Abstract
This chapter is devoted to the comparative analysis of the phenomenological and the psychoanalytic unconscious. The aim of the chapter is to examine the convergences and divergences between these two forms of the unconscious and to extend the Husserlian concept of affective relief. The chapter compares the role of repression in the Freudian unconscious and in Husserl’s analysis of the living present. The chapter will also examine the harmonizing attempts that try to connect the Freudian and the Husserlian notions of the unconscious. Finally, a partial synthesis between the Freudian and the Husserlian unconscious is proposed.
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Notes
- 1.
Moran claims that Husserl has never considered the problems of trauma and psychopathology, but the passivity of reproductive associations could straightforwardly lead to the problem of traumatic experiences.
- 2.
The term affective-associative synthesis refers to the associative processes operating in the periphery of consciousness. The working of these presupposed processes was defined by Husserl as passivity or passive genesis, and these subliminal processes are of pivotal importance in several phenomenologically inspired models of the unconscious.
- 3.
Despite the significant differences, Askay and Farquhar listed ten common features between psychoanalysis and phenomenology: “In general, both Husserl and Freud (1) undertook a regressive, archaeological inquiry into the affective histories of individuals and into the hidden recesses of the psyche; (2) acknowledged the existence and importance of ‘unconscious’ intentionalities; (3) affirmed that entire associative chains of ideas can run their course without ever emerging into consciousness, and that they can help us to recover unconscious memories; (4) claimed that consciousness and the unconscious mutually modified one another; and (5) asserted that the ego is at the mercy (at least at times) of the underlying processes of the unconscious. In addition, both held that the unconscious (6) is rooted in instinctual life; (7) involves dynamic forces that continually conflict, and affect consciousness; (8) retains ideas interminably; (9) involves processes/ideas that are atemporal; and (10) is also a dimension of the ego. Furthermore, Freud and Husserl held that ideas require a certain force to reach the threshold of consciousness and when they do, they may only be fragmentary or confused in nature” (Askay & Farquhar, 2006, 166).
- 4.
Moran defends the incommensurability between the Freudian and Husserlian terminology: “It would be a fruitless exercise to try to find in Husserl analogues of all the key Freudian notions (both discuss ‘instincts’ and ‘drives’ and do not sharply distinguish between them – although instincts generally are seen to belong more to biological animal nature), and the matter is further complicated by Freud’s evolving conception of drives” (Moran, 2017, p. 15).
- 5.
It is worth mentioning that Husserl declares that he cannot work with “unclarifiable instincts”, that means that he demarcates his own view from Theodore Lipps’ conception of instinct. Moran shows that Husserl uses the term “instinct” in a broad sense, that sometimes refers to the drive to existence and, in other cases, to tendencies of interest (Moran, 2017, pp. 13–14). As we shall see in the analysis of affective relief, the sensual field is permeated by tendencies and instincts (Husserl, 2014, p. 26).
- 6.
One can find the elaboration of this observation in Ricoeur’s book on Freud (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 392).
- 7.
Part IV will elaborate further in greater detail the dynamics of affective rivalry.
- 8.
“We perceive that we have no right to name the mental region that is foreign to the ego ‘the system Ucs’, since the characteristic of being unconscious is not restricted to it. Very well; we will no longer use the term ‘unconscious’ in the systematic sense and we will give what we have hitherto so described a better name and one no longer open to misunderstanding. Following a verbal usage of Nietzsche’s and taking up a suggestion by Georg Groddeck, we will in future call it the ‘id’. This impersonal pronoun seems particularly well suited for expressing the main characteristic of this province of the mind – the fact of its being alien to the ego” (Freud, 1965 [1933], p. 90).
- 9.
For Fink, not only consciousness is pregiven in the practical immediacy of everyday life, but a more detailed analysis is needed for altered states of consciousness as well: “For the unconscious, too, as well as for consciousness, there exists the illusion of everyday, given immediacy: we are all familiar, after all, with the phenomena of sleep, of fainting, of being overtaken by obscure driving forces, creative states, and the like. The naivete of the current theory of the “unconscious” consists in the fact that it engrosses itself in these interesting phenomena which are pregiven in everyday life, undertakes an inductive empirical inquiry, proposes constructive “explanations,” and is tacitly guided all along by a naive and dogmatic implicit theory about consciousness of which it always makes use in spite of its demarcation [of these phenomena] from phenomena of consciousness, which are also taken in their everyday familiarity” (Husserl, 1970, p. 386).
- 10.
