The Truth About Freud's Technique. Michael Guy Thompson
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truth, diluted further by the limitations imposed by empirical verification. By articulating his search for truth within the confines of observable data, Freud’s hopes for establishing the foundations for an epistemology of the unconscious—which is intrinsically unobservable—became increasingly remote. This is why there is no “philosophy of truth” in Freud’s body of work—even if psychoanalysis is concerned with no other question. The unconscious, by definition, can’t possibly be observed. It can only be thought. If psychoanalysis is going to be used to explore experience, this exploration needs to answer the most fundamental questions about human knowledge—its truths and its reality. If Freud’s vocabulary obscures this question, how can we justify the inherently philosophical interrogation his clinical work introduced? If a psychoanalytical conception of truth was never finally articulated by its founder—who nonetheless devoted his life to this task—where might we find one?
Why not turn to philosophy itself? And what better philosopher to ask than the de facto founder of existential philosophy, Martin Heidegger? Why Heidegger? After all, we know the contempt that so many analysts feel toward existential philosophy generally and against Heidegger, the acknowledged Nazi collaborator, specifically.1 When we talk about a road less traveled—the one between psychoanalysis and existentialism, between Freud and Heidegger—we know the obstacles must be real, even passionate. But there is more to the rift between psychoanalysts and Heidegger than “the Nazi question.” Even if Heidegger is sometimes accused of anti-semitism—whether jusdy or not—or if his betrayal of his former teacher, Husserl—a Jew—was politically motivated or personal enmity, there is more to these accusations than personalities or politics. Heidegger’s thought is assumed to be fundamentally opposed to any psychology that is founded on the notion of an “unconscious.” This perception, I believe, is wrong. Existential thought has always entertained the dimension of the latent and concealed, that place from which consciousness belatedly appears under the guise of “symptomatic” expression. The problem we all face, philosophers and psychoanalysts alike, is determining the nature of this latency and a method by which it may be understood. Once this misunderstanding about existential philosophy has been corrected, we can travel that road from Freud to Heidegger and see what is there.
1. Space doesn’t permit me to go into Heidegger’s relationship with National Socialism, prior to and during World War II. A heated controversy has recentiy ensued over the extent of Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazis and why (Farias 1989; Rockmore and Margolis 1992; Wolin 1991). For a balanced view of this controversy, which examines the motives surrounding Heidegger’s complicated identification with German culture, see Zimmerman (1981, 169–97).
What of those who preceded us? Some who went from psychoanalysis to Heidegger never came back (Laing 1961; May 1958; Boss 1963). Others took what they could and returned, faithful to their analytic identity (Loewald 1980; Leavy 1988; Rycroft 1966). Loewald, who studied with Heidegger personally, candidly acknowledged his debt to his former teacher (1980, viii-ix) and Leavy, in a recent article (1989), explored Heidegger’s influence on Loewald’s thinking. Leavy (1980, 1988) has also discussed his own debt to Heidegger’s thought. That influence is as apparent in Leavy’s compelling style as it is in his clinical theories. On the other hand, R. D. Laing and Rollo May, both of whom trained as psychoanalysts, turned away from and abandoned their principal identities as psychoanalysts (though not entirely) in order to pursue more freely an Heideggerian and existentialist path—a path, nonetheless, significandy indebted to Freud. The British analyst Charles Rycroft—who was, coincidentally, Laing’s training analyst—was also influenced by existentialism, yet chose to stay in the mainstream of psychoanalysis. Still, Rycroft eventually resigned from the British Psychoanalytic Society, feeling that his attempts to broaden analytic dogma never made an impression (Rycroft 1985, 198–206).
Obviously, there were other analysts interested in and indebted to existential philosophy—Ludwig Binswanger (1963), Alfred Adler (Van Dusen 1959), Paul Federn (1952), Angelo Hesnard (1960), Jacques Lacan (1977), Erich Fromm (Burston 1991)—and many psychiatrists who were interested in both—Paul Schilder (1935), Viktor Frankl (1968), Erwin Straus (1966), Henri Ey (1978), David Cooper (Laing and Cooper 1964), Ludwig Lefebre (1957). All of them owe a debt to Heidegger in important ways, and all of them discovered that the respective thought of Heidegger and Freud was mutually beneficial. None, however, to my knowledge, has explored their respective views on truth and reality in the context of analytic technique. Perhaps Heidegger’s conception of truth might open the way to a reappraisal of this question and help us, in turn, learn something about the psychoanalyst’s experience of reality, its truth, and the nature of his endeavor.
6 Heidegger’s Conception of Truth
Heidegger’s concept of truth is alluded to throughout his writings, but the ones that occasion his most extensive arguments are his classic, Being and Time (1962, 225–73), and a shorter essay, “On the Essence of Truth” (1977a, 113–42). The question of truth isn’t merely a preliminary to Heidegger’s philosophy; this question is his philosophy in its entirety. His approach to this question startled and even dismayed many members of the European academic community. With the publication of Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) in 1927, Heidegger abandoned the conventional approach to this question that had been preoccupied with scientific applications. Also unsettling for many was the literary manner in which Heidegger chose to write his magnum opus. It was almost impossible to decipher. Heidegger believed that contemporary European society had lost its way and had strayed from its essential nature. He blamed this to some extent on the direction science had taken, a direction obsessed with technology and its potential for “protecting” mankind from the fears inherent in everyday living. To suggest that Freud was captivated by this “scientific spirit” may be unfair, but we can assume he didn’t share Heidegger’s skepticism about the course science was taking. Of course, the problem with modern culture—a problem many would argue is even more evident today—wasn’t created by contemporary society. Heidegger argued that its seeds were sown in ancient Greece. Heidegger did believe, though, that the problem had gotten out of hand with the technological revolution and that we’re now in danger of completely forgetting what our nature really is. Our attitude about truth, Heidegger insisted, is at the heart of man’s nature, which we’ve apparently repressed.
What is this nature? What do we think truth is? The conventional attitude about truth is that if is something that is so. If I were to say, “I am truly enjoying this moment,” I would mean that I am actually enjoying myself, that I’m accurately describing my feelings. In other words, it’s my statement that is true, because my statement conforms to how I feel. But we also talk about truth as some thing as well as a statement about that thing. For example, it’s possible to distinguish between true gold and false gold. True gold, actual gold, is genuine. It really is gold. It’s real gold. Does that mean that false gold isn’t real? After all, it really is something. It’s something or other, though it may not be gold. I don’t hallucinate false gold. It—whatever “it” is—actually exists. So wouldn’t it be true to say that although it’s false, it’s still real? This is why something can be actual yet false. Whatever it is that’s true about real gold can’t be demonstrated by its actuality. So what is it that we mean when we say something is genuine or true? Genuine gold is gold that is in accord with, that corresponds with, what we understand as gold. False gold is something, but it isn’t the thing that we know as gold. We’re still talking about a statement that concerns gold, not gold itself. The statement, “this is gold,” is true or false. So, the statement is either in accord with this thing, or it isn’t. Thus, you can’t reduce the genuineness of something to the thing that it is; you can’t omit the statement or proposition that something is what it is. In a psychoanalytic session, patients are declaring that something is true every time they say something. But how do we know that what they say is really so? Isn’t this principally what the psychoanalyst is trying to determine? According to Heidegger,
The true, whether it be a matter or a proposition, is what accords. . . . Being true and truth here signify accord, and that in a double sense: on the one hand, the consonance of a matter with what is supposed in advance regarding it and, on the other hand, the accordance of what is meant in the statement with the matter. . . . This can be taken to mean: truth