Persons in Context

The Challenge of Individuality in Theory and Practice

Roger Frie, William J. Coburn, Roger Frie, William J. Coburn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781135263638
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In contemporary forms of psychoanalysis, particularly intersubjective systems theory, the turn towards contextualism has permitted the development of new ways of thinking and practicing that have dispensed with the notion of isolated individuality. For many who embrace this "post-subjectivist" way of thinking and practicing, the recognition that all human experience is fundamentally immersed in the world makes the question of individuality seem confusing, even anachronistic. Yet the challenge of individuality remains an important and pressing issue for contemporary theory and practice; many clinicians are left to wonder about the role of "individual" experience and how to approach it conceptually or clinically.

This volume of original essays gives the problem of individuality its due, without losing sight of the importance of contextualized experience. Drawing on a variety of disciplinary backgrounds - philosophical, developmental, biological, and neuroscientific - the contributors address the tension that exists between individuality and the emergence of contextualism as a dominant mode of psychoanalytic theory and practice, thereby providing unique insights into the role and place of individuality both in and out of the clinical setting. Ultimately, these essays demonstrate that individuality, no matter how it may be defined, always occurs within a contextual web that forms the basis of human experience.

Contributors: William J. Coburn, Philip Cushman, James L. Fosshage, Roger Frie, Frank M. Lachmann, Jack Martin, Donna Orange, Robert D. Stolorow, Jeff Sugarman

Part 1
Social, cultural, and political contexts

Chapter 1
Culture and context

From individualism to situated experience

Roger Frie

Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror.

– Hans-Georg Gadamer (1989, p. 276)

INTRODUCTION

Psychologists, psychoanalysts, and psychotherapists traditionally play down the role of historical, social, and cultural forces in human experience. Yet culture in its many forms is always present in the clinical setting and is the context within which all experience unfolds. Each of us is born into and emerges within cultural contexts of shared beliefs, values, rules, and practices. Our cultural contexts determine the language we use to describe ourselves and affect how we exist in the world. The Western emphasis on individuality, autonomy, and separateness is no exception. The belief that each person is unique, that the individual forms the focus of investigation, and that development occurs through a process of separation from others, reflects the dominant cultural values and history of North American society.

The North American preoccupation with the individual self is well documented. Cultural myths of individual self-fulfillment and self-awareness abound and are captured in the image of the “American Dream.” The impact of these myths on Western psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy cannot be underestimated. As numerous critics have shown (Cushman, 1990, 1994; Fancher, 1994, 1995; Martin, Sugarman, & Thompson, 2003; Richardson, Fowers, & Guigon, 1999; Taylor, 1989), the history of psychology and psychoanalysis reads like an ode to the self-determining individual. I will build on the work of these critics and suggest not only that our identity as human beings is shaped by social, cultural, and historical forces but also that individualism—the belief that we are, at the deepest level, self-contained, autonomous individuals—cannot capture the nature of our being as humans.*

Because the transmission of culture is largely tacit, occurring outside of our everyday awareness, the dominant perspective on individuality is firmly entrenched and not easily challenged or changed. Although there has been a strong reaction to the ideology of individualism implicit in many forms of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, the notion of the self-determining individual remains prevalent in popular culture. The values of autonomy, instrumental reason, and the valorization of the individual continue to impact society as a whole and the practice of therapy in particular. Indeed, many of the goals of therapy are derived from the belief systems and cultural assumptions associated with individualism. These views are implicit in traditional theories of development and often form the basis of the personal narratives that emerge in the therapeutic dialogue, with important consequences.

In this chapter I will suggest that the notion that people are independent and self-determining entities impedes our understanding of the sociocultural contexts of human experience. A theory and practice of psychotherapy that is preoccupied with the inner self and with individual self-fulfillment overlooks our embeddedness in a community of shared values. In the process, human experience becomes strangely disengaged from the social and cultural milieu. When the social world is devalued, social problems also lose their relation to political action (Cushman, 1990). Most importantly, when cultural contexts are overlooked, we are unable to perceive the way self-understanding, gender, race, and ethnicity are all culturally defined and limited.

