www.psychspace.com心理学空间网人的現象與經驗
與人的現象與經驗
的理解架構
與回到人的現象與經驗
March 1, 2006
醴陵張凱理
題綱
1. 引言: 來信回信及其它
2. BEFORE THEY BEGAN TO DIVERGE …
3. … AT A TIME WHEN ‘THE SCIENCES OF MAN’ WERE BEGINNING TO EMERGE
4. ENDNOTE
REFERENCE
APPENDIX: BREGER, 1989, P 1-13; KUNDERA, 1986, P 3-44
1.引言: 來信回信及其它
Subject: Russian man (Feb 8, 2006)
I try to read through your material, slowly.
Today, I help to do the psychological test (WASI), and the subject is a Russian. I don't have time to know his background. I know he uses cocaine i.v. injection, which is very very rare, dangerous and extreme.
He is young, nice, sweet, and has strong accent. He carried a big black bag when he entered my office. Generally speaking, the interview was smooth, although he was very frustrated about his performance. Then he went to the exam room for blood test, at that time, we had a chance to see into his black bag. Some nasty clothes, a tourniquet, cigarettes and a knife.
A knife, big and shinning, reminds me of the reality.
It's hard to express what I feel, but I knew I spent time with a Russian man, his knife and many stories that I don't have chance to know, or better not to know.
* * * * * *
The reality is always more frightening than our theories.
That piece of talk is supposed to be given on March 1. Two main points: (1) The psychoanalytic theories are protective barriers between us and the reality. Though they are also meant to illuminate the latter. (2) Take Dostoevsky for an example, who interestingly lived and wrote before the birth of psychoanalysis. His works are wonderfully complex and polyphonic (to use Bakhtin’s term). And that is exactly what reality is, in his times, in Freud’s times, and in our own.
Therefore, two phrases are the key points: “before they began to diverge …” and “(he wrote) at the time when the ‘sciences of man’ were beginning to emerge”.
If I am an eternal student, then let it be student of that reality.
* * * * * *
... We were both slightly over twenty years old. I was then residing in Petersburg; one year before I resigned from the engineers' corps, not knowing why, full of vague and uncertain aspirations. This was in May, 1845. Early in the winter, suddenly, I began to write Poor Folks, my first novel; before that I had never written anything. ... In the evening of the same day that I submitted the manu (to Grigorovich and Nekrasov), I went far off to visit a former friend of mine. All night we spoke about Dead Souls and read the novel for how long a time --- I don't remember. In those days it used to be this way among young men; two or three of them would get together: "Gentlemen, shall we read Gogol?" --- They would sit down and read, sometimes, all night. ... I returned home at four o'clock, in a white Petersburg night, bright as a day. The weather was beautiful and warm, and upon entering my apartment I did not go to bed, but opened the window and seated myself in front of it. Suddenly I heard the bell ring. This surprised me very much. Presently Grigorovich and Nekrasov rushed upon me and in a perfect transport started embracing me, and both were almost crying. ... In the evening they came home early, took my manu and began to read it, just for a test. "We shall be able to judge from the first ten pages." But having read ten pages, they decided to read ten more pages, and thereupon, without interruption, they sat all night till morning reading aloud and taking turns when one grew tired. ... “He is reading about the student’s death,” --- Grigorovich later told me, when we were alone --- “and suddenly I notice, in that place where the father runs behind the coffin, Nekrasov’s voice begins to falter, once, then a second time, and then, losing control over himself, he raps upon the manu with his palm, exclaiming: ‘The rascal!’ --- meaning you. And thus all night.” …After they had finsihed reading (112 pages in all), they unanimously decided to call on me immediately: "What does it matter that he is sleeping! We'll wake him up. This is more important than sleep!" ...
(The Diary of A Writer, by F.M. Dostoevsky, George Braziller, 1954, p 584-585)
Back in Rockville, Frieda buried herself in work. As millions of Europeans were being slaughtered or forced into exile … Frieda focused, as always, on the individual. Hilde Bruch recalled her reaction to the Pearl Harbor. … “Then came the meeting on December 8, 1941 [the day Roosevelt issued his declaration on war]. …This evening stands out vividly in my memory,” Bruch later wrote. “Everybody talked about what he or she was going to do for the war effort, and everybody had grandiose ideas. Frieda said very quietly, ‘I know what I’m going to do. I’ll do what I know best. I’ll do psychotherapy.’
(To Redeem One Person Is To Redeem The World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, by Gail A. Hornstein, Free Press, 2000, p 117)
Most critiques of contemporary scientific approaches to clinical psychology are built on the European philosophical traditions of phenomenology and hermeneutics. ... the approach I take here is to mine the riches of common sense and the unanalyzed notion of knowing people well in everyday day that is taken for granted by both logical positivist and hermeneutic approaches to science. In this way, my approach resembles more that of the philosopher Stephen Toulmin than it does the European Husserl or Heidegger. ...
I approach the moral engagement of clinical psychology in this book by examination of four topics: the concept of suffering, the analysis of the concept of knowing people well in everyday life, the nature of clinical knowledge, and the narrative clinical case study as a vehicle uniquely suited for the scholarly communication of morally engaged clinical knowledge.
(Facing Human Suffering: Psychology and Psychotherapy As Moral
Engagement, by Ronald B. Miller, American Psychological Association, 2004, p xi)
"賓雁曾經對我說過:我祇希望將來在我的墓碑上,寫上這麼一行字:「長眠於此的這個
中國人,曾做了他應該做的事,說了他自己應該說的話。」我知道賓雁還有很多話想跟我們
說,想對他牽念的祖國的父老鄉親說.可是,他也許再也沒有力氣說出來了。他在生命的最
後時光,最惦記的還是中國老百姓的自由和民主,幸福和權利,他為此奮鬥、拚搏了一生。
在他在進入昏迷以前,對身邊親友說的最清晰的一句話是:「將來,我們想起今天這樣的日
子,會非常有意思。」我想,這是他的最大的遺願。" (2005年12月4日上午9時 於賓雁彌留之際)
(賓雁的遺願, 朱洪, Beijing Spring, Vol 152, p 10, Jan, 2006)
2.BEFORE THEY BEGAN TO DIVERGE …
The Freud Wars: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, by Lavinia Gomez, Routledge, 2005
The premises of Object Relations (Gomez, 1997) led to the premises of psychoanalysis itself. After too many wrong turnings and blind alleys, the focus of this book emerged: how can psychoanalytic thinking be justified? … How do we know what we know? Can science explain everything? And that enduring enigma, whatever is a person?
