Outline of Analysis of Dasein 6 страница

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of space and into a temporal order derived from the movements of the sun and the other stars.

It is of utmost importance that these suppositions supporting the whole edifice of natural science be recognized for what they actually are: prescientific philosophical articles of faith. Once this is realized, it is easy to see that neither natural science nor any other science can prove the realm within which its suppositions are valid, or even prove them to be correct as such. It cannot be repeated often enough that all science must start out from a belief in the truth of some such prescientific prejudices. Where, for instance, could natural science find scientific proof for the tacit assumption that no existant has gaps in its causal connections with this or that something which cannot be figured out? That natural science limits its observations and investigations to those phenomena which yield to methods of total calculation and leave no gaps or contradictory items does not in the least eliminate the possibility of other existants which cannot thus be.determined.⁴

Freud transfered the above-mentioned prescientific articles of faith to his study of man, to picture the fundamental structure of his psychoanalytic theory as follows:

1. The so-called mental phenomena are products of an object which one may call the "psyche." This psyche is constructed hke a microscope, telescope, or a photographic apparatus. It is capable of picturing objects extraneous to itself within itself. It functions like a reflex mechanism.⁵

2. Being an apparatus, the psyche needs energy to run it. This assumed energy Freud calls "libido." It derives from excitations of body organs; the first psychic manifestations of these excitations always have the character of wishes. "Only a wish is able to set the [psychic] apparatus in motion," Freud states in The Interpretation of Dreams.⁶ In addition to the stimuli that the apparatus receives from inside itself, there are stimuli that originate in objects of the external world. These stimuli are transmitted to the psychic ap­paratus by the sense organs, in the form of energy. The path of these psychic processes is generally from the perceptual to the motor end of the apparatus.⁷

⁴ See W. Heisenberg, Physik und Philosophie, Frankfurt, 1959, p. 26.

⁵ S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, in SE, Vol. V, pp. 536-538.
e Ibid., p. 598.

''Ibid., p. 537-

Daseinsanalytic Re-evaluation of the Basic Conceptions 77

3. Both external and internal stimuli undergo various transforma­tions while being cathected with libido. By means of cathexis with libido, the psyche produces perceptions of the external world as well as ideas in general, the material being external stimuli, memory traces, and unconscious, preconscious, and conscious strivings. The psyche produces perceptions and ideas continually in a process which is wholly causal.

4. The sole aim of all the processes going on within the psyche is motor discharge of energy into the external world, in order that the apparatus may maintain itself so far as possible without excita­tion. For "accumulation of excitation is felt as unpleasure... diminution of excitation as pleasure."⁸

5. There are two kinds of thinking. "Right" or "correct" thinking, Le., thinking that corresponds to external, objective reality, is called "secondary-process" thinking. It contrasts with "primary-process" thinking, which refers to unconscious processes and which is "in­correct" and "irrational." "Right" thinking, on the other hand, is characterized by rationality, avoidance of contradictions, logic, con­cepts which unequivocally fit the perceived object, and adequate consideration of chronological time and homogeneous units of measurement.⁹

It is easy to see that the basic categories within which Freud built his scientific psychology have their roots in the philosophies of Descartes and Kant. It is not surprising, then, that Freud cites Kant in connection with a statement concerning the subjective conditioning of perceptions, the distortions of reality thereby in­troduced, and the fundamental unrecognizability of the perceived things as such.¹⁰ Here is proof, given,by Freud himself, that all sciences rest upon predetermined philosophic bases, as we have stated before. To investigate such bases with regard to their adequacy to the purposes of a particular science is by no means a superfluous game, by no means unworthy of a serious scientist. For in Freud's work we can discover better than anywhere else how philosophic presuppositions (which to him were so self-evident that he did not even question them) determine-from the start both the questions and the answers of his science.

Above all, these philosophical presuppositions of the natural

id., pp. 598 and 605.» 1Ш., pp. 596-597-»»S. Freud, "The Unconscious," in SE, Vol. XIV, p. 171.

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sciences—applied unreflectingly by Freud to the science of man— led from the start to a mental destruction of the unity of the psycho­analytic situation in all of Freud's theoretical considerations. In the actual situation of psychoanalytic therapy, patient and therapist are together in caring for the same phenomena which disclose themselves in the light of their existences. Freud's theory, however, bisects this union into the medical observer and the observable object. And this dissection by no means stops with this first step. A second one follows immediately, with the postulate of a body-psyche dichotomy. The patient's "psyche" is assumed to reside somewhere "in" the observed human object, and to be worldless at the start.