I will focus on our belonging and indebtedness to the wider sociocultural and historical contexts in which we find ourselves. I will suggest that individuality is a construct produced by particular types of social practices; it is one interpretation of being human among others, with no privileged status in telling us about our “true” nature. My aim is to examine how the notion of individuality forms an intractable part of Western, and particularly American culture, and fundamentally influences the way the clinical situation unfolds. Despite the growing reaction against individualism in contemporary theory and practice, its values, norms, and objectives persist. I believe a crucial step in overcoming this pervasiveness lies in achieving a fuller understanding of the extent to which individualism is ingrained in our thinking about human experience.

I will begin by tracing the historical trajectory of individuality and individualism, which is rooted in the philosophies of René Descartes and John Locke and finds expression in Sigmund Freud’s project of psychoanalysis. I then consider the determining role of the so-called independent self in psychological theories of human development and cultural experience. I conclude by considering a hermeneutic alternative that is grounded in the works of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Ludwig Binswanger. This contextualist sensibility undercuts the artificial distinction between self and world by emphasizing the irreducible contexts of understanding that form the basis for human development and experience. Most importantly, a hermeneutic perspective allows us to reconfigure the notion of individuality in terms of a situated (or contextualized) personal experience.

THE DISENGAGED INDIVIDUAL: DESCARTES AND LOCKE

The notion of the autonomous, self-determining individual, which is so deeply embedded in North American culture, is hardly new. It has a long history in western philosophy and forms the basis for models of self-understanding and action, from economic theory to law and politics. The self-determining individual is based on the gendered notion of instrumental, self-responsible reason. The ability to wield reason is grounded in the disengaged mind, which exists separately from bodily drives, the interference of others, and the role of social and political institutions. The iconic image of the Marlboro Man, known throughout the world from the marketing campaign of the cigarette maker Philip Morris provides an apt metaphor. The Marlboro Man is a modern representation of the disengaged individual mind. Here we have the rugged, independent man on horseback, free to determine a course of action, and able to tame the wilds of nature and beasts at will.

The notion of the isolated, thinking mind is most strongly indebted to the philosophy of Descartes. With his famous dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” Descartes championed the ability to reason and ushered in the age of the Enlightenment. Following Descartes, the individual mind became the locus of reason and knowledge for the modern tradition of philosophy and psychology (Burston & Frie, 2006). Descartes insists that the knowledge we have of our own minds is not connected in any essential way to the world around us. The external world, other minds, and even the existence of our own bodies are open to question. Our minds are the only thing we can be certain of. In Discourse on Method (1637/1949), Descartes writes:

I attentively examined what I was, and as I observed that I could suppose I had no body, and that there was no world or any place in which I might be…while, on the other hand, if I had only ceased to think, although all the other objects which I had ever imagined had been in reality existent, I would have no reason to think that I existed; I thence concluded that I was a thinking substance whose whole essence consists in thinking. (p. 27)

The separation of reason from the passions finds its epitome in the work of Descartes. In Descartes model of the mind, reason and passion are adversaries, antagonistic forces that influence behavior by different means. According to Descartes, reason is an active, ordering principle and associated with human agency and choice. By contrast, the passions have a driven involuntary character that effectively places them outside our control and usually puts them at variance with the promptings of reason, an idea that stems from Plato and is later endorsed by Freud. In the Cartesian tradition, therefore, the ability to reason is an “internal property” of the thinking mind that is radically disengaged from the very contexts—biological, social, and cultural—that make it possible to begin with.

