emotions and ideas
- Thread starter articul8
- Start date
Proves again that not everything is what it looks like.
I can tell many things about my early childhood and where it happened.
salaam.
rogue_lettuce
Well-Known Member
*cough*reconstructive memory*cough*
There is no 'huge controversy' in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is a tiny, elitist activity largely confined to training students on psychoanalytic psychotherapy courses. Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy are primarily concerned with surviving in competition with superficially more evidence-based therapies ush as CBT. As a result, psychoanalytic organisations are particularly interested in developmental research into intersubjectivity as it is felt that this may provide empirical support for its practice. I know this is the philosophy section, but I hate misrepresentations of psychoanlysis and its offshoots: it does practitioners no good at all when its talked about in such abstract and obtuse terms. This talk of desire is all very university Lacan n'est pas?
No offence intended, but this, along with everything else you've posted, makes my head hurt. I am familiar with Klein, and Segal and symbol formation, and I have a baby, who knows perfectly well the difference between a toy and my breast. But I really don't get what you're talking about. It seems to have no connection to real world biological beings.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Its nonsense to suggest there hasn't been a historical schism between orthodox and object-relations schools of psychoanalysis. No doubt in a British context this has begun to resolve itself in the sense that most theorists would accept the primacy of object-relations to some degree. But American ego-psychology influenced by Anna Freud still does not share these views
In any case, the practical/therapeutic dimensions of psychoanalysis do not exhaust the significance of its wider findings, which are of philosophical significance in that they offer insights into the nature of subjectivity, identity, reason, representation etc.etc Lacan is actualy more attuned to this than most other theorists. At no point have I said that developmental research has nothing to offer psychoanalysis. Just that it's not something within my sphere of experience.
As to breast/toy - the point is not that infants aren't capable of recognising a difference. It's about how this is learnt - how they learn to recognise objects (ie things that lie beyond the self and its powers) in the first place, and differentiate different kinds of objects - it is not given as innate from day one as Alde... seems to think - it is learnt, through interaction with others.
How is this "misrepresenting" psychoanalysis?
First, I didn't suggest that there hadn't been a historical schism. I said that there isn't a 'huge controversy'. There are, as you clearly state, theoretical differences between the UK and the American schools, but to say there is a 'huge controversy' really overstates it. It suggests that there is an intellectual and emotional involvement in this discussion on the part of psychoanalysts to a far greater extent than is actually the case. Practitioners of both schools are concerned primarily with survival at the moment, not with theoretical debates of this nature, and therefore I find your portrayal of 'theorists' engaged in some 'huge controversy' a misrepresentation of the field. It would be likely that you'd be accused by psychoanalysts of using theory and intellectualism as a defence if you were to go about talking in this way anywhere else but a university dept.
I agree with your first sentence. As for Lacan, the fact that he is considered a theorist above all speaks volumes. Personally, I can't stand that kind of intellectualism. I like my psychoanalysis, like my marxism, grounded in practice. But I understand this is the philo forum...its just not my bag.
Didn't say that you had! Simply pointing out that within a field of practice i.e. psychoanalysis, or psychoanalytic psychotherapy, as something that people do to earn a living, the focus is more on finding pertinent evidence from developmental reasearch than debates from the 1940s. I could have made that clearer, but I'm looking after a baby at the same time and she gets the dominant part of my attention.
It was this that I was unclear about and I'm still unsure what you mean. A new born baby placed on the mother, if allowed to take its own time and isn't drugged in any way, will slowly inch its way up to the breast and latch on to the nipple. This seems pretty innate to me.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
OK, I meant that there had been a huge controversy at a theoretical level in the historical evolution of psychoanalysis - it wasn't meant as a description of a feud amongst contemporary analysts.
In terms of the baby/breast thing -the point is that baby initially does not differentiate itself from the mother/external world. The breast (which essentially stands in for satisfaction in general) is seen as part of the psychic universe of the infants own omnipotence. The notion of an object which has a "reality" and indepedence of its own and therefore represents a constraint on the narcissistic omnipotence of the infant is something that is learnt/discovered and is profoundly traumatic. The emergence of such a recognition of the "object" and associated idea of itself as subject is accompanied by a hugley ambivalent affective (love-hate) relationship which forms the pattern of the way the baby relates to itself and to all its subsequent object attachments. Language is amongst the technologies we produce to negotiate 'difference' and to accommodate ourselves to a world that is structured around fundamental lack.
This is not simply "built into" the baby as biological entity - although clearly it couldn't get off the ground if there wasn't a basic capability to form attachments. But this ability is realised is necessarily only by through the shared network of meanings and structures that are the tools of individual and collective efforts at self-fashioning.
