To have unearthed the realm of the symbolic unconscious was Freud s monumental achievement. For Freud not only located this previously adumbrated territory; he essayed the lirst and most significant explication of its processes. Freud’s voyage is that of an explorer who discovers a previously uncharted continent but mistakes the actual place and meaning of this new region. Freud disclosed something of the forced self-alienation of men and women under capitalism and believed, instead, that he had ventured into the universal nature of instinctual drives and meanings. Everything Freud accomplished in the therapeutic realm participates in this contradictory alignment. I wish to present two quick illustrations of this procedure before bringing this chapter to a close.
The first and minor example occurs in the course of Freud’s interpretation of Dora’s symbolic expression of her desire to masturbate. Freud’s views on the subject of the effect of Dora’s mastrubation upon her hysteria seem to me totally unfounded. But his reflections on the symbolic manifestation of the desire itself are extremely interesting. On one particular occasion
she wore at her waist—a thing she never did on any other occasion before or after—a small reticule of a shape which had just come into fashion; and, as she lay on the sofa and talked, she kept playing with it—opening it, putting a finger into it, shutting it again, and so on. I looked on for some time, and then explained to her the nature of a symptomatic act. 74
Now we are all perfectly familiar with this sort of interpretation which makes of the reticule nothing but a representation of the female genitals. It is easy enough to be impressed by Freud’s distinct originality or to find the entire account ludicrous. In my own reading of Freud I often find myself swinging fitfully from one response to the other. It is more important for the moment to note precisely how Freud proceeds.
The key to the representation is the purported similarity of the reticule and the vagina. However, the reticule is external, metallic, hard, cold, mechanical, and rectangular. The female genitals are quite the opposite. Yet it is crucial for Freud’s theory of symbolism that the one represent the other. But the obvious retort will certainly be that the reticule and the vagina share one crucial similarity which is sufficient for their symbolic relationship—the fact of emptiness. And certainly it is this that confers persuasiveness upon all Freud’s interpretations of voids, holes, vacancies, etc., as representative of the vagina. However, the reticule is not merely an empty box. In fact, it is not empty at all. It is permeated by the social significance of female ornamentation and display, and of privacy, secrecy, and internality. But this last characteristic is
not a biological expression of the anatomy of the womb. It is, rather, an expression of the social function of the family as divorced from the masculine function of economic-political control in the world of practice. The reticule contains the reality and fantasy of Dora’s social location in the division of capitalist labor.
When Freud’s hydraulic theory is rejected for his intentionalsymbolic presentation it is precisely this sort of symbolic-phenomonological reading the the reticule that is adduced on Freud’s behalf. And yet the entire account is antiphenomenological, and as mechanical an explanation ol the realm of symbols as the economics of energy in the realm of psychic mechanics. For the truth is that experientially the vagina is not an absence at all. It is a very clear presence, a very distinct qualia to sight, touch, and our other senses. It is perfectly true that it can be entered into, but then so can the male mouth and anus, neither of which is regarded as inherently feminine for that reason. In the experience of intercourse or masturbation it is not the absence that is significant but the concrete presence of (a) particular sensations that mark off these acts as pleasurable and (b) the social code that marks off pleasure itself as proper or inappropriate. What is missing in Freud’s account is an unstated mediation, an implicit assumption that the male is whole because of the presence of the penis while the female is incomplete because of the absence of this organ. It is the penis that embodies power, mobility, action, and initiative and it is the absence of these characteristics in the female that constitute her as dependent and needing to be filled.
Absence is not a natural fact but a social determination. The female lacks a penis; the male lacks a vagina. Freud regards womanhood as a lack of male power and virtue, and it is this preconception that lends the necessary but unwarrented credibility to Freud’s explanation. In the course of his persistent reification Freud reduces the social subordination of women to a category of nature and presents a politically structured relationship of domination and subservience as a natural, anatomical fact. Freud hypostasizes a socially constructed relationship as a natural occurrence, thereby totally obscuring the realm of human activity that lies behind this alleged “fact.” The helplessness individuals feel in the presence of their own sexual natures is expressed in the form of natural determination. The realm of meaning, as a dimension of human existence, is not only contracted but thoroughly decimated. Freud’s account mystifies the human significance of purpose and intention, for it presents them as reflexes of a more basic necessity over which human beings have no ultimate control. In this manner Freud manifests the alienation of bourgeois society in an alienated form; he attributes to natural imposition what is a socially, humanly elaborated structure of political relationships.
