Critical Hermeneutics

Brazilian Philosophy of Psychoanalysis

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Cover

Editors' Introduction

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Present in a significant way in contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis has become an object of permanent and lively interest for the main philosophical tendencies of the twentieth century. Wherever one looks, from critical theory to phenomenology, from existentialism to structuralism, from hermeneutics to the philosophy of language, from the philosophy of science to the philosophy of mind, it is possible to attest to the existence of a wide and varied philosophical reception of psychoanalysis. Brazilian philosophy is inserted with protagonism in this great framework of interlocution between philosophical discourse and psychoanalytic discourse...

Editorial

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Presente de maneira significativa na filosofia contemporânea, a psicanálise tornou-se objeto de permanente e vivo interesse para as principais tendências filosóficas do Séc. XX. Para onde quer que se olhe, da teoria crítica à fenomenologia, do existencialismo ao estruturalismo, da hermenêutica à filosofia da linguagem, da filosofia da ciência à filosofia da mente, é possível atestar a existência de uma ampla e variada recepção filosófica da psicanálise. A filosofia brasileira se insere com protagonismo neste grande quadro de interlocução entre discurso filosófico e discurso psicanalítico...

Brain and Affectivity

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Behind the effort to harmonise the dual registers of Freudian discourse, Ricoeur expresses the desire not to give in to a reductionist and naturalising conception of the subject. Thanks to the coordinated work between phenomenology and hermeneutics, he achieved a radical recasting of the reality of the unconscious. He worked around psychoanalysis to develop his philosophy of the human being, but his anthropological conception of maturity was still open to comparison with the various sciences of the mind and brain.

The Boundaries of the Unconscious

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The psyché-soma difference (Bartoš 2006) is one of the structuring themes not only of Western thought but also of modern psychology, which inherits this debate from the philosophical tradition and the religious tradition. Through a journey with early texts by Henri Bergson, including the psychology and metaphysics classes he taught at the Lycée de Clermont-Ferrand in 1887-1888, as well as the psychophysical parallelism of 1901, we address the difficulties pointed out in the monist position and its reverberations in contemporary psychology, which are commanded by neuroscience and cognitive psychology. We intend to highlight the impasses of the monist position that continue to be re-edited. In fact, despite countless technological advances concerning the issue of the nature of this duality, the debates seem to have stopped at the assertions that Bergson already denounced at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, which denotes the strong presence of ontological options that largely overlap with the empirical inspiration of modern science. What are the determining lines in the resistance to this debate? Why do advances in research technologies not correspond to advances in the argument about this duality? Are there practical consequences for the reading of reality when adopting the monist principle, which remains sovereign in Western thought albeit unproven? These questions will guide the reflection we begin in this work.

On Schopenhauer’s Theory of the Unconscious Choice of Fate

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We propose to investigate Schopenhauer’s hypothesis of transcendent fatalism, namely, his conjecture that there seems to be a secret force that guides us better than ourselves, as he explains in Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual (1851). In this investigation, we will highlight his interpretation that this invisible force, called by the ancients Destiny (ειμαρμεχη), Demon (δαιμόν), or Providence (προνοια), symbolizes nothing other than our own nature or unconscious Will. Finally, we will also seek to contextualize that this interpretation of Schopenhauer, according to Marcel Zentner and Stephen Atzert, gives reason for Freud to cite that essay, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in connection with the psychoanalytic thesis of the unconscious choice of fate (unbewußten Schicksalswahl).

Misinterpretations of the Conception of Psychoanalysis According to Merleau-Ponty

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This article is part of ongoing research on Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Psychoanalysis. The study proceeds from the thesis that the philosopher has an original intuition, which reveals important and innovative points to Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. The work presented here addresses one of the courses taught by Merleau-Ponty at the Sorbonne from 1949 to 1952 that deals with the adult’s view of the child. On this subject, the philosopher presents the limits of the current philosophical and scientific conceptions, and concerning the purpose of our study, he presents misconceptions, not only about the child but about Psychoanalysis; interpretations of Freudian concepts that contradict what is original and innovative in Psychoanalysis, and how this generates a misconception about the child, reducing Psychoanalysis to a reactionary theory.