How Can Psychoanalytic Thinking Be Justified?
* * * * * *
Chap 1. Introduction: What sort of subject might psychoanalysis be?
The aim is to work towards an understanding of psychoanalysis through its central concept, the unconscious …
1. The context of the enquiry
“The Freud Wars”:
‘The Unknown Freud’ (Crews, 1993) condemns the whole edifice of psychoanalysis as a vast confidence trick played on suggestible patients and an unwary public by an unscrupulous and self-seeking psychoanalytic establishment. … Crew’s objections to psychoanalysis’ claim to scientific status are drawn largely from Grunbaum’s work. (The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique, Adolf Grunbaum, 1984)
Psychoanalysis, Thomas Nagel (1994) argues, introduces a new way of thinking which has triumphantly succeeded in transforming our views of what a person is, within a broader conception of empirical science.
The two philosophers’ opposing views form the centerpiece of an eighteen-month debate, with philosophers, psychoanalysts, academic psychologists and others all joining in. … The two critiques give us a solid platform from which to assess the scientific credentials of psychoanalysis.
One question which is never considered throughout the erupting debate is whether psychoanalysis should be categorized as a science in the first place. The possibility of classing it with the humanities is not even entertained.
This enquiry would be incomplete without a critique which puts psychoanalysis forward as an interpretative or ‘hermeneutic’ subject. The inaugural hermeneutic critique by Jurgen Habermas (1971) seems a particularly appropriate example, as a reading which Grunbaum explicitly and Nagel implicitly rejects.
Empirical and hermeneutic principles:
There are thus two questions for this enquiry to consider. Can psychoanalysis be justified at all? And should its acceptance of rejection depend on scientific or hermeneutic principles of knowledge? …
The empirical-hermeneutic distinction is a dichotomy which goes back to the very root of Western thought. … the etymology brings out their essential meaning. … ‘Empirical’ derives from ‘empeiria’ --- experience --- referring to the sensory experience by which we come to know a world outside ourselves; ‘hermeneutics’ is related to Hermes, messenger of the gods and symbol of communication. … The empirical science looks at phenomena from the outside. It uses the language of mechanics, going back to the physical laws and concepts through which we understand the material world. … Hermeneutic approaches explain phenomena --- sometimes the same phenomena --- from the inside. Their explanations are couched in the subjective language of desire and belief, value and intention, emotion and experience. These terms reflect the background of personal meaning and purpose which differentiates the action of a person from the output of a system, or a state of mind from a state of matter.
‘Science’, in itself, means nothing more than an organized body of theory. However, it has become overwhelmingly identified with ‘empirical science’, often with the implication that this kind of knowledge is more ‘real’ than any other kind. … Hermeneutic theorists such as Habermas challenge these assumptions. They claim that the knowledge represented by developed interpretational systems is just as legitimate as that of empirical systems, and should therefore be called ‘hermeneutic science’.
2. The theoretical background
The ‘mental’, the ‘physical’ and the ‘psychical’:
The sources of the confusion in psychoanalysis go back to its point of departure. … Freud developed psychoanalysis as one of a number of contemporaneous attempts to solve the most frustrating puzzle of 19th-century psychiatry. (i.e. hysteria) … ‘Psychical reality’ is Freud’s third area, lying between the physical and the mental realms, but conceivable only in mental or physical terms. … yet the psychical has no language of its own …
The three levels of psychoanalytic theory:
Each level treats the concept of the ‘psychical’ in its own way. The clinical theories approach it through the work of mental reality; the psychological models and theories, through the work of physical reality. The psychological foundations state formally that there must be a point of meeting between the two.
… the clinical theories cover all psychoanalytic concepts that can be expressed in the language of experience, and are themselves something to be explained. … Freud’s way of explaining them is termed the ‘psychology’, a word Freud coins as a direct counterpart to ‘physics’. ‘physics’ and ‘psychology’ refer to the ‘first principles’ of the sciences of physics and psychology respectively. … physical and psychological theories and principles are unprovable, since by definition there can be no deeper theoretical level on which ‘first principles’ can rest. …
Freud’s main psychological proposition is that psychical phenomena can be thought of in three different ways: ‘when we have succeeded in describing a psychical process in its dynamic, topographical and economic aspects, we should speak of it as a psychological presentation’ (Freud, S.E. 14, p 181, 1915)
… the clinical theories form the ground of explanation for Freud’s psychoanalytic observations, and the psychological models and theories form the ground of the clinical theories. … but they are still not the absolute foundation of psychoanalysis. This is to be found in the presuppositions they carry, which set out the unconditioned starting-point for psychoanalytic theorization. … the two fundamental hypotheses … the first hypothesis proposes that the psyche has to be conceived as a complex ‘apparatus’, with mental activity as its output … ‘the majority of philosophers … declare that the idea of something psychical being unconscious is self-contradictory. But this is precisely what psychoanalysis is obliged to assert, and this is its second fundamental hypothesis’ (Freud, S.E. 23, p 158, 1938) … thus Freud’s deion of the psyche is of a quasi-physical ‘apparatus’ churning out a continuous stream of quasi-mental ‘processes’ … the conception of the psychical as the primary psychophysical reality …
These two hypotheses are still not the most fundamental level of psychoanalysis. This is to be found in the ‘basic assumption’ and ultimate bedrock of Freud’s psychoanalysis: that a theory of mental life must begin with the unified conception of processes which are usually cast in either physical or mental terms. … The task of psychoanalysis is to ‘(act) as an intermediary between biology and psychology’ (Freud, S.E. 13, p 182, 1913)
* * * * * *
Chap 5: The apparatus of the soul: how can mental and physical explanations coincide?
