On Resistances to Psychoanalysis
- 1. 1 CLINICAL NOTES SERIES (November 2016) ON RESISTANCES TO PSYCHANALYSIS Sigmund Freud (1925, 1950, 1961). ‘The Resistances to Psychoanalysis,’ translated by James Strachey, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 19 (London: The Hogarth Press), pp. 212-224. INTRODUCTION These clinical notes describe the forms of resistance to psychoanalysis that Sigmund Freud lists in his paper of 1925. Resistance can either be resistance within the clinical analysis on the part of the patient or it can be resistance to the discourse of psychoanalysis itself. Freud deals with both forms of resistance in this paper. Resistance within analysis occurs whenever the patient’s free associations encounter the primordial repressed or its secondary derivatives.1 The greater the significance of these derivatives, the more will be the levels of resistance to analysis on the part of the patient. Resistance can also take the form of a negative therapeutic reaction or a positive therapeutic reaction. In other words, these clinical reactions on the part of the patient are ways to cut short the treatment; they are disguised forms of resistance on the couch.2 There is a considerable clinical literature on the resistance offered by 1 See, for instance, Charles Rycroft (1995).‘Resistance,’ A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin Books), p. 158. 2 See also Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (1973,1988). ‘Resistance,’ The Language of Psychoanalysis, translated Donald Nicholson-Smith, introduction by Daniel Lagache (London: Karnac Books), pp. 394-397. For a Lacanian account, see Dylan Evans (1997). ‘Resistance,’ An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge), pp. 166-167.
- 2. 2 the patient within different traditions of psychoanalysis.3 This resistance can also be related to the differences between the positive and negative forms of the clinical transference; and the differences between the patient’s transference and the analyst’s counter-transference.4 Freud’s focus however is on resistance to psychoanalysis itself as a clinical discourse. While this resistance will seem dated within the history of psychoanalysis, it is important to know how these forms of resistance relate to each other since it will affect the patient’s ability to make progress in his treatment. So, for instance, obsessional neurotics will first resist within the treatment; and subsequently subject the clinical model of analysis itself to a theoretical critique from the couch. It is therefore important for both theorists and practitioners to know the main points that Freud makes in this paper. It is also important to know that contemporary theorists differentiate between resistance to psychoanalysis and the resistance that is associated with psychoanalysis itself as a discourse in critical theory.5 SOURCES OF RESISTANCE Freud argues that the main source of resistance to analysis is that new innovations in science require a considerable ‘expenditure of psychic energy’ before they are widely accepted. While humanity craves for the new in trivial matters, that is not always the case in the history of science. Resistance also stems from a false understanding of scientific method and scientific truth. It is not widely known that scientific theories are subject to constant revisions in the light of new experimental evidence. In the absence of relentless innovation, science will become just another form of religious orthodoxy. The history of science is constantly punctuated by resistance to all discoveries that have a paradigmatic significance.6 Resistance to psychoanalysis is related to the fact that it forces us to rethink the relationship between the conscious and 3 See, for instance, Franz Alexander(1931, 1961). ‘Psychoanalysis and Medicine,’ The Scope of Psychoanalysis 1921-1961: Selected Papers of Franz Alexander (New York: Basic Books), pp. 483- 500. 4 For an introduction to the early Freudian clinic, see Iago Galdston (1956, 1973). ‘Freud and Romantic Medicine,’ Freud: Modern Judgements (London: Macmillan),pp. 103-123; Louis Paul (1963). Psychoanalytic Clinical Interpretation (London: The Free Press of Glencoe); Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek (1973). The First Freudians (New York: Jason Aronson, Inc); and Paul Schimmel (2014). Sigmund Freud’s Discovery of Psychoanalysis: Conquistador and Thinker (London: Routledge). 5 See, for instance, Jacques Derrida (1998). Resistances of Psychoanalysis, translated by Peggy Kamuf et al, edited by Werner Hamcher and David E. Wellbery (Stanford: Stanford University Press). 6 A good instance of this is Steve Fuller (2000). Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). See also John Forrester (2007). ‘On Kuhn’s Case: Psychoanalysis and the Paradigm,’ Critical Inquiry, Summer, pp. 782-819.