From Anti-Oedipus to Anti-Narcissus

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According to Deleuze and Guattari ([1972] 2009), the Oedipus complex is a historically produced social symptom that captures desire in neurotic and familial, capitalist, and Christian forms. From this perspective, narcissism is not a primordial condition, which precedes the Oedipus complex phase, but is its consequence and effect, reversing the logic of human development postulated by Psychoanalysis. The aim here is to carry on with Deleuze and Guattari’s criticisms of Psychoanalysis, approaching narcissism as a phenomenon manufactured by this same civilization that aims to combat it. If in Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari demonstrate that the Oedipus complex is not a natural and universal path to the formations of the unconscious, but is produced by the civilized capitalist machine, Narcissus is now placed in the spotlight, unfolding the narratives of psychoanalytic theory about a supposed anti-social human nature.

Indigenous Metaphysics and Freudian Metapsychology

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This article resorts to some concepts formulated by the anthropologist Viveiros de Castro on indigenous metaphysics: perspectivism, multinaturalism, animism, cannibal otherness, and the analysis of the xapiri and shamanic work, implied by the Yanomami shaman and author of The Falling Sky, to expand the understanding of Freudian metapsychology: the myth of parricide and its melancholic model, the images of movement (formulated in the Project for a Scientific Psychology) and the animistic method of knowing the unconscious.

‘Bisexuality’ in the Origins of Psychoanalysis

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Many authors have examined texts by Freud that belong to the “prehistory” of psychoanalysis. They deal with anatomy, physiology and neuropathology and date from the period from 1876 to 1886. In this article we examine some of these texts and point to some consequences of the study of this beginning of Freudian psychoanalytic thought.

Pornography as a Logical and Psychoanalytic Issue

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The topic of pornography raises many philosophical, political, moral, legal, and psychoanalytic questions. The latter addresses the issues of sex, pleasure, and domination, and consequently the real of the body. Pleasure and jouissance, valued by Lacanian psychoanalysis, have, in the word, in the structure and in the movement of the four discourses (of the master, the university, the hysteric, and the analyst), plus the discourse of the capitalist, as well as in the mathemes of sexuation, a possibility of circumventing the void left by the jouissance (as evidenced in pornography). It is through language that a possibility arises for the theme to be read and the subjects 'listened to', following the psychoanalytic norm of floating attention, in the analysis of social and sexual relationships.

Death Drive, Repetition Compulsion, and Primary Masochism

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This article takes up the 1920 Freudian text, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, to think about how psychic life is described in terms of drive imbrication or the connection between libido and the death drive and to suggest that the compulsion to repeat pain and displeasure can be thought of as an attempt to reestablish the primary masochism, which for some reason would have failed.

Lacan, Nietzsche, and the Problem of a Supposed Decentered Subject from Psychoanalysis

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The objective of this article is to compare some aspects of Friederich Nietzsche’s and Jacques Lacan’s conceptions of the subject. The text proceeds from the observation that in both Nietzsche and Lacan, human language, its function, and its field are considered from a primary and founding perspective of the world, that is, poetic, even though such proximity to this point of view hides some differences and tensions, which we will also try to identify. Such contrasts occur especially with regard to the greater breadth and radicality in the scope of Nietzsche’s critical reflection on the problematic nature of the characterization of the unity of the Self, even though Lacan’s decentered subject seems to follow in the same direction.

From Element to Structure

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The aim of this article is to discuss the changes in the conception of language in Jacques Lacan’s teaching based on the transformation of its minimum element, the signifier. We will begin by reconstructing the first definition of the signifier that we find in the Seminar of the 1950s with anthropological-linguistic structuralism, approaching its transformation at the beginning of the 1960s with the introduction of the unary trait. In this paper, we will try to extract each comprehension of language that follows or are derived from the different definitions of signifier. Doing so, we will indicate the solidarity between the element and the structure, that is, how the properties of one interfere in the consistency of the other and how, in the change operated by Lacan on the element, a modification is extracted in the structuring of language.

A Compulsion to Language in Psychoanalysis?

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Can Wittgenstein’s philosophical method illuminate our understanding of psychoanalysis? This article argues yes, by analyzing Lacan’s ‘Science and Truth’. Focusing on Lacan’s structuralist concept of the subject, shaped by language and desire, the article highlights how a Wittgensteinian lens offers insights for a global assessment of what we do by applying psychoanalytic concepts.

Is Attachment a Psychoanalytical Theory?

