Freud and Philosophy

Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation
Cover of the first edition
Author Paul Ricœur
Original title De l'interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud
Translator Denis Savage
Country France
Language French
Series L'Ordre philosophique
Subject Sigmund Freud
Publisher Éditions du Seuil, Yale University Press
Publication date
 1965
Published in English
 1970
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 528 (Éditions du Seuil edition)
573 (Yale edition)
ISBN 978-0300021899

Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (French: De l'interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud) is a 1965 book about Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, by the philosopher Paul Ricœur, in which the author interprets Freud's work in terms of hermeneutics, the theory and methodology of interpretation.

The book has been compared to the philosopher Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955), the sociologist Philip Rieff's Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959), and the philosopher Jürgen Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interests (1968). It was well received in France, but also received criticism there because phenomenology had become unfashionable by 1965. The work angered the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who spread the rumor that Ricœur had plagiarized his ideas, and Lacan's followers attacked Ricœur. Ricœur's interpretation of Freud has been criticized by the philosopher Adolf Grünbaum in The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984).

Summary

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Ricœur interprets Freud's work in terms of hermeneutics.

Ricœur explains that his work is about Freud rather than psychoanalysis, and as such does not discuss "analytic experience itself" or "the post-Freudian schools". He argues that ignoring the work of dissident figures such as Alfred Adler and Carl Jung, and psychoanalysts such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Harry Stack Sullivan, Melanie Klein, and Jacques Lacan, is justified because doing so would have diverted his work from its purpose of "a rigorous debate with the true founder of psychoanalysis."[1]

He stresses that the book is a work of philosophy and not a work of psychology, and compares his enterprise to that of the philosopher Roland Dalbiez in La Méthode psychanalytique et la doctrine freudienne (1936), the philosopher Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization (1955), the sociologist Philip Rieff in Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959), and the psychoanalyst John Flügel in Man, Morals and Society (1945). Ricœur identifies the main purposes of his work as being explaining the "epistemological problem" of the nature of "interpretation in psychoanalysis", the "problem of reflective philosophy" of showing what "new self-understanding comes out of this interpretation", and the "dialectical problem" of asking, "Does Freud's interpretation of culture exclude all others?"[2]

Ricœur identifies the importance of language as a key feature of schools of philosophy such as those of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, and English linguistic philosophy, as well as the exegesis of the New Testament, the comparative history of religion and anthropology, and psychoanalysis. He attempts to explore the connections between the disciplines concerned with language, arguing that psychoanalysts should be leading participants in a general discussion of language. Ricœur describes The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) as Freud's "first great book", and wrote that like Freud's other works it posits a "semantics of desire".[3] He discusses Freud's ideas in relation to those of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Though not discussing Lacan in detail, Ricœur writes that he disagrees with Lacan's elimination of "energy concepts in favor of linguistics". He also writes that Lacan had proposed a linguistic conception of the unconscious.[4]

Publication history

Freud and Philosophy was first published in May 1965 by Éditions du Seuil, as part of the series L'Ordre philosophique (The philosophic order).[5][6] In 1970, an English translation was published by Yale University Press.[7]

Reception

Mainstream media

Freud and Philosophy received a negative review from Michel Tort in Les Temps modernes.[8] The book was also discussed by Don Browning in The Christian Century.[9]

According to the historian and psychoanalyst Élisabeth Roudinesco, Tort argued that the book was obscurantist, reactionary, and "clerical", and concluded that Ricœur's Christian and phenomenological approach to understanding Freud's texts was unhelpful and obsolete. He compared Ricœur's to Lacan's, but considered Lacan's approach to psychoanalysis superior to that of psychologists and philosophers.[8] Browning compared the book to the philosopher Jonathan Lear's Love and Its Place in Nature (1990).[9]

Scientific and academic journals

Freud and Philosophy received a positive review from the psychiatrist Eliot Slater in the British Journal of Psychiatry.[10] The book was also reviewed by Norman Reider in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences.[11] Other discussions include those by the psychoanalyst Jean-Paul Valabrega in Critique,[12] William Adams in Western Political Quarterly,[13] R. D. Chessick in The Psychoanalytic Review,[14] Richard Kearney in Philosophy & Social Criticism,[15] Kirk A. Bingaman in Pastoral Psychology,[16] Charles Reagan in The Review of Metaphysics,[17] and Leif E. Vaage in Teaching Theology & Religion.[18]

Slater described the book as an "impressive work" and "the first study in depth by a professional philosopher of the development of Freud's thought and of psychoanalytical theory in all the stages of its growth." He credited Ricœur with providing "discriminating appreciation" of the development and evolution of Freud's ideas. However, he added that he found it unclear that Ricœur "shows successfully on what grounds psychoanalysis could be subjected to any criticism whatsoever." He suggested that Ricœur's view of the interactions between psychoanalysts and their patients could be understood to imply that there is no way for third parties to determine the truth or untruth of the claims made by the analysts about their patients, meaning that they could "be properly advised not to pay the slightest attention" to those claims. He questioned whether such a view was acceptable.[10]

