A Non-Oedipal Psychoanalysis?: A Clinical Anthropology of Hysteria in the Works of Freud and Lacan

by Philippe Van Haute, Tomas Geyskens

The different psychopathologic syndromes show in an exaggerated and caricatural manner the basic structures of human existence. These structures not only characterize psychopathology, but they also determine the highest forms of culture. This is the credo of Freud's anthropology. This anthropology implies that humans are beings of the in-between. The human being is essentially tied up between pathology and culture, and 'normativity' cannot be defined in a theoretically convincing manner. The authors of this book call this Freudian anthropology a patho-analysis of existence or a clinical anthropology. This anthropology gives a new meaning to the Nietzschean dictum that the human being is a 'sick animal'. Freud, and later Lacan, first developed this anthropological insight in relation to hysteria (in its relation to literature).This patho-analytic perspective progressively disappears in Freud's texts after 1905. This book reveals the crucial moments of that development. In doing so, it shows clearly not only that Freud introduced the Oedipus complex much later than is usually assumed, but also that the theory of the Oedipus complex is irreconcilable with the project of a clinical anthropology.The authors not only examine the philosophical meaning of this thesis in the work of Freud. They also examine its avatars in the texts of Jacques Lacan and show how this project of a patho-analysis of existence inevitably obliges us to formulate a non-oedipal psychoanalytic anthropology.

180 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2012

Reviews

[leren_lezen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well argued for why we need - like Lacan starts to admit from SXVII onwards - a non-Oedipal psychoanalytic anthropology of the human being. We need this because it 1) blurs the boundaries between the pathological and the normal by emphasising how so-called pathologies are mere exaggerations of tendencies inherent to us all 2) it allows for less heteronormativity in reaching what other psychoanalytic schools call a type of adult psychological developmental state 3) because the Oedipus-complex likely came from Freud's personal issues with his daddy (which is not the most convincing argument, to project your own family issues on the human condition at large).

Philip van Haute is one of my favourite Lacanian scholars, and I am actually quite sad that I will never be able to meet him in person, as he relatively recently passed away.