Subject and Agency in Psychoanalysis

Which Is to Be Master?

Frances Moran

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1993
• ISBN:
  9780814761052
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della psicologia

Psychoanalysis works with words, words spoken by a subject who asks that the analyst listen. This is the belief that underlies Francis Moran's rewarding exploration of a central problem in psychoanalytic theory—namely, the separation of the concepts of subject and agency.

Subject and Agency in Psychoanalysis contends that Freud simultaneously employs two frameworks for explaining agency-- one clinical and one theoretical. As a result, Freud's exploration of agency proceeds from two logically incompatible assumptions. The division between these assumptions is a part of Freud's psychoanalytic legacy.

Moran reads the Freudian inheritance in light of this division, showing how Klein and Hartmann's theoretical concepts of subject are adrift from the subject who speaks in analysis. Moran also shows that while Lacan's subject provides more focus on this issue, Lacan reverts to the Freudian division in his use of logically contradictory assumptions concerning the location of agency.

Drawing on contemporary theory development, from Lacanian innovations to the social theories of Anthony Giddens, Moran proposes a new and fertile approach to a fundamental problem, significantly narrowing the gap between psychoanalytic theory and practice.

THE FREUDIAN LEGACY

6
A Problem Concerning the Subject in Psychoanalysis

Introduction

A number of psychoanalytic theorists have taken Freud’s second topography unreservedly into their own theoretical considerations. Consequently, they have failed to interrogate the nature of their stance toward the notion of the subject and have, instead, worked toward the development of aspects of the topography, economics, and dynamics of the mind as postulated by Freud. Although these theorists may not have focused directly on the concept of the subject as an area for theoretical exploration, their work is underpinned by particular assumptions made concerning the subject in their psychoanalytic theory. What is important here is to bring into relief the possible differences in the assumptions made where theorists have taken the same Freudian schema into their work. The significance of seeing these differences is that this provides evidence of the consequence of the conceptual split between subject and agency in psychoanalytic theory. In particular we will see that in the case of both Heinz Hartmann and Melanie Klein, neither makes any assumption that necessarily or primarily concerns the subject who speaks to the analyst. This means that even though both work, at least initially, within the Freudian tradition by virtue of the schema that is basic to their hypotheses, these theorists make disparate assumptions concerning the concept of the subject. The subject, in each case, is perhaps best located in a domain other than that of the psychoanalytic enterprise.

At the outset of this chapter we will turn to the work of Anna Freud. Not only does Anna Freud provide an instance of the inheritance of problems for those who unquestioningly take Freud’s schema into their work but she is also important in setting a direction for the work of Heinz Hartmann. We will turn, then, to question the nature of the assumptions made by Hartmann where the subject is concerned. It is my argument that Hartmann’s subject is the subject in sociology and that this is to be accounted for by the nature of the question that he asks in his theoretical elaborations. Last, we will move to the work of Melanie Klein. Here we will see that the assumptions she makes concerning the subject in psychoanalysis are assumptions that pertain to an innately moral being. The theoretical conceptualization of the subject who speaks to the analyst remains to be found in the work of Jacques Lacan, whose contribution to psychoanalysis is the focus of the discussion in the chapter to follow.

Anna Freud

Foremost among those who have adopted Freud’s schema of the mind is his youngest daughter, Anna. In 1922, the year prior to the publication of The Ego and the Id, Anna Freud was made a member of the Vienna Society, and in 1923 she entered analytic practice. An outcome of this practice was the appearance in 1927 of her first book, Introduction to the Technique of Child Analysis,¹ a work in which she described the differences between her approach and that of Melanie Klein, and some ten years later the publication first in German (1936) and then in English (1937) of The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense.² It is this latter work that claims our attention here, particularly in reference to her use of Freud’s second topography. Although there are eight volumes of her written work³ I draw upon this work alone because it exemplifies the point that I wish to make with reference to the nature of the theoretical problems to be found where Freud’s schema is adopted without question.