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Attachment theory, postulated by John Bowlby in collaboration with psychologists Mary Ainsworth and Harry Harlow, has been the subject of much discussion about its nature. The author considers it a psychoanalytical theory, but his peers in psychoanalysis at the time rejected this idea and offered criticism of his concepts, suggesting that they were not in alignment with the principles of psychoanalysis. At the same time, collaborators Mary Ainsworth and Harry Harlow have repeatedly questioned the necessity of Bowlby’s choice of psychoanalysis as a basis for attachment theory, suggesting that it may not be the most appropriate approach. Lately, attachment theory has been used in many psychology courses and articles, without so much as a single mention to its psychoanalytical nature. This article presents a research proposal for an investigation of the nature of attachment theory on a conceptual level. It poses the question of whether the concepts used as a basis for attachment theory are consistent with psychoanalysis.

The Psychological Motivations of Nazism and Its Effect on the Superego According to Judith Kestenberg

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Judith Kestenberg conducted extensive research into child victims of Nazi persecution. She sought not only to understand the psychological effects of the traumatic experiences and persecution experienced by those children but also to understand the psychological processes behind Nazi ideology and behavior. The objective of this article is to present some of her hypotheses about how Nazi ideology acted on both the victims’ and the Germans’ superegos, as well as to address her conception of the psychological motivations for Nazism. The author claims that Nazism managed to invade the superegos of both Germans and some of the victims, which meant that, in the case of the latter, the persecution continued, even after the end of the Nazi regime. She also states that the children of Nazis were also victims of this regime, whose ultimate motivation would be the Germans’ impulse to kill their own children.

Carl Müller-Braunschweig’s Contributions to the Philosophical Reception of Psychoanalysis in Germany in the 1920s

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This article explores Carl Müller-Braunschweig’s contributions to the interface between psychoanalysis and philosophy in 1920s Germany. We focus on one of his works, presented in 1924 at the V International Congress of Philosophy. We aim to introduce the ideas of an author little frequented by the specialized literature, especially his epistemological contributions and his place in the history of the philosophical reception of psychoanalysis, hoping to foster new and more in-depth research on the topic. As a psychoanalyst and neo-Kantian philosopher, Müller-Braunschweig sought to frame psychoanalysis within the rigors of empirical science, proposing a dialogue between psychoanalysis and philosophy along the same lines as that which existed at the time between certain natural sciences, such as physics and chemistry, and philosophy. The article problematizes the reception of his ideas and how he would have influenced subsequent philosophical and psychoanalytic debates, establishing some markers from which psychoanalysis would interact with philosophy subsequently.

Thinking Philosophically about Psychoanalysis

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The article intends to present the Brazilian philosophical reception of psychoanalysis as an illustrative case of what it means to think philosophically about psychoanalysis. Therefore, 1) it contextualizes the proposal and results of the X CIFIP – International Congress of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, held in November 2023 by the Philosophy and Psychoanalysis Working Group of ANPOF (National Association of Postgraduate Studies in Philosophy), 2) it answers the question where is the philosophy of psychoanalysis going?, synthetically presenting the original contribution of the Brazilian philosophical reception of psychoanalysis through the thought of Luiz Roberto Monzani (1946-2021). The conclusion is dual: 1) the proposal and results of the X CIFIP opened a horizon of work with enormous local and international potential, which can generate significant advances in the field of the philosophy of psychoanalysis in Brazil, and 2) the contribution of Brazilian philosophical reception of psychoanalysis, mediated by Monzani’s thought, is original compared to other philosophical traditions because it points to a break with the ‘interpretive epistemological model’ of the traditional reception, creating a new method of philosophical reception.

Driven Again?

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This paper aims to reconstruct elements of the current debate on the incorporation of psychoanalysis into Critical Theory, contrasting two of its main models: the model of self-reflection, proposed by Jürgen Habermas in Knowledge and Human Interests (1968)—and which is reflected in recent developments by Axel Honneth—and the attempt to reintegrate drive theory according to a Kleinian model, developed by Amy Allen. Based on this interlocution, the aim is to investigate the reasons that led Habermas to distance himself from Freud's drive theory, discussing its possible consequences, and then to revisit Allen's argument regarding which psychoanalytic version would better serve the objectives of Critical Theory in order to raise some questions about it.

