Preface

It is a great privilege to guest-edit this special issue of American Imago, “Intersections between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis.” It is a privilege for two sets of reasons: (1) the high quality of the journal and its discerning editor, Peter L. Rudnytsky, and the opportunity to work closely with academic philosophers and psychoanalysts on developing their original writings, and (2) I have long felt that philosophy and psychoanalysis belong together, and I love them both.

This love for two areas of scholarly endeavor is hardly surprising, as philosophy and psychoanalysis share so much in the way of content and concepts (for example, a strong interest in both content and concepts), despite very different methodologies. Philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, epistemology, and ethics (in various combinations) concern how the human mind operates, how we know, believe, perceive, imagine, desire, dream, fantasize; how we should behave; how we do behave—and all these are central topics in psychoanalysis as well. Further, both philosophy and psychoanalysis deal with questions of the human will, agency, the self and what constitutes it, and self-knowledge. And, of course, the foregoing list is far from complete.

Regarding the title of this issue, the choice of the plural intersections is intentional because each of the original articles herein represents a unique blend of philosophy and psychoanalysis. Krista Lawlor, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, in her piece, “Knowing Beliefs, Seeking Causes,” gives a convincing account of the gain in freedom and self-awareness that can be achieved when one allows oneself to know one’s own beliefs, drawing not only on the rational evidence one has for them, but also on one’s own feelings and reactions as a cause for beliefs. Such causal self-interpretation obviously becomes vital when the beliefs in question are not rational ones. Tolerating both the ownership and criticisms of one’s other-than-rational beliefs is necessary in becoming one’s “best epistemic self,” which is clearly related to becoming one’s “best self,” more broadly. In this work, Lawlor’s use of epistemology, philosophy of mind, and ethics enhances our appreciation of interpretation (both self-interpretation, and, by extension, analytic interpretation) as a vehicle for greater self-understanding—arguably the most important goal of psychoanalysis.

Marcia Cavell, a Professor at Columbia University and an advanced candidate at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, New York, presents an article titled “Self-Knowledge and Self-Understanding.” Cavell sets forth important differences between first-person, subjective self-knowledge and third-person, objective self-knowledge. Regarding the first-person viewpoint, Cavell argues both that “knowing what one thinks is a matter of knowing what one means,” and that knowing what one feels (at least sometimes) entails feeling it. In this piece, quite complementary to Lawlor’s, Cavell is less concerned with the epistemology of our epistemological entities—i.e., the knowledge of our own beliefs. Rather, she focuses on our epistemological capacity to know and thereby to come to terms with our experiences and feelings, even in the face of ever-present unconscious conflicts.

The article by Jennifer Church, Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College, demonstrates a very different type of intersection between philosophy and psychoanalysis. In her contribution, “The Hidden Image: A Defense of Unconscious Imagining and Its Importance,” Church does just what she promises: she argues philosophically, first for the coherence, and then for the importance, of a concept that is vital and necessary for any truly psychoanalytic theory—unconscious imagining. In my view, more work along these lines would truly be of benefit to the development and explication of many psychoanalytic concepts, since those without such academic backing are often dismissed out of hand.¹

J. David Velleman is a Professor of Philosophy at New York University. His contribution, “Bodies, Selves,” compares and contrasts agential action in the following situations: incidents in everyday life, pretend play, the virtual reality game called Second Life, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The interesting conclusion that he argues for is that one’s relationship to one’s avatar in Second Life is quite parallel to one’s relationship to one’s own body...