Freud in the 21st century -

Freud in the XNUMXst Century

24/07/2024

Culture • Books • Psychology

By GILSON IANNINI

Excerpt from newly released book

What is an analysis for? Criticism and clinical

It circulated on social media that a psychoanalyst with strong media appeal would charge R$1.000 per consultation. In WhatsApp groups and university canteens, there was nothing else being talked about. Psychoanalysis would definitely be a practice of bourgeois for bourgeois, it was repeated. Also, the noise continues, what can we expect from a group that has never hidden the fact that the objective of the treatment would be to “restore in the subject the ability to love and work”? After all, there were or are versions of analytical practice that serve to consolidate and reinforce this stereotype. More seriously, the history of psychoanalysis itself would have proven this view more than once, in more than one place.^[I]

And this, despite several efforts by Lacan, repeated to exhaustion, even in the mainstream press: “It has already been written that the purpose of analysis is to adapt the subject, not completely to the external environment, say, to his life or to his true needs ; This clearly means that the sanction of an analysis would be that one becomes a perfect father, a model husband, an ideal citizen, in short, that one is “so tolerant” that one no longer discusses anything. Which is completely false, as false as the first prejudice that saw psychoanalysis as a means of freeing oneself from all constraints” (Lacan, 2021).

Love and work?

According to a certain reading, the very goal of analytical treatment, as expressly stated by Freud, would prove the veracity of the doxa: after all, wouldn't the purpose of an analysis be to restore the lost abilities to love and work?

Despite all the beautiful formulations and complicated theories, in the end, what psychoanalysis would aim for is the reestablishment of cis-heteronormative romantic love and integration into the capitalist labor market. In this book, I propose a radically different view of this. Before approaching it, I want to revisit some passages from Freud that are regularly mobilized in favor of that version.

Fortunately or unfortunately, alongside a certain tradition of reading, dubious translations and the buzz of common opinion, we have Freud's texts, and we can turn to them. Three main quotes are usually remembered to infer the goal of the analytical treatment, as explained above. They refer respectively to “The Freudian psychoanalytic method”, from 1905, “mourning and melancholy”, from 1917, and “The question of lay analysis”, from 1926.

Freud founds not only a discipline, but also his own mythology. One of the most curious autofictions he created begins like this: “The peculiar method of psychotherapy that Freud exercises and calls psychoanalysis has its origin in the so-called cathartic process” (Freud, [1905] 2017, p. 51). The text is written in third person.

A little further on, we read: “If cathartic work had already given up on suggestion, Freud, in turn, went a step further and also gave up on hypnosis. Currently, he attends to his patients by letting them position themselves comfortably on a couch, without any other type of influence, while he himself, outside the patients' visual scope, sits on a chair behind them. It also does not require them to close their eyes and avoids any contact and any procedure that may resemble hypnosis. Therefore, a session like this takes place like a conversation between two equally awakened people, one of whom spares any and all muscular effort, as well as any impression from the senses that could hinder concentration on his own soul activity” (Freud, [1905] 2017 , p. 52-53).

The text is called “THE FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYTIC METHOD”, spelled like that, in capital letters, and was published in 1905. It is a contribution to the book by Leopold Loewenfeld Die psychischen Zwangserscheinungen (Psychic compulsive phenomena). As James Strachey reports, everything indicates that Freud's contribution was written shortly before November 1903, the date on which Loewenfeld signed the preface to the work.

Its importance for Freud is such that, in 1909, in a footnote to his clinical study on the Rat Man, confesses that his bedside book, his standard manual for approaching obsessional neurosis, continued to be Loewenfeld's book. Freud reviews himself, recounts, in third person, the genesis of the discipline that he himself creates, thickening the broth of his heroic narrative. It might even sound a little dishonest. But the devil is in the details. So, if we refine our reading a little better, we will notice that the text is entirely in quotation marks and that, therefore, we should quote it with double quotation marks: ““The peculiar method of psychotherapy that Freud exercises and calls Psychoanalysis””.

How far are we talking here? What does this leap back, out of the scene mean, if not a way of including oneself from the outside? But what interests me here are two things: the status of analytical treatment, with emphasis on the art of interpretation, and the goals of an analysis.

