with which Freud infuses the discussion -- latent dream
thoughts "are contained in the associations like an alkali in the
mother-liquid"26 -- he goes on to give the process of wringing
the latent dream thoughts from the manifest ones an air of
philosophical argument rather than of scientific proof: With
respect to formulating the latent dream thoughts from the
manifest thoughts and from associations, Freud says, "we
intervene on our own; we fill in the hints, draw undeniable
conclusions, and give explicit utterance to what the patient has
only touched on in his associations."27 The rhetoric contained in
this passage -- "fill in the hints," "draw undeniable
conclusions," "give explicit utterance to" -- alludes, it seems,
more to the argumentative basis for the interpretation than to
its scientific basis. Yet, as the passage continues, Freud
anticipates this rebuttal and addresses it. But his refutation of
persuasion in favor of science is in turn itself based on
rhetoric and intuition, not science:
"This sounds as though we allowed our ingenuity
and caprice to play with the material put at our
disposal by the dreamer and as though we misused
it in order to interpret into his utterances what
cannot be interpreted from them. Nor is it easy to
show the legitimacy of our procedure in an
abstract description of it. But you have only to
carry out a dream-analysis yourselves or study a
good account of one in our literature and you will
be convinced of the cogent manner in which
interpretative work like this proceeds."28
It is precisely this "ingenuity" that Wittgenstein so admired in
Freud: His genius in formulating a manner of speaking about
something hitherto beyond the boundaries of rational discourse.
Perhaps, though, it is in confusing rational discourse with
scientific method that leads Freud into the trap of insisting
that his theory is based in science when it was, at least at the
time, unverifiable through experiment. "Freud is constantly
claiming to be scientific," Wittgenstein says. "But what he gives
is speculation -- something prior even to the formation of
a
hypothesis."29
The legitimacy of the procedure is precisely what
Wittgenstein
protests, demanding that if it is indeed as scientific as Freud
says it is, it should be explicable in terms that render it
verifiable in the same way as any other scientific method. It
must be more than merely an argument from intuition.
Wittgenstein, it might be noted, liked "to play the exciting game
of dream interpretation"30 with his sister Margarete, who had
herself been psychoanalyzed by Freud, allowing him, as Freud
suggests, to carry out a dream analysis, yet the argument from
intuition remains unconvincing for Wittgenstein. Even after
having done it himself and probably having read some accounts of
them, dream interpretations remained for Wittgenstein far from
scientifically cogent procedures.
There is another connection to be made here, too. It
pertains to
the crucial distinction Wittgenstein makes between reasons and
causes. "The difference between a reason and a cause,"
Wittgenstein says, "is brought out as follows: the investigation
of a reason entails as an essential part one's agreement with it,
whereas the investigation of a cause is carried out
experimentally."31 For Wittgenstein, Freud's technique is a
search for reasons, not causes.
But how is it that, as with the case of Anna. O., such
psychoanalytic talk, without being based in science, makes the
patient feel better, alleviates her anxiety, seemingly "cures"
her problems? It is because, Wittgenstein says, it alters the
perspective from which people view their problems in such a way
as to make them acceptable, bearable, easier. The powerful
mythological basis of Freudian theory renders it not only
convincing but also practical. "When people do accept or adopt
this [mythological explanation]," Wittgenstein says, "then
certain things seem much clearer and easier for them."32
Wittgenstein believed psychoanalysis does not solve or cure
psychological problems but clarifies them in such a way that they
become easier to handle.
9 The "Disciple of Freud"
Wittgenstein admired Freud for developing a way of speaking that
rendered expressible -- and held the potential to clarify --
problems, conflicts, desires, and emotional states. This was the
ingenuity that Wittgenstein saw in Freud, and it was
Wittgenstein's own hopes of developing a way of speaking, a line
of thought, to clarify philosophical problems. These hopes led
Wittgenstein to call himself a "disciple of Freud": He, too,
wanted to invent a manner of speaking to deal with age-old
philosophical problems that had for so long escaped
clarification. Yet Wittgenstein, after developing his own way of
speaking -- the language game and other techniques -- did not
claim that it was science.
