Freud, Husserl And “Loss Of Reality ” : Classical Psychoanalysis, Transcendental Phenomenology And Explication Of Psychosis

Abstract

In the following paper I am not going to deal with psychiatry in the traditional sense, but with what psychiatry is dealing with. Or, more precisely; with what psychiatry ought to be dealing with.

Freud’s psychoanalysis has both been influential for, and been influated by existential philosophy in the twentieth century. Freud’s attitude towards philosophy was deeply ambivalent – he both rejected most of philosophy as being forms of sublimation, and regarded rationalism as a defensive strategy relative to the alienating primary processes of the unconscious. But Freud’s own meta-psychology, as ex. in the Jenseits des Lustprinzips – may be read as a genuine attempt in existential phenomenology. Given that Freud’s psychoanalysis has contributed strongly to the configuration of modern subjectivity, a philosophical, phenomenological analysis of Freud may elucidate deep a historicity of modern subjectivity.

My efforts in this paper are twofold; first I try to demonstrate how Freud’s theory bears heavily upon classical thinking of our tradition. I claim that Freud was in fact re-collecting, or even maintaining a deep current in the Western humanistic tradition, hinting to unruly powers of a an un-personal “Will” constantly pressing on to break free. Freud’s originality thus lye less in conceiving new ideas, than in demonstrating unthought-of dimensions and consequences in ex. Kant’s model of the mind. Thus Freud is able to see a rudimentary theory of psychopathology already described by the tradition.

Secondly, and this is my main point in this paper, is that that Freud in fact ordered a phenomenological-hermeneutical interpretation of his own work, and if read in this perspective, a new horizon opens for psychoanalysis. To achieve this I will demonstrate an often overlooked resemblance of Freud’s theory of the unconscious and Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology of the “will” (as in HUA XV), which may then be seen as a genuine motivational theory of the Self.

My interpretative suggestion is that Freud wanted to explicate deep, existential consequences of an uncanny knowing in the Self of both being the source of its enduring existence – and at the same time having the notion of not being its own origin. The Self, therefore, has an aporetical, almost irrealizing appearance to it’s Self, hence being under a constant pressure of ontological inconstancy, which may upsurge as profound psychical irruptions, witch may be labelled “pathological”.

In conclusion I argue that the main lack in psychoanalysis is a fuller theory of constitution, which Husserl’s phenomenology perhaps may provide. I suggest a thorough phenomenological re-reading of Freud, in order to provide a potent theoretical contribution to psychopathological research.