The second point I wish to note is that Freud continues in the domain of theory what is taken for granted in the domain of bourgeois practice. Bourgeois parents do not recognize that they constitute the meaning of their children’s genitals through the process of incitement and denial. Freud confirms this invisible construction by asserting the social result as a natural fact. A striking illustration occurs in another of Freud’s cases, Little Hans. 75 In a situation heavy with the threat of castration and the loss of love, Freud offers the following reflection:
This morning Hans was given his usual daily bath by his mother and alterwards dried and powdered. As mother was powdering round his penis and taking care not to touch it, Hans said: Why don t you put youi finger theie. Mother: “Because tha’d be piggish” [emphasis added]. 71 ’
In this exchange the penis is constituted as a very specific social fact; as an object of parental interest and concern, as distinct in its significance from the remainder of the body, as an object of shame, as a source of unacceptable pleasure, and, finally, as an absence or negation that attaches to the organ and its function as its repressed and therefore hidden nature. The relationship between loss, desire, negation, and insatiability is suggestively adumbrated, and no deciphering of Lacanian hieroglyphics is required to understand the negated social construction of the body.
Freud’s therapeutic intervention legitimizes the structure of bourgeois domination by “certifying” its basic presuppositions. For as Freud brings to consciousness what had previously been repressed, he acts to reconstitute the rebellious inclination by introducing it into the fabric of normal, acceptable social relationships. In this way its, destructive power is dissipated and it is rendered harmless. As Freud notes, in the course of justifying his frank discussion of sexual matters with Dora:
With the exercise of a little caution all that is done is to translate into conscious ideas what was already known in the unconscious; and, after all, the whole effectiveness of the treatment is based upon our knowledge that the affect attached to an unconscious idea operates more strongly and, since it cannot be inhibited, more injuriously than the affect attached to a conscious one [emphasis added]. 77
Freud’s intervention makes it possible to incorporate into the social system what had previously been a recalcitrant opposition. Society has the power to repress various “instinctual” tendencies, but it has not the power to repress the effects of this repression. 1 hat is w hy psychoanalysis is so crucial a form of social control, and why it is so appropriate to the bourgeois order. It is not that it involves domination, nor ideology, nor the acceptance by the oppressed of the system that oppresses them; all these facts are as ancient as class society. What is novel in the system of bourgeois-psychoanalytic ideology is the belief of the exploited (a) not
merely that they are not exploited at all but (b) that they have in fact freely chosen the situation in which they find themselves. The serf of the Middle Ages believed in the appropriateness of his subordination; it was God’s will that society be hierarchically organized. But the typical bourgeois and, w ith the growth of capitalism, the typical worker believe that if their circumstances are not equal in power and privilege to those more fortunate, it is their own activity that has rendered them so subordinate.
What is unique in bourgeois ideology is the credo of personal responsibility—the belief that individuals freely select their own social status. I am not claiming that this ideology is uncontested; merely that it is a persistent and powerful force against which an enormous amount of counterenergy must be mobilized. As Freud notes:
For analysis does not undo the effects of repression. The instincts which were formerly suppressed remain suppressed; but the same effect is produced in a different way. Analysis replaces the process of repression, which is an automatic and excessive one. by a temperate and purposeful control on the part of the highest mental faculties. In a word, analysis replaces repression by condemnation. 79
The client, through the higher mental faculties of rational selfdetermination, chooses the suppression of instinct which had previously been externally imposed.