In The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, presented to her father on his eightieth birthday, Anna Freud argues a case from the basis of a clearly stated therapeutic stance. She makes the point very early in her book that although psychoanalysis in its earliest years of theory building was preeminently a psychology of the unconscious or the id, from a therapeutic point of view this is an inaccurate description of its intention:

From the beginning analysis, as a therapeutic method, was concerned with the ego and its aberrations: the investigation of the id and of its mode of operation was always only a means to an end. And the end was invariably the same: the correction of these abnormalities and the restoration of the ego to its integrity.⁴

It is from this therapeutic stance that Anna Freud develops her notions of the ego. This means, in effect, that her theory is a theory of therapy because she draws a clear distinction between the theory of psychoanalysis and the practical implementation of a clinical method. Whereas it has been argued that Freud was constantly reviewing his theory in the light of his clinical findings—hence he had a dialectical approach—Anna Freud takes a different path. Rather than have a theory inform her practice she takes the path of one whose practice informs a theory of the ego. It is not surprising, therefore, that Anna Freud places a particular emphasis upon technique.

From the outset she works on the basis of Freud’s second topography which, as has been shown, incorporates both the first topography of conscious, preconscious, and unconscious with the introduction of the id, ego, and super-ego structures. It is the latter three institutions that claim her attention—in particular, the ego. The ego, however, refers to both the unconscious and the conscious psychic apparatus, but it is the former that is her major focus. This is so because she delineates and explores the unconscious defenses utilized by the ego in psychoanalytic therapy. It is her contention, in the light of her deliberations on the ego, that there are two stages in analysis: (1) the analysis of the ego; then (2) the analysis of the id. As a consequence of this position she portrays the ego in its defensive roles and puts into motion a clinical emphasis to be found in the ego school, the analysis of the resistance.

One of the most important shifts made by Anna Freud concerns her theoretical approach to the concept of repression. Whereas Freud’s cornerstone was undoubtedly that of repression, Anna works on the basis of positing repression as one among a number of defenses employed by the ego. This means, in effect, that it is no longer the cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory but simply one among a number of bricks in the clinical edifice. This shift allows her to raise the other defenses such as denial, reaction formation, projection, and introjection to a higher status and so provides the ego with a battery of maneuvers to defend itself against the instinctual demand or what she terms pain. This rebalancing produces a theory of therapy where the ego is a central and potent agency whose livelihood is to be maintained. Her justification for the dethronment of repression is her claim that in 1926, in his work Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety Freud refuted that repression occupies a unique position among the psychic processes. Anna Freud places great emphasis upon the analysis of these defenses and also upon the notion of the development of the ego. This is, of course, in keeping with her general thrust—the centrality of the ego.

Agency

Throughout her exposition, the ego is conceptualized in terms of one institution of the psychic personality. Without any clarifying definition of the concept itself, Anna Freud employs the notion of the ego as an institution endowed with effective agency. It is the ego that struggles against instinctual life; it is the ego that takes into account the orders of the super-ego: “The ego submits to the higher institution and obediently enters into a struggle against the instinctual impulse, with all the consequences which such a struggle entails.⁵ Just as Freud imputed the apparatus with agency, so, too, does his daughter. Anna Freud simply adopted Freud’s terminology and used it with her own particular therapeutic emphasis. At no stage does she question the assumptions made in using the structural terms “id,” “ego” and “super-ego” and therefore subsumes within her own perspective those inconsistencies that have been elaborated on in the chapters on Freud’s schemas. The effect of this failure can be seen in the form of the “license” that Anna Freud takes when describing her clinical cases. Here she shifts from the use of the terminology of the psychic apparatus to the use of the notion of the subject.

Whereas from a theoretical perspective it is the ego that is endowed with agency, from a clinical point of view she provides contradictory evidence. Sometimes it is the ego that bears the potency, at other times it is the subject. For instance, when writing of the restriction of the ego she says:

When a child is somewhat older his greater freedom of physical movement and his increased powers of psychic activity enable his ego to evade such stimuli and there is no need for him to perform so complicated a psychic operation as that of denial.⁶

Here both ego and child are imputed with agency. That may well be acceptable, but how the subject and ego are linked, if they are, is never referred to as a problem. This, of course, is an inheritance from Freud who, as we know, did not address the issue of how the subject in psychoanalysis might be conceptualized. Again she writes of a case as follows:

He restricted the functioning of his ego and drew back greatly to the detriment of his development, from any external situation which might possibly give rise to the type of “pain” which he feared most.⁷

In this instance it is the subject who has command of the ego, be that the unconscious ego. Does this imply that the subject can utilize the psychic apparatus at will? Although this suggestion is quite contrary to the tenor of her work, one is left to speculate as to the implied link between ego or apparatus and subject and to the implied nature of agency, be that of the ego or subject, conscious or unconscious.

