Outline of Analysis of Dasein 7 страница

is Ibid., p. 386.

¹⁹ Both are quoted in Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 61г.

²⁰ S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 613.

Daseinsanalytic Re-evaluation of the Basic Conceptions 87

penetrates the obscurity of depth-psychology."²¹ The unconscious became so much the mark of psychoanalytic theory that psycho­analysis, and all doctrines derived from it, eventually became known as "depth" psychologies. "Depth" entered the picture because Freud, further developing Fechner's conception of "psychic localities,"²² undertook to view mental phenomena in terms of a "topographic" approach, and to regard the unconscious as a "psychical locality," a "psychical system" "below" consciousness.²³

Freud knew perfectly well that the assumption of an unconscious meant going beyond immediately observable phenomena. He under­scored this awareness when he referred to the idea of psychic localities as "conjecture."²⁴ Hence, he regarded his doctrine of the unconscious not as part of psychology but as part of metapsy-chology. Nevertheless, the starting point of his venturing beyond immediately observable phenomena was concrete observations. Among these, Freud cited the everyday occurrence that "an idea which is conscious now is no longer so a moment later.... What the idea was in the interval we do not know. We can say that it was latent."²⁵ Freud also recalled Bernheim's experiments in which subjects were given suggestions during hypnosis which they carried out after awakening, without knowing that the source of the suggestions was someone other than themselves. Freud saw further examples of unexplainable phenomena in parapraxes, neurotic symptoms, and dreams—all unexplainable, he thought, unless one assumed unconscious strivings and wishes behind them. As soon, however, as he had dared to assume an unconscious, he found himself forced to introduce complicated distinctions between what is only "latently" unconscious (i.e., "preconscious") and what is unconscious in the narrow sense (i.e., phenomena inaccessible even to the preconscious).²⁶ In later phases of his metapsychology, be even found it necessary to supplant the concepts "conscious" and "unconscious" to a large extent by those of "ego," "id," and

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super-ego. These distinctions are less important within the context of our

— S. Freud, The Ego and the Id, London, 1957, p. 18. Trans, by Joan Riviere.

— S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 494-495. ²¹ Ibid., pp. 536-537-

²* Loc. cit.

" S. Freud, The Ego and the Id, p. 10.

** S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 603.

^K S. Freud, The Ego and the Id, pp. 7-88.

88 Daseinsanalytic Re-evaluation of Psychoanalytic Therapy and Theory

present discussion than another development of the concept of the unconscious. At first, Freud stated, "unconsciousness seemed... only an enigmatical characteristic of a definite mental act."²⁸ But as time went on, it came to mean more:

The index-value of the unconscious has far outgrown its importance as a property. The system revealed by the sign that the single acts forming parts of it are unconscious we designate by the name The Unconscious'.... this is the... most significant sense which the term 'unconscious' has acquired in psycho-analysis.²⁹

In other words, what originally had been a property of a mental phenomenon suddenly came to mean a psychic locality or a psychic system. As such, the unconscious assumed the stature of an inde­pendent entity, with properties and laws peculiar to itself.

As characteristics of processes belonging to the "system of the unconscious," Freud mentioned the looseness of associative connec­tions; the concentration in a single ideational element of the intensity of whole trains of thought; the freedom with which such intensities can be transferred, resulting in the phenomenon of "displacement"; the fact that mutually contradictory thoughts persist side by side; the stress laid upon making cathecting energy mobile and capable of discharge, etc.³⁰ Freud coined the term "primary process" for this type of thinking—which he thought of as taking place within the psychic locality of the unconscious—to distinguish it from the reality-oriented "secondary process" of waking adult thought. The processes within the unconscious supplant outer reality with an inner one, regulated by the play between the pleasure and un-pleasure principles (see p. jj).

In a chapter significantly titled "Justification for the Conception of the Unconscious," Freud states that the assumption of an un­conscious is both "necessary and legitimate" and that he has in­controvertible proof of its existence.³¹

The assumption of an unconscious is necessary, Freud said, be­cause of the large gaps in the data of consciousness. Examples would be associations whose derivations we do not know and finished products of thinking arrived at in ways we do not know.

²⁸ S. Freud, "A Note on the Unconscious in Psycho-Analysis," in CP, Vol. IV, p.
29.

²⁹ hoc. cit. Italics added.

³⁰ S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 591 ff.

³¹ S. Freud, "The Unconscious," pp. 166-167.

