World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis

by Robert D. Stolorow

Stolorow and his collaborators' post-Cartesian psychoanalytic perspective – intersubjective-systems theory – is a phenomenological contextualism that illuminates worlds of emotional experience as they take form within relational contexts. After outlining the evolution and basic ideas of this framework, Stolorow shows both how post-Cartesian psychoanalysis finds enrichment and philosophical support in Heidegger's analysis of human existence, and how Heidegger's existential philosophy, in turn, can be enriched and expanded by an encounter with post-Cartesian psychoanalysis. In doing so, he creates an important psychological bridge between post-Cartesian psychoanalysis and existential philosophy in the phenomenology of emotional trauma.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Psychology

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[0 · Rating 1 out of 5]

While this is a nice book on how Heidegger can inform the practice of trauma therapy, it has nothing to do with psychoanalysis. Stolorow caricatures Freudian metapsychology as a Cartesian theory of a lone individual "thing," isolated from its environment and from others. Strawmanning Freud in this particular way is par for the course for relational therapists. It would be more honest if they admitted that they have not bothered to read Freud, rather than create caricatures which they can dismiss out of hand in order to justify their decision.

Aside from the unjustified Freud snub, the most glaring mistake is the conflation of phenomenology's "prereflective" with psychoanalysis' dynamic unconscious. Stolorow's reliance on Heidegger's Dasein allows him to conveniently forget that, amongst phenomenologists, "prereflective" is an adjective that modifies the noun "consciousness." The idea of a "prereflective unconscious," proposed by Stolorow and Atwood early in their career, is a contradiction in terms. It also, amusingly, implies the existence of a "reflective unconscious."

Psychoanalysis' dynamic unconscious is not reducible to "unformulated," pre-theoretical, or pre-propositional experience, to hermeneutic principles which are implicitly taken-for-granted, or to ready-to-hand comportment. The unconscious is, first and foremost, an aspect of Freudian metapsychology. It is a psychic domain that is produced by acts of repression, motivated by conflicts between id and superego. While a patient in analysis might express their unconscious conflicts in a prereflective manner, acting them out without being aware of them or the deeper meanings they express, it is precisely the emphasis on intrapsychic conflict which is essential to the notion of a dynamic unconscious, and inessential to the notion of the prereflective. It is possible that certain elements of a person's life may remain largely unreflected upon due to the threat of psychic conflict and anxiety, and here we can speak of repression as a kind of motivated forgetting or covering over of prereflective Being--Stolorow refers to Heidegger's dialectic of inauthenticity and authentic being-towards-death--but it seems doubtful that the psychoanalytic theory of conflicts applies to the entire domain of prereflective existence. Being-towards-death is not the same as Freud's death drive. But because Stolorow has conflated the unconscious with the prereflective, he feels comfortable jettisoning drive theory entirely and replacing it with a theory of unformulated, intersubjective affects.

It's not a bad theory. Like psychoanalysis, it can explain certain behaviors as the result of interpersonal conflicts which gradually become internalized and re-enacted in the present. Patients may get stuck in behavioral loops as the result of trauma, and may avoid acknowledging certain aspects of their experience because doing so will cause them unbearable anxiety. But again--unformulated experience is not equivalent to the repressed unconscious. At a certain point, one has to admit that one is no longer doing psychoanalysis: this is just phenomenology. The two aren't entirely opposed, but neither are they identical with each other. They intertwine, converging and diverging at certain important points. At a certain point in the history of therapy in the US, therapists turned away from psychoanalysis and towards phenomenology. Confusingly, they have called themselves "relational psychoanalysts" and they refer to the "unconscious" as the realm of prereflective, unformulated experience. My hope is that a quick reflection upon the differences between phenomenology and psychoanalysis will encourage them to drop the "psychoanalysis" label and authentically embrace themselves as exclusively phenomenological therapists, since that is what they are.

[Lee Vance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deepened my understanding of trauma and introduced me to the work and life of Heidegger - both of which are intertwined.

I deeply appreciate Stolorow's desire to keep whole the philosopher's creation with the creator. He demonstrates integrity in this as he weaves his own traumas throughout his work.

[Hanne G · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice exploration of the phenomenology of memory and how trauma fragments our time sense. I’m still thinking on it and will have to read again, as with most of his work.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very lucid discussion of the relationship between Heidegger's philosophy and the relational psychoanalysis that Stolorow advocates. It is a very seductive presentation, but it left me uneasy. First, I don't see why Stolorow needs Heidegger to make the case for his relational psychoanalysis. Second, relational psychoanalysis, as presented here, seems suited for the treatment of "trauma," and not a general psychoanalytic theory. This is because as I read Stolorow he seems to leave out, or at least minimize, what seems central to psychoanalysis, namely-- unconscious agency. Third, Stolorow's psycho-biography of Heidegger and his suggestion that all psychoanalytic and philosophical theorists should be so analyzed to get a proper grasp of their ideas seems to me to be a kind of reductionism that trivializes ideas. That said, I'm glad that i read this book.

[Rodger Broome · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brings Heidegger's deep and complex ontology to a level for practical application without losing its profundity.