Descartes thus presents us with an utterly detached engagement with a world that has itself been cast into doubt. As Charles Taylor suggests, Descartes cogito is an endorsement of “instrumental control” without regard for the outcome. This kind of “dimensionless point of conscious activity” is what Taylor (1989, 1995) calls the “punctual self.” According to Taylor (1995), the punctual self is “ideally disengaged, that is…free and rational to the extent that he has fully distinguished himself from the natural and social worlds, so that his identity is no longer to be defined in terms of what lies outside him in these worlds” (p. 7). Or as Wilhelm Dilthey (1976) suggests, in his well-known late 19th-century critique of the thinking subject: “No real blood flows in the veins of the knowing subject…only the diluted juice of reason, a mere process of thought” (p. 162). The knowing subject is an abstraction with little relevance to actual worldly experience. The objectified, individualized subject is thoroughly disengaged from the practical, embodied experience in which any separation of self and world is a false distinction.

While Cartesian philosophy heralds the notion of a disengaged, thinking subject and forms the basis for much subsequent western thought about the mind, the disengagement of the individual from social contexts is fully developed in Locke’s political philosophy. Locke’s ideas about individuality are particularly relevant to understanding the contemporary culture of individuality because they form the basis for central aspects of the American constitution.* Thomas Jefferson’s distillation of Locke’s philosophy of “natural rights” is evident in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Indeed, Locke provides a rational picture of the purpose of government: to protect individual rights and to serve individual needs. According to Locke, the individual has a natural right to life, liberty and property that precedes any type of social organization. Individuals come together to form a social contract in order to protect these rights and to limit state power. The role of government is to safeguard an individual’s rights, and the individual, in turn, is justified in rebelling if a ruler does not fulfill this obligation.

Locke’s ideas have been instrumental to the development of the so-called ideology of individualism. While the American Declaration of Independence proclaimed equality for all its citizens, only those individuals who were defined as white, propertied men were permitted to vote in the new American democracy. In his well-known critique, C. B. Macpherson (1969) introduces the term “possessive individualism” to describe Locke’s theory of the formation of a society comprising individuals who act on the basis of market relations. According to Macpherson, Locke sees the acquisition and protection of property as a “rational” exercise. On this view, anyone who fails to acquire property is lacking in rationality. It is this underlying distinction between the propertied and laboring classes that leads Macpherson to describe Locke as an apologist of capitalism. The democratic government envisaged by Locke is set up with the express purpose of protecting the rights of propertied classes. They alone possess the full capacity to be rational actors, and are disengaged from the realities of actual labor and the laboring classes.

The individualist perspective represented in Locke’s theory of government finds expression in liberalism and libertarianism. Proponents of these positions broadly hold that the state should protect the liberty of individuals to act as they wish, as long they do not infringe on the liberties of others. They promote the exercise of one’s goals and desires, while opposing any external interference upon one’s choices. The liberal and libertarian perspective is usually contrasted with the communitarian view of politics and society (Sandel, 1982; Taylor, 1989) which emphasizes communal and societal needs over individual goals. Communitarian thinkers take issue with the abstract concept of an individual self and argue that the emphasis on individual liberties devalues the importance of attachments, community, and tradition.

Locke’s political philosophy yields a picture of the sovereign individual who is not bound by nature to any authority. Here we have the emergence of the self-determining individual who is able to remake him or herself through disciplined action, and by force if necessary. Henceforward, the notion of the individual is identified with a specific set of ideas and traditions: the notion of the unified subject; the triumph of reason over nature; the imperial expansion of Western ideas of self-interest and autonomy to the exclusion of non-Western notions of community and selflessness; the celebration of scientific rationalism at the expense of the perils of modern technology; and the homogeneity of such values as universality and equality, which fail to account for differences in gender, race, culture, po...

Table of contents

• PSYCHOANALYTIC INQUIRY BOOK SERIES
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface and acknowledgments
• Introduction: Experience in context
• Part 1 Social, cultural, and political contexts
• Part 2 Philosophical contexts
• Part 3 Developmental contexts
• Part 4 Reflections on the challenges of individuality
• Index