… turns away from conventional work to the thinking behind Freud’s theories, in a search for the roots of their strange theoretical ambiguity. We find that this goes back to the very beginning of his thought. His underlying philosophy is neither wholly scientific nor purely interpretative. He seems to hold a picture of reality which pre-empts the division into the mental and physical modes on which empirical and hermeneutic approaches rest. …
Together with Freud’s thinking, the work of the philosophers Sebastian Gardner (Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, 1993) and Peter Strawson (Individuals: An Essay in Deive physics, 1959) (‘Deive physics is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world, revisionary physics is concerned to produce a better structure’. ibid, p 9) suggest the basis for a new foundational approach which seems to come from within psychoanalysis itself. Instead of the empirical basis in the body, or the hermeneutic basis in the mind, psychoanalysis goes back to the psychophysical basis of the person, as the source from which all thinking must arise.
* * * * * *
Chap 6. Conclusions
… based on the intimate association between psychoanalysis and the ‘pre-theoretical’ psychology of everyday living … allows the practical foundational principle to be drawn out … the ground of the psychical is neither the mind of hermeneutic approaches nor the body of empirical approaches. It can only be the person, as the irreducibly psychophysical holder of the psychical reality from which all knowledge derives.
… psychoanalysis defines itself as reflection on a self, by a self; directly, or by attunement with another. Psychoanalysis is most secure on the basis that there is no specialized arena, no technical or linguistic model of knowing or knowledge to which it must accede. It is not a hermeneutic theory, since its material is treated as ‘real’ rather than ‘merely’ symbolic. Neither is it an empirical science, because its concepts and explanations must be reachable, and reached, through reflections alone. Perhaps it could be described as systematic enquiry into the unspoken explanation of oneself, at a generalized level, and taking both mental and physical convictions into account.
The subject matter of psychoanalysis, its method and its underlying nature are all centred in reflection, making psychoanalytic thinking even less fixed and more ‘critical’ than psychoanalytic theory itself. In psychoanalysis more than in any other subject, theoretical consolidation and theoretical renewal pull against each other. Experience and reflection lead to both the establishment and the challenge of theoretical concepts and structures. The only theory that can be made use of psychoanalytically is theory that has been assimilated and modified to become personal knowledge. The extent to which psychoanalytic concepts are taught or learned, rather than recognized or reached through reflection, is the extent of the loss of their critical-reflective potential. This does not mean that psychoanalytic thought is confined to the ‘lowest common denominator’; just that interpretations have to be individually rather generally inspired, and should arise from the subjective or intersubjective situation rather than straight from the theoretical preconceptions of the individual.
Whatever the conceptual necessity of a mental or a physical theorization, we feel we should not have to choose between them in our minds, because in our lives we cannot: we can only choose the person.
We can now see why empirical-scientific or hermeneutic readings of psychoanalysis fail to satisfy. They enter into the theorizing process too late to encompass the whole of what psychoanalysis has to offer. The concept of the psychical implies foundations in which mental and physical explanations can in principle converge. The place at which the psychical arises is the place in which the ‘soul’ meets with its concrete ‘apparatus’. The question of how mental and physical explanations coincide cannot be answered, by psychoanalysis or anything else. It becomes, instead, the question of where they coincide. The answer seems to be: before they begin to diverge.
3… AT THE TIME WHEN ‘SCIENCES OF MAN’ BEGAN TO EMERGE
Dostoevsky is not only a philosopher, he is also a philosophical problem.
(“On Reading Dostoevsky”, George Florovsky)
“A survey of Russian critical literature on Dostoevsky’s works shows at once that with very few exceptions it does not rise above the spiritual level of Dostoevsky’s favorite characters. It does not dominate the material at hand, the material dominates it completely. It is still learning from Ivan Karamazov and Raskolnikov, from Stavrogin and the Grand Inquisitor, entangling itself in the same contradictions that entangled them, stopping in bewilderment before the problems that they failed to solve and bowing respectfully before their complex and tormenting experiences.”
Mikhail Bakhtin, 1929, p 6, quoting B. M. Engelhardt
Dostoevsky 1821-1881
Dostoyevsky (Dostoevsky), Fyodor (Feodor) Mikhailovich, Russian author, born in Moscow, on the 3oth of October 1821, was the second son of a retired military surgeon of a decayed noble family. He was educated at Moscow and at the military engineering academy in St. Petersburg, which he left in 1843 with the grade of sub-lieutenant. Next year his father died, and he resigned his commission in order to devote himself to literature thus commencing a long struggle with ill-health and penury.
In addition to the old Russian masters Gogol and Pushkin, Balzac and George Sand supplied him with literary ideals. He knew little of Dickens, but his first story is thoroughly Dickensian in character. The hero is a middle-aged man who entertains a pathetic, humble adoration for a fair young girl, a solitary waif like himself. Characteristically the Russian story ends in tender gloom. The girl marries a middle-aged wealthy man; the hero dies of a broken heart, and his funeral is described in lamentable detail. The germ of all Dostoyevsky’s imaginative work may be discovered here. The story was submitted in manu to the Russian critic, Bielinski, and excited him by its power over the emotions. It appeared in the course of 1846 under the title of Poor People. An English version, Poor Folk, with an introduction by George Moore, appeared in 1894. The successful author became a regular contributor of short tales to the Annals of the Country, a monthly periodical conducted by Kraevsky; but he was wretchedly paid, and his work, though revealing extraordinary power and intensity, commonly lacks both finish and proportion. Poverty and physical suffering robbed him of the joy of life and filled him with bitter thoughts and morbid imaginings.