By this way of thinking Freud had split up the unity of man's "Being-in-the-world" into three primordially separated particles: the "psyche," the human body, and the external world. Once this conceptual split has been achieved, these three theoretically ab­stracted parts of man's world can never be linked together again except by assuming magic transformations and substantiations. On the other hand, theoretical assumptions of this sort clear the way for an ever more far-reaching intellectual dissection of man into "psychic elements," and for hypotheses concerning the products of this dissection. Now it is possible to picture this hypothetical psyche as an interplay of the forces of instincts and partial instincts, of the intrapsychic "authorities" such as an "Id," a "Super-Ego," and "partial Ego-apparatuses." The "external world," on the other hand, can be reduced to mere stimuli.

Today, most of those whose concern is the understanding of man are no longer as extreme in their addiction to the dogma of natural science as were the scientists of Freud's time. For this reason it is easier to see what happened. Freud had (if unknown to himself) gained an immediate and primary understanding of man through his discovery and practice of psychoanalysis. But he destroyed this primary understanding in a truly catastrophic fashion when he introduced his theoretical constructions. To realize the extent of his destruction, we need only compare the two pillars (so designated by him) of psychoanalytic practice with their counter­parts in his theory. On the one hand, "transference" and "resistance" testify to Freud's deep understanding of man; on the other hand, his theoretical formulations—e.g., sensory organs which perceive "real­ity" inadequately and a "chain of conscious acts" that is full of

Daseinsanalytic Re-evaluation of the Basic Conceptions 79

gaps—distort this understanding to the extent that understanding is lost. Transference and resistance indisputably refer to actual phenomena of interhuman relationships (although in a veiled way). Observation confirms over and over again how right Freud was when he stated that if the analyst allows the patient time, devotes serious interest to him, and acts with tact, a deep attachment of the patient to the analyst develops of itself.¹¹ Nor can any analytical observer deny Freud's discovery that all patients in psychoanalytic treatment strongly resist total recognition of themselves. Every experienced analyst, therefore, will fully agree with Freud's ob­servation that "the pathological factor is not [the patient's] igno­rance in itself, but the root of this ignorance in his inner resistances; it was they that first called this ignorance into being, and they still maintain it now."¹²

In contrast to these undeniable phenomena, discovered through direct observation, neither the conception of the brain as an isolated organ of a bodily organism nor the conceptual artifact "act of con­sciousness" corresponds to an immediately given reality. Even less do they stand at the beginning of our knowledge and perception of man (as Freud still thought). Rather, both are abstractions, intel­lectual reductions of specific features of the human existence and of modes of relating to objects of a physical and mental nature. This is the reason why there is no road from such notions to a full understanding of any kind of human behavior.

If man and his world did actually consist of originally isolated, somato-psychic, telescope-like apparatuses and objects of the outer world (that is, of a conglomeration of extant and originally separate objects), not even one single "act of consciousness" would be possi­ble. We would not perceive, much less hope to understand, such simple relations as the "being-opposite" of an object, or the possibil­ity of encountering another human being. Still less would it be possible to comprehend how anybody would be able to develop an affective attachment or an intensive resistance toward an analyst, and how he could be treated and cured by disporting himself on the common "playground" of their interpersonal relationship. For no-bodv has ever seen an apparatus of any kind which could perceive an\-thing and understand it as this or that something which it is,

^u S. Freud, "On Beginning the Treatment, etc.," in CT, Vol. II, p. 360. ** S. Freud, " 'Wild' Psychoanalysis," in SЈ, Vol. XI, p. 225.

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much less an apparatus which could love or hate. Lucidly, Freud's theoretical self-mutilation was confined mainly to his books. For in his practice Freud never ceased to permit his patients fully to ex­perience their being human. He never treated them there as tele­scopes, or as bundles of instincts, as he should have done if he had followed his theory.