Throughout the 1890s, the Freudian technique had undergone several modifications. That was why Freud accepted Loewenfeld's invitation to review the technical changes made after the Studies on Hysteria, published shortly before. Furthermore, recalls Paul-Laurent Assoun (2009), it was the perfect opportunity to officially promulgate psychoanalysis as a therapeutic technique, at a time when analytical treatment had already begun to be established internationally, notably with Eugen Bleuler, in Zurich.

This article can be read as the first comprehensive exposition about the psychoanalytic technique, in its specificity not only in relation to suggestion and hypnosis, which I had not used for some time, but also to the cathartic method. It is worth remembering that Freud had been familiar with the cathartic method for a long time, since Breuer reported the Anna O. case, which occurred on several occasions from November 1882 onwards.talking cure” had already impressed the young doctor quite early. In turn, the case of Emmy von N., Baroness Fanny Moser, would have been one of the decisive events for Freud to abandon the hypnotic method, when she, around 1889, asked him to let her speak without interruptions.

The “art of interpretation” created by Freud is correlated to the technique of free association, which would progressively establish itself as a specificity of analytical practice, first in a “focal” way, then specifically “free”. It is noteworthy that, in the context of an obstinate effort to recognize the scientificity of psychoanalysis, Freud designates it as “art” (Art) the main technical tool of his young science.

“The task that the psychoanalytic method wants to solve can be expressed in several formulas, but all of them are essentially equivalent. One could say: the task of treatment is to suspend amnesia. If all the gaps in memory are filled and all the mysterious effects of psychic life are clarified, the continuity and even a new formation of suffering becomes impossible. We can formulate this condition in another way: make all repressions reversible; the psychic state, then, would be the same as that in which all amnesias were fulfilled. In another formulation, we go even further: it would be about making the unconscious accessible to the conscious, which occurs through overcoming resistance. But we cannot forget here that an ideal state like this also does not exist in a normal person, and that only rarely do we manage to get even minimally close to this point in treatment. Just as health and illness are not separated in principle, but only by a summative limit determinable from practice, so the objective of treatment will never be anything other than practical cure [praktische Genesung] of the patient, the establishment of his capacity to achieve and enjoy. In the case of incomplete treatment or imperfect results of this treatment, we mainly achieve a significant improvement in the general mental state of the patient, while the symptoms may continue to exist, without, however, stigmatizing him as sick, but having less importance for him” (Freud , [1905] 2017, p. 56-57).

The article is also worth elucidating the relationships between resistance and repression. Finally, and this is the point of arrival of the argument, the 1905 article contains one of the most cited passages, according to which the objective of analytical treatment would be to establish in the patient “his capacity to 'leisten' it's from 'enjoy''.

This is the first of three variants of Freud's phrase that led to the reading of the goal of analytical treatment as the restitution of the lost capacities to “work” and “love”. However, as I learned from Pedro Heliodoro Tavares, “afford” does not primarily mean “work” nor “enjoy” primarily means “to love”. “Do” refers much more to the semantic field of accomplishing, fulfilling, producing, contributing and similar, while “enjoy” refers to enjoy, enjoy, appreciate, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy, savor, enjoy. In other words, at least since 1905, the goal of an analysis has more to do with returning, establishing or restoring more generic capacities of “performing” or “producing”, on the one hand, and “enjoying”, “enjoying”, “enjoying” ”, on the other hand, than with the somewhat more restrictive meanings linked to “work” and “love”.

A translation is never neutral. “Love and work” as healing goals translates yet another thing: the adaptive matrix that would aim to return the subject to their destination in terms of integration into the productive market to generate wealth, also associated with their fulfillment in the sphere of love, often understood as in its hegemonic, matrimonial version. What coach Wouldn't you like to quote this phrase to cover the self-entrepreneur, who manages his life and capitalizes on his image of a happy family?

It is worth noting that analytical treatment has, since then, coexisted with a deflated perspective of therapeutic success. The passage concludes by remembering the “incompleteness” and “imperfection” always lurking. Significant improvements could be obtained in terms of reducing psychological distress and its subjective significance, despite the eventual persistence of symptoms.

