Wild Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Institutions
The following contains my quickly written notes from Sigmund Freud’s short essay “Wild Analysis,” published in 1910.
Freud opens the essay with a description of a situation in which he was recently placed. A middle-aged woman requested a consultation from Freud and complained of anxiety-states. This is the phrase that Freud used, “anxiety-state,” rather than “anxiety.”
What caused her anxiety-states? According to Freud, as a preliminary to an answer, she was divorced from her husband. Yet, what was curious was that psychoanalysis, as practiced by her prior physician, only exacerbated the anxiety. According to her, the physician had attributed her anxiety-state to a lack of sexual satisfaction and provided her with some practical solutions.
This cautionary tale from Freud was provided so as to alert us to problems with presuming in advance that all situations are based upon a sort of templated lack. Why couldn’t we extend this criticism to some philosophical readings of Lacan which interpret lack into nature, as in theories of ontological incompleteness? After all, how many Muslims would be willing to read into nature — or indeed God — as lacking? Are we correct to presume, with arrogance, that only a more secular, scientific, or christian approach is always the correct way to read nature? Is there only one ‘nature?’
On the one hand, Freud is offering a critique of clumsy interpretations, based upon naive understandings of psychoanalytic theory. I note two presumptions on the part of the physician: first, a presumption that there was a loss of satisfaction, which is, in a way, a thesis of lack; and, second, the presumption that there is a possible way forward by returning to the prior state and obtaining satisfaction through pragmatic efforts (i.e., returning to husband, masturbation, etc) — a thesis of surplus jouissance.
Freud notes that the physician had presumably attributed this psychoanalytic theory to … Freud, which reminds me of scene in the film “Annie Hall” when the main character overhears somebody attribute an idea to Marshall McLuhan, after which, Marshall McLuhan steps in to rectify the error: “I would never say something like that, and you know nothing of my work.” The young woman brought with her a friend who implored Freud to rectify the error of the physician since she was widowed for many years and had not, for her part, suffered from anxiety.
Next, Freud says that the experience of psychoanalysis teaches us not to accept straight away as true whatever it is that their patients say about their physicians. Indeed, we should not be concerned at all with any objective measure of truth — as if anything they say is true or false, since that is not at all the point of psychoanalysis. Yet, what this indicates is that Freud was suspicious of the narrative about the physician. It means that we cannot rule out what psychoanalysis teaches about transference: “[we must] sometimes resign ourselves to accepting responsibility, by a kind of projection, for the buried repressed wishes of his nervous patients.” Rather than accept the story as fact, he presumed, from the beginning, that all stories are distorted.
It seems to me that this is only the other side of an error. If one error is to presume that all stories told by our patients is true, then the other is to presume that all stories are distorted, and false. The second error is a more acceptable one to make: it presumes that the same effects of the dream-work are at play in everyday life. Yet, it is a question of situating the case within a structure. This is what the entire essay from Freud — it seems to me — strives to convey.
At the same time, Freud wanted to take this as a learning opportunity. He requests from us, as readers, that we accept as fact that the situation is precisely as it was reported by the patient.
If a physician is to speak about sexuality with a patient then he must, according to Freud, do so according to (1) technical rules of psychoanalysis and (2) an education in its scientific theories.
Thus, there can be betrayals of the technical rules of analysis, and there can be scientific errors.
First, the physician, for Freud, was obviously not educated in psychoanalysis since he reduces sexuality only to coitus, orgasm, or the emission of sexual substances. This is a fairly literal interpretation of sexuality. Freud’s insistence is that psychoanalysis has obviously shown the extent to which this is not sexuality: “this fact is undisputed […]: in psychoanalysis, the concept of what is sexual comprises far more; it goes lower and also higher than its popular sense.” It is for this reason that Freud qualifies the term sexuality, and even goes so far as to write it as “psychosexuality.” This shows the expansiveness of the concept.
