The Freudian Moment

Christopher Bollas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780367101534
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429920837
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The author eloquently argues for a return to our understanding of how Freudian psychoanalysis works unconscious to unconscious. Failure to follow Freud's basic assumptions about psychoanalytical listening has resulted in the abandonment of searching for the 'the logic of sequence' which Freud regarded as the primary way we express unconscious thinking. In two extensive interviews and follow-up essays, all occurring in 2006, we follow the author exploring his most recent and radical challenge to contemporary psychoanalysis. The Freudian Moment, the author argues, realizes a phylogenetic preconception that has existed for tens of thousands of years. The invention of psychoanalysis realizes this preconception and institutes a profound step forward in human relations. The author's proposal that we use the image of the symphonic score to better imagine unconscious articulation opens up a new conceptual way for grasping the complexity of unconscious thought.

CHAPTER ONE


Psychic transformations

VB: The theme of our Congress is “Psychic Transformations in the Psychoanalytical Process”. In some of your most recent work you argue that the arrival of psychoanalysis itself is transformative, in so far as the evolution of the western mind is concerned. Would you care to discuss this?

CB: We can describe the arrival of psychoanalysis as the “Freudian Moment”. When Freud invented the psychoanalytical process—the basic method of the free associating analysand and what Adam Phillips so astutely terms the free listening analyst (Phillips, 2002, p. 31)—he fulfilled a search.

As long ago as 2500 BC the Sumerians took their dream life so seriously that they needed and sought interpretation of their dreams. We can think of dreaming as the drive behind a phylogenetic need for dream reporting, the hearing of the dream, and the interpretation of the dream.

Existence was frightening and a single mind was not adequate to think the human condition. Dreaming itself must have been a very powerful experience. We may conjecture that dreams frequently overwhelmed the mind because it could not think its contents, even though it was aided by powerful religious beliefs that acted as containers for anxiety. By reporting the dream to the human other, early man knew that to survive mental life, it was essential to have the assistance of the other.

We are familiar with Bion’s theory of preconception. For thousands of years there has been an unconscious preconception of psychoanalysis. We—and by “we” I mean human beings—have been searching for the Freudian Moment, which is a realization of this preconception. When Freud formalized the reporting and the reception of the dream he realized this phylogenetic preconception and a relation we had been seeking for tens of thousands of years was now in place.

In the understandable rush of Freud and the early analysts to write down their findings there has been some failure on all of our parts to fully recognize this extraordinary moment. Indeed, until we think through what we have discovered, we cannot claim to have conceptualized psychoanalysis. We have the preconception and intermittent realizations (subject to −K and therefore lost for a while), but the concept “psychoanalysis” is not secured. The Freudian Moment, however, changed man forever.

Massacio and other Renaissance painters discovered how to represent three-dimensional perspective. Visual images of our world and ourselves would change forever.

Shakespeare dramatized the human mind and human relations in a way that changed the way we think. So has Freud.

VB: It is interesting that you place such an emphasis on psychoanalysis as part of a phylogenetic need, realized in some ways in order to secure the species.

CB: The Freudian Moment arrived soon after the discovery of mass armaments that would kill tens of thousands of people. The horrors of the twentieth century are a warning that we are on the verge of extinction. Either we understand others and ourselves, we find a way to think about our conflicts with one another, to analyse destructive processes, or we cease to exist. I think psychoanalysis heralded the arrival of the best means to think about destructive processes. It arrived at the moment when its implementation might rescue humanity from self-destruction. So, indeed, I do understand that psychoanalysis, as a phylogenetic and evolutionary accomplishment, was born of necessity.

VB: You say that you do not think that we have fully conceived of this. By we, do you mean psychoanalysts or do you mean mankind? And if you mean psychoanalysts have not formed a conception of this realization, quite where does that leave us?

CB: The Freudian Moment was immediately obscured by Freud’s narcissism, by the grandiose exultations of the early analysts, and by public excitement over its more titillating features such as the theory of infantile sexuality. And although analysts are often realizing psychoanalysis in their clinical work there is no profession “psychoanalysis”. Psychoanalysts are still, first, psychiatrists, psychologists, or social workers. Most efforts to create a free standing, independent profession have been opposed. This reflects a failure to conceive psychoanalysis. In addition, while psychoanalytical schools of thought are invaluable means of selecting out particular facts embedded in the realization, and while the writings of Klein, Lacan, Bion, Winnicott, and others are essential to the conception of this realization, the psychoanalytical movements impede thought. Theory is very important, but when it is used for purposes of −K, when we use ideas as heralds of political position, then psychoanalytical ideas are reduced to things: to weapons in the psychoanalytic wars.