Many years earlier, in the context of his correspondence with his friend Fließ, Freud celebrates the end of “case E.” (Oscar Fellner). He writes: "E. He finally concluded his career as a patient with an invitation to dinner at my house. Her enigma is almost completely solved; his health excellent, his essence totally changed; of the symptoms remained a remnant, for the moment. I am beginning to understand that the seemingly never-ending nature of the treatment is regular and has to do with transference. I hope this remainder does not harm the practical result. It was only up to me to continue with the treatment, but I realized that this would be a compromise between being sick and being healthy, which the patients themselves desire and which the doctor, therefore, should not agree with. The asymptotic conclusion of the treatment, which, for me, is indifferent, continues to be a disappointment to outsiders. In any case, I will keep an eye on the patient” (Freud, [1900] 2017, p. 48).

This short fragment of the case, reported in a letter dated April 16, 1900, is interesting because it shows a very early perception of the apparently “infinite” or “endless” character (Endless) of the treatment, announcing a theme that would only be systematized many years later, in 1937, in his “Finite and infinite analysis” (“Die endliche und die unendliche Analyze”). This fragment is particularly important because it brings together, in an embryonic way, ideas such as: the “asymptotic” character of the end of an analysis, which would be concluded by a decision by the analyst; the unavoidable symptomatic “rest”, with which the analyst must moderate his therapeutic ambition; It is, Last but not least, the connection of these factors with “transference”.

It is worth asking: how are the practical goals of restoring the lost capacities of “enjoying-enjoying” and “performing-producing” articulated with the perspective of the inevitable symptomatic rest? Do we have here the outline of a theory of the end of analysis? The second textual variant that I would like to mention here is quite enlightening of what we said previously and was extracted from “mourning and melancholy”, from 1917.

A few lines after stating that “in mourning, the world became poor and empty; in melancholia, it was the Self itself” (Freud, [1917] 2016, p. 102), Freud emphasizes the “extraordinary lowering of self-esteem”, comparable to a “delusion of inferiority”, which makes the melancholic “so disinterested, so incapable to the love (of Love) and for use (Performance), as he says” (Freud, [1917] 2016, p. 103).^[ii] "Performance” could be translated as “achievement”, “performance”, “productivity”, “work”. But what is important here is that, in the next sentence, the text talks about the “inner work” that consumes the melancholic’s Self: in this case, the word used is, literally, “work” (work). In the variant in question, we have the textual use, in the formula, of the term “love” (of Love).

The third variant is taken from “The question of lay analysis”, written two decades later, in 1926. In fact, it is an excerpt removed from the German standard edition and its translations, and is unlikely to have had any impact on its reception.^[iii] However, it is interesting insofar as it suggests the continuity of the Freudian perspective on the practical goals of treatment, even in the context of the latest major metapsychological reviews.

That is, even after the introduction of the death drive and the structural theory of the psychic apparatus, Freud continues to describe in approximately the same terms what he expects from treatment. The passage constitutes a long and scathing critique of Americans, in which Freud highlights four main elements: the dependence of Americans on the “relentless pressure of public opinion” (Freud, [1926] 2017, p. 300), which would transfer from politics to “the scientific enterprise”; his supposed “openmindedness” (p. 301), which would hide an underlying “incapacity for judgment”; his blind submission to “efficiency” (p. 301); and the disproportionate extension of the ideology of “time is money” (p. 302).

Strong anti-American sentiment sets the tone for his skepticism regarding the fate of psychoanalysis in the United States. It would be a truism to say that their anti-North Americanism stems from a diffuse feeling of declining European influence and a kind of nostalgia for an inevitable loss of Europe's geopolitical role. The weakness of a certain Europe sensed at that moment perhaps opened a small gap through which Freud saw something, or, more likely, shot at something he saw, hit at what he didn't see.

Bruno Latour also declares today that “not the crimes, but the current weakness of Europe is an advantage that Europeans and others can take advantage of” (Latour, 2020a, p. 360). But, beyond that almost stereotypical version, we can read something else. Freud ends up revealing to us the impossibility of separating the practical ends of analytical treatment from radical social criticism. The strong point of this passage concerns, therefore, not so much a cultural opposition between decadent European values and rampant North American ideology, but, above all, the position of psychoanalysis regarding the dominant values of economic liberalism in its hegemonic version in the West during the XNUMXth century.