He continued: “we have long known that mental absence of satisfaction with all its consequences can exist where there is no lack of sexual intercourse […].” He provides this as one example, along with another one, to demonstrate the extent to which the reduction of sexuality to a concept can actually lead us away from the scientific theory of psychosexuality within psychoanalysis. It is a problem of taking sexuality within its commonsensical definition, conceptually. This mistake is one of restrictiveness. Hence, “anyone not sharing this view of psychosexuality has no right to adduce psychoanalytic theses dealing with the aetiological importance of sexuality.” Freud refers to this as a “simplification.”
If the first problem has to do with simplification or restrictiveness of sexuality, then the second has to do with complexification. This is mentioned only in passing by Freud, and only a bit later in the essay. Yet, we see that the complexification of psychoanalytic theory, particularly within philosophy and literature, produces another type of error. Hence, while there is a tendency to avoid overly complicated theories, there is, also, the difficulty of the conflict between “libido” — which he describes as “excessive” — and the rejection of sexuality, or an overly severe sort of repression.
Freud supposes that the physician interpreted too much into the patient: why would he presume that she wouldn’t engage in masturbation, or that she would be unable to find another partner, and so on?
At this point, Freud distinguishes the “actual neurosis” from other neuroses. He claims that “actual neurosis” relates to a somatic aspect to sexuality, and that it is still unclear what role repression plays here. In other words, “actual neurosis,” or “real neurosis,” has some relationship to the body without a clear understanding of the place of repression. Freud seemed inclined to use this as a way to show that diagnosis not only matters but that it can only be deduced from technique and education )rather than presuming in advance that a patient is whatever they say they are or whatever another physician says they are). Freud wrote: “a person suffering from anxiety is not for that reason necessarily suffering from anxiety neurosis; such a diagnosis cannot be based only upon the name of the symptom.” This point is essential: it relates to our avoidance of presuming that a patient is whatever they say they are, and, on the other hand, an avoidance of the reduction of the symptom, the complaint, which is sort of speech, to that of structure, which is the diagnosis. Symptom is not structure … complaint is not diagnosis.
He continued by demonstrating the value of the patient’s speech in reaching diagnosis: “one has to know what signs constitute an anxiety neurosis, and be able to distinguish it from other pathological states which are also manifested by anxiety.”
Freud’s conclusion: she was likely suffering from “anxiety hysteria,” which implies that somatic or practical solutions are less important — perhaps even more problematic — than solutions that are more technical involving the relationship of libido to desire. The prior “wild” approach of the physician, which offered practical solutions, eradicated psychoanalysis: “oddly enough, the three therapeutic alternatives of this so-called psychoanalyst leave no room for psychoanalysis!”
Freud then turns to the “technical errors” in the treatment by this physician.
Freud reminds his readers that it had long ago been discovered that psychoanalysis is not a cure necessarily for ignorance, as if bringing something to the light of day will cure it, or will combat the “inner resistances.” Hence, “informing the patient of what he does not know because he has repressed it is only one of the necessary preliminaries to the treatment.” Interpretation, Freud maintained, is not therefore the solution unless it comes also with a proper education and training on the part of the physician, but also on the part of the patient. Freud wrote that this technique “has as much influence on the symptoms of nervous illness as a distribution of menu-cards in a time of famine has upon hunger.” Freud wrote that this approach can even intensify the resistances, exacerbating the troubles.
If we are to provide insight in this way, through interpretaiton, there must be two conditions first met: (1) the patient must himself have already reached the “neighborhood” of what he has repressed, and (2) he must have formed a sufficient attachment (transference) to the physician for his emotional relationship to him to make a fresh flight impossible.
Now, as regards the education requirement, Freud says that it cannot come from books: “this technique cannot yet be learnt from books, and it certainly cannot be discovered independently without great sacrifices of time, labour and success.” It is a question of how it can be learnt/taught. How can psychoanalysis be taught? This is the question which plagued the paper on “wild analysis.” In my reading of this paper, Freud wrote it, as a consequence of his desire, to protect psychoanalytic experience, and, indeed, psychoanalysis proper.
It was for this reason that he ended the paper with his admission that in the spring of 1910 he helped found the International Psychoanalytic Association.
Why?
It was an effort to combat “wild psychoanalysis,” surely, but much more an attempt to defend psychoanalysis against its prejudices and its resistances. Indeed against a psychoanalysis that would counteract its experience.