In terms of the baby/breast thing -the point is that baby initially does not differentiate itself from the mother/external world. The breast (which essentially stands in for satisfaction in general) is seen as part of the psychic universe of the infants own omnipotence. The notion of an object which has a "reality" and indepedence of its own and therefore represents a constraint on the narcissistic omnipotence of the infant is something that is learnt/discovered and is profoundly traumatic. The emergence of such a recognition of the "object" and associated idea of itself as subject is accompanied by a hugley ambivalent affective (love-hate) relationship which forms the pattern of the way the baby relates to itself and to all its subsequent object attachments. Language is amongst the technologies we produce to negotiate 'difference' and to accommodate ourselves to a world that is structured around fundamental lack.
This is not simply "built into" the baby as biological entity - although clearly it couldn't get off the ground if there wasn't a basic capability to form attachments. But this ability is realised is necessarily only by through the shared network of meanings and structures that are the tools of individual and collective efforts at self-fashioning.
Ah, yes, ok. This is why I don't 'do' philosophy. I just can't get my head round the everything at a theoretical level thing. I'm always bringing in stuff from outside the discourse and thereby missing the (philosophical) point. But the philosophical point often seems a bit pointless to me.
Doesn’t it? That’s the theory, but I’m not convinced that it’s the case.
Again, is it? The awareness of self and other is a gradual development. I’m not sure that it is traumatic. I’m just not sure about any of this. I’ve done an infant observation as part of a Kleinian training and now I have my own baby and despite the profound resonance that her theory has for my, adult, psychology, applying this retrogradely to the infant seems often more a case of fantasy on the part of the observer than the reality for the baby.
Well our biology is social and cultural. Its not possible to talk about anything as a simple biological entity when it comes to humans is it?
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
actually this is an important point - our very biological evolution is mediated by technology - eg. our hands developed in order to grip basic tools, needed to expand the range of socially possible tasks
well any concept of a pre-cultural biological entity that is the human-individuum-prior-to-culture is a wholly abstract retrospective construction
gorski
customised free radical
Sorry, I just must...
Just a quick Q: can you see that such a position is nothing but "theory", namely that your rejection of "theory" is in itself theoretical?
Moreover, your "practice" would be nothing without "theory". In fact, it is not possible without a theory.
In conclusion: you also have a "theory" or if you will a "meta-theory", which we can call - for this purpose - a philosophy. It is also the worst possible philosophy, btw... The one that "rejects philosophy" via a certain type of "philosophy"...
What kind is it? Well, it seems it calls for no philosophy that requires too much effort... as it's "too theoretical" [at least for an alleged "pure practitioner"], so it's doing one's ["pure practitioner only"] head in, because it's way too demanding... which by definition means that if it is "down to your level" of "doing philosophy" [which, btw, you allegedly just don't do], then and only then is it "OK to do"...
In fact, you are trying to position your "meta-theory"/"understanding" of what is or what isn't "true" or "relevant" as the ultimate arbiter [based on the Anglo-American ideas of pragmatism/utility or... what exactly???]. Thereby, methodologically speaking, you are establishing yet another "philosophy", which is a bit much, given the fact that you allegedly "don't do philosophy"...
And this is from the heart... As in, from one philosopher to another... trying to preserve some dignity of the profession and - as you yourself say - given the fact this is the "theory and philosophy section"...
Just a quick Q: can you see that such a position is nothing but "theory", namely that your rejection of "theory" is in itself theoretical?
Moreover, your "practice" would be nothing without "theory". In fact, it is not possible without a theory.
In conclusion: you also have a "theory" or if you will a "meta-theory", which we can call - for this purpose - a philosophy. It is also the worst possible philosophy, btw... The one that "rejects philosophy" via a certain type of "philosophy"...
What kind is it? Well, it seems it calls for no philosophy that requires too much effort... as it's "too theoretical" [at least for an alleged "pure practitioner"], so it's doing one's ["pure practitioner only"] head in, because it's way too demanding... which by definition means that if it is "down to your level" of "doing philosophy" [which, btw, you allegedly just don't do], then and only then is it "OK to do"...
In fact, you are trying to position your "meta-theory"/"understanding" of what is or what isn't "true" or "relevant" as the ultimate arbiter [based on the Anglo-American ideas of pragmatism/utility or... what exactly???]. Thereby, methodologically speaking, you are establishing yet another "philosophy", which is a bit much, given the fact that you allegedly "don't do philosophy"...
And this is from the heart... As in, from one philosopher to another... trying to preserve some dignity of the profession and - as you yourself say - given the fact this is the "theory and philosophy section"...
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