Abstract
In this brief essay, I attempt to critique some of the philosophical problematics inherent with the hermeneutic turn in psychoanalysis. The proposition that “there are only interpretations of interpretations” leads to an inescapable circularity because interpretation ultimately lacks a referent or criterion for which to anchor meaning. If we follow this proposition through to its logical end, this ultimately collapses into relativism because meaning is relative to its interpretive scheme, which further relies on other interpretative schemata for which there are no definitive definitions, conclusive consensus, or universal laws governing interpretation. How can hermeneutics escape the charge of circularity, infinite regress, disavowal of universals, its tacit relativism, and the failure to provide a consensus or criteria for interpretation? How is psychoanalysis able to philosophically justify interpretative truth claims when they potentially inhere to a recalcitrant subjectivism while claiming to be objectively valuative?
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Notes
One may argue that relativism is necessary because interpretation can only take place within a historical context that relativizes it. I prefer to distinguish the notion of perspectivism from relativism, the former allowing for historical contextualism as well as qualitative variances in subjective experience, while the latter denotes the philosophical doctrine that there are no universal truths or intrinsic characteristics about the world, only different ways of interpreting it.
Although science requires interpretation to arrive at understanding and knowledge, it is primarily wed to an objectivist epistemology that would resist hermeneutic constructions of the subject. But because science is not estranged from subjectivity, or more precisely, the individual scientists (subjects) studying the external world (objects), the cognitive processes underlying subjectivity qua mentation must necessarily impose interpretations on objects of study; and in this way the subject–object divide is suspended. In other words, if we were to examine the individual personalities of each scientist or any theorist, we would not only conclude that their peculiar subjectivities inform their scientific theories, but structures of subjectivity necessarily participate within universal conditions that make objectivity possible; and this becomes a ground or condition for the possibility of science itself. This is why Husserl (1950) advocates for a foundational role phenomenology plays in the constitution of any science, indeed, in the possibility for there to be any science at all, including psychoanalysis.When universal cognitive processes that comprise the generic structure of subjectivity (including all its unconscious permutations) become the focus of intellectual investigation, the subject becomes an object of science. And when the object is viewed as an independent microcosm that radically betrays universal classifications due to self-articulation and stylized particularity based on creative self-definition belonging to the existential agent, the individual ceases to be merely an object. Yet each determination requires procedures of interpretation, what we may traditionally attribute to the field of hermeneutics.When the question of psychoanalysis as a science versus a hermeneutic discipline is raised, this very question presupposes an incommensurate dichotomy, and hence reinforces a hegemony whereby each side of difference attempts to exert self-importance over the other; when both have failed to observe the dialectic that conjoins such differences within a mediatory process that attempts a sublation (Aufhebung) or integrative holism between the two polarities. If psychoanalysis is to achieve some form of consiliatory paradigm, it must be willing to attempt to explain its activities on multiple plains of discourse with sound methodological coherence. Here I am not concerned so much with a dialectical synthesis of the oppositions of science and hermeneutics as I am concerned about preserving the two methodologies and modes of discourse that have legitimacy within their own frames of reference and perspective purposes.
We may very well conclude that there are no facts apart from interpretation because our epistemological justifications rest on our cognitive capacities to form judgments about any object in question. We are conditioned to interpret since childhood according to our cultural context and the internalization of others’ interpretive schemata, which have been historically and consensually validated.
It may be argued that any explanation of events—especially human actions—necessarily requires interpretation, particularly when making claims about facts and their causal connections, which are sensitive to context. In this way any explanation evokes an act of making something intelligible or understandable.
Here I am reminded that for Lacan, what is primary is not the individual, but the Other, that is, the symbolic and social functions imbedded within the subject. And for Lacan, the subject is always the subject of the unconscious, and the unconscious is always the Other's discourse. There is always another voice speaking in the patient, a metapsychology of internalized culture, the ontology of symbolic meaning and demand instituted through speech and desire. This is what the Lacanian analyst listens for.
Perhaps Nissim-Sabat is taking too much liberty in separating phenomenology from hermeneutics, for they may be viewed as complementary rather than antithetical. If hermeneutics is more interpretive than descriptive, phenomenology is more descriptive than interpretive: it becomes a matter of emphasis rather than difference.
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1Psy.D., Ph.D., ABPP is a psychologist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst, member of the Core Psychology Faculty, Adler Graduate Professional School, Toronto, and Director of Mills Psychology Prof. Corp.
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Mills, J. Deconstructing Hermes: A Critique Of The Hermeneutic Turn In Psychoanalysis. Am J Psychoanal 71, 238–245 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/ajp.2011.20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ajp.2011.20