Psychoanalytic theory has of course undergone a great many modifications in the course of half a century. The most important ones were introduced by Freud himself. Many other valuable theoretical contributions were made by Freud's disciples, by those inside as well as outside the orthodox psychoanalytic school. They all, however, are still unable to make sufficiently explicit, and to portray adequately, the unclarified and imphcit understanding of man which is at the basis of psychoanalytic practice from the moment of its inception. For they all pass over the main problem: they tell us nothing at all about the essential condition of the constructs with which they start their deliberations. But until we learn something about the basic nature and essence of the "total person," the "personality," the different "selves," and about who or what and how the "agent" of the "social relations" really is, all our conceptions of man hang in the air. The main objection of analysis of Dasein in regard to all these psychoanalytic extensions of, and additions to, Freud's theory of man, however, would have to point to their common lack of a basis for a real understanding of the pos­sibility of man's having "I-like," "personal" relations to objects of an external world which are determined by his "partial instincts"; or for man's entering into "empathic" or "parataxic" reciprocal social relations with his fellow human,beings; or for man's propensity to succumb to the opinion of others and thereby to form a merely "reflected appraisal" of himself; or for man's being involved in societal processes and his being formed thereby. As long as we do not understand man's essential nature as being of a meaning-disclos­ing, elucidating character, we remain unable even to understand how someone is able to perceive a fellow man as a fellow man, let alone how he could enter into so-called interpersonal relationships.

There is no other way out of the confused situation of our con­temporary psychology in general and of the psychoanalytic theory in particular than to re-evaluate one basic psychoanalytic concep­tion after another in the fight of a more adequate understanding of man. We have mentioned that one of the two main pillars of Freud's

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theory was the notion of "acts of consciousness." We had, however, to call this psychological conception an intellectual artifact. Let us consider, then—since it is supposed to be the most basic "act of consciousness"—the concept of an "idea," in the sense of a "mental representation of an object" or a "psychic picture."

The Conception of "Idea"

The psychological conception of an "idea" is the starting point of contemporary psychology in general and of the psychoanalytic theory in particular. The psychoanalytic theory of neuroses asserts, for instance, that in hysteria unacceptable "ideas" are repressed. In obsessional neuroses, "ideas" are supposed to become detached from their accompanying affect. Furthermore,

it seems [Freud states] that in dementia praecox the efforts of the libido to get back to its objects, that is, to the mental idea of its objects, do really succeed in conjuring up something of them, something that at the same time is only the shadow of them— namely, the verbal images, the words, attached to them.¹³

Obviously, then, Freud, too, seems to take it for granted that we do have, somewhere within our consciousness or within our un­conscious, ideas or mental images or psychic object-representations of all the objects of the external world which we have perceived. Almost all of us would at least agree that such ideas, mental images, or intrapsychic object-representations take place within ourselves, whether in the head or in the psyche or elsewhere. Among many of us there even seems to be more or less unanimous agreement that the physiological equivalents or "substrata" of these mental images in the brain would constitute their ultimate reality. At any rate, everybody will understand me if I state that I have formed an idea or a mental representation within me of the contents of a book which I have read recently, or of a chemical experiment which I have just carried out, of a football game I have been watching this afternoon, or of a picture which I see at this very moment on the opposite wall.

On closer examination, however, our mutual understanding about our "ideas" of what we have seen or heard, about these mental

¹³ S. Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Garden City, N.Y., 1943, p. 366. Trans, by Joan Riviere.

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images somewhere in our psyche, dwindles down to our being in agreement only on the same obscurities. In fact, not one of the constituents of our common phrase, "I have an idea" is clarified in the least. Actually, we do not know at all what we mean when we talk like that. We have "no idea" what the actual nature of an "I" is, nor have we any idea of the "substance" or the "essence" of a mental image or a psychic object-representation within ourselves; we are even less able to picture the possessive relationship between an "I" and such an "idea" of something.

For centuries, philosophers have questioned whether ideas cor­respond to a reality extraneous to our mind or soul, a reality which ideas supposedly represent. Some philosophers say.that they do, others say they do not; still others claim that the question cannot be decided. If philosophers are unable to agree on this question, it is best to refrain from philosophical speculation, and to investigate the immediately perceptible phenomena themselves to which the conception of "idea" seeks to point. To do this is one of the many tasks of psychology. But we are not going to consider what psychol­ogy has to say concerning ideas—not because we do not value the importance of psychological contributions to the problem, but because these contributions are psychological, i.e., scientific ones. As psychological achievements they presuppose from the outset the existence of a "psyche." Otherwise they would not call them­selves "psychological" contributions. Like all sciences, however, psychology necessarily has to leave its own presuppositions com­pletely in the dark. Psychology as science, therefore, not only does not know as yet what "having an idea of something" actually means, but will never be in a position to clarify the nature of that into which psychology likes to place these "ideas." All those matters posited by psychology, such as a "psyche," or the "psychic organ­ism," or "the consciousness," or "the Soul," or the "Ego" with all its cognitive functions—ever more elaborated by the modern Ego-Psychology—have to remain psychological black boxes, so to speak. In this fundamental respect everything is bound to be questionable and doubtful in the science of psychology. This scientific situation also necessarily prevents all psychological investigations from ever reaching down to the basic nature of that which psychology calls an "idea" or a "mental object-representation" or a "psychic image."