To put it bluntly, the fantastic quartet formed by conformity to public opinion, submission to efficiency, pseudo-open-mindedness and servility to the rhythm of capitalism are at the antipodes of psychoanalysis itself. There is no way to do psychoanalysis without criticizing, at the same time, these values. The parodic detail of the words cited in English shows that what is at stake is not, for example, efficiency, but its ideological version, the efficiency.

We can add to Freud's list the current neuro-enhancement and doping of everyday life (Han, 2015, p. 67-70). It is at this point that we read: “But the transitions between conscious and unconscious have their own temporal conditions, which do not correspond well with American demands. It is not possible to transform someone who until then had no understanding of analysis into an efficient analyst in the space of three or four months, and even less would it be possible to lead the neurotic to the changes that should restore his lost abilities to work and enjoy [verlorene Arbeits- und Genußfähigkeiten]” (Freud, [1926] 2017, p. 303).

The temporality of the unconscious is not the temporality of the current economic system, which every day shows more and more that widespread tiredness is the truth of the performance society (Han, 2015, p. 70). The type of tiredness produced by the excess of positivity in the current stage of capitalism materializes in the individual as “lonely tiredness” (p. 71). The tired individual is also affected in their ability to see and speak; he is increasingly affected by blindness and muteness (p. 72).

This entire situation is deeply violent, because its elements “destroy any community, any common element, any proximity, yes, including language itself” (p. 72). Language loses its magic, at the same time as communities withdraw. The flow of the unconscious is different: it makes people talk where the imperative of performance remains silent. He transports silence to the analyst's side, as a condition for a non-just-any speech to resonate with a non-just-any listening.

In the end, bringing together these three textual variants, which cover an arc that goes from 1905 to 1926, we can summarize that the practical goals of analytical treatment mobilize two parallel series: the first series chains “enjoy-enjoy-love”, and the second series, “produce-perform-work”. Without prejudice to the perception regarding the asymptotic nature of the treatment, the analytical cure would aim to restore to the subject the possibility of moving at some point within some combinatory in the network constituted by these two series.

Thus, if, for some, the goal of “loving and working” serves exactly to block possibilities of “enjoying and achieving”, for others, nothing prevents those same goals from functioning as more than legitimate solutions. The two parallel series allow different combinations. We can represent this in several ways.

For example, in a simple combinatorial structure, which always required a pair formed by an element from each series, we would form, with the series “enjoy-enjoy-love” and “produce-perform-work”, a total of nine possible combinations : like-produce; enjoy-perform; enjoy-work, and so on. This is if we think of language in structural terms and its combinations. Let us remember, however, that language is pale magic.

We could, therefore, recover what is sedimented in each segment, in each beam. Representing each of these words as nodal points of complex networks, each of them containing remains of the history of what was rejected (as a ruin contains a city), of socially shared meanings, but, at the same time, cutting each of these planes with the radically unique way in which each speaking body declines its trajectory in this space, we would not have a chessboard, but a multidimensional space, a kind of network: a thin, elongated cloud that indicates the direction of the wind. At the end of the day, what matters is that the subject makes them his own, incorporates them, as a result, not as a goal.

Each one, in a radically unique and unpredictable way, will invent a way, based on the connections they can make, to cope with what is there. Certainly, one of the best ways to delve deeper into this topic would be to systematically examine the end-of-analysis reports. There are many testimonies in which we read something like the possibility of additional satisfaction. For example, “what I previously took as scattered agitation, I started to take, not only as an additional pleasure, but as a unique way of attaching myself to life” (Vieira, 2018, p. 97).

When he comments on the phrase “to restore the lost abilities to work and enjoy [verlorene Arbeits- und Genußfähigkeiten]”, Joyce McDougall adds, in parentheses, with the expression: “Come on!", "with pleasure".^[iv] In the language of Guimarães Rosa, this “milk that the cow did not promise”.

*Gilson Iannini, Psychoanalyst, he is a professor at the Department of Psychology at UFMG. He is the author, among other books, of Style and truth in Jacques Lacan (authentic).

Reference

Gilson Iannini. Freud in the 21st century. Volume I. What is psychoanalysis?. Belo Horizonte, Autêntica, 2024, 342 pages. [https://amzn.to/3YituOq]