Psychoanalysis to Come: A "Freuderridian" Approach to a Non-normative Psychoanalysis

The phrase "psychoanalysis to come" contains both a promise and a risk. The promise is that it will never arrive once and for all, that it will keep itself open; the risk is of never being identical with itself, of losing itself in the hope of immediately finding itself again, of exposing itself to the accusation "This is not psychoanalysis" while engaging time and again with the question "What is psychoanalysis?" With the quasi-parasitic inclusion of Derrida's "to come" in psychoanalysis, I will propose a "Freuderridian" approach to psychoanalysis. Hélène Cixous coined the term "Freuderridian" for Derrida's analytical, passionate, and precise reading of Freud. "Freuderridian," as Cixous puts it, also describes a movement of opening that Derrida inscribes in Freud and in psychoanalysis: a movement of bringing them beyond themselves, beyond their finitude and limitations (Cixous 2007, 159).

It may seem strange or inappropriate to inscribe something foreign to psychoanalysis, this alien figure of the "to come" that derives from Derrida's deconstruction. Derrida is, in a way, a stranger, a "foreign body" within the field of psychoanalysis (Ellmann 2000, 211; Derrida 2007a, 321)—he is not a psychoanalyst himself, nor has he undergone an analysis (Major 2016, 2). Rather, he speaks as a friend of psychoanalysis: "I like the expression 'friends of psychoanalysis.' It evokes the freedom of an alliance, an engagement with no institutional status. The friend maintains the reserve, withdrawal, or distance necessary for critique, for discussion, for reciprocal questioning, sometimes the most radical of all" (Derrida and Roudinesco 2004, 167). For Derrida, criticism as friendship and friendship as criticism do not mean the destruction or annihilation of psychoanalysis but rather an unconditional "yes" to psychoanalysis, and one that I fully share. This unconditional "yes" must as well be understood as a "yes" to the other and to the foreign and can thus be perceived as a shared ground of psychoanalysis and deconstruction.¹ Through this "yes" to the radical, elusive, and unpredictable foreign other, the "to come" has perhaps always been included in psychoanalysis but is at the same time lost again and again in dogmatic and normative theories and attitudes, which are rightly criticized and often lead to the rejection of psychoanalysis. Within psychoanalysis, and often against Freud's advice, knowledge is preferred to the psychoanalytical method, and the other is in danger of disappearing behind a curtain of prejudices and theoretical assumptions (Freud 1912; Reiche 2004, 77).

In order to rediscover the "to come" and to keep it in play and alive, I am arguing for inscribing Derrida's thinking and his approach into psychoanalysis. Derrida is not only a productive and appreciative reader of Freud's work; many of his approaches are able, as I would like to show, to open up psychoanalysis, to enrich it with a deconstructionist, anti-normative and critical attitude. This is why, in talking about what I am calling "psychoanalysis to come," I cannot avoid speaking about democracy as well. But this will only be a short detour. Derrida developed this figure of the "to come"—in French, l'avenir—in his reflections on democracy and terror, but it also appears in his discussion of hospitality, of the unconditional gift, of the unconditional university and of the event. Intrinsic to his thinking of "democracy to come" are Freudian concepts, such as the existence of the unconscious and of the interwovenness of libido and the death drive. In short, the "to come" addresses, among other things, the unforeseeable, the "Other who comes without my being able to anticipate their arrival" (Derrida 2002c), and a certain impossibility, an aporetic structure, something that is to come, although it will never fully arrive (Derrida 2005). This polymorphism of the "to come" that welcomes the radical other, as well as its structure of deferral, makes it a productive figure that opens psychoanalysis to the other and inscribes a permanent transgression and porosity in psychoanalysis.

What I am calling "psychoanalysis to come" is no original invention of mine, not only because with Derrida there can be no "original invention...