There is no other way left, then, if we want to understand man more adequately, than to attempt to approach "unscientifically" the

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phenomena which psychology has up to now referred to by speaking of having an idea or a mental representation of something in the external world. Let us, for instance, just stand before an ordinary tree—and let the tree stand before us. Both the tree and we are in the relation of standing before each other. This standing before each other is not just an idea located somewhere in my head. Let us stop for a while. What we have just said amounts to a leap out of the familiar realm of the sciences and even out of the realm of philosophy. We have leaped, not just anywhere, but to the ground on which we live and die, unless we fool ourselves. It seems strange that we have to make such an effort to reach the ground on which we stand. But, if we are right, this is something worth contem­plating. Scientifically, it is completely irrelevant that each of us has stood before a tree at some time or other. Again, let us not delude ourselves. We do not face the tree with our head or our conscious­ness when we are in its presence. It is, rather, the tree which presents itself to us, as the meaningful thing which it actually is. Naturally, we do not deny that a great many processes go on in the brain while we are standing before the tree, as we regard it, perceive its blossoms and their fragrance. We know that such brain processes can even be measured and made visible by means of a graph which transcribes brain waves on to a roll of paper. Nor do we deny that such knowledge is useful and even contributes to the over-all therapeutic effort. But if we pretend that such brain processes (or anything else except the phenomenon itself) describe what is really happening while we are standing before the tree, we must ask: what has become of the tree, of the blossoms, of their fragrance? Where, while we are studying his brain waves, is the human being who saw the tree? Not the brain of this human being, but he him­self, someone who may die tomorrow or may live on, someone who was alive when he saw the tree. Where, in such an approach, is the confrontation during which the tree introduced itself to us and we faced it?

One may reply: why ask such questions when it is obvious that anybody would immediately agree that someone stood before the tree. But let us not agree too hastily. For pretty soon we shall agree with the sciences of physics, physiology, and psychology (as well as "scientific" philosophy), which declare (with an impressive array of arguments) that what we perceive as a tree is actually an al­most empty electric field in which occasional electric charges are

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rushing about. Only in unguarded moments do scientists admit that we actually stood before a tree; but they usually add immediately that this statement is, of course, merely a naive and prescientific conception of what took place. Thus speaking, scientists make an important admission. It is they who decide what is basic reality. But where does science, in itself unaware of its philosophic origins, get the mandate to make such far-reaching decisions? Who entitled scientists to define man's place in the world and to prescribe the standards into which he must fit? This, however, is what the scientist does when he judges the statement concerning my stand­ing before the tree to be naive and prescientific.¹⁴

It seems incredible that all those who have reflected on such simple events as the fact that a tree stands before us and is seen by us have been unable to leave the tree where it is—namely, standing before us. Analysis of Dasein enables us to do just that. Man is seen as the world-openness in whose light all particular beings may appear in their authenticity. The tree is a particular being which comes into its being by shining forth into the luminos­ity called Dasein. Psychotherapists who are able to grasp this basic Daseinsanalytic tenet, with all its ramifications, can relinquish the concept of an idea produced by an assumed psyche inhabiting a subject. Acceptance of this Daseinsanalytic view amounts to over­coming psychology (the doctrine of a "psyche") in favor of a more adequate understanding of man. Such a departure is necessary because the traditional theory of the neuroses, owing to its de­pendence on psychology, is hampered by inadequate concepts such as "idea" in the sense of a psychic object-representation. The vision of contemporary psychology is too limited to support a sci­ence of healing. These limitations are all too apparent, if only in the many pseudo-problems which psychology poses. Foremost among these is the problem of how separated subjects—existing primarily in and for themselves—can ever achieve understanding relation­ships with objects in an external world. We dealt with this question at length in Chapter 2. Here, we have only to add that from the point of view of analysis of Dasein this must always be a pseudo-problem, because the relationships exist before they can even be called in question, because the primordial unity of man and his world is the inseparable one of a luminating realm and what shines

¹⁴ M. Heidegger, Was heisst Denken? Tubingen, 1954, pp. 16 ff.