10 Wittgensteinian Psychoanalysis
Thus, I am also concerned with Wittgenstein's own
acknowledgements about his philosophical technique and the
implications of it if applied to psychological, rather than
philosophical, problems and why such a technique might be more
powerful, at least theoretically, than Freud's.
As Wittgenstein acknowledges, the technique of language
games,
though useful, is itself the application of a mythology -- a
manner of speaking. It is not a scientific method. Wittgenstein,
admiring Freud, said of his work, "It's all excellent similes."33
Wittgenstein said nearly the same thing about his own work in
philosophy: "What I invent are new similes."34
At the same time, Wittgenstein's technique is one that
clarifies
but does not resolve philosophical problems. As Ray Monk puts it
in
summing up Wittgenstein's perspective, philosophy's "puzzles
... require, not solution, but dissolution."35 Wittgenstein is
not so much seeking a resolution of the problem but a
disappearance of it: "For the clarity that we are aiming at is
indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the
philosophical problems should completely disappear."36
Therefore, if Wittgenstein's philosophical technique is
recast as
a form of psychotherapy, as has been done, its results are, a
fortiori, only the clarification, not the resolution, of
psychological problems. If correct, such a position lends
support, by association, to my first thesis.
Yet, even though Wittgensteinian psychoanalysis does not
solve
problems, it has two connected aspects that may make it superior
to the Freudian model. It discards the postulation of the
unconscious, and it withdraws any claim to be scientific.
Discarding the unneeded theoretical machinery of the unconscious
renders the Wittgensteinian model more parsimonious. Withdrawing
the claim to be scientific renders it more honest, acknowledging
as it does its mythological, rather than scientific, basis. As
such, Wittgensteinian psychoanalysis demythicizes Freudian
psychoanalysis while retaining its powerful -- and necessary --
mythological basis.
11 The Necessity of Mythology: Desire
The necessity of a fundamentally mythological approach to
psychological problems lies in the relation of desire to
language. The problem is one of expression. The human being,
Vincent Descombes says in the forward to Wittgenstein Reads
Freud, is "a `divided subject': The subject does not emerge
until
he speaks, but when he speaks, he loses himself in language and
is condemned to desire without being able to signify the object
of his desire in an articulate message."37 Desire transcends
language, rises above its purview. The best we can do, it seems,
is express ourselves in cliches, many of which quickly
become an
integral part of the language that mediates the exchange between
therapist and patient and, similarly, between lover and other.
Descombes continues: "The subject is therefore divided, due
to
his condition as a speaking being, between what he can ask in the
language he shares with others, and what he continues to desire
-- which is always `something else.'"38
The problem, then, is one of expression. The solution lies
in
inventing a manner of speaking -- a mythology. For Freud, that
manner of speaking was grounded in the postulation of the
unconscious. Giving expression to unconscious desires and their
conflicts became the centerpiece of psychoanalysis. How, then,
can the same results be obtained, the same conflicts clarified,
without resorting to the unconscious? Does psychoanalysis,
stripped of the unconscious, lose its explanatory power? Can
people talk about and alleviate their psychological problems and
conflicts, their desires, without recourse to the unconscious
as
a mechanism?
12 The Unconscious
Wittgenstein thought, Bouveresse says, that "we have an
imperative need for philosophical clarity to save us from the
misdeeds of psychoanalysis."39 The central misdeed that
Wittgenstein saw in psychoanalysis was the unconscious. Indeed,
Wittgenstein, Bouveresse writes in the preface to Wittgenstein
Reads Freud, "regarded the unconscious as really no more than
a
manner of speaking which creates more philosophical difficulties
than the scientific ones it claims to resolve."40
Descombes discusses one of the philosophical difficulties
that
perhaps Wittgenstein had in mind. "What Freud puts into question,
according to Lacan, is the very possibility that human beings can
claim to be the center of anything. The notion of the unconscious
ought to be understood as bearing witness to the impossibility of
anyone attaining what the philosophers call the state of
satisfaction in harmony with the self (or, in speculative
Hegelian terms, self-identity triumphing over all alienations and
internal divisions)."41 On Freud's view, at least as interpreted
by Descombes, we are doomed: We can never be the center of
anything, not even ourselves.