Clearly, there is need for further clarification surrounding the problem of both subject and agency in the work of Anna Freud. It would be inappropriate to expect The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense to be a thoroughly thought-out theoretical framework because this was not her aim. However, given the fact that Anna Freud employed Freud’s concepts, she adopted, without question, his failure to explore the theoretical underpinning regarding the notion of agency and the notion of the subject in psychoanalysis. Consequently her work holds unavoidable contradictions. Not only is Anna Freud’s work important in its own right⁸ and important as an example of one who has inherited the Freudian difficulty but it is also the influence of her work that has set a specific direction for later psychoanalytic theorization.

Hartmann, whose work we are to consider next, has taken Freud’s concept of the ego, as did Anna, and developed this concept in a particular way. Throughout his work he acknowledges and accepts Anna Freud’s contribution but broadens the concept of the ego beyond that of defensive agency. Hartmann endorses Anna’s proposed centralized ego and to some degree authorizes his approach by placing his theoretical contribution within the light that Anna Freud shed on the character of the ego as agent.

Heinz Hartmann

Heinz Hartmann, regarded “as Freud’s ‘heir apparent’”⁹ when he arrived in New York from Vienna in 1941, is best known for his work in the area of ego psychology. Hartmann’s ego is that which is central within the terms of the structure of Freud’s second topography and is a concept that derives much from the influence of Anna Freud. What is especially important in his work, within the present context, is that although he imports Freud’s schema into his theory, he does not question the assumptions upon which it rests. Thus he automatically inherits problems with regard to an adequate conceptualization of agency and of the subject in much the same way as did Anna Freud. In addition, as a consequence of this neglect, Hartmann’s theoretical perspective is based upon an implicit but particular notion of the subject in psychoanalysis. This subject, I argue, is the subject in the everyday world or the subject in sociology rather than the subject defined as the one who speaks to the analyst. That Hartmann can theorize on the basis of such a theoretical assumption is a legacy of the division found in Freud’s concepts of agency and subject. Agency and subject are divided in Freud’s theory, and both concepts are open to a variety of conceptualizations by later theorists working in the Freudian tradition. In the case of Hartmann, the notion of agency is Freudian in the sense that, like Freud, Hartmann imputes it to the psychic apparatus. The notion of the subject, however, is unique to Hartmann’s ego psychology and is derived from the type of question that underpins his endeavor. It is to this question that we now turn our attention. We will see that because Freud did not adequately specify and conceptualize the notion of the subject in psychoanalysis, Hartmann has taken a path that has led him to a questionable end.

Hartmann’s most significant contribution to the field of psychoanalysis is his essay Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation, which was first presented in 1937 before the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and then published in German in 1938 in the Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse and Imago. This essay was published in an English translation by David Rapaport in 1958¹⁰ to inaugurate the Monograph Series of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Hartmann’s first essay is best regarded as a prolegomenon to his later papers which, found in his collection, Essays on Ego Psychology,¹¹ expound more fully issues and conceptualizations that appear in their “unworked out” form in Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation. The latter title encapsulates the major foci of his work: the ego and the process of adaptation. Given that the essay has been introduced as a prolegomenon, it nevertheless reads as a first and conceptually unclarified attempt to shift the entire framework of Freudian psychoanalysis sideways.

The Ego and the Problem of Adaptation

At the outset of his essay, Hartmann claims that psychoanalysis has moved from its initial study of pathology and its concentration on the id and the instinctual drives toward a “general theory of mental life.”¹² Yet Freud was adamant that “Psycho-analysis has never claimed to provide a complete theory of human mentality in general”¹³ but rather that “the theory of the neuroses is psycho-analysis itself”.¹⁴ We will see the result of this shift in connection with Hartmann’s assumption concerning the subject in psychoanalysis. Given his initial thrust toward a general theory of mental life, it is not surprising that the ego forms a key focus of attention for Hartmann in his theoretical elaborations. The ego, for him, provides the basis of a psychological approach in line with an understanding of our everyday life rather than pathological or neurotic existence.

Because of this focus Hartmann proposes that the ego grows not only in conflict but that there are other roots as well, referred to when developed as the “conflict-free ego sphere.” Having acknowledged Anna Freud’s work on the ego and its defense functions, he points out that it is necessary to study other ego functions and other aspects of ego activity. These refer to such functions and activities as perception, intention, object comprehension, thinking, language, recall phenomena, productivity, maturation and learning processes implicit in motor development, grasping, crawling, and walking. Hence he proposes that “we adopt the provisional term conflict-free ego sphere for that ensemble of functions which at any time exert their effects outside the region of me...