Death Drive and Critical Theory

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Much has been said about death drive in Critical Theory. This concept was mainly read as an aggressive and/or destructive drive. As a consequence, there are two ways of finding death drive in critical theories: the classic mode represented by Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and, more recently, Whitebook, in which death drive is seen as a factor that gives psychoanalysis its negativity face; or a way that leads to the despise of the nuclear function of death drive in psychoanalytic theory in name of normativity, as it happens in Fromm and Honneth. What I propose here is, from a comparison of both Freud’s texts, “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through” (1914) and “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920), to present a new way of appropriating the concept of death drive to produce a current critical theory. This means not considering the Wiederholungszwang as simply an imperative for coercion, but also a repetition compulsion. By proposing this reading of death drive (as suggested by Freud in 1920), I believe it is possible to amplify the range of possible connections between psychoanalysis and Critical Theory, keeping the negativity side, but without losing its normativity.

Critical Theory and Psychoanalysis in Leo Löwenthal

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This article explores the role of the psychoanalytic component in Leo Lowenthal's analysis of domination, in order to understand the architecture of the subject that disintegrates and is configured within the capitalist organization of existence, whose contemporary deployments show not only the validity of Löwenthal's approaches, as a Frankfurtian thinker, but also the imperative need, from a Latin American perspective, to establish constructive links with his legacy.

The Critic and the Cure

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This article aims to analyze Hannah Arendt's critique of psychoanalysis in her short essay published in 1943, We refugees, in which, in the midst of her reflections on the changing social situations of Jewish refugees from the Second World War. Arendt describes psychoanalysis as an outmoded practice of a tedious elite who tell “ghost stories” based on minor events from their childhoods, which, in her perception, becomes unnecessary after the frightening events witnessed during the war. This critique in itself could already serve as an object of detailed analysis, nevertheless it becomes particularly interesting when, in the following paragraphs, Arendt proceeds to examine the suicides committed by Jewish refugees, who are supposed to be safe from the dangers of war in the countries where they are welcomed, basing her investigations on possible internal factors. This approach is very similar to Sigmund Freud's so-called social theory, describing a series of symptoms which, although they only affect individuals, have a social origin, that is, they are due to historical moments or events that individuals all together experience. Arendt discusses her suspicion of the optimism with which many Jews faced the loss of their mother tongue, the sense of feeling like victims who had to be saved and the necessity of adapting to the new habits of their new countries' cultures – whereas all of these themes are the subject of psychoanalytic studies. Lastly, the author describes an individual who would illustrate her concerns about Jewish optimism and the constant pursuit of being part of the national culture and identity: Mr. Cohn, who would become one of the most famous characters in Arendtian thought, which, in this sense, can also be compared to a clinical case, presented in psychoanalytic writing to illustrate the development of symptoms and the analysis. Despite ironizing psychoanalytic practice, the following pages will analyse whether it is possible to relate Arendt's investigation into the suicides of Jewish refugees and the fragile state in which refugees find themselves in the countries that receive them to the psychoanalytic methods criticized by the author in the same essay.

Intercorporeality and the Transference Phenomenon

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This article aims to propose elements to understand the role of corporeality in the transference phenomenon based on the articulation between psychoanalytic listening and two ideas from Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy: the concepts of body schema and intercorporeality. The transference relationship is revisited through the lens of Merleau-Ponty’s thesis that our relationships with others are based on a corporeal, unconscious, and libidinal infrastructure. We hope to present a possible reading and complementation tool to elucidate the intercorporeal substrate present in the transference neurosis revealed by Freud.

The Border of the Other

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In this article, it is stated that both in traditional clinical practice and as a methodological strategy in social research, the ultimate ambition of Lacanian psychoanalysis is to listen to the subject, suspending any ontological presuppositions prior to the very diction in which they are enunciated. The subject is strictly specified as supposed and coextensive with the utterance. Conceiving him as attached to a psychic duo modeled on anthropomorphic anatomical-physiological projections is a particular case and an ethnocentric and historically dated reduction of a more general structure, thus not restricted to such specifications.

Between Bodies

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Proceeding from initial considerations about the importance of symptom formation for Psychoanalysis, in addition to its result as an incarnation of words in bodies, and a special focus on the symptoms of conversion hysteria, we propose some elements of analysis to observe a clinical case analyzed by Merleau-Ponty in Phenomenology of Perception. The significant incidence does not fail to mark the hysterical woman’s body, a mark that refers to the non-existence of a sexual relationship considered by the patient, not impossible, but forbidden by the maternal Other. This relationship with her loving partners – mother and boyfriend – leads her to devastation. In this way, because she believes in the existence of sexual relationships and the existence of an Absolute Other, death, she incarnates her symptom.

Books Received / Livros recebidos (2024)

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Books Received / Livros recebidos

Contents / Sumário

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Contents / Sumário