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forth in its luminosity. Psychotherapy cannot remain grounded forever in a scientific approach that so blatantly denies the realities of its key situation. How dare we talk about the "unrealistic" nature of so-called psychotic hallucinations, for instance, as long as we remain completely in the dark about the nature of the psycho­logical concepts of an Ego or a Subject, about the nature of the external world and about the possibility of any understanding relationship between the two, to repeat once again the severe ac­cusations which our first patient flung at us.

Freud, the brilliant discoverer of the new dimension of a thorough­going meaningfulness in all human phenomena, was well aware of these psychological impasses. He tried, however, (unlike analysis of Dasein) to overcome them by adding to the traditional psycho­logical presuppositions and speculations yet other mental assump­tions, first of all, the hypothesis of an "Unconscious."

The "Unconscious" and "Psychic Topography"

Freud's Reasons for Assuming an "Unconscious." According to Freud's own testimony, his central aim, repeatedly stated, was to demonstrate the thorough-going meaningfulness of all mental phe­nomena (see pp. 64-66). This attempt was a complete innova­tion insofar as both the medicine and the psychology of his time were concerned. It is true that, even before Freud, the philosopher Dilthey had demanded that another approach should be added to natural-scientific "explanation," i.e., to the demonstration of causal-genetic relationships. Dilthey had called this new approach "Ver-stehen" and had meant thereby an "understanding of meaningful connections within the mental realm."¹⁵ Freud, however, was the first to have the audacity to claim that this meaningfulness was all-pervasive. Above all, he was the only one to make a systematic attempt to prove his daring hypothesis.

The "meaning" of a mental phenomenon Freud understood to be "the intention which it serves..., its place in the mental se­quence..., its tendency."¹⁶ He also defined the meaning of a svrnptom as "its whence and its whither or why."¹⁷ In other words,

**W. Dilthey, Verstehen und Erklaren, Vol. V of Collected Works, Leipzig and: n. 1924, pp. 139 f. ■ 5. Freud, op. tit., p. 38. "Ibid., p. 251.

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"meaningfulness" and "making sense" of a phenomenon signify that the phenomenon has a definite position and value in the process of the unfolding and maturing of a person's existence. This is essen­tially the same definition of "meaning" (German: Sinn) which we find in the French sens unique and the old German root sinnan. They, too, refer to "going in a definite direction" and "being on the way to somewhere." If Freud conceived of all mental phenomena in these terms, his basic conception of man must have been that of a being who is always "on the way toward a goal." While being thus on the way, man carries out his life possibilities, or, to use one of Freud's favorite terms, his "strivings." According to Freud, man is on the way even—indeed especially—when his inhibitions break down, namely at night (in his dreams) and in the symptoms of his illnesses. The goal of man's way—which coincides with the highest goal of psychoanalytic therapy—Freud characterized as becoming normal and free, not only in his relation with his physician, but also in his relation with his fellows.¹⁸

In his attempt to "prove" the thorough-going meaningfulness in all psychic phenomena, Freud found that he was forced to attack one of the unquestioned dogmas of most of the philosophers of his time, namely, the claim that mind and consciousness are identical. Freud knew and stated that even here some philosophers had pre­ceded him. Theodore Lipps, for instance, had said that the "general basis of psychical life" is unconscious, and du Prel had stated that "the concept of the mind is a wider one than that of consciousness, in the same way in which the gravitational force of a heavenly body extends beyond its range of luminosity."¹⁹ But Freud's deposal of hitherto all-powerful consciousness went much further into detail than any other philosopher had gone. Always aiming to prove the thorough-going meaningfulness of all mental phenomena, Freud arrived at the conception of a twofold "unconscious," a partner of consciousness but infinitely more powerful. Freud's "unconscious" soon became the most essential of all concepts introduced within the corpus of psychoanalytic theory. He went so far as to designate it as the "true psychical reality."²⁰ The "quality of being conscious or not" always remained for him "the single ray of fight that

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