Doug Henwood wrote:
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> >The Unconscious is/was/will always be a fetish.
>
> It can be - and in much like the sense of the commodity, torn from
> its social context - but doesn't have to be. Within psychoanalysis,
> Roy Schafer wrote in the 1970s about the danger of reifying what
> vulgar Freudians called mental mechanisms, arguing in favor of an
> "action language" for psychoanalysis. But if you think of the
> unconscious as the creative product of individuals' personal
> histories, mixed with some admittedly vague notion of "constitution,"
> then it doesn't have to be a fetish at all.
The last line of my post, the line Doug quoted, was one of those throwaway lines that in published text gets edited out and in conversation gets cancelled with a hand wave. In e-mail text it remains there to be the focus of a new thread (sometimes good) or an apparent new thread which is merely a digression into never-never land (sometimes o.k., sometimes screwy).
What I wanted to say (or should have wanted to say) in that last line was that "The Unconscious" was a useless premise for an exploration of human thought and feeling. Instead, I made a vague statement about the *effects* of believing in it and/or the *ways* in which it was believed. And that opened up the route to a reply making a distinction between "vulgar Freudians" and (presumably) "sophisticated" Freudians: a reply suggesting that judgment of Freud's thought depended on the use made of it.
And as my original post suggested, empirically it seems to be the case that acceptance or rejection of Freudian psychology does not determine correctness or falsity of political positions -- or even of opinions re individual behavior. To put it that way, Freudianism *can* be (as was once said of the Anglican Church) a system that doesn't interfere with a person's politics or psychology. In particular many, perhaps most, Latin American comrades do argue strongly for the acceptance of psychoanalysis *as an explanation of individual* behavior* (and as a form of treatment for emotional difficulties *of individuals*). But those same comrades deny the applicability of Freudian analysis to social structures or the behavior of *groups* (however defined). They would (I believe) reject with scorn the journal title, *Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society*. Volume 1, Number 1 (Spring 1996) contains such titles as "Re-visioning 'Lacanian' Social Criticism: The Law and Its Obscene Double" (Zizek), "Talking with Jesse Helms: The Relation of Drives to Discourse" (Marshall Alcorn), "Beyond the Social Principle: Psychoanalysis and Radical Democracy" (Christopher Lane), a (glowing) review of Copjec, *Read my Desire* (Tim Dean).
One feature of the JPCS is interesting and suggests to me that I have been partly wrong in insisting that critiques of some "posmod" writers *not* be based on their bad writing. The writing in Vol. 1 No 1 of the journal (including the article by Zizek & the review of Copjec) are quite clear -- and quite empty. This is, as Thoreau says, merely a trout in the milk and proves nothing, but it does make one think.
Carrol
P.S. The original comment on the Anglican Church was that it didn't interfere with either a man's politics or his religion. "Psychology" (and not only Freudian psychology) seems a reasonable substitute for "religion," the two rather overlapping, both depending on the existence of a "soul" (psyche) which provides the *subject* of the discipline(s). This of course is the objection to all psychologies that claim to be even semi- autonomous in respect to *either* history *or* neurology (or both). Psychology can provide empirical information of interest to the neurologist (and less often to the historian or political theorist) but cannot offer independent explanations of "psychological phenomena." See Marx on Providence in *The Poverty of Philosophy*.
I take it that Doug wants to replace "soul" (psyche) or "identity" with "constitution," which can then be historicized. I would like to see this in action. I do not, incidentlly, object to his characterization of "consitution" as "admittedly vague." In political analysis many key conceptions have to be vague. E.g., no one can even *begin* to theorize U.S. politics who does not accept the reality of a "black community," which is also admittedly vague.
P.S. 2. Further comment on "But if you think of the unconscious as the creative product of individuals' personal histories, mixed with some admittedly vague notion of "constitution," then it doesn't have to be a fetish at all."
My objection is to "individual's personal histories." There is no such thing. A personal history is a sum or ensemble of social relations, and there is no center (vague or otherwise) to the onion -- that constitution would have to be identified with the total neurological make-up the individual -- which itself is an abstraction from the individual -- e.g., cf. "the human stomach," which can be the object of knowlege of a sub-division of medical science. That is one of the abstractions a concatenation of which gives us the concrete (particular) stomach of the individual patient.
Another possible specification of constitution would be the activity of the neural circuits through the constant activity of which memory is continually reconstituted. This is one of the details, a rather fundamental one, on which Freud's pscyhology has been definitively refuted. He originally posited the unconscious as an explanation of the existence of memory, the assumption being that memories must be *stored* in our brains. The unconscious then was the "place" where memories were stored. But now we know that memories are not stored but rather continuosly recreated (and changed) in neural circuits. The continued belief of many therapists (and not just those who are psychoanlysts) in such "storage" of memory has destructive results in the treatment of individual patients. The idea that the patient must "work though" such stored memories (e.g., deep memories of child abuse) is a positive barrier to the treatment of some depressed people. (I am not talking of the criminal situation in which the therapist loads supposedly "recovered memories" on the patient, but instances in which the memory of the fact of abuse is "conscious" but it is assumed that one must somehow "work through" those memories. In fact what is needed is an actual forgetting and a going on to other concerns. That is not easy, or lways possible, even with the best therapy combined with the best possible chemical andi-depressants. But the premise of an unconscious needlessly interferes with treatment.
P.S. 3. Perhaps (as a psychiatric premise) psychoanalysis is best compared with chiropractry, Alexander technique, or Yoga. All of these are practices which at a quite superficial level are quite useful for many people. Any older person who has developed bad posture, for example, can profit considerably (if he/she can afford the fees) from training in the Alexander technique, but one must also be able to resist the many cult features which accompany it. Psychoanalysis, precisely because it still retains a modicum of therapeutic respectability does less good and more damage than these cult practices, however, because its effectiveness is almost wholly bound up with its dogmatic acceptance as a cult.
It helps many mentally ill patients simply to talk to someone who is non-judgmental. Insofar as psychoanalytic treatment serves this function -- *and does no more* -- it is harmless and possibly useful. But insofar as the patient comes to believe in such superstitious dogmas as transference, repressed memory, repression, oedipal feelings, castration complex, etc. etc. etc. it can only be a medical disaster, on the analogy of a patient sufferning from prostate cancer who continues to have his back manipulated by a chiropracter rather than seeking competent medical treatment.
Incidentally, a number of the responses to criticism of psychoanalysis are immaterial because they assume the practice itself is up for debate. But this is not the case. I am no more interested in *refuting* psychoanalysis than I am in refuting the Olympian religion of Homer. I am interested in examining it historically and explaining its strange hold over the minds of otherwise intelligent and politically committed people. Psychoanalysis has simply ceased to be a serious description of human psychic or social behavior. That much we know, and can pass on to more interesting questions.
P.S. 4. A good deal of what passes for psychological knowledge has been known to almost everyone for as far back as it is possible to trace human history. All modern psychological explanation of anger, for examples, merely repeats in more ostentatious terms millenia of folk wisdom -- it shouldn't even be called folk wisdom: everyone discovers it for him/her self by the time they are 10 or 12. I would say something like 105% of the psychological knowledge needed for political practice is of this sort. When in ordinary political practice one notices this knowledge not being followed, one does not offer a theoretical explanation of the offender's practice but simply notes that, at least on the particular occasion, he/she is being an asshole.