Freud – authentic analysis

Allow me in conclusion to say something about Freud. His work, his discoveries of the unconscious, of resistance and transference have been compared to the discoveries made by Copernicus. This may be a useful comparison for scholars. But he did more for us as human beings. He discovered that apart from the human languages of sound and gesture there are hundreds of other languages a thousand times more important and true than the former, means of communication which bring people closer to each other. In the context of world history Freud did something that can only be compared to the work of the founders of religion if we have to make a comparison at all. He taught people new ways of understanding one another, he brought them closer together, he built a thousand bridges across the gap that separates human beings from each other, he gave to those who followed him a newer, deeper, happier, more childlike way of living, a new kind of loving and a new kind of believing. To know is to doubt, to believe is not to doubt. In science Freud forced us to doubt and reexamine everything we thought we knew up to then. In our personal lives he brought us a belief, the belief in loving one another. He increased in us the ability to get to know each other which results spontaneously and inevitably in a greater human love and respect for others, it reduces the compulsion to lie, offers the possibility of a greater freedom of living and reduces anxiety. I am glad I know him.

Georg Groddeck; ‘Das Es und die Psychoanalyse nebst allgemeinen Ausführungen zum damaligen wie heutigen Kongresswesen’ (The It and Psychoanalysis with general remarks about congress mania then and now), Psychoanalytische Schriften zur Psychosomatik, pp. 161-2.

I then go on to look again at the subject of Bion’s ‘method’ from another angle of vision. Meltzer (1978) discerns in Bion’s style of writing a genuine search for ambiguity. His readers are certainly very familiar with this ambiguity, which they experience as a source of both delight and torment. Also the colleagues who attended his seminars had direct experience of it. But for Bion ambiguity has a defined value. It activates the psychoanalytic function of the mind. In his view, in fact, psychoanalysis can be seen as a special probe that explores the unknown of the psyche in an act of reconnaissance that continuously expands the field. Thus, Bion’s darkness, the black light of dream projects on to things, is nothing other than the desire to be ‘precisely obscure’ (Bion, 19975, p. 191), to achieve the ideal state of mind which he calls negative capability, and to free oneself as far as possible of preconceived ideas. To focus on knowledge you need to be able to tolerate the frustration that comes from not understanding, from paradox, from the aporias of reason, and what Freud called overdetermination, in other words, the plurality of possible meanings.

Civitarese, Giuseppe. (2012). The Violence of Emotions: Bion and Post-Bionian Psychoanalysis. Routledge.

Tag: Freud

what freud did for us as human beings

the defined value of ambiguity