Daseinsanalytic Re-evaluation of the Basic Conceptions 89

All these conscious acts remain disconnected and unintelligible if we insist upon claiming that every mental act that occurs in us must also necessarily be experienced by us through consciousness; on the other hand, they fall into a demonstrable connection if we interpolate between them the unconscious acts which we have inferred. A gain in meaning is a perfectly justifiable ground for going beyond the limits of direct experience.³²

The assumption of an unconscious becomes legitimate because "in postulating it we are not departing a single step from our customary and generally accepted mode of thinking.... That other people, too, possess a consciousness" is, after all, also an inference by analogy.³³ Incontrovertible proof of the existence of the unconscious, finally, was for Freud the fact that successful practical procedures can be constructed on this basis.³⁴

Many objections to Freud's justifications of the unconscious come to mind. To argue back from successful procedures, for instance, is not proof at all, for there are many examples of successful tech­niques arising from hypotheses later proved false. The development of electrodynamics is ample proof of such a fallacy. Not even the immense successes and discoveries of the exact natural sciences in regard to so-called dead nature are able to prove that the real core of this "dead nature" is elucidated by their theories at all. Likewise, any attempt to prove the reality of the unconscious by the useful­ness and practical effects of this concept is more than dubious.

Concerning the legitimacy of assuming an unconscious, we con­cede that it is as legitimate as the assumption of a consciousness. But then the question arises as to the legitimacy—and this can only mean the adequacy—of the assumption of a consciousness. This concept seems completely self-evident. And yet no one has ever been able to state convincingly just what consciousness would have to be or what its nature must be if it is a primarily immanent, subjective thing and yet capable of receiving within itself external objects, of taking notice of them and their meaningful content. Such consciousness of objects would be the inescapable condition for consciousness of self, because the latter is possible only in con­trast to something else. It is as impossible to state the nature of a consciousness as it is to define the nature of a human psyche which

*- -d., p. 167. ³³ ioid^ p. 169. **IfcA, p. 167.

90 Daseinsanalytic Re-evaluation of Psychoanalytic Therapy and Theon

could "have" and "carry around" this mysterious consciousness.* Freud strove diligently and incessantly to clarify the concept or consciousness, because he was fully aware of the decisive importance of such an endeavor for an understanding of the negation of con­sciousness, i.e., the notion of an unconscious. All he came up with, however, was that "consciousness is the superficies of the mental apparatus."³⁶ As such, it is part of the ego, which, in turn, Freud defines as the "coherent organization of mental processes."³⁷ The role of consciousness is "only that of a sense organ for the percep­tion of psychical qualities.... Excitatory material flows in to the Cs. sense-organ from two directions: from the Pcpt. system [i.e., from the outside]... and from the interior of the apparatus itself."³⁸ In order that the most important content of consciousness —the thought processes—may become conscious, a special condi­tion must be fulfilled. They must come into connection with the verbal images that correspond to them. The verbal images, in turn, must be regarded as verbal memory-residues derived primarily from auditory perceptions.³⁹ If these conditions are fulfilled, thought processes arising from the unconscious—in themselves without quality—acquire quality and thus can be received as perceptions by the consciousness.⁴⁰

When Freud had arrived at this point, he discovered that his ideas about consciousness did not keep the promise they had seemed to make. He recognized that with children, for example, the distinc­tion between conscious and unconscious "leaves us almost com­pletely in the lurch.... [In children, he states,] the conscious has not yet acquired all its characteristics;... it does not as yet fully possess the capacity for transposing itself into verbal images."⁴¹ Because of these difficulties, Freud had to content himself with having recognized the obscurity in regard to the problem.⁴² He had long before admitted implicitly that he was actually not very certain

³⁵ E. Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen, 4th ed., Halle, 1928, in which modern
philosophy probably progressed furthest so far as the examination of the problem of
consciousness is concerned—and yet failed.

³⁶ S. Freud, The Ego and the Id, pp. 19-20.

³⁷ Ibid., p. 15.

³⁸ S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 615-616.

³⁹ S. Freud, The Ego and the Id, pp. 20 ff.

⁴⁰ S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 617.

«S. Freud, "From the History of an Infantile Neurosis," in SE, Vol. XVII, pp. 104-105. 42 hoc. cit.

