2. THE PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

One can understand emotion only if he looks for a signification. This signification is by nature of a functional order. We are therefore led to speak of a finality of emotion. We grasp this finality in a very concrete way by objective examination of emotional behavior. It is not at all a matter of a more or less obscure theory of emotion-instinct based on a priori principles or on postulates. The simple consideration of facts leads us to an empirical intuition of the finalist signification of emotion. If, on the other hand, we try to establish the essence of emotion as a fact of interpsychology in a full intuition, we grasp this finality as inherent in its structure. And all psychologists who have reflected on James’s peripheric theory have been more or less conscious of this finalist signification. This is what Janet adorns with the name “psychic.” It is what psychologists or physiologists like Cannon and Sherrington tried to reintroduce into the description of emotive facts with their hypothesis of a cerebral sensitivity; again, this is what we find in Wallon or, more recently, in the psychologists of form. This finality supposes a synthetic organization of behavior which can be only the unconscious of the psychoanalysts or consciousness. But it would be rather easy, if it were necessary, to have a psychoanalytic theory of emotion-finality. One could, without too much trouble, show anger or fear to be means used by unconscious tendencies to satisfy themselves symbolically or to break a state of unbearable tension. One could account for this essential character of emotion as follows: one undergoes it; it takes one by surprise; it develops in accordance with its own laws and without our conscious spontaneity’s being able to modify its course appreciably. This dissociation of the organized character of emotion, whose organizing theme one could cast into the unconscious, and of its inevitable character, which would be such only for the consciousness of the subject, would render about the same service on the plane of empirical psychology as the Kantian distinction between empirical character and noumenal character does on the metaphysical plane.

Psychoanalytic psychology has certainly been the first to put the emphasis on the signification of psychic facts; that is, it was the first to insist upon the fact that every state of consciousness is the equivalent of something other than itself. For example, the clumsy theft carried out by a person who is sexually obsessed is not simply a “clumsy theft.” As soon as we consider it with the psychoanalysts as a phenomenon of self-punishment it sends us back to something other than itself. It sends us back to the first complex for which the sick person is trying to justify himself by punishing himself. One can see that a psychoanalytic theory of emotion could be possible. Does it not already exist? A woman has a phobia of bay-trees. As soon as she sees a cluster of bay-trees, she faints. The psychoanalyst discovers in her childhood a painful sexual incident connected with a laurel bush. Therefore, what will the emotion be in such a case? A phenomenon of refusal, of censure. Not of refusal of the bay-tree. A refusal to re-live the memory connected with the bay-tree. The emotion here is flight from the revelation to be made, as sleep is sometimes a flight from a decision to be made, as the sickness of some young girls is, for Stekel, a flight from marriage. Of course, emotion will not always be escape. One can already begin to see among the psychoanalysts an interpretation of anger as a symbolic gratification of sexual tendencies. And, of course, none of these interpretations is to be rejected. There can be no doubt that anger may signify sadism. That fainting from passive fear may signify flight, the search for a refuge, is certain, and we shall try to show the reason for it. What is in question here is the very principle of psychoanalytic explanation. That is what we should like to consider here.

The psychoanalytic interpretation considers the phenomenon of consciousness as the symbolic realization of a desire repressed by censorship. Let us note that for consciousness this desire is not implicated in its symbolic realization. Insofar as it exists by and in our consciousness, it is only what it appears to be: emotion, desire for sleep, theft, phobia of bay-trees, etc. If it were otherwise and if we had some consciousness, even implicit, of our real desire, we should be dishonest; the psychoanalyst does not mean it that way. It follows that the signification of our conscious behavior is entirely external to the behavior itself, or, if one prefers, the thing signified is entirely cut off from the thing signifying. The behavior of the subject is, in itself, what it is (if we call “in itself” what it is for itself), but it is possible to decipher it by appropriate techniques as a written language is deciphered. In short, the conscious fact is to the thing signified as a thing, the effect of a certain event, is to that event, for example, as the traces of a fire lit on the mountain are to the human beings who lit the fire. Human presences are not contained in the ashes which remain. They are connected with them by a bond of causality; the bond is external, the remains of the fire are passive in relation to this causal relationship as is every effect in relation to its cause. A consciousness which has not acquired the necessary technical knowledge would be unable to perceive these traces as signs. At the same time, these traces are what they are, that is, they exist in themselves outside of any signifying interpretation; they are half-calcinated pieces of wood; that is all.