But on Wittgenstein's view, we are not doomed, because
nothing
is, in principle, unconscious. Wittgenstein's philosophical
method assumes, Bouveresse says, that "there is nothing `hidden'
to exhume, that everything is in principle immediately accessible
to the surface, and that we already know, in a way, everything we
need to know."42 We thus already possess the possibility of
obtaining the understanding that can lead to psychological
improvement without having to unearth our repressed desires.
13 A Solution Emerges
The germ of the solution begins to materialize in remarks made by
Wittgenstein: In describing his philosophical technique,
Wittgenstein says that "the philosopher gives us the word with
which the thing can be expressed and made inoffensive."43 It
would probably not be an inappropriate stretch to say that
Wittgenstein would probably sanction the substitution of
"psychoanalyst" for "philosopher" in this quotation,
foreshadowing our solution.
It is made explicit by Lacan: "Whether it sees itself as an
instrument of healing, of formation, or of exploration in depth,
psychoanalysis has only a single intermediary: the patient's
Word."44 Without its scientific basis, the unconscious can lead
both patient and analyst astray. The use of the patient's
language, however, being the "single intermediary," can alone
lead to a dissolution of the psychological problem.
As Bouveresse points out while discussing the basis for
reducing
philosophy to a form of psychotherapy, Freud puts forth a similar
view about the role of language in therapy. Bouveresse sums it up
thus: "The disappearance of hysterical symptoms occurs when the
process at the source of the troubles can be reproduced and
`expressed' (ausgesprochen); more precisely, when the
patient has
become capable of giving a detailed account of the process and
giving voice to the accompanying affect."45
But in Wittgensteinian psychoanalysis, the emphasis is on
the
words, without regard to whether the "process" at the source is
expressed accurately, since its accurate reproduction is
scientifically futile. The scientific proof is, in turn, replaced
by the element of persuasion discussed above.
Thus it is that the role of language in psychoanalysis is
seen by
Freud and Wittgenstein in opposing ways: For Wittgenstein, the
language lies at the foundation of the myth that creates
psychoanalysis. The language is the psychoanalytic machine. For
Freud, on the other hand, the language becomes a scientific
mechanism in the psychoanalytic machine, a cog that allows the
patient to express and, in turn, conquer his or her problems. The
unconscious is the ghost in the machine. Thus, if Wittgensteinian
psychoanalysis can work in practice without appealing to an
unconscious, it would be a superior theory -- it expels the ghost
from the machine.
14 A Brief Case Study: The Meaning of Dreams
For Freud, the meaning of a dream could often be revealed through
the interpretation of it. For Wittgenstein, however, the meaning
of a dream, like any other form of language, would be given by
its use; interpretation alone, for Wittgenstein, does not
determine a dream's meaning.