During 1847 he became an enthusiastic member of the revolutionary reunions of the political agitator, Petrachevski. Many of the students and younger members did little more than discuss the theories of Fourier and other economists at these gatherings. Exaggerated reports were eventually carried to the police, and on the 23rd of April 1849 Dostoyevsky and his brother, with thirty other suspected members, were arrested. After a short examination by the secret police they were lodged in the fortress of St Peter and St Paul at St Petersburg, in which confinement Feodor wrote his story A Little Hero. On the 22nd of December 1849 the accused were all condemned to death. As the soldiers were preparing to carry out the sentence, the prisoners were informed that their penalty was commuted to exile in Siberia. The novelist’s sentence was, four years in Siberia and enforced military service in the ranks for life. On Christmas eve 1849 he started the long journey to Omsk, and remained in Siberia, like a man buried alive, nailed down in his coffin for four terrible years. His Siberian experiences are graphically narrated in a volume to which he gave the name of Recollections of a Dead-House (1858). It was known in an English translation as Buried Alive in Siberia (1881). Upon the accession of Alexander II., he was finally recalled from exile.
After herding for years with the worst Criminals, Dostoyevsky obtained an exceptional insight into the dark and seamy side of Russian life. He formed new conceptions of human life and of the Russian character. Psychological studies have seldom, if ever, found a more intense form of expression than that embodied by Dostoyevsky in his novel Crime and Punishment. The hero Raskolnikov is a poor student, who is led on to commit a murder partly by self conceit, partly by the contemplation of the abject misery around him. Unsurpassed in poignancy in the whole of modern literature is the sensation of compassion evoked by the scene between the self-tormented Raskolnikov and the humble street-walker, Sonia, whom he loves, and from whom, having confessed his crime, he derives the idea of expiation. Raskolnikov finally gives himself up to the police and is exiled to Siberia, whither Sonia follows him. The book gave currency to a number of ideas, not in any sense new, but specially characteristic of Dostoyevsky: the theory, for instance, that in every life, however fallen and degraded, there are ecstatic moments of self-devotion; the doctrine of purification by suffering, and by suffering alone; and the ideal of a Russian people forming a social state at some future period bound together by no obligation save mutual love and the magic of kindness. In this visionary prospect, as well as in his objection to the use of physical force, Dostoyevsky anticipated in a remarkable manner some of the conspicuous tenets of his great successor Tolstoy. The book electrified the reading public in Russia upon its appearance in 1866, and its fame was confirmed when it appeared in Paris in 1867. To his remarkable faculty self awakening reverberations of melancholy and compassion, as shown in his early work, Dostoyevsky had added, by the admission of all, a rare mastery over the emotions of terror and pity. But such mastery was not long to remain unimpaired. Crime and Punishment was written when he was at the zenith of his power. His remaining works exhibit frequently a marvelous tragic and analytic power, but they are unequal, and deficient in measure and in balance. The chief of them are: The Injured and the Insulted, The Demons (1867), The Idiot (I869), The Adult (1875), The Brothers Karamazov (1881).
From 1865, when he settled in St, Petersburg Dostoyevsky was absorbed in a succession of journalistic enterprises, and suffered severe gambling losses. He had to leave Russia, in order to escape his creditors, and to seek refuge in Germany and Italy. He was further harassed by troubles with his wife, and his work was interrupted by epileptic fits and other physical ailments. It was under such conditions as these that his most enduring works were created. He managed finally to return to Russia early in the seventies, and was for some time director of The Russian World.
The last eight years of his life were spent in comparative prosperity at St. Petersburg, where he died on the 9th of February 1881.
(From The Free Library By Farlex)
Dostoevsky’s works do not force one view of human freedom to be taken by the other. He provides no definite image of man. The presentation of freedom in this manner is a defense of man, a speaking on behalf of man against dissolution into the rhetoric that theology and science bring. It is worth observing that Dostoevsky wrote these novels at a time when “the sciences of man” were beginning to emerge. His artwork defends man against a dissolution into the acid bath of psychology, sociology, and economy, all of which sought to account for man’s being in terms of their own rhetoric.
(Dostoevsky’s Conception of Man: Its Impact on Philosophical Anthropology, by Peter Mcquire Wolf, PhD Dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University, 1997, p 9)
Four facets may be distinguished in the rich personality of Dostoevsky:
the creative artist, the neurotic, the moralist and the sinner. How is one
to find one’s way in this bewildering complexity?
The creative artist is the least doubtful: Dostoevsky’s place is not far behind Shakespeare. The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written; the episode of the Grand Inquisitor, one of the peaks in the literature of the world, can hardly be valued too highly. Before the problem of the creative artist analysis, alas, lay down its arms.
… I included Dostoevsky the psychologist under the creative artist. Another objection I might have raised against him was that his insight was so much restricted to abnormal mental life. Consider his astonishing helplessness in face of the phenomena of love. All he really knew were crude, instinctual desire, masochistic subjection and loving out of pity. … in spite of all my admiration for Dostoevsky’s intensity and pre-eminence, I do not really like him. That is because my patience with pathological natures is exhausted in analysis. In art and life I am intolerant of them.
(Freud, S.E. 21, p 177 & 196)
Traditional interpretation of literature from a psychoanalytic standpoint has relied extensively upon the work of Sigmund Freud. In the case of Dostoevsky, however, this method is both anachronistic and inadequate. Dostoevsky's great works, considered individually or holistically, though fictional, established him as one of the forefathers of psychoanalysis, and a predecessor to Freud. Indeed Freud himself acknowledged that "the poets" discovered the unconscious before he did, stating further in a letter to Stefan Zweig, "Dostoevsky 'cannot be understood without psychoanalysis- i.e., he isn't in need of it because he illustrates it himself in every character and every sentence.'"
Louis Breger seems to present the most comprehensive and adequate approach to psychology in Dostoevsky. While building upon Freud, he rejects the simplicity and atomistic nature of his analysis: "Too often, applications to literature have relied on particular psychoanalytic observations- the Oedipus complex, the primal scene,- or some version of theory- orthodox Freudian, Lacanian. But observations and theory can only be guidelines in the application of the method."
Breger argues here, that Freudian methods of analysis tend to think of the author as patient, and believes rather, in the case of Dostoevsky, that he should be considered a fellow psychoanalyst. "What is most characteristic in [Dostoevsky] is the presence of multiple points of view; he is never, as an author, completely identified with one character.”