May we admit that a fact of consciousness may be like a thing in relation to its signification, that is, may receive it from without like an external quality—as it is an external quality for the burnt wood to have been burned by men who wanted to warm themselves? It seems, at the start, that the first result of such an interpretation is to establish consciousness as a thing in relation to the thing signified; it is to admit that consciousness is established as a signification without being conscious of the signification which it establishes. There is a flagrant contradiction here, unless one does not consider consciousness as an existence like a stone or a cart. But in this case it is necessary to renounce entirely the Cartesian cogito and make of consciousness a secondary and passive phenomenon. Insofar as consciousness makes itself, it is never anything but what it appears to be. Therefore, if it possesses a signification it should contain it in itself as a structure of consciousness. This does not at all mean that this signification has to be perfectly explicit. Many degrees of consideration and clarity are possible. It means only that we should not examine consciousness from without as one examines the traces of the fire or the encampment, but from within, that one should find signification in it. If the cogito is to be possible, consciousness is itself the fact, the signification, and the thing signified.

The truth is that what makes an exhaustive refutation of psychoanalysis difficult is that the psychoanalyst does not consider signification as being conferred upon consciousness from without. For him there is always an internal analogy between the conscious fact and the desire which it expresses, since the conscious fact symbolizes with the complex which is expressed. And for the psychoanalyst this character of symbol is evidently not external to the fact of consciousness itself; it is constitutive. We are completely in agreement with him on this point: that symbolization is constitutive of symbolic consciousness will trouble no one who believes in the absolute value of the Cartesian cogito. But it must be understood that if symbolization is constitutive of consciousness, it is permissible to perceive that there is an immanent bond of comprehension between the symbolization and the symbol. Only, we shall have to agree upon what it is that consciousness is constituted of in symbolization. In that case, there is nothing behind it, and the relation between symbol, thing symbolized, and symbolization is an interstructural bond of consciousness. But if we add that consciousness symbolizes under the causal pressure of a transcendent fact which is the repressed desire, we again fall into the previously described theory which makes the relation of thing signified to thing signifying a causal relation. It is the profound contradiction of all psychoanalysis to introduce both a bond of causality and a bond of comprehension between the phenomena which it studies. These two types of connection are incompatible. Also, the psychoanalytic theoretician establishes transcendent bonds of rigid causality among the facts studied (in dreams, a pin cushion always signifies woman’s breasts; entering a railway-carriage signifies performing the sexual act), whereas the practitioner is confident of getting successful results by studying, above all, the facts of consciousness in comprehension, that is, by seeking in a flexible way, the intra-conscious relationship between symbolization and symbol.

As for us, we do not reject the results of psychoanalysis when they are obtained by comprehension. We limit ourselves to denying any value and any intelligibility to its subjacent theory of psychic causality. And, moreover, we assert that to the extent to which the psychoanalyst makes use of comprehension to interpret consciousness, it would be better freely to recognize that everything which takes place in consciousness can receive its explanation only from consciousness itself. So we have returned to our point of departure: a theory of emotion which insists on the signifying character of emotive facts should seek this signification in consciousness itself. In other words, it is consciousness which makes itself consciousness, being moved to do so by the needs of an inner signification.

The fact is that partisans of psychoanalysis will immediately raise a difficulty of principle: if consciousness organizes emotion as a certain type of response adapted to an exterior situation, how does it come about, therefore, that it does not have consciousness of this adaptation? And it must be recognized that their theory accounts perfectly for the wedging between signification and consciousness, which ought not to astonish us since it is made precisely for that purpose. Better still, they will say, in most cases we struggle as a conscious spontaneity against the development of emotional manifestations; we try to master our fear, to calm our anger, to hold back our sobs. Thus, not only do we not have consciousness of the finality of emotion but we still repress emotion with all our strength, and it invades us in spite of ourselves. A phenomenological description of emotion owes it to itself to remove these contradictions.