Unconscious Logic: An Introduction to Matte Blanco's Bi-Logic and Its Uses (The New Library of Psychoanalysis) by Eric Rayner

by Eric Rayner

Eric Rayner, a psychoanalyst in private practice, has written the first clear introduction to Matte-Blanco's key concepts for psychotherapists and psychoanalysts. While Matte-Blanco's theories on the structure of the unconscious and the way in which it operates are generally recognized to be the most original since those of Freud, many people find his use of terminology from mathematics and logic difficult to understand. In this book, Rayner sets out the central ideas and then shows, with examples, how they relate to clinical practice. He also describes how the ideas are related to those of people in other disciplines--mathematics, logic, psychology (specifically Piaget), and anthropology, among others.Drawing on the work of a group of people who have been inspired by Matte-Blanco's thinking to extend their own ideas and test them out in the consulting room, this book reveals the significance of Matte-Blanco's thought for future research.

Paperback

First published September 13, 1995

Reviews

[javor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author is palpably British. Definitely not Rayner’s best work. Sorry for being an asshole but as a helpful tip to anyone writing any kind of “Introduction to [author]”-type book in the future: the more you insist “It may seem to the reader like [author]’s theories are completely useless and circular, but I promise you they’re applicable!”, the less convincing it is. This book did an alright job of explaining the psychoanalytic theories of Matte Blanco but a poor job of convincing the reader of much of anything. The notions of dimensionality in unconscious processing, as well as infinitization and (a)symmetrization in emotions and object relations, were very interesting, as well as Matte Blanco’s general reduction of Freud’s principles of the unconscious to two mathematical processes. However, the clinical examples of bi-logic seemed almost ridiculous. I did like, in concept, the idea of an unconscious in which propositional functions precede their saturation with subject and object arguments, but not how this notion of symmetrized (subject–object) propositionality was handled clinically by analysts informed by bi-logic. And also—and maybe this is just my bias towards post-structuralist thinking, but—I can’t help but suspect that this unconscious of symmetrizing abstraction can only exist to the extent that it functions according to predicational/identitarian operations as internalized by the speaking subject as Language in its Western-metaphysics-of-presence sense. I.e. that, if the unconscious must be produced, the ‘propositional unconscious’ Matte Blanco described is not wrong per se but naturalizes the material conditions that make its emergence possible. This goes beyond the book though. Anyway, the connections at the end with other thinkers like Bateson, Edelman, Lévi-Strauss, Bion, and especially with chaos theory felt hardly related and a loose attempt at best to situate Matte Blanco’s theories in context/conversation with other disciplines. Was not a huge fan of this book and it did a poor job of selling Matte Blanco to the reader, especially given that it just started out by saying how Matte Blanco was a mean and angry person. Rayner also often arrives at agreeable conclusions through the weirdest ways imaginable. Like saying that “psychoanalytic therapists must take the unpredictable aspects of mental functioning into account in future theory and therapy” is certainly true, but this is kind of a basic tenet of psychoanalysis, no? Especially through theorists like Winnicott and such? Do you really need a set theoretic unconscious and chaos theory to arrive at that conclusion? And how does it support it? Nevertheless I did like some of Rayner’s conclusions regarding bi-logic’s clinical applications, such as “interpretations will be most usable if done using explanatory ideas imbued with bi-logical structures, such as emotionally loaded language, metaphor, other figures of speech, jokes and poetry.” I was surprised to see such an "il n'y a pas de hors-texte"-esque conclusion regarding the rhetoricization of analytic discourse but this went well with my general distrust of analytic neutrality as it is often conceived. Rayner presented a very particular reading of Matte Blanco through the lens of chaos theory but I could see the potential of other readings recovering a sort of (inter)textuality latent in Matte Blanco's thought that would allow for an interesting bridge between more (post)structuralist-leaning theories and his own. So overall not a great book in terms of selling Matte Blanco but did explain things fairly well and asked some interesting questions.

[Mani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding introduction to Matte Blanco's concepts of subconscious Bi-logic, symmetry and asymmetry and the transition from subconscious an dream content to the consciou world of semantic representation.

I think I'm ready to take on Blanco's book now. I think.