(Dostoevsky and Psychology, by Dan Cantrell)
THE UNDERGROUND MAN: BACKGROUND OF THE MODERN SELF
與人的現象與經驗
的理解架構
與回到人的現象與經驗
March 1, 2006
醴陵張凱理
題綱
1. 引言: 來信回信及其它
2. BEFORE THEY BEGAN TO DIVERGE …
3. … AT A TIME WHEN ‘THE SCIENCES OF MAN’ WERE BEGINNING TO EMERGE
4. ENDNOTE
REFERENCE
APPENDIX: BREGER, 1989, P 1-13; KUNDERA, 1986, P 3-44
1.引言: 來信回信及其它
Subject: Russian man (Feb 8, 2006)
I try to read through your material, slowly.
Today, I help to do the psychological test (WASI), and the subject is a Russian. I don't have time to know his background. I know he uses cocaine i.v. injection, which is very very rare, dangerous and extreme.
He is young, nice, sweet, and has strong accent. He carried a big black bag when he entered my office. Generally speaking, the interview was smooth, although he was very frustrated about his performance. Then he went to the exam room for blood test, at that time, we had a chance to see into his black bag. Some nasty clothes, a tourniquet, cigarettes and a knife.
A knife, big and shinning, reminds me of the reality.
It's hard to express what I feel, but I knew I spent time with a Russian man, his knife and many stories that I don't have chance to know, or better not to know.
* * * * * *
The reality is always more frightening than our theories.
That piece of talk is supposed to be given on March 1. Two main points: (1) The psychoanalytic theories are protective barriers between us and the reality. Though they are also meant to illuminate the latter. (2) Take Dostoevsky for an example, who interestingly lived and wrote before the birth of psychoanalysis. His works are wonderfully complex and polyphonic (to use Bakhtin’s term). And that is exactly what reality is, in his times, in Freud’s times, and in our own.
Therefore, two phrases are the key points: “before they began to diverge …” and “(he wrote) at the time when the ‘sciences of man’ were beginning to emerge”.
If I am an eternal student, then let it be student of that reality.
* * * * * *
... We were both slightly over twenty years old. I was then residing in Petersburg; one year before I resigned from the engineers' corps, not knowing why, full of vague and uncertain aspirations. This was in May, 1845. Early in the winter, suddenly, I began to write Poor Folks, my first novel; before that I had never written anything. ... In the evening of the same day that I submitted the manu (to Grigorovich and Nekrasov), I went far off to visit a former friend of mine. All night we spoke about Dead Souls and read the novel for how long a time --- I don't remember. In those days it used to be this way among young men; two or three of them would get together: "Gentlemen, shall we read Gogol?" --- They would sit down and read, sometimes, all night. ... I returned home at four o'clock, in a white Petersburg night, bright as a day. The weather was beautiful and warm, and upon entering my apartment I did not go to bed, but opened the window and seated myself in front of it. Suddenly I heard the bell ring. This surprised me very much. Presently Grigorovich and Nekrasov rushed upon me and in a perfect transport started embracing me, and both were almost crying. ... In the evening they came home early, took my manu and began to read it, just for a test. "We shall be able to judge from the first ten pages." But having read ten pages, they decided to read ten more pages, and thereupon, without interruption, they sat all night till morning reading aloud and taking turns when one grew tired. ... “He is reading about the student’s death,” --- Grigorovich later told me, when we were alone --- “and suddenly I notice, in that place where the father runs behind the coffin, Nekrasov’s voice begins to falter, once, then a second time, and then, losing control over himself, he raps upon the manu with his palm, exclaiming: ‘The rascal!’ --- meaning you. And thus all night.” …After they had finsihed reading (112 pages in all), they unanimously decided to call on me immediately: "What does it matter that he is sleeping! We'll wake him up. This is more important than sleep!" ...
(The Diary of A Writer, by F.M. Dostoevsky, George Braziller, 1954, p 584-585)
Back in Rockville, Frieda buried herself in work. As millions of Europeans were being slaughtered or forced into exile … Frieda focused, as always, on the individual. Hilde Bruch recalled her reaction to the Pearl Harbor. … “Then came the meeting on December 8, 1941 [the day Roosevelt issued his declaration on war]. …This evening stands out vividly in my memory,” Bruch later wrote. “Everybody talked about what he or she was going to do for the war effort, and everybody had grandiose ideas. Frieda said very quietly, ‘I know what I’m going to do. I’ll do what I know best. I’ll do psychotherapy.’
(To Redeem One Person Is To Redeem The World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, by Gail A. Hornstein, Free Press, 2000, p 117)
Most critiques of contemporary scientific approaches to clinical psychology are built on the European philosophical traditions of phenomenology and hermeneutics. ... the approach I take here is to mine the riches of common sense and the unanalyzed notion of knowing people well in everyday day that is taken for granted by both logical positivist and hermeneutic approaches to science. In this way, my approach resembles more that of the philosopher Stephen Toulmin than it does the European Husserl or Heidegger. ...
I approach the moral engagement of clinical psychology in this book by examination of four topics: the concept of suffering, the analysis of the concept of knowing people well in everyday life, the nature of clinical knowledge, and the narrative clinical case study as a vehicle uniquely suited for the scholarly communication of morally engaged clinical knowledge.
(Facing Human Suffering: Psychology and Psychotherapy As Moral
Engagement, by Ronald B. Miller, American Psychological Association, 2004, p xi)
"賓雁曾經對我說過:我祇希望將來在我的墓碑上,寫上這麼一行字:「長眠於此的這個
中國人,曾做了他應該做的事,說了他自己應該說的話。」我知道賓雁還有很多話想跟我們
說,想對他牽念的祖國的父老鄉親說.可是,他也許再也沒有力氣說出來了。他在生命的最
後時光,最惦記的還是中國老百姓的自由和民主,幸福和權利,他為此奮鬥、拚搏了一生。
在他在進入昏迷以前,對身邊親友說的最清晰的一句話是:「將來,我們想起今天這樣的日
子,會非常有意思。」我想,這是他的最大的遺願。" (2005年12月4日上午9時 於賓雁彌留之際)
(賓雁的遺願, 朱洪, Beijing Spring, Vol 152, p 10, Jan, 2006)
2.BEFORE THEY BEGAN TO DIVERGE …
The Freud Wars: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, by Lavinia Gomez, Routledge, 2005
The premises of Object Relations (Gomez, 1997) led to the premises of psychoanalysis itself. After too many wrong turnings and blind alleys, the focus of this book emerged: how can psychoanalytic thinking be justified? … How do we know what we know? Can science explain everything? And that enduring enigma, whatever is a person?