VB: But aren’t such movements, whether in psychoanalysis, literary criticism, or philosophy, an inevitable part of mental life? Isn’t this just the clash of ideas?

CB: Intellection and intellectual history—as clash of ideas—are at their best when the clash is part of the life instincts. The critical deconstruction of ideas is crucial to intellectual development. We can think here of Winnicott’s concept of the “use of the object” where there must be a ruthless utilization of proposed ideas, and where these ideas are altered through our use of them. For Winnicott, this is an essential feature of ordinary aggression. Similarly, as we use some of Lacan’s or Klein’s or Kohut’s ideas, we subjectify them, and, of course, we change them, and some parts of their theory survive, some parts fall into the margins. Such thinking, however, is based on the epistemophilic instinct, which Freud, ambiguously, attached to the sexual instincts (Freud, 1909d, p. 245).

So, when we use ideas as intellectual objects we are going to subjectify them. This is part of the creative clash of ideas.

Too many psychoanalytical movements, however, are allied to the death instinct. Instead of a clash of ideas there is “intellectual genocide” (see Bollas, 1992). One group falsifies another’s ideas, and engages in a type of clan warfare. Significant ideas cease to be signifiers and instead become signs, used as things-in-themselves in such warfare. When a signifier becomes a sign it is stripped of its meaning and is no longer of use. When we examine the major movements of psychoanalysis we can see how such movements privilege specific terms—now signs—and in my view such collapsing of the Symbolic order into the Real destroys thinking.

As importantly, if psychoanalysis is to serve the crisis of our times, if we are to be politically effective, then we have to prove the efficacy of insight into our own political realm. To quote Hannah Segal’s famous remark, “silence is the real crime”. Too often we are silent about corruptions and destructive behaviour amongst analysts and analytical groups.

VB: So what you are saying relates in some respects, then, to the question we are conferring about at this Congress. By your definition the movements retard the psychic transformations possible within the psychoanalytical process.

CB: Yes, that is correct. Psychoanalytical movements usually (although not always) form around a charismatic figure and they become cults that use the words and ideas of that figure to bind their community together. In this way, psychoanalytical movements counteract the creative evolution of psychoanalysis. They are a feature of the death drive because movements retreat into enclaves and do not invest in the ideas of other analytical groups or individual analytical writers.

VB: You claim to be a pluralist, but as you know many—if not most—psychoanalysts would disagree with this proposal. It is argued that the pluralist view seeks, through an ecumenical approach, a kind of politics of inclusion that waters down the core truths of psychoanalysis. From your view one cannot be a Kleinian, or a Kohutian, or a Classical French analyst, because this is contrary to the pluralist ethic. How do you respond to these criticisms, and how does this issue relate to the theme of this Congress?

CB: It depends on how we understand theory. Theories are views. Each theory sees something that the other theories do not see. They are forms of sensation. What we gain from the eyes is different from what we take in from the ears. What we perceive of reality through the olfactory sense is different from what we take in from touch. Theory is a meta-sensual phenomenon. Some theories are better than others, just as it is possible to say that sight is probably more frequently used than smell in the perception of reality. So you can see that for me pluralism is, in its core, a theory of perception, and to say that one must become a Kleinian or a Lacanian, to the exclusion of the other theories, is as absurd as saying that one must become an advocate of the ear, or an eye-guy, or a touch person, or a sniffer.

This issue becomes important when considering psychic transformations in psychoanalysis. If we develop new theories we enhance our perceptual capability. Freud had at least three significant models of the mind: (1) the dream work model; (2) the topographic model; (3) the structural model. Sometimes in work with a patient I am aware that I am “seeing” the analysand’s material through the topographical model. That allows me to consider certain things in a very clear light, especially repression and the return of the repressed. The dream-work model allows me to “see” how the analysand works lived experience of the day into his or her psychic history that is then condensed into the dream event, which is later deconstructed through the process of free association. In turn, the structural model allows me to “see” how the ego is pressured both by the drives and by the superego. I can “see” compromise formations, for example, better through this theory than I can through any other theory.