Seen as a form of language, a dream's meaning, from a
Wittgensteinian perspective, becomes what it is used to
accomplish or reveal in the psychotherapeutic situation. As
such,
the dream and the psychoanalytic interpretation of it become
merely another element in the argument, so to speak, that the
psychotherapist uses to persuade the patient that a given insight
is somehow the right insight, the insight that will help dissolve
the problem at hand. After all, in Wittgenstein's view, "any
interpretation still hangs in the air along with what it
interprets, and cannot give it any support. Interpretations by
themselves do not determine meaning,"46 a position which
contrasts sharply with Freud's anti-structuralist view: Some
dream elements, he says, "are to be regarded as symbols of
something else. As contrasted with the other dream-elements, a
fixed meaning may be attributed to them, which, however, need not
be unambiguous and whose range is determined by special rules
with which we are unfamiliar."47
Aside from the obvious objection that one cannot suppose
that the
range is determined by rules with which we are unfamiliar,
neither
Wittgenstein nor Saussure, the father of linguistic structuralism, would have it that any signs, linguistic or
otherwise, could have a fixed meaning. It is in Freud's assertion
that some dream symbols carry a fixed meaning that he falls
victim to a scientific dogmatism when he is, in fact, engaged in
making a myth, albeit a myth with meaning for the human spirit.
Let me make more explicit this relationship between science and
symbol. 15 The Delusion of Science and Meaning as Use
Freud, for his part, sees the use, or function, of dreams only in
psycho-physiological terms. He does not see their use in the
psychoanalytic moment as determining their meaning, a position
nearly opposite of Wittgenstein's. For Wittgenstein, a dream's
meaning becomes its use in the psychotherapist's and patient's
attempt to dissolve or see differently the situation or conflict
that is producing the psychological problem in question. The
dream's use, that is, determines its meaning. For Freud, a dream
has meaning well before it is used in an exchange between
therapist and patient. In fact, the dream has meaning of two
types, one superficial and the other subterranean, the first
being the manifest dream thoughts and the second the latent dream
thoughts. Roughly, the therapist works through the manifest dream
thoughts and the associations contained in them, in combination
with other associations, to unmask the psychoanalytically more
significant latent dream thoughts, which are in turn used to help
solve the problem at hand.48 For Freud, then, meaning precedes
and determines use.
There is, of course, a deeper reason for the opposition of
Freud's and Wittgenstein's views toward the meaning and use of
dreams, a reason that for Wittgenstein goes beyond the paradigm
of his philosophy of language and a reason that for Freud goes
beyond using the dream to reveal an underlying cause or conflict:
science.
Again, here, Freud and Wittgenstein stand in direct
opposition:
From Freud's perspective, a dream must have meaning prior to its
use, for the whole of the proclaimed scientific basis of his
theory rests upon such an independent meaning. Freud does not
hesitate to note the connection between the symbolic language of
dreams and science. Within the context of presenting his revised
theory of dreams in New Introductory Lectures, he writes,
"What
is in question is principally the symbolism in dreams and the
other methods of representation in them."49
From Wittgenstein's perspective, on the other hand, the
dream can
have no independent meaning, for that would imply a scientific
foundation to psychoanalytic theory. To conform to Wittgenstein's
overall position on Freud, the scientific basis for Freud's
theory must be denied on every level; otherwise, Wittgenstein
would create an opening through which Freud and his followers
could reassert psychoanalysis as a scientifically grounded
theory.
16 Conclusion
There is ambiguity and ambivalence in Wittgenstein's attack on
Freud's self-proclaimed scientific approach. Ambiguity because
what comes across as a clear criticism of Freud contains a
glorification in its own faint reflection. Ambivalence because
Wittgenstein's views on Freud's work -- admiration combined with
staunch condemnation -- underscore the tension for Wittgenstein
between his own loyalty to science and his intuition that it is
our mythologies, our inventing new manners of speaking, that
dissolve problems lying beyond the reach of scientific analysis.
There is, then, for Wittgenstein, a level at which
scientific
explanations become misplaced, irrelevant. Useless. It is here
that mythical explanations must step in and save us, providing
the insights that only a mythology can supply. "My aim,"
Wittgenstein says poignantly, "is to teach you to pass from a
piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent
nonsense."50 Freudian psychoanalysis serves exactly such a
function. And the formulation of such a powerful, persuasive
mythical explanation deserves the highest regard, a regard that
Wittgenstein bestowed upon Freud. The admiration, however, ends
as soon as the mythical explanation is proclaimed to be science.