How Can Psychoanalytic Thinking Be Justified?
* * * * * *
Chap 1. Introduction: What sort of subject might psychoanalysis be?
The aim is to work towards an understanding of psychoanalysis through its central concept, the unconscious …
1. The context of the enquiry
“The Freud Wars”:
‘The Unknown Freud’ (Crews, 1993) condemns the whole edifice of psychoanalysis as a vast confidence trick played on suggestible patients and an unwary public by an unscrupulous and self-seeking psychoanalytic establishment. … Crew’s objections to psychoanalysis’ claim to scientific status are drawn largely from Grunbaum’s work. (The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique, Adolf Grunbaum, 1984)
Psychoanalysis, Thomas Nagel (1994) argues, introduces a new way of thinking which has triumphantly succeeded in transforming our views of what a person is, within a broader conception of empirical science.
The two philosophers’ opposing views form the centerpiece of an eighteen-month debate, with philosophers, psychoanalysts, academic psychologists and others all joining in. … The two critiques give us a solid platform from which to assess the scientific credentials of psychoanalysis.
One question which is never considered throughout the erupting debate is whether psychoanalysis should be categorized as a science in the first place. The possibility of classing it with the humanities is not even entertained.
This enquiry would be incomplete without a critique which puts psychoanalysis forward as an interpretative or ‘hermeneutic’ subject. The inaugural hermeneutic critique by Jurgen Habermas (1971) seems a particularly appropriate example, as a reading which Grunbaum explicitly and Nagel implicitly rejects.
Empirical and hermeneutic principles:
There are thus two questions for this enquiry to consider. Can psychoanalysis be justified at all? And should its acceptance of rejection depend on scientific or hermeneutic principles of knowledge? …
The empirical-hermeneutic distinction is a dichotomy which goes back to the very root of Western thought. … the etymology brings out their essential meaning. … ‘Empirical’ derives from ‘empeiria’ --- experience --- referring to the sensory experience by which we come to know a world outside ourselves; ‘hermeneutics’ is related to Hermes, messenger of the gods and symbol of communication. … The empirical science looks at phenomena from the outside. It uses the language of mechanics, going back to the physical laws and concepts through which we understand the material world. … Hermeneutic approaches explain phenomena --- sometimes the same phenomena --- from the inside. Their explanations are couched in the subjective language of desire and belief, value and intention, emotion and experience. These terms reflect the background of personal meaning and purpose which differentiates the action of a person from the output of a system, or a state of mind from a state of matter.
‘Science’, in itself, means nothing more than an organized body of theory. However, it has become overwhelmingly identified with ‘empirical science’, often with the implication that this kind of knowledge is more ‘real’ than any other kind. … Hermeneutic theorists such as Habermas challenge these assumptions. They claim that the knowledge represented by developed interpretational systems is just as legitimate as that of empirical systems, and should therefore be called ‘hermeneutic science’.
2. The theoretical background
The ‘mental’, the ‘physical’ and the ‘psychical’:
The sources of the confusion in psychoanalysis go back to its point of departure. … Freud developed psychoanalysis as one of a number of contemporaneous attempts to solve the most frustrating puzzle of 19th-century psychiatry. (i.e. hysteria) … ‘Psychical reality’ is Freud’s third area, lying between the physical and the mental realms, but conceivable only in mental or physical terms. … yet the psychical has no language of its own …
The three levels of psychoanalytic theory:
Each level treats the concept of the ‘psychical’ in its own way. The clinical theories approach it through the work of mental reality; the psychological models and theories, through the work of physical reality. The psychological foundations state formally that there must be a point of meeting between the two.
… the clinical theories cover all psychoanalytic concepts that can be expressed in the language of experience, and are themselves something to be explained. … Freud’s way of explaining them is termed the ‘psychology’, a word Freud coins as a direct counterpart to ‘physics’. ‘physics’ and ‘psychology’ refer to the ‘first principles’ of the sciences of physics and psychology respectively. … physical and psychological theories and principles are unprovable, since by definition there can be no deeper theoretical level on which ‘first principles’ can rest. …
Freud’s main psychological proposition is that psychical phenomena can be thought of in three different ways: ‘when we have succeeded in describing a psychical process in its dynamic, topographical and economic aspects, we should speak of it as a psychological presentation’ (Freud, S.E. 14, p 181, 1915)
… the clinical theories form the ground of explanation for Freud’s psychoanalytic observations, and the psychological models and theories form the ground of the clinical theories. … but they are still not the absolute foundation of psychoanalysis. This is to be found in the presuppositions they carry, which set out the unconditioned starting-point for psychoanalytic theorization. … the two fundamental hypotheses … the first hypothesis proposes that the psyche has to be conceived as a complex ‘apparatus’, with mental activity as its output … ‘the majority of philosophers … declare that the idea of something psychical being unconscious is self-contradictory. But this is precisely what psychoanalysis is obliged to assert, and this is its second fundamental hypothesis’ (Freud, S.E. 23, p 158, 1938) … thus Freud’s deion of the psyche is of a quasi-physical ‘apparatus’ churning out a continuous stream of quasi-mental ‘processes’ … the conception of the psychical as the primary psychophysical reality …
These two hypotheses are still not the most fundamental level of psychoanalysis. This is to be found in the ‘basic assumption’ and ultimate bedrock of Freud’s psychoanalysis: that a theory of mental life must begin with the unified conception of processes which are usually cast in either physical or mental terms. … The task of psychoanalysis is to ‘(act) as an intermediary between biology and psychology’ (Freud, S.E. 13, p 182, 1913)
* * * * * *
Chap 5: The apparatus of the soul: how can mental and physical explanations coincide?
