Fresh Brains: Jacques Lacan's Critique of Ernst Kris's Psychoanalytic Method in the Context of Kris's Theoretical Writings

Introduction

Jacques Lacan's attack on ego psychology became specifically identified with his polemics against Ernst Kris (1900-1957), a Viennese-born analyst of the ego-psychological tradition, who from 1940 until his death practiced in the United States. It was particularly Kris's 1951 Psychoanalytic Quarterly article, "Ego Psychology and Interpretation in Psychoanalytic Theory" (1951/1975) that kept irritating—and fascinating—Lacan. In that article, Lacan (1901-1981) came to find a paradigmatic example of ego-psychological treatment, an example instrumental in making his case against this most influential direction in psychoanalysis after the Second World War.

Lacan dedicated repeated time and reflection to Kris's case study, discussing it twice in his seminars (1953-1954, pp. 52-61; 1955-1956, pp. 73-88) and coming back to it twice again in his writings (1966, pp. 318-333, 489-542). Due to this strong interest in the case, as well as its exemplary nature—the discussion of which served to make Lacan's otherwise highly coded work more accessible—Kris's study has gained considerable notoriety in Lacanian circles, serving as one of the most eminent examples of how not to treat a patient.

Astonishingly, though, with all the original contributions by Kris and Lacan dating back to the 1950s and 60s, the case never seemed to obtain more than proverbial character for Lacanian analysts.¹ It was only in 2004 that it received serious critical attention: in his study Lacan to the Letter, Bruce Fink meticulously analyses Lacan's treatment of Kris's case report as well as the chronological development of his four readings of it. Fink's observations are an important help to every student interested not only in the intricacies of the debate but also in Lacan's relation to ego-psychological psychoanalysis in general. Yet, even Fink has to admit to the limited nature of his observations: "Had Kris provided us with a great deal more detail and Lacan given us more than a few vague lines, I might feel a bit more confident about my commentary here" (2004, p. 62), he writes in rounding off his subchapter on the case.

It is at this point that the present article wants to step in and expand upon Fink's observations—which are grounded in Lacanian thought—with a contribution that locates Kris's case report, as well as Lacan's critique, within the context of Kris's oeuvre—an oeuvre that stretches across three academic fields: art history, psychoanalysis, and propaganda analysis, i.e., communication research. Kris, who began his career as an art historian at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and whose ensuing acquaintanceship with Sigmund Freud brought him in touch with psychoanalysis, had to flee Austria after the country's annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938. In exile in Great Britain, and subsequently in New York, he became one of the leading researchers of Nazi propaganda during the war. And just as his wartime work can be seen as a continuation of the art psychological studies of the 1930s, especially those on caricature (see Rose, 2007; Krüger, 2011), his postwar analytic work can be seen as a continuation of his wartime approach to propaganda.

Lacan, therefore, might have been closer to the mark than he wagered. In his last reading of Kris's case study, Lacan offers a personal recollection of meeting Kris, an encounter that characterized for Lacan the latter's approach to psychoanalytic treatment:

I remember him at the [1936] Marienbad Congress where, the day after my address on the mirror stage, I took my leave, anxious as I was to get a feeling for the spirit of the time—a time full of promises—at the Olympics in Berlin. He kindly objected, 'Ca ne se fait pas!' ('That isn't done!'), having already acquired that penchant for the respectable that perhaps influenced his approach here [i.e., in "Ego Psychology and Interpretation in Psychoanalytic Theory"].

(Lacan, 1966, p. 501)

In the same way that he tried in 1936...