It must be seen for what it is: A perspective that sheds new
light on problems beyond the scope of science.
17 Notes
1. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New
York:
Hill and Wang, 1972), p. 109.
2. See, for instance, Language,
Saussure and
Wittgenstein: How to
Play Games with Words, by Roy Harris (London: Routledge,
1988).
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures &
Conversations on Aesthetics,
Psychology and Religious Belief
, ed.
Cyril Barrett (Berkeley,
Calif.: University of California Press), p. 44.
4. Jacques Bouveresse, Wittgenstein Reads Freud: The Myth of
the
Unconscious, trans. Carol Cosman (Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 26. Bouveresse is quoting
Wittgenstein from Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935.
5. Wittgenstein,
Lectures & Conversations, p. 52.
6. Jacques Lacan, "The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis,"
in Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, trans. Anthony
Wilden
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), p.
8.
7. Ibid. p. 5.
8. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference,
trans. Alan Bass
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 32.
9.
Bouveresse, Wittgenstein Reads Freud, p.
41.
10. Wittgenstein, Lectures & Conversations, p.
41.
11. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and
Value, trans. Peter
Winch,
ed. G. H. von Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1984), p. 19e.
12. Bouveresse, Wittgenstein Reads Freud, p. 5. He
is quoting
Wittgenstein from Culture and Value, p. 34e.
13. Bouveresse,
Wittgenstein Reads Freud, p. 5.
14. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 54e.
Italics in original.
15. Wittgenstein, Lectures & Conversations, p. 50.
16. Ibid. p. 50.
17. Ibid. p. 42. Italics in original.
18. Bouveresse, Wittgenstein Reads Freud, p.
123.
19. Wittgenstein, Lectures & Conversations, p. 27.
20. Ibid. p. 27.
21. Bouveresse, Wittgenstein Reads Freud, p.
53.
22. Peter Gay, Introduction to the Standard Edition of Freud's
The Ego and the Id (New York:
W. W. Norton and Co., 1960), p.
xiv.
23. Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on
Psycho-Analysis,
trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton and Co.,
1965), p. 12. Italics in original.
24. Wittgenstein, Lectures & Conversations, p. 43.
25. Ibid. p.
43.
26. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
p. 15.
27. Ibid. p. 15.
28. Ibid. p. 15.
29. Wittgenstein, Lectures &
Conversations, p.
44.
30. Bouveresse, Wittgenstein Reads Freud, p.
6.
31. Bouveresse, Wittgenstein Reads Freud, p. 26. He is
quoting
Wittgenstein from Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935.
32. Wittgenstein, Lectures & Conversations, p. 43.
33. Ray Monk,
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York: Penguin,
1990), p. 357. He is quoting from "Wittgenstein's Lectures" by G.
E. Moore.
34. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 19e. Italics in
original.
35. Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, p.
298.
36. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations,
trans.
G.E.M. Anscombe, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1958), No. 133.
Italics in original.
37. Bouveresse, Wittgenstein Reads Freud, in the foreword
by
Vincent Descombes, p. x.
38. Ibid, in the foreword by Vincent Descombes, p. x.
39. Ibid. Preface, written by Bouveresse, p. xix.
40. Ibid. p. xvii.
41. Ibid., in the foreword by Vincent
Descombes, p. x.
42. Ibid. p. 9.
43. Ibid. p. 10. Bouveresse quoting Wittgenstein's "Big
Typescript," p. 180.
44. Lacan, "The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis," in
Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, p.
9.
45. Bouveresse, Wittgenstein Reads Freud, pp. 10,
11.
46. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, No. 198.
47. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
pp. 15-16. Italics in original.
48. For an explanation of Freud's theory of dreams and the uses
of manifest and latent dream thoughts in psychoanalysis, see
Freud's New Introductory Lectures on
Psycho-Analysis, especially
Lecture xxix, pages 8 through 37, of the Standard Edition.
49. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,
p. 27.
50. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, No.
464.
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