The Future of Psychoanalysis

12. Understanding the Human Mind in the Contemporary World

The Enlightenment, with its dream that reason and science could both understand and improve the world, could have died that very day, if its corpse were not already stinking up the quiet muddy fields of France and Russia. All the science, the crystal skyscrapered cities, the machines, the electrical networks, the rationalizations of time, the armies, the bureaucracies , the plans, the colonies and the commerce so artfully managed, the missionaries, the explorers, the revolutions, the manifestos, and the world systems, all the schemes and all the ideals, all the hard-booted engineers and all the covenants, all the best intentions and learning had all amounted to an artillery shell in the chest. —Einstein in Love (Overbye 2000, 364) Philosophy begins when we have lost our way and no longer feel secure about our place in the world and our way of life. As Heidegger (1956) pointed out: The question about the nature of something awakens at those times when the thing whose nature is being questioned has become obscure and confused, when at the same time the relationship of men to what is being questioned has become uncertain or has even been shattered. (43) It is the task of philosophy to explicate and criticize the fundamental beliefs and concepts that underlie any given culture such as ours. Because of all this, a philosopher is not at peace with the world. Stroud (2001) says: 213 12 Understanding the Human Mind in the Contemporary World Philosophy depends on undying curiosity, and the pursuit of a limitless enquiry. It arises out of a wish, or an attempt, to grasp the world as it is, as it is open to our view. . . . Philosophy is thought or reflection , that is done purely for the sake of understanding something, solely to find out what is so with respect to those aspects of the world that puzzle us. (31–32) The life of thought, its vitality and creativity, requires a process of moving beyond itself and a critique of the ideals and presumptions that hold it in place. Heidegger proposed that thought was an experiment belonging to questions and uncertainties, one that does not anticipate a body of results or forge a systematic account of the way things “really” are. For Heidegger, thinking is constituted by the ways of encountering other peoples thinking. It is a process of strife and engagement, but one that does not foresee its own establishment as supreme and final. The parallel between this philosophical concept of thinking and Freud’s orientation to his psychoanalytic clinical work is apparent. For Freud, psychoanalysis had as its main purpose an understanding of the human mind and the more understanding that was achieved, the more the psychoanalytic process gained therapeutic value as an ancillary consequence. The human mind in psychoanalysis , philosophy, music, and art must be understood historically. The practice of psychoanalysis requires a certain stance of receptive patience; it cannot be hurried. Each patient unfolds at their own pace. Harries (2001) explains: Both Plato and Aristotle insist on this connection between philosophy and freedom: not only does the pursuit of philosophy require free time—only a person of leisure can be a philosopher—but it is precisely because the philosopher does not approach things and issues with a particular end in mind that he is able to see them with more open eyes. (65) The similarity to Freud’s psychoanalytic attitude advocating free-floating attention to the patient’s material is obvious here. There is a fundamental disagreement among both philosophers and psychoanalysts over what it means to be human. The stance called humanism postulates that the human being can be described in the abstract, independently of time and place, and is endowed by nature with certain attributes like the capacity for self-knowledge and the ability to make free rational choices. In this sense modern humanism carries on the legacy of the Enlightenment and assumes that humans are naturally free, equal, self-aware, and gifted with reason. It follows that the more they exercise reason the more they know and the better they are able to master their environment and control their destiny. 214 The Future of Psychoanalysis From this point of view ignorance and superstition are the enemies of humankind and, as we spread knowledge and technology over the world, freedom will spread along with it and life will become improved. Anti-humanism defines humans not as given essences but as...