Deaeinsanalytic Re-evaluation of the Basic Conceptions 92

about what human consciousness really was and that he was aware of the intricacies of this problem. In his description of Bernheim's hvpnotic experiments, Freud had pointed out that the hypnotist is able to make his subject remember what happened during hypnosis, even if the latter does not seem at first to know anything about it. Because the subject, Freud had stated, does have knowledge of what transpired (provided the hypnotist presses him to remember it), and because he has not learned anything in the meantime from anv other quarter, the conclusion is justified "that these recollec­tions were in his mind from the outset. They were merely inac­cessible to him; he did not know that he knew them, but believed that he did not know."⁴³

Fundamentally, the obscurity which veils the problem of the: sciousness originates in the fact that it is impossible to under­stand "consciousness" as arising out of quality-less excitations and as i property of the surface of an apparatus. It is hardly worth men---miintr that it is equally impossible to understand "consciousness" m connection with language in the way Freud tried to comprehend rt The phenomenon of human language cannot be reduced to residues and memories of sensory stimuli and auditory sensations; ~n the senseless gibberish of a parrot cannot be explained this.-.-. It remains unintelligible how consciousness can rise out of an cinematic connection between "unconscious thought processes" and corresponding "auditory stimuli." Above all, it is simply not true that we perceive "auditory stimuli" when we hear a child cry, for instance, or a train whistle. Nor do we perceive only "visual stimuli" or "visual sensations" when we become aware of a tree standing er there in the garden. On the contrary, we primarily and rectly hear someone crying or something whistling; we perceive a и ее standing over there.

Unfortunately, Freud's peculiar ideas concerning the becoming-conscious of trains of thought (by means of energy cathexes of auditory verbal memories) had a considerable, and mostly detri­mental, influence in psychoanalytic therapy. We will return to this subject later on (pp. 244 ff.).

The phenomenon which the obscure concept of a consciousness bides rather than elucidates is neither a mysterious property of an energetic psychic process that is quality-less as such, nor is it a

S. Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, p. 93.

92 Daseinsanalytic Re-evaluation of Psychoanalytic Therapy and Theory

psychic locality within a subject or an apparatus. Such ideas так: forever impossible to understand my becoming aware of mysec as well as of the table, the house, the people around me—aware of them, moreover, as what they actually are, i.e., as this table, the: house, those people. This "capacity" for becoming aware of some­thing, hitherto thought of as a property or an act of a posited. unclarified consciousness, is nothing of the kind but simply evidence of man's primary openness and awareness, which, in turn, is the very essence of his existence and never merely the property of an unknown X. The recognition that others have the same ability as I do to understand—or to become "conscious" of—something is not based on deduction or analogy (as are, according to Freud's own statements, his notions of a consciousness and an unconscious). This recognition is, rather, an integral part of man's fundamental openness for an immediate understanding and perceiving of a being as the being it is—of a human being, for instance, as a being that exists in the same way as the one who perceives.

Freud felt that the scientific advantage which could be gained bv assuming causal connections within the mental realm of a posited unconscious was sufficient motive for going beyond immediate ex­perience. Actually, Freud abandoned his central aim and violated his own brilliant innovation of seeing human phenomena in a meaningful historical perspective when he interpolated assumed processes. For this type of procedure amounts to a radical retreat to the methods of natural science, which constructs intellectually arrived at causal connections. Nothing is gained for the under­standing of meaningful connections, which are in fact hidden from view from the beginning in such an approach. Therefore, the desire for discovery of meaningful connections can never be a valid motive for the assumption of an unconscious lying beyond im­mediate experience.

The assumption of an unconscious is necessary only if one accepts Freud's underlying philosophy as obviously true. Then, of course, the hypothesis of a psychic container, a psychic locality, or a psychic system is unavoidable. All the manifold psychic transformation processes which Freud assumed behind the immediately given phenomena require such a psychic "black box," since they ad­mittedly can never be seen.

However, to assume an unconscious does not further the genuine understanding of human possibilities of behaving. After all, the

Daseinsanalytic Re-evaluation of the Basic Conceptions 93

concept of an unconscious is but the negation of the notion of a consciousness. It is hard to imagine how the mere negation of a notion which is itself completely unclarified could possibly be of anv help for a more adequate elucidation of the basic nature of man. Again we must repeat that the central issue remains as mysterious as ever: how physiological stimuli and other excitations can of themselves produce perceptions and thoughts, let alone create a whole world. No theory which pictures man as an object, e.g., analogous to a camera) will ever be able to explain human perceiving, thinking, and acting, be it correct or incorrect. To men­tion just one point, such a theory forgets that no camera can per­ceive the picture on the film as a reproduction of something. Thus even if we retain the analogy Freud used, we discover that the most essential part is missing: the photographer. If one argues that Freud included the photographer by implication, one still misses the essential point and fails to clarify the basic question. The real issue is that no camera could ever come face to face with an object to be photographed unless the photographer (i.e., a human being) had previously perceived the object as an object he is interested in. Hence it follows that, for human perception qua perception and understanding, a camera—or a camera-like "psyche" with the lens