Contrary to Zahavi, Sebastian Gardner supposes that we can speak of “unconscious emotions” by subtracting the fact of manifestation but retaining the efficacy of their phenomenal character (the way how they feel). Thus, an unconscious emotion can be efficacious by virtue of how it feels. He argues that phenomenal properties (unconscious pain, pleasure, anxiety) have a “heightened causal value” in the unconscious because they are instinctual, infantile, and fantastic (Gardner, 1991, p. 155). The argument relies on some kind of bottom-up (causal) determination that captures more faithfully the puzzle of the unconscious than the thematic-unthematic distinction.
- 11.
For preliminary purposes, let me point to the fact that the dispositional nature of the unconscious is of particular importance for various ideas of the phenomenological unconscious.
- 12.
Somatic states also play a fundamental role in the intentional life of consciousness: “The conception of and praxis in the psychoanalytic setting in my opinion enables the recuperation of insights concerning the psychosomatic basis of mental achievements, in the sense of the inner psychical, comprehending experience, not in the sense of an external causal genetic analysis of the bodily influences on psychic experience. Moreover, we gain intuitions for handling the question as to how the somatic state is an effective moment in intentional accomplishment” (Brudzińska, 2012, p. 33).
- 13.
Mishara highlights the fact that the aim of Husserl’s so-called abstractive method is to unravel the deepest layers of experience; thus, it can labelled as an “archaeological effort”. This tendency is a common ground between Freud, Husserl, and Kafka. They all rely on the German Romantic literary tradition where the metaphor of the unconscious frequently occurs (e.g. as “night” and “mine”) (Mishara, 1990, p. 36).
- 14.
Let me emphasize, again, that pre-affective or pre-egoic constitution is governed by the laws of unity and contrast. Pre-affective formations are totally egoless tendencies, and they can be approached only by the “abstractive reduction”, that is, they cannot appear in clear intuition, they are only the result of inferences based on well-developed, well-known perceptual Gestalts. Kozyreva argues that, in this case the limit of the describable is reached (cf. Kozyreva, 2017, p. 123).
- 15.
Furthermore, Husserl does not employ Pavlovian or other reflex-model to explain the orientation of the ego; rather the so-called “dialogical terms” are prominent in his papers. Another departure from empirical findings is that Husserl, in contrast to psychophysics, does not consider the notion of absolute threshold. For Husserl, as Mishara has shown, the threshold between conscious and unconscious processing is determined by the actual pattern of affective forces at any given moment (Mishara, 1990, pp. 39–40).
- 16.
“But above and beyond one’s response on any particular occasion, there can be a sedimented general readiness not only to receive or to reject – to be open for the affective invitation or closed off from it – but also to be moved and go along with the movement, or to refuse to do so. Affectivity in the sense of the experiencer’s ability to be affected in this double way is thus a practical condition of possibility for the affective power of the non-I to come to fruition in an actual affective event” (Behnke, 2008, p. 48).
- 17.
A more detailed analysis of the relation of affectivity and time-consciousness will be elaborated in Part IV.
- 18.
“The role of affectivity acquires special original meaning when applied to such issues as the affective constitution of the pre-reflective selfhood; the formation of affective unities; and the clarification of the affective dimension of memory-related phenomena (namely, retentional modification, recollection and constitution of the past). Moreover, in the larger perspective, it amounts to a new approach to consciousness, the unconscious, and subjectivity itself” (Kozyreva, 2017, p. 205).
- 19.
“We may imagine that what is repressed exercises a continuous straining in the direction of consciousness, so that the balance has to be kept by means of a steady counter-pressure. A constant expenditure of energy, therefore, is entailed in maintaining a repression, and economically its abrogation denotes a saving. The mobility of the repression, incidentally, finds expression also in the mental characteristics of the condition of sleep which alone renders dream-formation possible. With a return to waking life the repressive cathexes which have been called in are once more put forth” (Freud, 1957a, [1915], pp. 89–90).
- 20.
Smith enumerates the frequently used terms of Husserl in this context: Verdeckung (covering over), Deckung, Unterdrückung, Hinunterdrückung (suppression), and Hemmung (inhibition) (Smith, 2010, pp. 56–57).
- 21.
“What is specific therein is motivated in the obscure background and has its ‘psychic grounds’, about which it can be asked: how did I get there, what brought me to it? That questions like these can be raised characterizes all motivation in general. The ‘motives’ are often deeply buried but can be brought to light by ‘psychoanalysis’. A thought ‘reminds’ me of other thoughts and calls back into memory a past lived experience, etc. In some cases it can be perceived. In most cases, however, the motivation is indeed actually present in consciousness, but it does not stand out; it is unnoticed or unnoticeable (‘unconscious’)” (Husserl, 1989, p. 234).
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Horváth, L. (2024). The Unconscious in Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology. In: The Affective Core Self. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 130. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56920-3_3
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