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SEXUATED TOPOLOGY AND THE
SUSPENSION OF MEANING

A NON-HERMENEUTICAL PHENOMENOLOGICAL
APPROACH TO TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

WILLIAM J. URBAN

CHAPTER 5

PSYCHOANALYSIS

[E]very dream has a meaning, though a hidden one.

[E]very dream reveals itself as a psychical structure which has a meaning.

There is at least one spot in every dream at which it is unplumbable – a navel, as it were, that is its point of contact with the unknown.457

In broad terms the argument of the previous chapter regarding meaning goes beyond the position taken by any one of the earlier chapters alone. Moreover, from the perspective of aesthetic theory and the dimension it opens up, the first two chapters on hermeneutics and phenomenology can be seen as paired in their concern with the meaningful content of texts of which the third chapter of (post)structuralism counters against with its own concern for the meaningless mechanistic aspects of the formal language of texts. Aesthetic theory, which widens the discussion of meaning to include notions of sense and nonsense, overcomes the simple opposition of form and content through a general investigative practice which seeks to delimit those dimensions it suspects is the cause of disturbances in the semantic field. By using the terminology of Kant – the founding father of modern aesthetic theory – it was seen how the most consequential of contemporary aesthetic thought places such disturbances with the collapse of the formal schematic framework into a paradoxical sublime object found disclosed within the content-matter of aesthetic works. However, such a nonsensical object, which embodies the impossible conjunction of form and content remains at best implicit in aesthetic theory. Its explicit articulation is first made with psychoanalysis, which thereby accomplishes its theorization in general, not just in art.

This final chapter on psychoanalysis is a fitting way to conclude Part I not so much because it goes further than any of the foregoing discussions but because it can be seen as simultaneously embodying all of them. Indeed psychoanalysis should be deemed privileged in that the entire historical trajectory traced out in the previous four chapters is reflected in its discipline at the theoretical and methodological level. This can be seen in many of the great works of psychoanalysis. Consider the three quotations above, all taken from Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). If one holds the second quotation to be the key to psychoanalysis, its methodological requirements would necessitate a turn away from the hermeneutical phenomenological concerns for the deep meaning of the dream text called for by adhering to the first quotation, to examine instead the structural mechanics of the dream-work. Yet to identify the nonsensical 'navel' requires working through both of these two methodological approaches only to ultimately abandon a strict adherence to either of them. As this third quotation refers to the most radical dimension psychoanalysis has to offer in terms of a theory of meaning, we can begin to see how psychoanalytic theory might prove foundational for much of what the scholarly fields hitherto discussed have to offer. To this end Chapter 5 discusses the thought of Freud and Lacan and some significant contributions made to their work with an eye towards understanding how their field opened up a dimension which allows for radically suspending meaning from its nonsensical singular point.

Section 5.1 examines two texts from the founding father of psychoanalysis as well as texts from two of his early dissenters. Section 5.2 assesses three works from the 1960s–80s which are critical of both Freud and Lacan. Section 5.3 approaches major texts by Lacan which, like those of Freud, can often be read as encompassing more than just one methodology. This is followed by a discussion of some of his adherents who highlight and expand on his original écrits [writings] and seminar material.

5.1 Classical Psychoanalysis

Dreams have meaning. This is a point Freud reiterates often and well before he formally takes up his famous thesis that all dreams are fulfillments of wishes in his The Interpretation of Dreams. One tends to forget that in 1900 the demonstration of this claim was a major break from previous thinking. Just as today the well-educated more often than not purport dreams to be absurd, so too the predominant view of Freud's time held dreams to be unworthy of any serious study. He does nevertheless find enough material for a significant scientific literature review dealing with the phenomenon of dreams at the beginning of this text. But the chapter which immediately follows announces a methodology to be followed which is not directly concerned with solving the problems raised in his review. For his primary concern is to treat the dream in an unheard of way: as a text. As he writes,'[t]he title that I have chosen for my work makes plain which of the traditional approaches to the problem of dreams I am inclined to follow. The aim which I have set before myself is to show that dreams are capable of being interpreted... [and] "interpreting" a dream implies assigning a "meaning" to it.'458 The traditional approach referred to is of course hermeneutical, and here is the first level at which one can read Freud. Like any other text, the dream has a hidden (or just as often, a 'secret' or 'concealed') meaning and is thus in need of interpretation to extract it. This level has been well appropriated by the academic and non-psychoanalytic community which accordingly turns to, for instance, Freud's great interpretations of Hamlet and Oedipus Rex as two different literary manifestations of the universal scandal of man, viz., his wish for father to be dead so as to clear a path for union with mother.459