terns of a consciousness and an unconscious—is completely super­fluous. Neither psychic mechanisms (supposed to take place within these systems) nor any actually demonstrable physiological proc­esses in the eyes and the brain could ever contribute to an elucida­tion of human perception as such. Rather is it the other way around. Only a full understanding of the latter will throw hght on the true nature of its so-called underlying processes.

The Daseinsanalytic Reasons for Dropping the Assumption of an Unconscious. One of the immeasurable advantages of the Daseins-analvtic understanding of man lies in its making superfluous the assumption of an unconscious. Analysis of Dasein makes us realize that we have no basis for conjecturing the existence of subjective images which mirror an independent, external reality, nor for assuming processes (occurring in some intrapsychic locality) which fabricate ideas and thoughts which correspond more or less to this external reality (cf. pp. 81 ff.). Instead, analysis of Dasein enables ns to become aware that the things and fellow men which an indi­vidual encounters, appear to him—within the meaning-disclosing light of his Dasein —immediately (and without any subjective

92 Daseinsanalytic Re-evaluation of Psychoanalytic Therapy and Theory

psychic locality within a subject or an apparatus. Such ideas make it forever impossible to understand my becoming aware of myseK as well as of the table, the house, the people around me—aware of them, moreover, as what they actually are, i.e., as this table, that house, those people. This "capacity" for becoming aware of some­thing, hitherto thought of as a property or an act of a posited, unclarified consciousness, is nothing of the kind but simply evidence of man's primary openness and awareness, which, in turn, is the verv essence of his existence and never merely the property of an unknown X. The recognition that others have the same ability as I do to understand—or to become "conscious" of—something is not based on deduction or analogy (as are, according to Freud's own statements, his notions of a consciousness and an unconscious). This recognition is, rather, an integral part of man's fundamental openness for an immediate understanding and perceiving of a being as the being it is—of a human being, for instance, as a being that exists in the same way as the one who perceives.

Freud felt that the scientific advantage which could be gained by assuming causal connections within the mental realm of a posited unconscious was sufficient motive for going beyond immediate ex­perience. Actually, Freud abandoned his central aim and violated his own brilliant innovation of seeing human phenomena in a meaningful historical perspective when he interpolated assumed processes. For this type of procedure amounts to a radical retreat to the methods of natural science, which constructs intellectually arrived at causal connections. Nothing is gained for the under­standing of meaningful connections, which are in fact hidden from view from the beginning in such ад approach. Therefore, the desire for discovery of meaningful connections can never be a valid motive for the assumption of an unconscious lying beyond im­mediate experience.

The assumption of an unconscious is necessary only if one accepts Freud's underlying philosophy as obviously true. Then, of course, the hypothesis of a psychic container, a psychic locality, or a psychic system is unavoidable. All the manifold psychic transformation processes which Freud assumed behind the immediately given phenomena require such a psychic "black box," since they ad­mittedly can never be seen.

However, to assume an unconscious does not further the genuine understanding of human possibilities of behaving. After all, the

Detemsanalytic Re-evaluation of the Basic Conceptions 93

concept of an unconscious is but the negation of the notion of a consciousness. It is hard to imagine how the mere negation of a notion which is itself completely unclarified could possibly be of anv help for a more adequate elucidation of the basic nature of man. Again we must repeat that the central issue remains as mysterious as ever: how physiological stimuli and other excitations can of themselves produce perceptions and thoughts, let alone create a whole world. No theory which pictures man as an object (e.g., analogous to a camera) will ever be able to explain human r rceiving, thinking, and acting, be it correct or incorrect. To men­tion just one point, such a theory forgets that no camera can per­ceive the picture on the film as a reproduction of something. Thus even if we retain the analogy Freud used, we discover that the most essential part is missing: the photographer. If one argues that Freud included the photographer by implication, one still misses the essential point and fails to clarify the basic question. The real issue is that no camera could ever come face to face with an object to be photographed unless the photographer (i.e., a human being) had previously perceived the object as an object he is interested in. Hence it follows that, for human perception qua perception and understanding, a camera—or a camera-like "psyche" with the lens svstems of a consciousness and an unconscious—is completely super­fluous. Neither psychic mechanisms (supposed to take place within these systems) nor any actually demonstrable physiological proc­esses in the eyes and the brain could ever contribute to an elucida­tion of human perception as such. Rather is it the other way around. Only a full understanding of the latter will throw light on the true nature of its so-called underlying processes.

