Apprehending the Inaccessible: Freudian Psychoanalysis and Existential Phenomenology

9 A Propaedeutic to Freud and the Existential Phenomenologists

Every philosopher “takes something from the history” of past philosophers, from past philosophical writings—just as he has at his disposal, from the present philosophical environment, the works that have most recently been added and put in circulation, takes up those that have just appeared, and, what is possible only in the case [of the present], makes more or less use of the possibility of entering into a personal exchange of ideas with still living fellow philosophers. —Husserl As we approach the historical engagement of Freud with the existential phenomenologists it is crucial that we first consider the historical context and role of one major philosophical contemporary of Freud, and the primary inspirational father of the existential phenomenologists, Edmund Husserl. For it was Husserl, of course, who provided the existential phenomenologists with some of the initial methodological tools (however modified to their own philosophical pursuits) or at least philosophical impetuses , which would furnish the grounding for their critical engagement with Freud. An implicit set of questions immediately arises: what was the historical—and is the philosophical—relationship between Husserlian phenomenology and Freudian psychoanalysis? Are the goals of the two essentially identical or compatible (reciprocally supplementary to one another), largely or marginally overlapping, or mutually exclusive?1 Is there a convergence which results in their merger? To what extent is a reconciliation of the two approaches possible? The answers to these questions will, of course, in the end identify what each has to offer the other, if anything. Before we consider directly Freud and Husserl’s relationship to one another in the following chapter, it is important to point out that a direct A Propaedeutic to Freud and the Existential Phenomenologists 155 9 historical convergence occurred between these two important thinkers, most notably through the works of Johann Herbart and Franz Brentano.2 Opposed to the route taken by the romanticists culminating in Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s approaches, in keeping with the influence of British empiricism and in reaction to Kantian philosophy, Herbart and Brentano sought to place psychology in alignment with the natural sciences. Each undertook this project, though in highly discrepant ways,3 and exerted a strong influence on the development of both Husserl’s and Freud’s philosophical approaches. Herbart and Freud It is well known that during Freud’s youth Herbartian psychology was the predominant view in the field throughout Austria. It exerted its influence on Freud through several main avenues: 1. Gustaf Lindner’s Textbook of Empirical Psychology by Genetic Method, described by its author as “a compendium of Herbartian psychology,”4 had clearly been introduced to Freud during his final year at the Gymnasium .5 2. Freud’s mentor in psychiatry, Theodor Meynert—who had also been influenced by Schopenhauer—was an admirer of Herbart’s and had been powerfully influenced by him.6 3. Fechner had self-consciously constructed his psychology based on Herbart’s (sheared of its metaphysical principles), which sought to extend the nomenclature of the natural sciences to psychology; and Fechner in turn exerted a strong influence on Freud’s teachers, Brücke, Breuer, and Meynert, and—as we have seen—on Freud himself. 4. Freud certainly knew of Herbart’s work via comments made to him by Brentano.7 Herbart conceived of psychology as a “mechanics of the mind” in which there are interactions among ideas (conceived as active agents) measurable in terms of quantity and force, hence a “mathematical psychology .” Herbart believed that psychology wassupervenient to physiology. This was an important advance for Freud beyond the medicine of his time that tended to reduce everything to the physiological level. Furthermore, Freud would clearly have appreciated Herbart’s recognition of the empirical limits of science: 156 A P P R E H E N D I N G T H E I N A C C E S S I B L E Science knows more than what is actually experienced [in consciousness ] only because what is experienced is unthinkable without examining what is concealed. One must be able to recognize from what is experienced the traces of what is stirring and acting “behind the curtains”!8 According to Herbart, active ideas of varying degrees of strength compete to be above the threshold of consciousness. The weaker (“inhibited ”) ideas disappear from consciousness and form a mass of unconscious ideas which continue to exert pressure against the ideas in consciousness in a continual conflict that results in the...