It is at this level that many criticize Freud for his supposed intention to develop universal standards. Besides the Oedipus complex, other offending overreaches might include his interpretations in the fifth chapter of typical dreams or in the following chapter, which seems to set the meaning of a dream's symbolic imagery once and for all. However, what such criticisms overlook is how Freud always takes the subject's individual appropriation of a symbol that is culturally handed down to him. Indeed Freud 'should like to utter an express warning against over-estimating the importance of symbols in dreaminterpretation, against restricting the work of translating dreams merely to translating symbols and against abandoning the technique of making use of the dreamer's associations.'460 Symbolic interpretation is merely an auxiliary method to the primary method of following the chain of associations the dreamer himself makes upon waking and speaking of the dream. Here is an aspect of the second 'structuralist' level at which Freud can be read. For Freud admonishes us not to be seduced by the imagery of the manifest content of the dream but rather turn instead to its latent dream-thoughts if the disentanglement of its meaning is desired. To make this clear, he famously likens the dream to a rebus whose solution is only to be found by submitting its pictorial values to an analysis which takes place at the signifier level. He tells us quite directly to set aside relations of the whole composition and its parts to 'try to replace each separate element by a syllable or word that can be represented by that element in some way or other.'461 The picture-puzzle will ultimately be deemed worthless if one treats it only as a pictorial composition. Anticipating discussion below, it might be countered that it is precisely the absurdity of dream images which triggers the questioning upon waking of what the dream means. However, a structuralist reading of Freud would point out that if one remains at this level of imaginary meaning, one is unable to approach the meaningless structural mechanism which generates the dream's phenomenal meaning-effect. Again a concern for meaning and structure do not stand on the same level. While the meaning-effect is easily accomplished by a simple pause in the analysis of the chain of signifiers, it takes considerable effort to move to that analysis from the level of meaning. Indeed '[i]t cannot be denied that to interpret and report one's dreams demands a high degree of self-discipline'462 and he does lament across these pages how his discoveries are not widely accepted because so few actually attempt to analyze dreams as he advises. It is also his rigorous attention to this structural level of signification that can generally account for Freud's aspirations for scientificity.463 Moreover, written during an intellectual climate that sees Dilthey attempt to model the human sciences on the natural sciences, The Interpretation of Dreams is a landmark book which also aspires to place the new discipline of psychoanalysis on a firm scientific foundation, much like the new disciplines of phenomenology and structuralism which also first arise during this time.

In an important footnote added a quarter of a century after the book's initial publication, Freud explains that the essence of dreams is not so much found in the latent dream-thoughts in distinction from the dream imagery of its manifest content; rather, the key distinction is between the former and the dream-work, which creates that particular form of thinking known as the dream.464 What is at stake is how the dream-work strives to transform potentially troubling latent thoughts into innocuous manifest content so that the dreamer will not awake. It is here the larger dimension of Freud's structuralism reveals itself which, one should add, imperceptibly moves into a focused concern for a nonsensical object. What thereby opens up is a possible third level on which one can read Freud. Two of the four factors composing the mechanics of the dream-work's process of forming dreams are well-known. While condensation compresses the wealth of latent thoughts into the manifest content of dreams which are quite slight by comparison, displacement transforms latent thought elements of high psychical value into manifest content with lower, more acceptable intensities.465 Along with considerations for representability and the secondary revision the dream undergoes by the awakened dreamer himself when he articulates it, a dream is formed whose overall status is effectively a distorted fulfillment of a wish. It follows that its hidden meaning can be revealed by working back through the transformation process of the dream-work. However, Freud notes how