According to Roudinesco, Valabrega accused Ricœur of having drawn on Lacan's ideas despite claiming to be original. At the request of the philosopher Michel Foucault, Critique published a reply by Ricœur, in which he denied the accusation and explained that he had completed the outline of his interpretation of Freud before having read Lacan or attended his seminar.[12] Kearney identified Freud and Philosophy as one of Ricœur's three major works of the 1960s, the others being The Symbolism of Evil (1960) and The Conflict of Interpretations (1969). He credited Ricœur with expanding on his analysis of symbols in The Symbolism of Evil, and with demonstrating that the symbolic imagination is linguistic.[15]

Bingaman credited Ricœur with demonstrating that "a Freudian hermeneutic" has the potential to both challenge and "purify and strengthen" religious faith.[16] Reagan wrote that because Freud and Philosophy made little mention of Lacan, Lacan's followers attacked Ricœur.[17] Vaage compared Freud and Philosophy to Augustine of Hippo's Confessions, the educator Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), and the anthropologist Jonathan Boyarin's The Ehnography of Reading (1993), writing that despite their differences, each contains "a discipline or disciplines of learning how to read better or well for the sake of knowing a larger, more fulsome life."[18]

Evaluations in books

The psychotherapist Joel D. Hencken, writing in the anthology Homosexuality: Social, Psychological, and Biological Issues (1982), described Freud and Philosophy as an important example of the intellectual influence of psychoanalysis.[19] Murray S. Davis, writing in Smut: Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology (1983), credited Ricœur with subtly comparing psychoanalysis with phenomenology. However, he noted that the extent to which the two are similar is controversial, and concluded that Ricœur's comparison is only partially correct, since there is a parallel between psychoanalytic therapy and phenomenological inquiry, but not between psychoanalytic theory and phenomenological inquiry.[20] Grünbaum, writing in The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984), criticized Ricœur's hermeneutic interpretation of Freud. He rejected Ricœur's attempt to limit the proper subject of psychoanalysis to the verbal communications of the patient in analysis, arguing that Freud could not have accepted such a limited conception of the proper domain of psychoanalysis, since he often considered the nonverbal behavior of patients, speculated about the psychological meaning of artifacts such as statues and paintings, and most importantly believed that his discoveries held true for people who had never been analyzed and therefore never had to produce a narrative account of their symptoms.[21]

Roudinesco, writing in Jacques Lacan & Co: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925—1985 (1986), maintained that Freud and Philosophy was well received in France because it was the first book of its kind but criticized because phenomenology had become unfashionable by the time it was published in May 1965. She noted that the book angered the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who had expected it to praise him, prompting him to spread the rumor, which convinced Lacan's followers, that Ricœur had plagiarized his ideas. She argued that while Ricœur was able to understand Freud and ego psychology, Ricœur's discussion of Lacan was erroneous and that he failed to understand Lacan's use of structural concepts. She rejected Ricœur's claims that Lacan had eliminated energy concepts in favor of linguistics and proposed a "linguistic conception of the unconscious." However, she dismissed the charge that Ricœur had plagiarized Lacan's ideas, writing that he could not have done so given his failure to understand them.[22]

The philosopher Jeffrey Abramson, writing in Liberation and Its Limits: The Moral and Political Thought of Freud (1986), compared Freud and Philosophy to Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955), Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death (1959), Philip Rieff's Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959) and Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), writing that they jointly placed Freud at the center of moral and philosophical inquiry.[23] The historian Peter Gay, writing in Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988), described Freud and Philosophy as a "highly disciplined study by the leading advocate of psychoanalysis as hermeneutics", but commented that while the book was challenging and deserved close attention, he disagreed with Ricœur's view of Freud.[24] The critic Frank Kermode, writing in An Appetite for Poetry (1989), praised Freud and Philosophy, calling it "monumental".[25]

The psychoanalyst Joel Kovel, writing in History and Spirit (1991), saw Freud and Philosophy as an important demonstration that Freud was a post-Hegelian thinker, though he noted that Freud would have rejected any association with Hegel.[26] Lear, writing in Love and Its Place in Nature (1990), criticized Freud and Philosophy, blaming it, along with Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interests, for convincing some psychoanalysts that reasons cannot be causes, a view he considers part of a mistaken philosophical tradition. He credited Grünbaum with effectively criticizing Ricœur.[27] The historian Paul Robinson, writing in Freud and His Critics (1993), described Freud and Philosophy as a classic portrayal of Freud as a hermeneutician and a philosopher similar to Friedrich Nietzsche. However, he credited Grünbaum with showing that Ricœur's effort to obscure Freud's identification with the scientific tradition is misguided.[28] The critic Frederick Crews, writing in Unauthorized Freud (1998), criticized Ricœur for helping to inspire unscientific defenses of Freud and psychoanalysis, and charged him with misunderstanding Freud. Crews endorsed Grünbaum's criticism of Ricœur in The Foundations of Psychoanalysis.[29]

The philosopher Christopher Norris, writing in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (2005), argued that, like some of Ricœur's other books, the arguments of Freud and Philosophy reflect Ricœur's view that all interpretation involves a hermeneutic that is in part negative and in part positive: in the case of psychoanalysis, it involves both an examination of repressed memory and a way of helping patients by providing them self-knowledge.[30]