- 3. 3 unconscious parts of the mind. That is because psychoanalysis points out that while ‘consciousness’ is an important attribute of the mind, it is not the only attribute. In fact, what we term ‘consciousness’ is only a small part of the human mind. An important aspect of Freudian meta-psychology is the attempt to describe the differences between the ‘topographic, the structural, and the dynamic’ theories of the psyche and relate ‘resistance’ to clinical work within these models. Jacques Lacan’s interpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis is also an attempt to undo the resistance within the psychoanalytic movement that led to the repression of the discovery of the unconscious.7 So while psychoanalysis began as a way of treating the neuroses, it became a full-fledged theory of the subject; it is therefore important to understand the role played by terms like ‘interiority’ and ‘subjectivity’ in the history of psychoanalysis.8 This expansion of the scope of analysis was necessitated by the fact that the aetiology of the neuroses was psycho-sexual; the neuroses did not have a demonstrable base in neurochemistry. There was no equivalent of the germ theory of disease in psychoanalysis. Since the deterministic approach to medicine was based on ‘anatomical, physical, and chemical factors,’ it took a while to appreciate the role played by psychogenic factors in the aetiology of the neuroses. THEORY OF THE SUBJECT In other words, analysts had to redefine the philosophical model of causation in order to make sense of the discourse of the patient. Furthermore, the reason that made it necessary to develop a general theory of the subject in analysis (which was not reducible to clinical phenomena) is related to the fact that the analytic symptom is a substitute for a formative trauma that is displaced (when the repressed returns) in everyday life. That is why, unlike clinical psychiatry, psychoanalysis has a lot at stake in getting into place a theory of the subject that can subsume both clinical and non-clinical phenomena.9 Freud argues that this aspect of his theory is anticipated in Plato’s theory of Eros in The Symposium.10 Or, to put it simply, the treatment of the neuroses is not a matter of neurochemical tests; it presupposes the availability of a theory of love, mind, and sexuality in the analytic clinic. That is why ‘psychosomatic impotence’ plays an important role in the Freudian psychology of love. It is when patients encounter this form of impotence that they realize that there are parts of the 7 Elisabeth Roudinesco (1997). Jacques Lacan, translated by Barbara Bray (Cambridge: Polity Press). 8 See Donald E. Hall (2004). Subjectivity (London:Routledge). 9 Jacalyn Duffin (2000), ‘Wrestling with Demons: History of Psychiatry,’ History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction (London:Macmillan), pp. 276-302. 10 See Plato (1999). The Symposium, translated by Christopher Gill (London: Penguin Books).
- 4. 4 mind that are way beyond their conscious control. The sexual life of the patient is not reducible to his volition since the unconscious mediates the expression of all forms of human sexuality. Differentiating systematically between sex and sexuality is important to appreciate what Freud had to teach his patients about their sex life in his theory of love and sublimation.11 Psychoanalysis however does not reduce all human behaviour to sexuality; that is because the psyche is ‘dualistic’ in its orientation. The subject’s libidinal life is split between affective investments in the ego and its objects and the forms of sublimation that this psychic dualism makes possible. The ego itself can be libidinised as an object of self-love in narcissistic subjects. Falling in love with an object necessarily involves a reduction of narcissism unless the subject is fixated on his ego and is not capable of anaclitic attachments. The Freudian theory of object choice is basically about coming down on the side of the object or the ego and in delineating the libidinal flows between the object and the ego. Freud’s critique of excessive sexual repression is actually in the service of sublimation rather than sexual expression as such.12 So, contrary to his popular image, Freud was not a libertine.13 The Freudian theory of infantile sexuality is an attempt to find these sources of traumas in childhood; and ascertain the vicissitudes to which the sexual instincts and their psychic representatives are subject to within the oedipal matrix. The resistances to psychoanalysis however cannot be wished way in the history of science because analytic theory bears a resemblance to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and Nicholas Copernicus’s theory of heliocentrism in astronomy. All these theories were subject to resistance because they dealt humankind with narcissistic blows. Darwin implies in his theory of evolution that human beings are not the products of divine creation but descended from the apes; Copernicus argues (albeit under the cover of mathematical speculation) that the sun and not the earth is the centre of the solar system. If these theorists had argued the exact opposite of these propositions they would not have had to face as much resistance as they did. These then are the sources and reasons for the ‘resistances to psychoanalysis’ in the history of science. SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN 11 See Bruce Fink (2014). ‘Freud and Lacan on Love: A Preliminary Exploration,’ Against Understanding: Cases and Commentary in a Lacanian Key, Vol. 2 (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 131-147. 12 Mary Ann Doane (2003). ‘Sublimation and the Psychoanalysis of the Aesthetic,’ Jacques Lacan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, edited by Slavoj Žižek (London and New York: Routledge), Vol. IV, pp. 127-146. 13 See, for instance, Herbert Marcuse (1970). Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia, translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shierry M. Weber (London: Penguin).