'[t]here is often a passage in even the most thoroughly interpreted dream which has to be left obscure; this is because we become aware during the work of interpretation that at that point there is a tangle of dream-thoughts which cannot be unravelled and which moreover adds nothing to our knowledge of the content of the dream. This is the dream's navel, the spot where it reaches down into the unknown. The dream-thoughts to which we are led by interpretation cannot, from the nature of things, have any definite endings; they are bound to branch out in every direction into the intricate network of our world of thought. It is at some point where this meshwork is particularly close that the dream-wish grows up, like a mushroom out of its mycelium.'466

Given the discussion from Section 4.2 above, the logic Freud is using should look familiar. All the elements of the dream can be accounted for by disentangling the meshwork of the latent dream-thoughts schematized by the dream-work. Yet an exceptional element nevertheless remains. Despite being disclosed by the dream-work, one cannot fully account for this most obscure and distorted element by tracing it back to an associated latent dream-thought. Here is why Freud explicitly expresses this element as a halting point to epistemological concerns, for its status is rather ontological. Its objective status comes precisely from paradoxically embodying the very dream-work which disclosed it.467 Without such an object analysis would be interminable, as he states elsewhere, and there would be no accounting for why the latent dream-thoughts do not immediately collapse onto the manifest content of dreams. Using aesthetic terminology, what Freud effectively identifies with the navel is the sublime object of the dream such that if one extracts it, the entire dream and its meaningful content unravel.

Speaking of which, Freud does feel 'impelled to investigate the subject of aesthetics' on at least one occasion, viz., in his essay "The 'Uncanny'" (1919).468 We are told that this is so because the literature of aesthetics in his time has neglected to account for a particular experience, and this experience, we hasten to add, has something to do with encountering the paradoxical sublime object. The first part of the essay compares and contrasts entries of the term uncanny [unheimlich, literally 'unhomely'] across different dictionaries to demonstrate how its meaning is thoroughly ambivalent and ultimately coincides with its opposite, heimlich [homely, familiar]. The second part of the essay is more empirical, examining individual experiences of the uncanny in order to extract out the common theoretical thread. Phenomena like encountering one's 'double' or the simple reoccurrence of the same thing leads Freud to conclude that the factor of repetition is the source of uncanny feeling. For instance, 'if we come across the number 62 several times in a single day, or if we begin to notice that everything which has a number...invariably has the same one... [w]e do feel this to be uncanny. And unless a man is utterly hardened and proof against the lure of superstition, he will be tempted to ascribe a secret meaning to this obstinate recurrence of a number.'469 The subjective gesture which assigns the possibility of a deep meaning to reoccurrence is of course logically secondary to the thoroughly contingent link between the individual occurrences. But the more critical issue is to identify exactly why this experience is uncanny. Freud explains that such a scenario reminds us of that 'compulsion to repeat' embedded in the unconscious, which is powerful enough to overrule the pleasure principle. This implies that the unpleasure which attends this compulsion stands in contrast to the pleasure of divining a hidden meaning in the empirical reoccurrence, making the total experience one of 'pained pleasure' or what the French might call jouissance [enjoyment]. For his part Freud provides accounts of how such experiences may lead the subject to narcissistically overvalue his own mental processes (which incidentally provides an explanation for primitive beliefs and superstition). In the end Freud's hypothesis is that the uncanny is 'something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light' or alternatively, is 'something which is secretly familiar, which has undergone repression and then returned from it.'470 Using examples from literature, the essay concludes by demonstrating that while everything that is uncanny fulfils this condition, not everything that fulfils this condition is for that reason uncanny. For instance, the world of Hamlet with its ghostly returns of the dead is simply too imaginary to effect an uncanny feeling in its reader. Yet if the writer creates a setting consistent with material reality and the reader strongly sides with the character that has the uncanny experience in the storyline, this will provoke a similar experience in the reader. Freud maintains that in such literature more opportunities are created for the uncanny experience than are possible in real life.