These theories reside in the psychoanalyst’s preconscious and will be activated by the analyst’s need to see certain things at certain times. So if the analyst has been schooled in Freud, Klein, Bion, Winnicott, Lacan, Kohut and others then in my view he has more perceptual capability in his preconscious than an analyst who remains within only one vision.

As I have said, however, I think many analysts would identify themselves with one group but they have in fact become pluralists without knowing it.

VB: How can one be “all these things” one might ask? Surely you could not know more about Kohut than, say, a Kohutian. And a long standing Kleinian would know more about that way of seeing. Don’t you risk trying to be too many perceivers? Do you not run the risk of shallow transformations based on a slight grasp of one theory, but at the expense of greater depth?

CB: This is a legitimate question and, indeed, a fair objection. There is no doubt that I know less of the theoreticians you mention than those inside these movements in their name. I do think, however, it is possible to study their writings in depth and to work with analysts from these schools, so that one can grasp the basic models they propose and then gain new sight in one’s own work. Indeed, a risk faced by remaining in one of these schools is the scotomatic effect of a canalized vision. They often go too far. Rather than listening to the analysand with an open mind, they listen out for something in particular, whether it is the castration complex, the drive derivative, or the ego position. Such selective listening makes psychic transformations in analysis possible in so far as the analytical model is concerned. That is, one can work hard on gaining more reality orientation and adaptation for the ego, and one could point to psychic change as a result of this, but what would not be seen by the clinician, in my view, is that while something has been transformed within the kingdom of this selected fact, too much has been lost by virtue of its limitations. The many other transformational possibilities within analysis will not have been made available.

VB: Can you give an example of a technical approach that is so worryingly limiting? Presumably you are referring here to a negative transformation?

CB: There is now a widespread use of what is termed the “here and now transference interpretation”. This is the view that almost everything the analysand says to the analyst is either a reference to the analyst or an action committed upon the analyst. This is an example of an extremist approach. It is certainly true that from time to time the analysand is unconsciously referring to the psychoanalyst, and also it is equally true that often what the analysand says is really, in Austin’s sense, an “illocutionary act” (Austin, 1962, pp. 98–164). The insistence that each of these factors is taking place all the time, and that the analyst must interpret this in the transference throughout the session, takes the semi-paranoid dimension of the selective fact and turns it into a full-blown idea of reference. I have no doubt that such a listening perspective collapses the analysand’s wish to be unconsciously communicative. This may lead the analysand to retreat into an enclave in order to ward off the intense intrusiveness of the analyst. Such a retreat is seen by the analyst as evidence of the invidiously destructive ambition of the analysand’s negative transference, and is a profound tragedy in my view: for the analysand, but also for psychoanalysis.

For me, it is not a question of whether one is pluralist or not. The question is whether one is a pluralist or totalitarian. I opt for the former, and I think so too do most psychoanalysts. Many who would claim not to be pluralists are indeed pluralists according to this definition. André Green, for example, is a good example of an analyst who works from multiple perspectives derived from studies of Freud, Klein, Bion, Winnicott, and Lacan among others. These multiple perspectives, revealed in his writing, occur at a high level of creativity. We could go round the world and name many analysts for whom this is true.

VB: How does a pluralist approach facilitate psychic transformations in the psychoanalytical process?

CB: If one has more ways of seeing mental life and human behaviour then, in my view, it follows on logically that one is going to be more effective in working with the analysand. If your preconscious stores multiple models of the mind and behaviour, to be activated by work with a particular patient in a particular moment, then you will find that you are either consciously or unconsciously envisioning the patient through one or other of these lenses. In his essay “The unconscious”, Freud wrote “… the Ucs. is alive and capable of development and maintains a number of o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the Authors
• Foreword
• Notes on the French Edition of the Freudian Moment
• Introduction
• Chapter One Psychic transformations
• Chapter Two Articulations of the unconscious
• Chapter Three Perceptive identification
• Chapter Four What is theory?
• Chapter Five On transference interpretation as a resistance to free association
• References