The therapist mediates this “self-determination” by directing the process of rational condemnation. The case of Dora did not reach a successful conclusion, and Freud’s reflection on the outcome is instructive. In regard to the last visit Dora made to him he notes:
1 knew Dora would not come back again. Her breaking off so unexpectedly, just when my hopes of a successful termination of the treatment were at their highest, and her thus bringing these hopes to nothing—this was an unmistakable act of vengeance on her part. Her purpose of self-injury also profited by this action. No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed. Might I perhaps have kept the girl under my treatment if I myself had acted a part, if I had exaggerated the importance to me of her staying on, and had shown a warm personal interest in her—a course which, even after allowing for my position as her physician, would have been tantamount to providing her with a substitute for the affection she longed for? I do not know. Since in every case a pai t of the factors that are encountered under the form of resistance remains unknown, I have always avoided acting a part, and have contented myself with practising the humbler arts of psychology. In spite of every theoretical interest and of every endeavor to be of assistance as a physician, I kept the fact in mind that there must be some limits set to the extent to which psychological influence may be used, and I respect as one of these limits the patients own will and understanding. 71
172 The Transcendence of Psychoanalysis
The abrupt termination of the analysis is here attributed to Dora’s vengeance against Freud. His lack of “warm personal affection,” on the other hand, is attributed to his unwillingness to “act a part” and to his respect for the will and understanding of the client. But just why Freud’s reserve—his insistence on Dora’s restricted importance to him—is any less a “psychological influence” than an expression of warm personal affection is impossible to determine. The claim to respect for Dora’s will and intelligence must be seen in the light of Freud’s observations in the postscript to the case. There he candidly acknowledges that “I did not succeed in mastering the transference in good time.” 80
Freud noted from the beginning that he was replacing Dora’s father in her imagination, for
she was even constantly comparing me with him consciously, and kept anxiously trying to make sure whether I was being quite straightforward with her, for her father “always preferred secrecy and roundabout ways.” 81
Later, Freud comments, when Dora’s transference to him proceeded from Herr K, he might have directed her attention to the fact that she was preparing to leave him as she had her previous suitor. But the comparison of Freud with Dora’s father and Herr K in the transference raises the crucial question of the real grounds of comparison between them. According to Freud,
the transference took me unawares, and, because of the unknown quantity in me which reminded Dora of Herr K, she took her revenge on me as she wanted to take her revenge on him, and deserted me as she believed herself to have been deceived and deserted by him. Thus she acted an essential part of her recollections and phantasies instead of reproducing it in the treatment. What this unknown quantity was I naturally cannot tell. I suspect it had to do with money or with jealousy. 82
The key phrase in this passage is “as she believed herself to have been deceived and deserted by him.” For she was, in fact, deceived and deserted by Herr K. Was Freud’s behavior so absolutely dissimilar? He, like Herr K and her father, while not overtly deceiving her, refused to acknowledge her “truth,” the persistent character of exploitation and betrayal in her life. And, like Herr K, Freud also refused to pursue her in treatment, to “show warm personal affection” toward her at the moment of her resistance.
But do we not need to keep in mind Freud’s respect for Dora’s will and intelligence?
Moreover, the relation of transference brings with it two further advantages. If the patient puts the analyst in the place of his father (or mother), he is also giving him the power which his super-ego exercises over his ego, since his parents were, as we know, the origin of his super-ego. The new super-ego now has an opportunity for a sort of after-education of the neurotic; it can
correct mistakes for which his parents were responsible in educating him. But at this point a warning must be given against misusing this new influence. However much the analyst may be tempted to become a teacher, a model and ideal for other people and to create men in his own image, he should not forget that that is not his task in the analytic relationship, and indeed that he will be disloyal to his task it he allows himself to be led on by his inclinations. It he does, he will only be repeating a mistake ot the parents who crushed their child’s independence by their influence, and he will only be replacing the patient's earlier dependence by a new one. In all his attempts at improving and educating the patient the analyst should respect his individuality. The amount of influence which he may legitimately allow himself will be determined by the degree of developmental inhibition present in the patient. Some neurotics have remained so infantile that in analysis too they can only be treated as children. 83
The amount of influence that may be exercised is determined by the degree of "developmental inhibition” present in the client. 1 here can be no doubt that Dora was so inhibited; she had no awareness, for example, “that her homosexual love for Frau K was the strongest unconscious current in her mental life.” 84 How, than, can we justify Freud s failure to intervene more directly in Dora’s therapy on the basis of his supposed respect for her "own wall and understanding. I he difficulty is that according to Freud’s own account, Dora did not yet possess her own will and understanding, and Freud’s severe scientilic neutrality can add nothing to its development.
Freud’s ambivalence is rooted in the paradox of liberal education. The child-patient is acknowledged to have been determined by the parents’ dominating influence and the therapist is admonished to tespect the patient’s “individuality.” But if the analyst refuses to adopt the role of “teacher, model or ideal,” how will he transform the crippling influence which the parents first exercised? If he were to be neutral—a stance we have seen to be both practically and theoretically impossible he would merely perpetuate the child’s helpless dependence. The standard response is that the analyst merely helps the patient to uncover repressed inclinations and leaves it to the patient to determine their value and freely adopt or reject them. But we have seen that the unearthing of hidden motives occurs in the context of an interpretation that cannot be impartial in terms of its ascription of responsibility to the individual or the social system, and that also cannot avoid the legitimization of one form of social relationship over another. The therapist’s task is to counter the dependence of the client-child, which, as it was foi med in a particular social arrangement, must be counterposed by a new social system dedicated to the independence of its members. I his would require that the therapist be antiauthoritarian, antipaternalistic, and, consequently, anticapitalist, though it does not dictate the strategy by which this alternative vision is to be included in the therapeutic piocess.
CHAPTER SIX