… turns away from conventional work to the thinking behind Freud’s theories, in a search for the roots of their strange theoretical ambiguity. We find that this goes back to the very beginning of his thought. His underlying philosophy is neither wholly scientific nor purely interpretative. He seems to hold a picture of reality which pre-empts the division into the mental and physical modes on which empirical and hermeneutic approaches rest. …
Together with Freud’s thinking, the work of the philosophers Sebastian Gardner (Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, 1993) and Peter Strawson (Individuals: An Essay in Deive physics, 1959) (‘Deive physics is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world, revisionary physics is concerned to produce a better structure’. ibid, p 9) suggest the basis for a new foundational approach which seems to come from within psychoanalysis itself. Instead of the empirical basis in the body, or the hermeneutic basis in the mind, psychoanalysis goes back to the psychophysical basis of the person, as the source from which all thinking must arise.
* * * * * *
Chap 6. Conclusions
… based on the intimate association between psychoanalysis and the ‘pre-theoretical’ psychology of everyday living … allows the practical foundational principle to be drawn out … the ground of the psychical is neither the mind of hermeneutic approaches nor the body of empirical approaches. It can only be the person, as the irreducibly psychophysical holder of the psychical reality from which all knowledge derives.
… psychoanalysis defines itself as reflection on a self, by a self; directly, or by attunement with another. Psychoanalysis is most secure on the basis that there is no specialized arena, no technical or linguistic model of knowing or knowledge to which it must accede. It is not a hermeneutic theory, since its material is treated as ‘real’ rather than ‘merely’ symbolic. Neither is it an empirical science, because its concepts and explanations must be reachable, and reached, through reflections alone. Perhaps it could be described as systematic enquiry into the unspoken explanation of oneself, at a generalized level, and taking both mental and physical convictions into account.
The subject matter of psychoanalysis, its method and its underlying nature are all centred in reflection, making psychoanalytic thinking even less fixed and more ‘critical’ than psychoanalytic theory itself. In psychoanalysis more than in any other subject, theoretical consolidation and theoretical renewal pull against each other. Experience and reflection lead to both the establishment and the challenge of theoretical concepts and structures. The only theory that can be made use of psychoanalytically is theory that has been assimilated and modified to become personal knowledge. The extent to which psychoanalytic concepts are taught or learned, rather than recognized or reached through reflection, is the extent of the loss of their critical-reflective potential. This does not mean that psychoanalytic thought is confined to the ‘lowest common denominator’; just that interpretations have to be individually rather generally inspired, and should arise from the subjective or intersubjective situation rather than straight from the theoretical preconceptions of the individual.
Whatever the conceptual necessity of a mental or a physical theorization, we feel we should not have to choose between them in our minds, because in our lives we cannot: we can only choose the person.
We can now see why empirical-scientific or hermeneutic readings of psychoanalysis fail to satisfy. They enter into the theorizing process too late to encompass the whole of what psychoanalysis has to offer. The concept of the psychical implies foundations in which mental and physical explanations can in principle converge. The place at which the psychical arises is the place in which the ‘soul’ meets with its concrete ‘apparatus’. The question of how mental and physical explanations coincide cannot be answered, by psychoanalysis or anything else. It becomes, instead, the question of where they coincide. The answer seems to be: before they begin to diverge.
3… AT THE TIME WHEN ‘SCIENCES OF MAN’ BEGAN TO EMERGE
Dostoevsky is not only a philosopher, he is also a philosophical problem.
(“On Reading Dostoevsky”, George Florovsky)
“A survey of Russian critical literature on Dostoevsky’s works shows at once that with very few exceptions it does not rise above the spiritual level of Dostoevsky’s favorite characters. It does not dominate the material at hand, the material dominates it completely. It is still learning from Ivan Karamazov and Raskolnikov, from Stavrogin and the Grand Inquisitor, entangling itself in the same contradictions that entangled them, stopping in bewilderment before the problems that they failed to solve and bowing respectfully before their complex and tormenting experiences.”
Mikhail Bakhtin, 1929, p 6, quoting B. M. Engelhardt
Dostoevsky 1821-1881
Dostoyevsky (Dostoevsky), Fyodor (Feodor) Mikhailovich, Russian author, born in Moscow, on the 3oth of October 1821, was the second son of a retired military surgeon of a decayed noble family. He was educated at Moscow and at the military engineering academy in St. Petersburg, which he left in 1843 with the grade of sub-lieutenant. Next year his father died, and he resigned his commission in order to devote himself to literature thus commencing a long struggle with ill-health and penury.
In addition to the old Russian masters Gogol and Pushkin, Balzac and George Sand supplied him with literary ideals. He knew little of Dickens, but his first story is thoroughly Dickensian in character. The hero is a middle-aged man who entertains a pathetic, humble adoration for a fair young girl, a solitary waif like himself. Characteristically the Russian story ends in tender gloom. The girl marries a middle-aged wealthy man; the hero dies of a broken heart, and his funeral is described in lamentable detail. The germ of all Dostoyevsky’s imaginative work may be discovered here. The story was submitted in manu to the Russian critic, Bielinski, and excited him by its power over the emotions. It appeared in the course of 1846 under the title of Poor People. An English version, Poor Folk, with an introduction by George Moore, appeared in 1894. The successful author became a regular contributor of short tales to the Annals of the Country, a monthly periodical conducted by Kraevsky; but he was wretchedly paid, and his work, though revealing extraordinary power and intensity, commonly lacks both finish and proportion. Poverty and physical suffering robbed him of the joy of life and filled him with bitter thoughts and morbid imaginings.
