The Future of Psychoanalysis

2. Psychoanalysis as Science and Art

What desires do you speak of? he said. Those, stirred up in sleep, I replied, when the rest of the soul, the rational, conscious, and essential part slumbers, but the wild and savage part, filled with food and wine, springs up and, repelling sleep, seeks to sally forth and satisfy its own instincts. You know that in such a case there is total courage to do anything, as it is released from all shame and all reason . It does not hesitate from attempting to have intercourse with one’s mother in imagination or with anyone else, man, god, or beast. It is ready for any bloodstained deed; it abstains from no food, and, in a word, does not leave out any extreme of folly and shamelessness. Most true, he said. . . . the point we wish to notice is this, that there exists in every one of us, even in some of us thought to be the most respectable, terrible, wild, and lawless desires, which become manifest in our sleep . . . —Plato (Republic IX:571c–572b)1 In this and subsequent chapters I delve into certain fundamentals that underlie the practice and theory of psychoanalysis as I conceive of it. These involve the role of fantasy, creativity, and imagination, as well as the natural science aspect of psychoanalysis. The questions of whether there exists common grounds for psychoanalytic technique, and of what constitutes the philosophical underpinnings of foundationalism and psychoanalytic technique will be addressed. Postmodern objections to all this will be briefly reviewed but in a “politically incorrect” view, I come down firmly on the side of foundationalism , phenomenology and contemporary traditional Freudian psychoanalysis, that is based on Freud and Anna Freud’s (1946) ego psychology and utilizing 27 2 Psychoanalysis as Science and Art other channels of approach as needed. Finally, I will turn to creativity as manifested in art and psychoanalysis and indicate as evidence for my position how great art offers us a glimpse of foundationalist truth and beauty. Spillius (2001) points out clearly the difference between the Kleinian and Freudian view of fantasies. (In this book I refer to Freud’s use of “fantasy” and to Klein’s use of “phantasy” to help distinguish between them.) She writes: In Freud’s view, although there are phantasies in the system unconscious , the basic unit of the system unconscious is not phantasy but the unconscious instinctual wish. . . . For Klein, on the contrary, unconscious phantasies are the primary unconscious content and dreams are a transformation of it. For Freud, the prime mover, so to speak, is the unconscious wish; dreams and phantasies are both disguised derivatives of it. For Klein the prime mover is unconscious phantasy. (362) So Klein regards “phantasy” as a basic mental activity which is present in its rudimentary form from birth onwards, and is essential for mental growth even though it can also be used defensively. She thought it was possible to infer the phantasies of infants from her analyses of small children. Spillius explains that Klein’s use of phantasy is much wider than Freud’s: In the Kleinian view, unconscious phantasy is the mainspring, the original and essential content of the unconscious mind. It includes very early forms of infantile thought, but it also includes other forms that emerge later on in development through change in the original phantasies. (364) Through introjection and projection, argues Klein, a complex phantasy world of self and internal objects is slowly built up, reaching to unconscious depths and of course: This notion of internal objects and the internal world was and has continued to be central in Kleinian thought. This internal world is imaginary by the standards of material reality, but possesses what Freud calls “psychic” reality—that is, to the individual concerned it feels real at some level, conscious or unconscious, and it is also real in the sense that it affects his behavior. (365) Spillius argues that unconscious phantasy is the mainspring of both creativity and destructiveness and, although phantasies affect the perception of external reality, external reality affects phantasies—there is a continual interplay between them. The big objection of Anna Freud and the Freudians to Klein’s 28 The Future of Psychoanalysis work was to the Kleinian conception that “unconscious phantasy is really synonymous with the content of the unconscious mind” (ibid., 369). Spillius points out that with certain exceptions, especially the work of Jacob Arlow, there is less attention being paid to unconscious...