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Ricœur 1970, p. xi.
  2. ↑ Ricœur 1970, p. xii.
  3. ↑ Ricœur 1970, pp. 3–6.
  4. ↑ Ricœur 1970, pp. 367, 387, 395.
  5. ↑ Roudinesco 1990, p. 393.
  6. ↑ Roudinesco 1997, p. 324.
  7. ↑ Ricœur 1970, p. iv.
  8. 1 2 Roudinesco 1990, pp. 396–397.
  9. 1 2 Browning 1991, p. 340.
  10. 1 2 Slater 1972, pp. 455–457.
  11. ↑ Reider 1972, pp. 142–144.
  12. 1 2 Roudinesco 1990, pp. 395–396.
  13. ↑ Adams 1986, pp. 548–563.
  14. ↑ Chessick 1988, pp. 299–318.
  15. 1 2 Kearney 1989, pp. iv, 7, 10–11, 13.
  16. 1 2 Bingaman 1999, pp. 91–105.
  17. 1 2 Reagan 2005, pp. 277–278.
  18. 1 2 Vaage 2007, pp. 87–94.
  19. ↑ Hencken 1982, pp. 127, 395, 414.
  20. ↑ Davis 1985, pp. 247–248.
  21. ↑ Grünbaum 1984, pp. 43–69.
  22. ↑ Roudinesco 1990, pp. 394–395.
  23. ↑ Abramson 1986, p. ix.
  24. ↑ Gay 1995, p. 745.
  25. ↑ Kermode 1989, p. 147.
  26. ↑ Kovel 1991, pp. 5, 240.
  27. ↑ Lear 1992, p. 49.
  28. ↑ Robinson 1993, pp. 73, 265.
  29. ↑ Crews 1999, p. xxix.
  30. ↑ Norris 2005, p. 818.

Bibliography

Books

  • Abramson, Jeffrey B. (1986). Liberation and Its Limits: The Moral and Political Thought of Freud. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-2913-0.
  • Crews, Frederick; Crews, Frederick, Editor (1999). Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-028017-0.
  • Davis, Murray S. (1985). Smut: Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-13792-9.
  • Gay, Peter (1995). Freud: A Life for Our Time. Harmondsworth: Papermac. ISBN 0-333-48638-2.
  • Grünbaum, Adolf (1984). The Foundations of Psychoanaylsis: A Philosophical Critique. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-05016-9.
  • Hencken, Joel D.; Paul, William, Editor; Weinrich, James D., Editor; Gonsiorek, John C., Editor; Hotvedt, Mary E., Editor (1982). Homosexuality: Social, Psychological, and Biological Issues. Beverly Hills: SAGE Publications. ISBN 0-262-13221-4.
  • Kearney, Richard; Kemp, T. Peter, Editor; Rasmussen, David (1989). The Narrative Path: The Later Works of Paul Riceour. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-61060-4.
  • Kermode, Frank (1989). An Appetite for Poetry: Essays in Literary Interpretation. London: William Collins Sons & Co. ISBN 0-00-215388-2.
  • Kovel, Joel (1991). History and Spirit: An Inquiry into the Philosophy of Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-2916-5.
  • Lear, Jonathan (1992). Love and its Place in Nature: A Philosophical Interpretation of Freudian Psychoanalysis. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-16641-5.
  • Norris, Christopher; Honderich, Ted, Editor (2005). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-926479-1.
  • Ricœur, Paul (1970). Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-02189-5.
  • Robinson, Paul (1993). Freud and His Critics. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-08029-7.
  • Roudinesco, Elisabeth (1997). Jacques Lacan. New York: Polity Press. ISBN 0-7456-1523-6.
  • Roudinesco, Elisabeth (1990). Jacques Lacan & Co: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925—1985. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-72997-4.
Journals

  • Adams, William (1986). "Review: Politics and the Archeology of Meaning: A Review Essay". Western Political Quarterly. 39 (3).
  • Bingaman, Kirk A. (1999). "Teach Your Students Well: The Seminary and a Hermeneutics of Suspicion". Pastoral Psychology. 48 (2).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Browning, Don (1991). "Love and its place in nature (Book Review)". The Christian Century. 108 (March 20, 1991).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Chessick, R. D. (1988). "Prolegomena to the study of Paul Ricoeur's Freud and philosophy". The Psychoanalytic Review. 75 (2).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Reagan, Charles (2005). "In Memoriam: Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005)". The Review of Metaphysics. 59 (1).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
  • Reider, Norman (1972). "Paul Ricoeur. Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation. (Translated by Denis Savage), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. Pp. 571. $15.00". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. 8 (1).
  • Slater, Eliot (1972). "Freud: A Philosophical Assessment". British Journal of Psychiatry. 120 (557). doi:10.1192/bjp.120.557.455.
  • Vaage, Leif E. (2007). "Learning to Read the Bible with Desire: Teaching the Eros of Exegesis in the Theological Classroom". Teaching Theology & Religion. 10 (2).  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)
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