During 1847 he became an enthusiastic member of the revolutionary reunions of the political agitator, Petrachevski. Many of the students and younger members did little more than discuss the theories of Fourier and other economists at these gatherings. Exaggerated reports were eventually carried to the police, and on the 23rd of April 1849 Dostoyevsky and his brother, with thirty other suspected members, were arrested. After a short examination by the secret police they were lodged in the fortress of St Peter and St Paul at St Petersburg, in which confinement Feodor wrote his story A Little Hero. On the 22nd of December 1849 the accused were all condemned to death. As the soldiers were preparing to carry out the sentence, the prisoners were informed that their penalty was commuted to exile in Siberia. The novelist’s sentence was, four years in Siberia and enforced military service in the ranks for life. On Christmas eve 1849 he started the long journey to Omsk, and remained in Siberia, like a man buried alive, nailed down in his coffin for four terrible years. His Siberian experiences are graphically narrated in a volume to which he gave the name of Recollections of a Dead-House (1858). It was known in an English translation as Buried Alive in Siberia (1881). Upon the accession of Alexander II., he was finally recalled from exile.
After herding for years with the worst Criminals, Dostoyevsky obtained an exceptional insight into the dark and seamy side of Russian life. He formed new conceptions of human life and of the Russian character. Psychological studies have seldom, if ever, found a more intense form of expression than that embodied by Dostoyevsky in his novel Crime and Punishment. The hero Raskolnikov is a poor student, who is led on to commit a murder partly by self conceit, partly by the contemplation of the abject misery around him. Unsurpassed in poignancy in the whole of modern literature is the sensation of compassion evoked by the scene between the self-tormented Raskolnikov and the humble street-walker, Sonia, whom he loves, and from whom, having confessed his crime, he derives the idea of expiation. Raskolnikov finally gives himself up to the police and is exiled to Siberia, whither Sonia follows him. The book gave currency to a number of ideas, not in any sense new, but specially characteristic of Dostoyevsky: the theory, for instance, that in every life, however fallen and degraded, there are ecstatic moments of self-devotion; the doctrine of purification by suffering, and by suffering alone; and the ideal of a Russian people forming a social state at some future period bound together by no obligation save mutual love and the magic of kindness. In this visionary prospect, as well as in his objection to the use of physical force, Dostoyevsky anticipated in a remarkable manner some of the conspicuous tenets of his great successor Tolstoy. The book electrified the reading public in Russia upon its appearance in 1866, and its fame was confirmed when it appeared in Paris in 1867. To his remarkable faculty self awakening reverberations of melancholy and compassion, as shown in his early work, Dostoyevsky had added, by the admission of all, a rare mastery over the emotions of terror and pity. But such mastery was not long to remain unimpaired. Crime and Punishment was written when he was at the zenith of his power. His remaining works exhibit frequently a marvelous tragic and analytic power, but they are unequal, and deficient in measure and in balance. The chief of them are: The Injured and the Insulted, The Demons (1867), The Idiot (I869), The Adult (1875), The Brothers Karamazov (1881).
From 1865, when he settled in St, Petersburg Dostoyevsky was absorbed in a succession of journalistic enterprises, and suffered severe gambling losses. He had to leave Russia, in order to escape his creditors, and to seek refuge in Germany and Italy. He was further harassed by troubles with his wife, and his work was interrupted by epileptic fits and other physical ailments. It was under such conditions as these that his most enduring works were created. He managed finally to return to Russia early in the seventies, and was for some time director of The Russian World.
The last eight years of his life were spent in comparative prosperity at St. Petersburg, where he died on the 9th of February 1881.
(From The Free Library By Farlex)
Dostoevsky’s works do not force one view of human freedom to be taken by the other. He provides no definite image of man. The presentation of freedom in this manner is a defense of man, a speaking on behalf of man against dissolution into the rhetoric that theology and science bring. It is worth observing that Dostoevsky wrote these novels at a time when “the sciences of man” were beginning to emerge. His artwork defends man against a dissolution into the acid bath of psychology, sociology, and economy, all of which sought to account for man’s being in terms of their own rhetoric.
(Dostoevsky’s Conception of Man: Its Impact on Philosophical Anthropology, by Peter Mcquire Wolf, PhD Dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University, 1997, p 9)
Four facets may be distinguished in the rich personality of Dostoevsky:
the creative artist, the neurotic, the moralist and the sinner. How is one
to find one’s way in this bewildering complexity?
The creative artist is the least doubtful: Dostoevsky’s place is not far behind Shakespeare. The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written; the episode of the Grand Inquisitor, one of the peaks in the literature of the world, can hardly be valued too highly. Before the problem of the creative artist analysis, alas, lay down its arms.
… I included Dostoevsky the psychologist under the creative artist. Another objection I might have raised against him was that his insight was so much restricted to abnormal mental life. Consider his astonishing helplessness in face of the phenomena of love. All he really knew were crude, instinctual desire, masochistic subjection and loving out of pity. … in spite of all my admiration for Dostoevsky’s intensity and pre-eminence, I do not really like him. That is because my patience with pathological natures is exhausted in analysis. In art and life I am intolerant of them.
(Freud, S.E. 21, p 177 & 196)
Traditional interpretation of literature from a psychoanalytic standpoint has relied extensively upon the work of Sigmund Freud. In the case of Dostoevsky, however, this method is both anachronistic and inadequate. Dostoevsky's great works, considered individually or holistically, though fictional, established him as one of the forefathers of psychoanalysis, and a predecessor to Freud. Indeed Freud himself acknowledged that "the poets" discovered the unconscious before he did, stating further in a letter to Stefan Zweig, "Dostoevsky 'cannot be understood without psychoanalysis- i.e., he isn't in need of it because he illustrates it himself in every character and every sentence.'"
Louis Breger seems to present the most comprehensive and adequate approach to psychology in Dostoevsky. While building upon Freud, he rejects the simplicity and atomistic nature of his analysis: "Too often, applications to literature have relied on particular psychoanalytic observations- the Oedipus complex, the primal scene,- or some version of theory- orthodox Freudian, Lacanian. But observations and theory can only be guidelines in the application of the method."
Breger argues here, that Freudian methods of analysis tend to think of the author as patient, and believes rather, in the case of Dostoevsky, that he should be considered a fellow psychoanalyst. "What is most characteristic in [Dostoevsky] is the presence of multiple points of view; he is never, as an author, completely identified with one character.”
(Dostoevsky and Psychology, by Dan Cantrell)
THE UNDERGROUND MAN: BACKGROUND OF THE MODERN SELF