The Daseinsanalytic Reasons for Dropping the Assumption of an Unconscious. One of the immeasurable advantages of the Daseins­analytic understanding of man lies in its making superfluous the assumption of an unconscious. Analysis of Dasein makes us realize that we have no basis for conjecturing the existence of subjective images which mirror an independent, external reality, nor for assuming processes (occurring in some intrapsychic locality) which fabricate ideas and thoughts which correspond more or less to this external reality (cf. pp. 81 ff.). Instead, analysis of Dasein enables us to become aware that the things and fellow men which an indi­vidual encounters, appear to him—within the meaning-disclosing light of his Dasein —immediately (and without any subjective

94 Daseinsanalytic Re-evaluation of Psychoanalytic Therapy and Theory

processes being involved) as what they are, according to the world-openness of his existence. Because it is the essence of Dasein to light up, illuminate, disclose, and perceive, we always find Dasein primordially with what it encounters, similar to so-called physical light. Light, too, is always "out there," shining on the things which appear within its luminous realm. Relating to the things in the way of being-with-them-primordially, of letting them shine forth and appear, Dasein spatializes itself into its relationships with what it encounters, according to its close or distant concern for the en­countered in a given case (see pp. 42 ff.). Thus man exists, con­sumes his time, and fulfills his Dasein. Existing in this fashion, man depends on what he encounters as much as the encountered depends on the disclosing nature of man for its appearance.

From this point of view, one can understand without difficulty that a thing discloses itself even more fully and with greater reality if it appears in "condensation," i.e., if it has several meanings (which may even contradict each other), than if it is unequivocal. Though a thing may show itself in a manner which cannot be defined sharply by concepts, it may yet disclose more of itself than when it reveals only those features which can be forced into an unequivocal definition based on its utilitarian and calculable characteristics, in positivistic fashion. We also have good reason not to limit epithets such as "real" and "correct" to those perceptual phenomena which easily fit within the frame of reference of watch time and three-dimensional space, homogeneously extended. For we have seen (pp. 44ff.) that both are "derived," insofar as they are specific manners in which original temporality and spatiality may be con­ceptualized. Altogether Daseinsajialysis can grant an immediate and autonomous reality to all kinds of phenomena which, in Freud's view, would be degraded from the start to incorrect deceptions of the unconscious. Daseinsanalysis can do this because it has not prejudged a whole host of phenomena according to an arbitrary decision as to the nature of the world and reality. Daseinsanalysis makes it unnecessary to go beyond immediate experience. It can elucidate without difficulty, on the basis of immediate experience alone, all those psychic phenomena that forced Freud to invent the unconscious. It is easy to demonstrate this.

Freud wondered how an idea could be present in consciousness at one moment and have disappeared in the next. He seemed to have good reason to ask himself what had become of it and where

Daseinsanalytic Re-evaluation of the Basic Conceptions 95

it had disappeared. It could not have been destroyed; if it had been, the same idea could not reappear a moment later. These questions seem harmless and correct. Yet they do violence to the facts. They depart from immediate experience and must necessarily lead us into a blind alley. What Freud asks for is an explanation of some­thing that does not exist. Is it really true that just a moment ago there was an idea in a consciousness and that it was no longer there a moment later? For instance, if I say "I think of Notre Dame in Paris" while physically I am in my home in Zurich, does this think­ing of Notre Dame actually mean that I have only an "idea" or an "image" of this Gothic church somewhere in my head or my brain, or in my "mind" or "psyche"? We have only to remember our previous discussion of "idea" in order to discard such an assumption at once as being a mere and unwarranted abstraction which actually can never be traced anywhere. The immediate experience of our thinking of, or remembering, something gives evidence of a com­pletely different state of affairs. At the moment that I think of Notre Dame in Paris I am with Notre Dame in Paris and Notre Dame is with me, though "only" in my relationship of thinking of, or remembering, it. Of course, this thinking or remembering of Notre Dame is a different way of relating to this object than my perceiving it visually, as I would if I stood physically before it. Nevertheless, my relationship of thinking of Notre Dame is one of the possibilities of my world-disclosing relationships in whose light the cathedral can make its appearance.

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