Jung agrees with Freud on at least two counts. In the opening paragraphs of his essay "Dream Analysis in Its Practical Application" (1931)471 he undeniably reaffirms not only Freud's discovery of the existence of the unconscious but also the fact that dreams are meaningful. Yet from this point on differences with Freud abound, and at very basic levels. For instance, '[w]hen Freud speaks of the "dream-façade," he is really speaking, not of the dream itself, but of its obscurity, and in so doing is projecting upon the dream his own lack of understanding.'472 Dreams are distorted and thus unintelligible not because of the dream-work but because we cannot properly read them. Contrary to Freud there is no need to seek underlying causal factors of a patient's neurosis in dreams, for dreams make rational, even factual, statements about the dreamer and do so at the level of its imagery. Free association and subsequent analysis at the signifier level will avail us nothing. According to Jung, the associations should instead proceed from the dream images themselves which are then interpreted in order to provide the proper context with which to read the objective state of the patient as conveyed by the dream. As per the title of his essay, dream analysis should have its practical application. Moreover, beyond their practicality, the facts conveyed by dreams are deemed to have predictive qualities for the dreamer. Already it should be clear that in terms of the three levels on which to read Freud discussed above, Jung does not move past the first with its predominate hermeneutical concerns. Essentially the reason for this lies with his belief that the unconscious is not the 'dangerous monster' Freud has made it out to be but is rather innocuous in its desire to compensate for the deficiencies of conscious thought.473 In Jung's view, the conscious and the unconscious work together in a reciprocal fashion, the former providing the context for the unconsciously generated images of the dream which stand much closer to the primitive. The psychoanalyst's job is to assimilate unconscious contents with the conscious context so as to reharmonize the subject with nature and thereby 'lead the patient to the rediscovery of the law of his own being.'474 Despite his insistence that the content of relatively fixed symbols is actually indefinite as opposed to Freud's (erroneously attributed) own use of hard and fast sexual symbols, when it comes to questions surrounding the meaning of dreams it is in fact the Jungian approach which appears far less flexible than the original multi-leveled methodology of the founding father himself.

The flattening out of Freudian psychoanalysis is even more discernible with Kris, a co-founder of psychoanalytic ego psychology. His essay "Ego Psychology and Interpretation in Psychoanalytic Therapy" (1948)475 bears the distinct mark of his early efforts to find rationale for what has become one of the most successful breaks from Freud. It effectively continues to provide the theoretical foundation for much of today's practice of psychiatry and psychotherapy in distinction to psychoanalysis proper. From the opening pages of this essay the emphasis is decidedly on practice and technique, which provides a justification for the new approach to interpretation in two ways. First he reasons that his new approach has historically emerged due to the long interaction between clinical observations and the development of psychoanalytic technique and theory. Second, since Freud himself is argued to have laid down the principles of ego psychology, which champions technique over abstract formulations, there is also a theoretical rationale for focusing on technique. Through case studies Kris endeavors to illustrate how his approach addresses a central problem of technique, which 'consists in establishing the best way of communicating the full set of meanings to the patient.'476 Such a statement is indicative of the restriction made by ego psychology to exclusively analyze and attempt to break through only the 'surface' defense mechanisms of the patient. Certainly a 'deeper' analysis of the patient's id, which might explore infantile fantasies is also made by ego psychology, but its claim is that whatever meaning that analysis holds will be lost to the patient if his ego continues to inhibit its full acceptance. The retreat from the richness of Freudian psychoanalysis becomes even clearer in the final pages of his essay, where the benefits of a methodology focused on the interaction between conscious 'planning' and preconscious 'intuition' to the exclusion of the unconscious are extolled.477 Despite the contention by Kris that all advances in psychoanalysis come about by such interactions, these advances are effectively little more than a historical series of codified techniques which only attend to the patient's conscious demand to appropriate meaning. Much like Jung, consideration for the meaningless chain of signifiers is set aside as well as the possibility of a nonsensical suspension point to that chain and the meaning it carries in its network of differences.

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